The long years of being a surveillance satellite in the sky did not change the nature of Gawain's personality, but it gave him a special perspective of looking at everything in the world. When necessary, he could analyze the changes of the world as a bystander and conclude some possible patterns from the changes that could easily last thousands or tens of thousands of years. These patterns were difficult for the species living on the ground (including the elves who could live for thousands of years) to conclude.
It was because he had seen the rise and fall of civilization on the surface many times that Gwen could speculate that there had been more than one Demonic Wave. Even if he did not capture any of them, it was enough to guess what happened in between from the surveillance footage.
In Gwen's other speculation, he believed that the scale of the Demonic Wave should be uncertain.
A large-scale Demonic Wave may lead to the reshaping of the civilization of the entire planet, but a small-scale Demonic Wave — the disaster of Gondor 700 years ago was probably just a 'small-scale Demonic Wave'.
Although it destroyed the most powerful Kingdom of Gondor in human history, it only affected the central region of the continent. Not to mention the Silver Empire of the elves and the Kingdom of the Dwarves in the west were not affected at all.
Or … the Demonic Wave 700 years ago was not a formal one, but a 'prelude'?
Gwen could not help but have all kinds of guesses and associations in his mind, many of which were actually made up by his own imagination. Amber looked at Gwen for a long time, and finally could not help but poke him in the arm. "Hey, what are you thinking about?"
"I just thought of something." Gawain snapped out of his trance, and casually asked, "What do you think will happen if one day, all the resources that humans are familiar with, such as the properties of all kinds of magic conductive materials?"
Amber was stunned for a moment. "Why are you jumping around so much?"
Gwen knocked on Amber's head and said, "Just tell me what will happen."
"Of course everyone is in a mess," Amber replied casually. "Especially the mages, they probably can't find any casting materials. Many of them have to be reconsidered …"
After hearing Amber's answer, Gwen sighed softly after a long silence. "Mortal civilization is really fragile … right?"
Amber's ears twitched. "You speak so strangely."
Gwen rose to his feet and turned to look at Holme and the other expedition members who were waiting beside him. These people did not dare to disturb their liege when he was deep in thought. Only when they saw Gwen rising to his feet did they approach him slightly.
"This ore needs a name." Gwen nodded at Holme. "I'll call it the Holme Ore."
"My … my lord?" Holmes, who was still a serf not long ago, was startled by Gwen's words. His eyes widened in disbelief as he repeated, "Holmes stone? This … this doesn't suit my status! How can I have this honor … "
"In exploring the unknown, the discoverer is always the greatest. Don't decline." Gwen waved his hand. "In the future, we may find more valuable things on this land. Naming them after the discoverer will be a simple and easy method. It will also stimulate the enthusiasm of the explorers."
"Yes … thank you!" Holme abruptly straightened his body. After so many years, this was the first time he had straightened his back, which had been bent prematurely due to heavy labor. This caused his spine to crack, and his entire back to ache. Even so, he still tried his best to straighten his body. "I … I …"
The inexperienced commoner, who could barely read and write, could not find the right words to describe his feelings. Gwen did not care about this. He just waved his hand and said, "Everyone in the expedition has contributed. I'll let Heti record it and convert it into rewards according to the contribution law."
He then looked in the direction of the mountain path. Just now, he saw a combat soldier running over and standing on the mountain path, waiting for him.
"What's the matter?" Gwen came before the soldier and asked.
"My lord, I've brought a report from the ruins." The soldier stood up straight and saluted. "Byron and Knight found a strange magic device and a hall full of runes in the lower area of the ruins. I hope you can see it for yourself."
A new area in the depths of the ruins?!
Gwen frowned and immediately waved to Amber. "Come with me."
The two walked up the mountain path under the soldier's lead. After a long journey, they finally arrived at the deepest part of the ancient facility.
"It's really big here …" Looking at the tall corridor and the dim magic crystal lamps on both sides of the corridor, Amber could not help but sigh. "It's a straight path, but it takes so long to walk in …"
"And this is the result of Byron and Knight having cleared the path." Gwen nodded. He noticed that the magic crystal lamps on both sides of the corridor were newly installed. Considering the cost and the output power of the portable honeycomb magic network unit, the magic crystal lamps were spaced very far apart, so the overall light in the corridor was very dim. However, compared to the originally completely dark environment of the ruins, the restored light in the corridor was still much brighter than before.
In the circular hall, Gwen saw the middle-aged Knight, whom he had not seen for many days.
Many days of exploration did not make Mr. Knight look haggard and tired. His condition was surprisingly good, as if he had found the feeling of being a mercenary again in the process. Byron's face was in high spirits. As soon as he saw Gwen, he greeted him. "My lord, you should see this! I bet the two groups of words at the door are describing the function of this room. But we can't understand what it means even after studying it for a long time. "
Gwen looked in the direction of Byron's finger and saw a piece of rust-free metal plate inlaid on both sides of the inner door of the circular hall. The metal plate was engraved with neat ancient words using a technology similar to laser etching.
"On the left, it says to pay attention to safety and avoid accidents. On the right, it says to lock the door before leaving. What's wrong?"
Byron was speechless.
Gwen saw the few soldiers behind Byron blushing. If it were not for the military discipline, they would have rolled on the ground.
"Next time, don't bother to study things that are not your specialty." Gwen sighed and patted the middle-aged Knight on the shoulder. "Even Heti can't recognize these ancient words. What are you doing here?"
Byron broke out in cold sweat. He turned around awkwardly and pointed to the center of the circular hall. "My lord, you're right. You'd better take a look at this."
Gwen looked at the center of the hall. In fact, he had noticed the wonderful thing from the moment he entered the room.
It was a vertical ring inlaid on the ground. About one-third of the structure was buried underground. The inner diameter of the ring was about four meters. Densely packed magic patterns and runes could be seen on the ring. Rare metals and magic crystals were embedded in the magic nodes, which showed that it should be some kind of device that consumed a lot of energy.
On the ground around the ring, there was an equally complex magic symbol system and several metal devices fixed to the ground and connected to the magic patterns on the ground. They looked like consoles.
"Is this … some kind of door?" Gwen scratched his chin. The shape of the ring reminded him of something similar to a portal. But he had doubts about the 'portal'. Even in the heyday of the Kingdom of Gondor, long-distance teleportation was still a theoretical product. There was no such convenient teleportation magic in this world. If there was a mature portal in Gondor a thousand years ago, it was impossible that it had not been passed down.
It was more likely to be a kind of 'magic door' for small-scale spatial transformations. It was used to link different spaces at the same coordinates. This technology was quite mature in the Gondor era.
"At first, we suspected that this thing was made of stone, but in fact, it's some kind of metal. It's just that no one knows what kind of material it is," Knight Byron continued to report. "In addition, we found several sealed rooms on this floor. In those rooms, there were some ingots of the same material as the rings. It seems that the people here wanted to build more rings or expand it. But later, they left, and the work was put on hold."
"Unknown metal material …" Gawain muttered to himself. "If it's not an ancient alloy, then it can only be that the Demonic Tide has changed its nature. If it's the latter, then it'll be troublesome to study it."
Byron Knight did not hear clearly. "My lord, what did you say?"
"No, it's nothing." Gawain waved his hand. At the same time, he noticed from the corner of his eye that Amber had snuck up to the ring and was poking at the purplish-black crystal on the surface of the ring with her precious little dagger. He immediately exclaimed, "Hey! What are you doing? This thing can't — "
"Don't worry, I won't steal it!" Amber immediately glared at Gwen, and loudly denied that it was her occupational disease. "I just feel that the residual power of the crystal is a little … familiar."
"Familiar?" Gwen was taken aback. "Have you seen this kind of crystal?"
Amber looked at the crystal inlaid on the ring like a scholar. She touched her smooth chin with her free left hand. "According to my years of experience …"
Gwen was stunned. "… What?"
"Ahem, work experience, work experience." Hu Po reacted and quickly corrected herself. Unfortunately, everyone present had already heard her, so she continued to speak shamelessly, "According to my experience, this crystal should be a very rare Shadow Affinity Crystal — the most expensive type of elemental crystal. And to be honest, its purity is frighteningly high. Such a high-purity shadow crystal is rare now. "
"Shadow?" Gawain blinked. He knew about the existence of elemental crystals. These special magic crystals were formed when ordinary magic crystals were corroded and transformed in an environment with a high elemental concentration over a long period of time. Since shadow environments were rare in nature, it was even rarer to find a place that could maintain a shadow environment for a long period of time and reach a certain level of concentration. Therefore, shadow elemental crystals were the most expensive and rare. Although Gawain Cecil was known as an erudite back then, his main skill points were in herbology, wilderness survival, territory construction, and monster slaying. He did not have much research on magic crystals. However, as Amber, who even dared to dig up the tomb of the founding duke and had a close affinity with shadow, it was not strange that she had seen this kind of crystal.
"Could it be related to the shadow realm?" Gwen guessed.
Amber patted her chest. "Then I'll go in and see what's going on!"
"Wait a minute." Gwen grabbed her arm before she entered the shadow realm. "Take me with you."
Amber was stunned for a moment. He suddenly recalled the terrifying experience of facing the flesh and blood of the gods when he entered the Shadow Realm in the ruins laboratory. A layer of cold sweat immediately broke out on his forehead as he hurriedly grabbed Gawain's arm. "Then you have to walk in front later!"
Gawain didn't know whether to laugh or cry as he looked at the half-elf who had suddenly cowered. He waved his hand and said, "Let's go."
Amber took a deep breath and calmed down. Then she activated her shadow affinity talent.
The familiar trance struck again. Gawain felt the scene in front of him begin to shake, but just as he was about to vaguely see the scenery of the Shadow Realm, Amber, who was beside him, suddenly cried out, and then the two of them 'fell' out of the critical state.
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