Chapter 380 — Stirrings
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
Within the Dark Mountains, in the middle tier of the "Defiance Fortress," before the gates of the interior defense post.
This section of the ancient fortress had been renovated to gleaming newness. The once mottled, peeling walls had been repainted; the white wall coating and pale gray floors gave the great hall an entirely fresh appearance. On the snow-white walls, roughly every ten meters, a bright mana-crystal lamp was set, bathing the whole space in light as bright as day. And behind each lamp, on the wall, one could see a "glowing strip" formed of small hexagonal outlines, emitting a faint blue light, running along the wall, tracing and converging near the ceiling into elegant, spare geometric patterns before finally joining with the ceiling itself.
Across the newly laid ceiling, a neat honeycomb of hexagonal structures spread all the way to the far end of the hall, on into the deep darkness of the distant corridor...
Those honeycomb structures were the second-generation arcane-network devices meant to replace the Defiance Fortress's original power core after it had failed.
These arcane networks had not yet received their final encapsulation. According to the lord, those densely packed hexagons were enough to give anyone "trypophobia," and they would have to be covered over with a suspended ceiling. But to Suojilin, it was precisely this unencapsulated arcane network, faintly glowing blue, that lent the whole chamber an otherworldly, spellbinding beauty. This spectacle of orderly geometric lines and advanced arcane machinery was truly reminiscent of the treasures of elven civilization—the Radiant Vault, hailed as "the miraculous relic of ancient technology"...
Who could have imagined it? This ancient Gondor facility, built in the Spark Era, had "come back to life" a thousand years later in such a fashion. Beyond this great hall, in the several adjacent large interior spaces, were the roaring workshop floors and the warehouse facilities stacked with reserve supplies. After Kamaier had restored this district's access-control and isolation systems and the lord had dispatched enough guards, the safety of the fortress's middle tier was assured. The number of people now working and living in this district had already reached over a thousand. Though it was still far from the grandeur of the Defiance Fortress in its heyday, even that had left Kamaier sighing in wonder for quite a while.
Feeling a touch of emotion, Suojilin withdrew his gaze from his surroundings and looked at the dozen-odd elite soldiers he had selected. These soldiers wore the special light armor of the Steel Rangers and full-coverage helmets stamped precisely by machine; the detection lenses at the front of each helmet glowed faint red. They stood there silently awaiting orders, and though they were merely a band of "mortals" with no magical talent whatsoever, an indescribable air radiated from them.
For now, that air could only be called bluster—but let them see blood in real combat a few times, and it would become something solid and real.
A subordinate serving as deputy captain glanced at the mechanical clock on the nearby wall; a somewhat muffled voice came from beneath his helmet: "Sir, it's time to move out."
"Five more minutes," Suojilin waved a hand. "The lord's envoy should be here any moment."
As he spoke, the senior ranger wore a faintly puzzled expression. That shadow master miss might usually seem thoroughly unreliable, but when it came to punctuality she was never sloppy—one need only note that the lord had come to use her as a mealtime alarm to see that. Why would she be late?
He was still puzzling over it when Amber's brash voice suddenly came from the entrance at the other end of the hall: "Hey, I'm here, I'm here! You didn't wait too long, did you? I ran into a bit of an unexpected situation on my end!"
Suojilin breathed a sigh of relief and turned at once: "It's fine, it's only a few minutes past... hmm?"