Chapter 301 — A Servant
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
The mage Daniel watched in horror as the whole world slowly collapsed before him—the gilded spires of the Arcane Pivot, that peerless hall of magic, that world of untrammeled freedom brimming with light and hope—all of it crumbling away before his eyes in utter silence, while a dreadful consciousness descended swiftly upon him.
That it "descended upon him" was only an illusion; Daniel, well versed in the secret arts of the mind, knew precisely what was really happening—his thoughts had been invaded, and the intruder's power had reached an inconceivable magnitude. Within his own mind Daniel constructed illusions and decoys to block out prying eyes and encrypt his memories, but the intruder simply ignored those defenses altogether and smashed through everything. In that fleeting second, all he felt was his brain being forcibly stuffed with an overwhelming torrent of information—a torrent he had no means of resisting.
Under such an immense onslaught of information, every thought-barrier and every memory buffer proved utterly useless.
In the last shred of his sanity, Daniel recalled the information recently published on the mind-network—the files on the "Otherworldly Wanderer," and the intelligence concerning the Eternals' bishop who had died at that Wanderer's hands. He realized what that vast information lodged in his mind truly was—information no human brain could possibly process—and the instant he understood, his first instinct was to sever his connection to the network.
His thoughts leapt frantically between the mind-network and the real world. In one fortunate instant—less than a millisecond long—he glimpsed his magic laboratory on the Typhon border, where that clumsy female apprentice was processing samples beside an experiment table not far away. With all his strength he raised his hand—but the very next instant, he found himself back in the dream world, collapsing without end.
The palaces and towers around him were still crumbling slowly; the pedestrians in the city dissolved in the air like figures in an abstract oil painting. The old mage squeezed the last breath from his lungs and let out a final scream: "He's in the network—"
But his scream existed only as a fantasy within his own mind. In truth, he merely stood rooted to the spot, frozen, while a voice exploded in his head: "Stand right there and don't move. I've got you!"
With that single sentence, the scene around him was finally transformed beyond all recognition.
The resplendent City of the Arcane Pivot vanished. Before his eyes now stretched an endless, boundless expanse of water, upon which stood one bizarre metal platform after another. A sky devoid of any stars or celestial bodies arched over this watery realm, and upon that firmament countless colossal geometric figures shifted and recombined without cease, forming all manner of incomprehensible visions. And the master of this world—a man with short, pale-gold hair—stood quietly before him.
It was the face of Charles the First, founding sovereign of the Kingdom of Anseth. In the "Eternal Dream," many were fond of molding themselves into that likeness—but the old mage knew that this "Charles the First" before him was a being far more terrifying than any Eternal.
"The Otherworldly Wanderer..." he murmured.
"Honestly, I'm not terribly fond of that name you people gave me—it sounds downright awkward," Gao Cen said as he looked the old mage up and down. Before this man had been dragged in, his form had been that of a dignified, composed middle-aged figure draped in a starry mage's robe and gripping a gemstone staff. But in this "Crevice World" that obeyed only the rules Gao Yang had laid down, outsiders were forcibly stripped of all disguise—he was nothing but a shriveled, frail old man in a black mage's robe. "Your name is Daniel... interesting. A Typhon man, are you?"