Night falls.
Stars shrouded the night sky of Cecil City. The starlight and the artificial lights on the earth complemented each other. A thin halo diffused from the sky above the city, giving the starlight a hazy and illusory texture. Sir Golosh looked up. Looking at the stars in this foreign country, I heard the faint sound of music coming from the bustling neighborhood in the distance.
The starry sky of Longlinbao is brighter than here, but the night is colder. It is not as prosperous as here, but it has a different kind of solemnity.
Regardless of personal feelings, which one is better is really a difficult question to answer.
Azarena's voice came from the side, interrupting Sir Gorosh's thoughts: "Sir, your daughter has already left, if you still want to blow the cold wind here for a few hours, then I will not accompany you I'm asleep—the warm room and nightcap are calling me."
Golosh woke up from his thoughts, his eyes left the dark night sky, he glanced at the direction Maggie left, and shook his head with a complicated smile: "Do you think Maggie met me tonight, it was Gawain Sethi Did you arrange it?"
"As long as we stand here, everything that happens around us can be regarded as the result of Emperor Cecil's arrangement, and it's pointless to dwell on it," Azalena glanced at Golosh, "The key is whether you are willing to Accept these 'arrangements' and whether these 'arrangements' will affect your ability to judge as an ambassador."
Saying that, the Dragon Seal Witch paused, and added: "As for my personal opinion - this is not a bad thing. Gawain Cecil's actions so far have been within measure, he is very cautious You have taken care of the feelings of the dragonborn, and are working hard to advance the whole matter, you can regard what happened tonight as an 'arrangement', but you can also regard it as a gesture of goodwill and sincerity."
Gorosh was silent for a few seconds in contemplation, and then spoke before Azarena urged: "Ms. Azarena, I'm afraid I will trouble you again—please contact Dragon's Landing Castle again."
Azalena sighed deliberately: "... well, I knew it would be like this."
…
The night wind blew into the study.
Gao Wen raised his head from a pile of documents, and saw the figure of Amber was rapidly separating from the air.
"How's the situation?" he asked casually.
"The father and daughter talked for a long time. Except for a small accident at the beginning, the overall atmosphere seemed to be quite harmonious," Amber reported the result of her stalking, "But according to your instructions, I didn't get too close. No eavesdropping on anyone's private affairs—I don't know exactly what was discussed."
"Well, it's mainly based on your strength. Once you get close, you can easily be beaten to death," Gawain nodded. "It doesn't matter. After all, our main purpose is to let Maggie and Sir Gorosh meet. What will come of it... just let it happen, we don't count on that."
Amber didn't refute Gao Wen's comment that "it's easy to be beaten to death". Instead, she nodded in agreement, and then glanced curiously at the pile of documents in front of Gao Wen: "...by the way, there are still things you need to deal with. That much?"
"Construction projects across the country have already started, and there are new diplomatic, economic, military, and industrial plans. Although each department has a dedicated person in charge, there are still a lot of things that I need to personally ask about." Gao Wen looked at the pile of things before his eyes. He glanced at the file, and smiled helplessly, "It's actually okay, there aren't many things that make people particularly headache."
Amber scratched her hair and muttered, "My head is about to explode just by processing the intelligence collected by the Military Intelligence Bureau every day..."
Gao Wen's movement of flipping through the documents suddenly stopped, and after a while he smiled: "When the computing center is officially opened, the situation will be much better—a lot of work can be done by machines and networks, and clerks and assistant administrative officers will have more Focus on more important things, and after the efficiency is improved, our work... "
"Our work will increase accordingly, from reviewing 10 documents a day to reviewing 100 documents a day, you can quickly solve the problems that can only be solved in a few days before, but you will find that you have to wait in line There is still no end to the problem you can solve—" Amber rolled her eyes upwards, muttering non-stop in a tone like feeling life, "I have been following you for several years, next time you fool me, at least change your mind …”
Gawain stared blankly at Amber, who seemed to have gained a lot of enlightenment, and suddenly felt that the progress of this half-elf over the years by his side was actually not inferior to others at all—this guy was getting harder and harder to deceive.
At this moment, a special aura suddenly disturbed Gao Wen's perception. After a little recognition, he nodded to Amber on the other side of the table: "A guest is here."
Amber's first reaction was to take out the power sap from the back of her waist: "Well, I'll just..."
"No, it's really a guest." Only then did Gao Wen realize that his words were ambiguous, and quickly waved his hands, "Put that thing away—Megaul, you can show up now."
As his words fell, an invisible wave of magic power suddenly appeared out of thin air, and all the lights in the study seemed to be disturbed by the invisible force, becoming slightly dimmed, and there were dark purple shadows mixed with shadows that fluctuated. The starlight condensed in the center of the room—these starlight and shadows quickly gathered into an expanding and shrinking aggregate of starlight, and floated over the room like some kind of ghost.
Amber was taken aback by this sight, and before she had time to ask what it was, a low humming voice came from the starlight aggregate: "Good night, Your Majesty, and this... nervous half-elf lady. Excuse me Let me tell you bluntly, miss, the weapon in your hand may not be effective against me, and I lost my head many years ago."
Amber stared at the fluctuating starlight in a daze. Although she was taken aback, she had already reacted after the other party spoke, and quickly matched the information in her head, raising her eyebrows: " Megal III? The Pope of the Eternal Sleeper?"
"It's over," the starlight aggregate said flatly. "You can call me Megall directly—now I'm just an ordinary Cecil citizen, serving His Majesty Gawain Cecil."
Amber twitched the corners of her mouth, and while putting away her power sap, she muttered casually: "Okay, after issuing certificates to a ball of arcane light, an iron ball, and a tree, now we're going to give a... flashing smoke Make an ID card."
She looked at Gao Wen: "Then do I need to avoid it?"
"No, you can just stay here." Gao Wen nodded to Amber, and then looked at Megal III, "Her name is Amber, and she is my intelligence minister. What do you want to tell me when you come here?"
"Minister of Intelligence...I understand," Megoll trembled slightly, the shapeless star shrank slightly and lowered its height, and stopped in front of Gawain as if communicating face to face, "Your Majesty, you have already As promised, you accepted the personnel we transferred to Cecil and helped us solve the crisis of the upper storytellers before. Then, according to the previous agreement, all the technology and secrets of the Eternal Sleeper belong to you.
"I'm here today to fulfill the promise.
"I have some secrets related to the Typhon royal family. I wonder if you are interested?"
Gao Wen's eyes changed imperceptibly, and then he said in a deep voice, "What aspect?"
"It's related to the curse of the Augustus family that lasted for two hundred years."
"... I'm very interested," Gao Wen said, and then he looked up and down at the starlight aggregate floating in mid-air, "Do I need to prepare a chair for you? I always feel like you are trying to impress the guests when you communicate with me like this." stand."
"No, I'm used to this state," Megaul III responded, "Of course, if you feel unwell, you can also give me a chair, and I can float over and pretend to be sitting on it."
"...Forget it," Gao Wen imagined the picture, shook his head, "you can start talking."
"First of all, it starts from the time of Typhon's old imperial capital, Orlandelle," Megoll said. "You should know that the headquarters of the Order of the Eternal Sleepers is deep underground in the ruins of Orlandelle, and the curse of Typhon's royal family It also appeared after the big collapse of Orlande... In fact, long before the big collapse of Orlande, the eternal sleepers had already been active in the ground there."
Part of what Megaul said was information that Gawain had already grasped, and he had doubts about that area for a long time. He immediately frowned when he heard Megaul's last words: "So the key to everything is It's Orlandle—what the hell is there?"
"... It's a fragment of the God of Dreams, Your Majesty, it's under the ground of Orendelle."
Gawain's breathing stopped for half a beat, but after this short and slight reaction, his expression was much calmer than Megower imagined.
"You don't seem very surprised?"
"I expected it," Gawain shook his head, "The Eternal Sleeper is a dream priest who has fallen into darkness, and you have been hiding in the depths of Orlandelle for hundreds of years to study forbidden knowledge. In addition to being suitable for hiding, there must also be Something that attracts you. Plus the curse of the Augustus family is very special, it obviously has the characteristics of dreams and spiritual realms-I have been suspecting that all this points to some god from a long time ago, to me,' The suspects are just those few."
Calling gods "suspects" is obviously a leeway only for wanderers outside the territory.
There was a hint of awe in Megol's voice: "Everything is as you judge."
Gawain waved his hands and looked at Megal with a serious expression: "That is to say, the so-called 'curse' of the Augustus family is essentially the pollution of the gods caused by the god of dreams—then the collapse of Orlandle two hundred years ago What's going on? How did the pollution spread to the Augustus family? You used Orlandelle as your stronghold before that, all of this... Could it be your handwriting?"
"That's not the case," Magall immediately denied, and then his tone was a little slow, as if he was organizing his thoughts while speaking, "Where should I start telling you... In fact, all of this is a coincidence and a mistake The result of the accumulation. The reason for the collapse of Orlandle was that the underground ruins were out of control, and the fragments of the God of Dreams were suddenly activated, and this was more of an accident; on the other hand, you should know that the Typhon royal family had They 'predicted' the disaster in time and evacuated the entire city's residents in advance, miraculously avoiding tens of thousands of casualties, and the reason why they were able to 'predict' the collapse in advance was precisely because they obtained eternal sleep A warning to those who…”
"Then let's start from the beginning," Gawain tapped on the table lightly, "from the time when the Church of Dreamland fell into darkness and used Orlandelle as a stronghold, and from when the Typhons established their capital in Orandale."
"Yes," Megoll responded, "First of all, the eternal sleepers took root in Orendelle and the Typhons established their capital in Orendelle. These two things happened at about the same time, but they did not Contact, just a coincidence.
"In the early days of Typhon's founding, the Augustus family chose Orlandelle, which was relatively fertile and suitable for city building at that time, to establish their capital, and just after they established a foothold, the Dreamland Church, which had barely recovered some vitality, arrived at that time. Orlandelle in the camp, where we lived in seclusion, hiding among the nearby forests and villages and towns that were still in chaos at that time, and maintained a low profile for a long time, living with the people of Orlandelle at that time.
"Afterwards, Orlandail became a city that had just taken shape, and the Church of Dreams was also restored more. We reorganized in the dark alleys of Olandale into the Order of the Eternal Sleepers, and acted locally in the form of a hidden church— At that time, the most things we considered were still survival and recuperation, and in a very unexpected situation, in the process of searching for a new hiding place, we found a cave leading to the ground in a certain area outside the city... At first We thought it was a cave, but we soon discovered that it actually led to a... ancient ruin that was almost as large as Orlandle at the time.
"It totally shook us at the time."
Gawain interrupted Megal's narration: "Did you discover the facilities left by the Gondor Empire? You are also a Gondorian, and you should recognize the technology and architectural style of the ancient empire."
Although he has entered the core of the Dream City many times, he has never seen what the headquarters of the Eternal Sleeper looks like in the real world, and from part of the memories of Daniel and others, he can only see the underground palace after seven After a hundred years of reconstruction, it is impossible to imagine what it looked like when it was first discovered by the Eternal Sleepers. At this moment, he just instinctively thought of the rebellious plan of the Gondor Empire, and suspected that what the Eternal Sleepers found was actually another "rebellious fortress" used to store the samples of the gods—just like the fortress in the dark mountains.
After all, the combination of ancient ruins + samples of gods has a really strong sense of sight.
However, Megal gave a negative answer: "I can be sure that it is not—it is definitely not something built by the Gondor Empire. First, it is outside the territory of the ancient empire, and it is a land newly opened by humans. Second, , and the more important reason—the facility is full of things we don’t know: the construction style has never been seen before, there are still unrecognized characters on some walls, and some equipment remains in some closed rooms. Also unheard of technology…”