Chapter 1245 — The Door Opens Ajar
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 4
"No, I haven't thought of anything," Milmina said with a slow shake of her head, though deep in her eyes something blank and lost seemed to be gathering. "Like you, I know nothing about these 'sentinels.' I simply felt something strange... as if something important had been overlooked... but I don't know what it is I've overlooked."
"Something wrong with your memory?" Amorn immediately fixed the "Goddess of Magic" with a stern look. "Theoretically that should be impossible—a god's memory is indelible. I've never heard of any god losing their memory."
"Check your state again," Enya said, setting down her cards, her face grave. "If in the end you still can't confirm the problem... we'll have to bring this to Gao Dai's attention. Even if it isn't a useful clue, it can at least prompt him to raise his guard further."
......
The cold wind of late autumn howled across the vast, desolate plains, a wind that linked Winterwolf Keep to Changfeng Fortress and had of late gathered between them into a single frigid cyclone. Above Treaty Fortress, the alliance flag flapped and cracked in the wind, and beneath it one could often see dry dust kicked into the air and clumps of withered yellow grass swept in from who knew where.
Winter was truly almost here—and yet for the technical and engineering teams stationed upon this land, their firelike fervor never slackened day or night.
Around the fortress built of great stone blocks and molten metal, three colossal energy facilities already stood tall between heaven and earth. Those iron-grey towers stood firm in the cold wind, and around them had been raised a number of subsidiary magical mechanisms built of metal and concrete, like enormous needles tapering to sharp points at the top. Runes glowing with pale blue light surfaced upon the bases and shells of these arcane installations, and at their sharp tips, brilliant magical sparks leapt and crackled like lightning, joining into one dazzling arcane circuit after another. Each flicker of those sparks was accompanied by a mighty release of energy; walk near the towers, and even an ordinary person could faintly feel the chilling "soak of magic" upon the nerves.
Those sparks were vast energies that even high-ranking mages could scarcely gather with ease. In the old era now past, energy of such intensity would have sufficed to keep a medium-sized mage tower running; yet here, an arcane extraction technique combining the advanced with the ancient had turned this immense power into the most ordinary of "firewood." With every flicker of those towers, magic on this scale was directly compressed and extracted, flowing ceaselessly into Treaty Fortress at the very center of the facility complex, and into the depths of the castle—into that "door" that seemed it could never be filled.
In the main hall of Treaty Fortress, lights blazed and technicians hurried to and fro.
A massive and intricately structured device had been assembled within this hall, which had been remodeled and reinforced. It had a triangular base of alloy, that great base layered like a stepped structure, as though an ancient altar. Along the edges of each tier countless fine runes could be seen, along with conductive tracks distributed among the runes, embedded crystals, and slender brass pipes responsible for cooling the entire system.
Those brass pipes ran deep into the base, and through them flowed activated pure water and liquefied crystal dust. They had to run ceaselessly; should their heat-dissipation fail, the immense energy would melt through every piece of hardware in the portal in mere moments.
Above the triangular base lay the portal's "trunk": three curved alloy "arms" extended from the three vertices of the base, converging in midair as though enclosing an invisible sphere. And between these three arcing alloy "arms" floated a great metal ring, which now lay horizontally above the base, seemingly in a state of dormancy.