The space opposite the Might and Magic Gate, or this part of the hidden facilities, is even bigger than Gawain imagined.
There is not only a hall that everyone saw at first, after the soldiers expanded their search area, they soon discovered that there was a surrounding corridor structure outside the hall, and rooms arranged outside the corridor.
The furnishings in these rooms are complete, and all kinds of living or research appliances, including tables, chairs, and equipment, are well kept in place, instead of being removed like the rooms outside.
"The things here have not been removed." Hetty looked at a room that had just been opened. This room seemed to be a place for many people to gather and eat. There were long tables and chairs in the room, and the corners could still be seen. The neatly arranged sinks are just that it is impossible for water to flow in the sinks, "and the preservation of these things... is much better than the outside."
"The entire facility seems to have been subjected to a large-scale magical effect, and the rate of decay of all items has become extremely slow," Gawain looked down at a long table at hand. There were mottled rust spots on the long table, but the table itself Still solid and in good condition, "…still corroded to a considerable degree."
Till walked among the long tables with arches and arches, brushing her fingers over the dusty tabletop, and said thoughtfully: "It feels like it is ready to be reactivated at any time, as long as someone Come back here and start living right away.”
Gawain didn't say a word, but walked silently between the rusty long tables. At this moment, a group of soldiers who went to explore the way ahead suddenly returned to this room, and the leader came to Gawain. In front: "My lord! We found a warehouse in front!"
"Take me over there to have a look."
Gao Wen soon arrived at the warehouse discovered by the soldiers, and he couldn't help frowning at the scene in the warehouse.
This is the place where materials are piled up. In the warehouse, you can still see neatly stacked pallets and various signages whose handwriting can no longer be read clearly. However, what makes Gao Wen frown are the goods that were originally packed on the pallets. has been taken apart.
A large number of wooden boxes were pried open, and empty boxes and jars were piled up in various places. Some were neatly stacked, but some were simply scattered all over the room. Apart from these messy "packaging", There is no useful material here.
"This..." Seeing the scene in the warehouse, Hetty immediately clenched her staff tightly. She subconsciously looked at Gawain, "Ancestor, this..."
"Someone has taken the supplies here!" Gawain said the only possibility, "Someone has been active here. At least in the first period of time after this facility was blocked, there are still people active here!"
"How is it possible!?" Hetty was taken aback. "Didn't this place be abandoned and sealed off a thousand years ago? Didn't everyone evacuate?"
"I thought so too, but looking at the materials that have been consumed, if they were consumed before the facility was closed, the logistics manager would not allow the warehouse to become like this," Gao Wen pointed to the empty boxes that were piled up in a mess and empty tanks, "this is clearly the result of continued depletion after the closure of the facility, and probably for a long time."
Hetty couldn't help swallowing: "This... really disturbing..."
Thiel asked a question: "If there are people here after the facility is closed, where are they now?"
Gao Wen shook his head: "I don't know, but if all the people working here are human beings... then no human being can live for a thousand years."
Soon, the soldiers found more material warehouses, and most of the warehouses had been consumed by people, only a few things remained, and judging from the thick dust on the sealed boxes, they had been exhausted. For many years no one cares about it.
Even with the protection of magical power, these materials cannot be stored for thousands of years. Even if the packaging is intact, the contents inside have already rotted and deteriorated, so Gawain only briefly checked these things before losing interest in them.
After inspecting the corridor outside the hall, a group of people arrived at the end of the corridor, where the roads converge, and an upward-sloping staircase extends from the intersection of the corridors to the upper floor of the secret facility.
"It seems that there is still a structure on it." Hetty looked up at the dark space at the end of the stairs. This ancient facility has an astonishing energy system, but no matter how advanced the energy system is, it cannot completely resist the erosion of time. The light was obviously dimmer than the lower floor. It seemed that there was something wrong with the energy supply. The light was not only dim but also very unstable. Hetty summoned a Mage Eye to go up. After a while, she nodded, "There is no danger up there."
The exploration team advanced along the stairs and soon reached the upper floor of this hidden facility. At the end of the stairs, a thick metal door blocked their way.
"The magic lock on the door has failed." Hetty quickly found the magic mechanism that controlled the locked state of the door. Several dim runes were engraved in the center of the door, but these runes had no response to external magic stimulation. , "Now it is an ordinary iron door, which can be directly destroyed."
The two soldiers immediately stepped forward and aimed their thermal energy ray guns at the lock in the center of the gate. After several consecutive bombardments with scorching rays, the magic mechanism in the center of the door was directly melted: without magic protection, the advanced ancient magic mechanism It's just a piece of metal with a not so high melting point.
Gawain put his hand on the door, and relying on the powerful strength of the legendary knight, he directly pushed open the door that originally required a magic device to push open.
squeak
Accompanied by the ear-piercing sound of metal rubbing, the ancient gate with a history of thousands of years slowly opened to both sides, and a stale breath leaked from the space inside the gate, but a piece of slightly cool mist suddenly appeared out of thin air. Appearing and surrounding everyone, isolating all these potentially harmful breaths.
Gawain glanced back, and saw Tire waving his hand nonchalantly, while the power of water element flowed quietly between her fingers.
He didn't tell Miss Kraken that every soldier's armor has a long-lasting "breeze shield" effect, but smiled and thanked Tyre for his kindness, and then walked through the gate.
In the next second, the scene in front of him stunned him on the spot.
Inside the gate is a large semi-circular room. Rows of neat seats are arranged in the room along an arc, and on the rows of seats, there are corpses one after another. !
These people had apparently been dead for many years, but instead of being reduced to bones over time, they turned into some kind of mummified existence, wearing ancient The robes or tunics of the magicians of the Gondor Empire, and this costume is enough to explain their identity:
They are the people who stayed in this ancient facility after it was closed!
Hetty's eyes widened. The shocking scene in front of her made her unable to speak for a long time. It was not until more than ten seconds later that she muttered to herself: "They... are all here... they all died here..."
"Why are these people left here?" Tire also heard about the origin of this facility from Gawain, and she was puzzled by the existence of these people. Are people forgotten in it?"
"It's impossible for there to be such a big mistake," Gao Wen frowned and shook his head, "The evacuation operations back then were obviously orderly, and there were no conditions for mistakes in the rush, and the warehouses we discovered before are also clues... those materials It shows that the people stranded here are planned."
After he finished speaking, he began to walk cautiously among the seats arranged in a semicircle. After passing through rows of seats, he came to the front end of the semicircular hall.
Gawain turned around here, and he saw the rows of seats neatly arranged in front of his eyes. Nearly a thousand silent corpses sat on those chairs. Due to the arrangement of these seats, the "line of sight" of those corpses The focus is exactly where he is.
This weird feeling made him break out in a layer of cold sweat, but it also made him notice his feet: on the ground under his feet, there was an inconspicuous raised device, and between the runes on the surface of the device , there are still some residual magical brilliance flowing slowly.
He recognized that thing as the technology of the ancient Gondor Empire. It was a magical device used to transmit messages. With the help of the huge power of the Deep Blue Well and the magic deflectors throughout the empire, these devices could closely connect every inch of the empire. Together, but with the explosion of the deep blue well, this communication network has completely collapsed and there is no possibility of reconstruction, and the communication spells and magic communication towers used by the human countries today are just a lingering afterglow of this ancient technology .
This device can still be used, although it is no longer possible to send or receive any messages after breaking away from the "Dark Blue Magic Network", but the shimmering light on its surface shows that there is still a little residual energy inside, and the information it stores Nor is it lost.
According to the memory of seven hundred years ago, Gao Wen tried to inject some magic power into this device, so this ancient device that had been silent for thousands of years was "resurrected" in an instant, the runes on its surface flickered violently, and a A beam of light was emitted from the top of the device and shot towards the wall behind Gawain.
Gawain turned around and avoided the projected light beam. He saw that the ancient device projected a message on the wall in front of the nearly thousand corpses in the hall. It was a series of words written in the ancient Gondor common language, It's surprisingly short:
"You are the last survivors, live and don't come back."
There is only such a sentence saved in the communication device, which is obviously the content of the last communication, while other early content was either deleted by someone, or failed to survive the passage of time.
"The last survivor..." Tire saw the message. This sea monster who lived for an unknown time could actually recognize the characters of the ancient Gondor Empire. She arched her head up curiously, "What does this mean?"
"... This is the last communication sent here from the empire when the demon tide broke out," Gao Wen said slowly, "I have already guessed what happened here, but there are still many mysteries to be solved."