Hu Po's head poked out from behind Gawain's arm. She blinked her eyes and stared at the scene in the small wooden hut. Her gaze finally landed on the pillar in the middle, and the two ordinary-looking pinkish-white flowers.
"… Is this really the place where Firna and Rayna lived … I mean, the 'real' elven twins …" She turned to look at Gwen and said with uncertainty.
"The clues point to this answer," Gawain said in a low voice as he stepped into the cabin. The cabin was a little short and narrow for his burly figure, but even in such a small room, he could still see that this used to be a warm and cozy place. Whether it was the exquisitely made living utensils or the dried flower bouquet on the table in the corner, he could almost imagine how it used to be when someone used to live here.
Amber also came in, followed by Kamel, Melita, and Daniel. The small cabin suddenly became a little crowded. Those who came in later looked curiously at everything in the cabin, but only Kamel knew the story of the elven twins a thousand years ago. The former rebel's eyes fell on the vines in the cabin. After a long while, he whispered, "So you've been here all along …"
"Looks like there's a long story behind this," Melita said softly. She then glanced at the hut which was overcrowded due to the large number of people. "The fragile structure of this building is probably not suitable for so many people to search inside. I'll go out and take a look around first. Before the spaceship docked, I think I saw something in the distance that caught my attention."
"Let's go out too," Daniel said in a deep voice. "I'll bring Mary to search the surroundings and see if there are any other valuable clues. Mary, don't just stand there. Let's go."
After Melita, Daniel, and Mary left, the cabin suddenly became a lot more spacious. Gwen nodded to Kamel and Amber who stayed behind. "Let's split up and search. If they've lived here for hundreds of years … there should be some clues left behind."
"I think I've found the 'clues'." As soon as Gwen's voice trailed off, Amber raised her hand and pointed at a wall not far away. With her hint, Gwen finally noticed that there seemed to be faint carvings on the wall. "There seems to be words there. It's all over the wall."
After Amber said that, without waiting for Gwen to speak, Kamel had already floated to the wall. The ancient rebel waved his hand and a bright white ball of light appeared out of thin air. The darkness in the cabin was instantly dispelled, and the faint carvings on the wall suddenly became clear. It was indeed a wall full of words. Perhaps it had been engraved on the wall a long time ago. Time had not completely weathered the wall made of the 'divine wood', and the dust covering it did not completely cover the words. Gwen's eyes widened instantly. His gaze found the beginning of the words. The 'letter' written in Elvish finally presented itself before the reader for the first time:
"To the future. Although we are not even sure if there will be anyone coming here, and we don't know if the next 'person' will be able to recognize these words and understand everything we have said, we can only hope that you are the ones we have been waiting for. We hope that it is not too late.
"Our names are Firna Hoarfrost and Rayna Hoarfrost. We come from the Silver Empire. As consultants of the Kingdom of Gondor's' Disobedience Project ', our duty is to analyze the mysteries behind the existence of the gods, to find the internal mechanism behind the gradual madness of the gods in the development of civilization, and to try to find a way for mortals to resist natural and divine disasters from these mysteries …
"Due to a serious experiment accident, we sisters are trapped here. It has been hundreds of years since then. In these hundreds of years, we have been cut off from the outside world and trapped in a deadly environment. But fortunately, we have found a safe shelter in this terrible place. Whether you want to admit it or not, this' shelter 'in the darkness seems to be the power we are trying to fight against. This huge divine tree remains … seem to be the' Giant Reincarnation Tree 'of the main god of the elves, the God of Nature, Amoun, the God of Reincarnation …
"… And around this divine tree that has withered and died for unknown reasons is an ancient ruin unimaginable to mortals. Even with the knowledge and wisdom of us sisters, we could not figure out when and who built this shocking wonder and made it float among the many divine kingdoms, even becoming the graveyard of the 'Giant Reincarnation Tree'.
"… In the days when we were trapped, we spent many years exploring this place, the Giant Reincarnation Tree and the world of steel outside the tree. We did not find the way home, nor did we find the reason why the Giant Reincarnation Tree was' stranded 'here and died. But we did not come up empty-handed. In the hundreds of years of activity in the world of steel, we found words, pictures, signs, and some … terminals that could display information.
"In the long and difficult process of learning, we summarized the meaning behind the scattered information bit by bit. After a long time, we finally extracted some useful information from the scattered words and signs.
"'Sentinel' — this is the name of this world of steel, and the one who created all this is an extremely ancient and advanced civilization known as the 'Voyagers'."
Gwen's eyes suddenly sharpened as he stared at the carvings left on the wall. The aura that he inadvertently exuded even startled Amber beside him. But soon, Gwen's expression returned to its usual calmness.
This was the Sentinel. This' mother port 'that was almost as large as a mortal kingdom was the Sentinel. It was not a weapon or a powerful ancient warrior, but a colossal structure that was comparable in scale to the heavens!
But while all this was shocking, it was not completely beyond Gwen's imagination. Because when he saw the colossal structure floating in the dark chaos, he already had a vague guess in this regard. Now that his guess was confirmed, he was greatly shocked, but not overly helpless.
"Keep reading." He gently took a breath and said aloud to awaken Amber and Kamel, who were also in shock. "They still haven't mentioned why we have to be careful of the Sentinel."
Kamel and Amber nodded as they looked up at the wooden wall engraved with elvish text. They looked at the long letter on the wall and continued to tell the ancient story.
"… After the initial results, our exploration of this' world of steel 'has significantly improved. We began to gradually discover some … truths, and this is the beginning of all the terrible things. This is why we have to leave this information here. If the outside world has not fallen into the worst situation, then please remember one thing, please remember — be careful of the Sentinel! It has been corrupted, it has broken free of its duty and logic, and it may want to end everything on this planet!
"Now, we have delivered the warning. Next is the specific 'truth' that we have discovered.
"The Voyagers, the advanced civilization that created the Sentinels, had visited our world a long time ago. According to the scattered information we have found, this powerful race had once defeated the 'gods' on this planet and took away most of the intelligent beings on this planet. We do not know the purpose of this advanced civilization, but one thing is for sure. When they left, they left many things in our world, and this behemoth known as the Sentinel … is one of them.
"A Sentinel's original mission should be to carry out some kind of monitoring and waiting mission. It can monitor the operations of many divine kingdoms and record the long history of the entire world over millions of years. It has an ancient and tireless mind that can support it to complete this nearly eternal mission. It can also wait endlessly until a certain final 'goal' is achieved … However, hundreds of years ago, when we sisters came here, all of this plan had already been destroyed!
"Something terrible had corrupted this ancient and powerful 'legacy'. We do not know what kind of power could so easily break through … or rather, bypass the extremely advanced defense system here, nor do we know the source and form of the corruption … At first, we only found some traces of corruption, some ancient terminals that were operating erratically, and some cabins that had been destroyed by some unknown power. At the time, we only thought that the biggest problem here was the malfunction of the old system, until … we found a duplicate and abandoned 'self' in a hidden cabin, and found our deleted memories there!
"When we fell here, we were 'captured'. For some crazy reason, the Sentinel collected material data of us sisters and successfully created a duplicate of one of us in a very short period of time. We do not know how it did all this in such a short period of time, but it was clearly part of the process for it to 'leave' this place …
"Yes, leave this place. This ancient and powerful mind, this mind that theoretically could operate tirelessly and be forever loyal to its mission, has gone mad. The traces of corruption we discovered seem to have been imperceptibly contaminating the Sentinel over the long years. This power of corruption seems to have given the Sentinel a 'humanity', but it is a humanity that is as fragile and changeable as a mortal's, and has been induced to go mad. In the recovered memories, we can still feel the repressive and distorted aura that the Sentinel emitted when it created our duplicates and stuffed its mind into the mortal body. That aura also has a chilling ecstasy …" "Yes, leave this place. This ancient and powerful mind, which theoretically could operate without exhaustion and be forever loyal to its mission, has gone mad.
"And the most frightening thing is that all this had happened long ago, long before we fell into the depths of the dark Chaos. And the corruption and loss of control of the Sentinel happened even earlier! Everything was too late, and when we finally realized that we had been used as a tool for the Sentinel to escape, it was already a few hundred years too late!
"We don't know why we survived after that. After the sentinels captured and copied us, we should have lost our value to them. However, we were only thrown into the ruins of the Giant Reincarnation Tree after having our memories erased … But this mystery doesn't have much meaning, and it doesn't have much meaning when compared to the crazy sentinels …" "That's right," Leylin said.
"To this day, we still do not know what the Sentinel wants to do, and do not know what the outside world will face, but one thing is for sure … this world will face great danger because of the Sentinel's escape, and this danger may be far greater than the demonic tide, or even the divine calamity …
"When we finally realized what terrible things had happened, we sisters have been thinking about how to warn the outside world. Even though we know that this warning may be meaningless. We have been trapped here for hundreds of years, which means that it has been hundreds of years since the sentinels used one of our clones as a springboard to leave this space. The outside world may no longer exist, and even if we send a warning to the outside world, it is very likely that this warning will only lead to ruins after destruction. However, we have never given up hope, and … we have really glimpsed a glimmer of hope.
"One day, about four hundred years after we were trapped here, this space welcomed a strange … traveler.
"We did not know how he came here, and even he himself did not know. He called himself Modiel Werde, an adventurer who traveled everywhere. He lost a part of his memory during his journey, and when he woke up, he was already in this space. The only thing he remembered was a goddess as huge as a mountain, holding a black and white scepter, offering him guidance and help … We did not know the 'goddess' he spoke of, and it sounded like a hallucination, but regardless, a visitor entered this space, and this meant that our warning message had a chance to be sent out. We told the great adventurer about the Sentinel, and not long after that, the great adventurer disappeared into thin air before us …
"We did not know if he had returned to the real world, and did not know if he could complete this' warning '. We could only sincerely hope that he could bring the Sentinel's warning to the world. From him, we learned about the great explosion and the impact of the Mana Tide in Gondor, the earth-shattering changes in the world, and the severing of disobedient legacies. We did not know if all of this had anything to do with the Sentinel who escaped, but at least the outside world was not completely destroyed, and at least the orphans of Gondor had begun to rebuild their kingdom … The current state of the world was countless times better than our worst expectations, and this was enough to rekindle our hope and continue to wait in hope.
"But unfortunately, we cannot wait forever … We are just mortals, mortals with slightly longer lifespans.
"Now, it has been hundreds of years since the great adventurer left this space, and we can feel the life in our bodies fading away … Even with the protection of the Giant Tree of Reincarnation, our lives here are about to come to an end. Perhaps the experience of being captured by the Sentinel had reduced our lifespan, or perhaps the special environment here is accelerating our aging. Regardless of the reason, as elves, we are aging prematurely.
"We can't wait for help, and we can't wait for news from the outside world. We still don't know if the world has been saved by our warning, or if it has come to an end helplessly … It's a pity, successors, if you really exist. It's a pity that you have to listen to our fragmented, scattered story in this way.
"If the outside world is still safe, if everything is still not too late …
"Beware of the Sentinel."
(End of Chapter)
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