Another hour passed, and the team was still advancing through the ever-extending corridors and passages.
The scale of this millennium facility has exceeded Gao Wen's imagination.
Even in Gondor's heyday "Spark Era", the empire rarely built facilities of this scale—even if it had the functions of a military fortress and a scientific research facility at the same time, its scale greatly exceeded Gawain's expectations. It seemed that it was indeed built by hollowing out a mountain, and with more and more downward slopes and steps, Gawain even suspected that it hollowed out more than just a mountain.
The magic response was still coming in steadily, and it was still quite weak. Due to too many forks and corridors, Hetty's guidance was no longer reliable. She could only judge a general direction and use the spirit summoning technique to and other divination spells to determine which fork should be taken, but even so, the team took several detours and found many dead ends.
Although Knight Byron has been setting marks along the way, and Hetty used magic marks to outline the waypoints, the soldiers still felt a little uneasy after advancing in an ancient ruin for so long. After noticing this uneasiness, Knight Byron came to Gawain's side: "My lord, if you continue to go deeper, you may get lost in it—everyone's sense of direction is completely confused."
Gao Wen frowned. In fact, he had also considered the problem of getting lost, but he was more confident than everyone else—the superb memory of the satellite spirit was at work, and he had memorized almost every detail of every fork along the way. There is even a rough map in the mind, but these abilities are not easy to say, or even if they are said, it is not easy to make everyone feel at ease.
After all, this place is really big.
It would be great if Amber was here... At least she can be thrown out to find the way, and she can also run around from the Shadowlands, and she is good at sliding doors and picking locks, so she is definitely not as easy to be trapped in the ruins as ordinary people—she is already in Cecil The family's ancestral grave proved this.
This time Gao Wen was seriously considering this matter.
It's a pity that Amber is not here now, so Gao Wen could only shake his head: "Your worry is justified—then let's go for a while, make a few more marks, and then return first regardless of whether we find it or not, and come back next time."
Although the lord did not order to return immediately, Gawain's ambiguous statement still made the soldiers heave a sigh of relief, as if they had received some kind of guarantee, the team once again mustered up the courage to move on.
After going down a flight of stairs, there is another hall ahead, and there are more things in this hall than before: some huge obsidian cuboids are neatly arranged around the hall, like stone tablets placed against the wall, and under the cubes are A number of metal conduits or "tracks" extended, all of which converged in the center of the hall, where a strange hemispherical device stood.
Gawain frowned, walked to the side of the hemispherical device, and rubbed it a few times with his hand wearing an iron glove. Some of the black ash and oxides on the surface of the device were scraped off, exposing the silver-white metal underneath.
"What is this?" Hetty leaned over curiously. The facilities in this room are obviously "fixed installations" that could not be taken away. This is rare in this ruins. Those obsidian and metal connections make She had a weird intuition about magic.
"Magic Energy Focusing Array—Although I really want to call it a magic power capacitor," Gao Wen said about knowledge that no one knows in this day and age, and mixed some more inexplicable words, "These obsidian are connected to the magic well in the facility. , this hemisphere can focus powerful energy, create a short-duration but extremely high-intensity energy flow, and then pass through this main conduit—"
Gawain pointed to a thick conduit extending from the hemispherical device and finally buried in the wall.
“…delivering energy where it is needed.”
Hetty's eyes widened slightly. As a mage, seeing this ancient magic device from thousands of years ago made her excited: "Focus the powerful energy? So this is a weapon?"
"No, this is an auxiliary energy source for research facilities. It is usually used to provide instant 'ignition' for equipment that consumes a lot of energy, such as iridescent lenses." Gao Wen shrugged. Not only for fighting—although this is indeed one of its important functions, but magic can also do many things at the same time. In fact, in my opinion, what mages should really do is to use their knowledge and magic in this kind of research."
"Research..." Hetty muttered incredulously.
She is no stranger to the word research, mages have always been synonymous with researchers, delving into the mysteries of magic and analyzing the laws of runes is what they are most proud of, but no matter what kind of research, the ultimate goal will come down to how A mage who improves his spellcasting ability but cannot improve his own spellcasting ability will be regarded as a poor researcher.
Hetty instinctively felt that the "research" Gao Wen mentioned might not be the same thing as the research he was familiar with.
This old ancestor seems to always be used to looking at a very far and wide angle. He always mentions "universalization" and "mass production". Research seems to be running counter to his train of thought.
Hetty shook her head, and put aside those irrelevant thoughts in her mind, she heard Knight Byron asking: "Madam, is the magical reaction coming from this place?"
Hetty felt it attentively, then shook her head: "No, but it's very close."
"Remember this place," Gao Wen said, "This ancient device has been completely scrapped, so there is no need to consider repairing it—but it can extract at least half a ton of mithril, seven or eight tons of obsidian, and a large pile of fine gold." and copper and steel."
"Wait a minute..." Heidi shuddered and stared at Gawain, "Ancestor... are you going to... dismantle this ancient magic device of infinite value?!"
"Otherwise?" Gawain glanced at her, "This thing needs ultra-high-purity magic power to 'ignite', and there is no corresponding magic power purification technology now. And even if there is energy, this thing has been stored here for a thousand years. In 2000, the structure inside it has long been rotten, and repairing it is no easier than building one."
Hetty was stunned for a moment, with a strange expression on his face: "You may not feel it from seven hundred years ago, but this thing is an antique..."
Gao Wen shook his face: "This thing was also an antique before I died - but we have to start from the practical value. It has no value at all here. It can only be reborn after being melted."
Hearing what Gawain said, Hetty realized that it was useless to say anything, so she nodded with pain all over her face.
It is said that cubs don’t feel bad about selling their father’s land, but it doesn’t seem that his heart hurts so much when he sells his own fields...
The discovery of the magic power focusing device means that it is very close to the deep research facility, and considering the magic power response Hetty sensed before, the target is most likely a research device that is still in operation.
Gawain activated the knight's "Danger Perception" skill calmly, in order to guard against possible magic traps or ancient radiations here at any time.
On the way on, he casually asked Hetty: "By the way, I heard they address you as Ma'am instead of Miss or Ms.—Are you married? Where's your husband?"
He has been curious about this question for a long time, but he never found a chance to ask.
Heti froze for a moment, but it was normal for the ancestor to care about her marriage, so she replied: "I am not married, but I converted to the goddess of magic, Mirmina, when I was an adult, and gave up my inheritance rights by converting to my faith. , so as to leave the right of inheritance to Rebecca's father. According to the law of the nobility, an adult woman who renounces her right of inheritance by converting to her faith is considered married, that is, she is dedicated to her faith. Originally, I could still retain the title of nobility and become a The hereditary baroness, but the territory was difficult that year, so I sold this title... well, to a businessman... "
Gawain nodded, "Oh" to express his understanding, and at the same time, the message of Mirmina, the goddess of magic, came to mind.
Mirmina, Goddess of Magic, also known as God of Magic and Lady of Mysteries, is believed to rule over the power of magic and was the mentor of the world's first dragon and first elf—hence the legendary She also created dragon language magic and existing elf magic. Unlike other gods, Mirmina is not a "god of strong faith", but more like a "god of symbols".
It can be said that she has no formal religion and belief system, and almost all spellcasting professions are her "shallow believers", but less than one percent of mages convert to this god in the form of formal believers, which is about the same as spellcasting. It is related to the general liking of seeking mysteries and the lack of awe of God.
And among the 1% believers, there are quite a few converts, like Hetty, purely for the purpose of proving the renunciation of inheritance or similar purposes.
Princess Veronica of the Ansu royal family converted to the God of Holy Light in a similar way, except that Her Royal Highness is not as poor as the descendants of the Cecil family, so that even the noble status has to be sold at a low price. So she can still be called a princess (or the corresponding priesthood status) today.
And Heidi was a little uneasy after finishing the answer. She was mainly worried about two things: one was whether Cecil's descendants would be ashamed to the point where they had to sell their titles of nobility to make ends meet; The first one is whether I will make my ancestors angry if I am not married at such an age, especially the second one - in case Gao Wen turns around later and says, "Why don't you get married? When do you plan to get married? Look at that xxx What about "urging marriage three times in a row
Oh my god, the ancestors urging marriage seven hundred years ago is much more stressful than parents urging marriage!
This even made Hetty less worried about whether she would be beaten if she sold her title of nobility...
As a result, Gao Wen really just asked casually, and there was no more to say.
And Heidi's cranky thoughts didn't last long, because she finally sensed that magical reaction was ahead.