The space on the other side of the magic door, or rather, the hidden facility, was much larger than Gawain had imagined.
Not only was there a hall, but after the soldiers expanded their search area, they soon found that there was a corridor outside the hall, and rooms lined up outside the corridor.
These rooms were fully furnished, including tables, chairs, equipment, and all kinds of living and research utensils, unlike the rooms outside, which had been emptied.
"The things here have not been moved," Heti said as she looked at a room that had just been opened. This room seemed to be a place where many people gathered to eat. There were long tables and chairs in the room, and neatly arranged sinks in the corner, but there was no water flowing in the sinks. "And the preservation of these things … is much better than outside."
"The whole facility seems to have a large-scale magic effect, and the decay of all items has become extremely slow," Gwen said as he looked down at a long table in his hand. The long table was mottled with rust, but the table itself was still solid and intact. "… There is still a considerable degree of corrosion."
Tyre walked around the long table, her fingers brushing the dusty table. She said thoughtfully, "It feels like this place is ready to be reactivated at any time. As long as someone comes back here, they can start their life immediately."
Gwen did not say a word, but walked silently between the long tables that had begun to rust. At this moment, a group of soldiers who went ahead to explore suddenly returned to the room. The leader came up to Gwen and said, "Sir! We found a warehouse in front! "
"Take me there."
Gwen soon arrived at the warehouse that the soldiers had found. The scene in the warehouse made him frown.
This was the place where materials were stored. There were neat stacks and various signs in the warehouse, but what made Gwen frown was that the packed goods on the stacks had been unpacked.
A large number of wooden boxes had been pried open, and the empty boxes and jars were piled up in various places. Some were piled up neatly, but some were simply scattered all over the room. Other than the messy "packaging", there was not a single useful material in the room.
"This …" Heti immediately clenched her wand when she saw the scene in the warehouse, she looked at Gwen subconsciously. "Ancestor, this …"
"Someone used the materials here!" Gwen said the only possibility. "Someone was active here. At least in the early days after the facility was sealed off, someone was still active here!"
"How is that possible?" Heti was shocked. "Wasn't this place abandoned and sealed off a thousand years ago? Didn't everyone evacuate? "
"I thought so at first, but look at these materials that have been consumed. If they were consumed before the facility was sealed off, the logistics manager would not have allowed the warehouse to become like this." Gwen pointed to the empty boxes and jars that were piled up messily. "This is obviously the result of continued consumption after the facility was sealed off, and I'm afraid that they have been consumed for a long time."
Heti could not help but gulp. "This … is really disturbing."
Tyre then asked a question. "If there were still people here after the facility was sealed off, where are they now?"
Gwen shook his head. "I don't know, but if the people working here are all humans, then no human can live for a thousand years."
Soon, the soldiers found more warehouses. Most of the things in the warehouses had been used up. Only a few things were left. Judging from the thick layer of dust on the sealed boxes, they had not been used for many years.
Even with the protection of magic, these materials could not be stored for a thousand years. Even if the packaging was intact, the contents had long rotted. So Gwen just roughly checked these things and lost interest.
After checking the corridor outside the hall, the group came to the end of the corridor, where the roads converged. An inclined staircase extended from the intersection of the corridors to the upper level of the secret facility.
"It seems that there is still a structure above." Heti looked up at the dim space at the end of the staircase. This ancient facility had an amazing energy system, but no matter how advanced the energy system was, it could not completely withstand the erosion of time. The lights in the upper area were obviously dimmer than the lower area. It seemed that there was a problem with the energy supply. The light was not only dim but also very unstable. Heti summoned a Mage's Eye. After a moment, she nodded. "There is no danger up there."
The exploration team moved forward along the staircase and soon reached the upper level of the secret facility. At the end of the staircase, a heavy metal door blocked their way.
"The magic lock on the door has lost its effect." Heti quickly found the magic mechanism that controlled the lock on the door. A few dim runes were engraved in the center of the door, but these runes did not respond to external magic stimulation. "Now it is just an ordinary iron door. It can be destroyed directly."
Two soldiers immediately stepped forward and aimed their heat ray guns at the lock in the center of the door. After a few consecutive shots of heat rays, the magic mechanism in the center of the door was directly melted. Without the protection of magic, the advanced ancient magic mechanism was just a piece of metal with a low melting point.
Gawain placed his hand on the door, and with the strength of a Legendary Knight, he slowly pushed open the door that originally required a magical device to open.
Creak —
Accompanied by the ear-piercing sound of metal rubbing against each other, the ancient door with thousands of years of history slowly opened to both sides, and a stale aura leaked out from the space behind the door. However, a slightly cool mist suddenly appeared out of thin air and surrounded everyone, isolating all the potentially harmful aura outside.
Gwen looked back and saw Tyre waving her hand as if nothing had happened. The power of the water element quietly flowed through her fingers.
He did not tell the siren that in fact, every soldier had a long-lasting 'Breeze Shield' effect in their armor. Instead, he smiled and thanked Tyre for her kindness, and then stepped through the door.
The next second, the scene in front of him stunned him.
Behind the door was a large semicircular room. Rows of chairs were arranged neatly along the curved lines of the room. And on those rows of chairs, were rows of corpses!
These people had obviously been dead for many years, but because the entire facility was shrouded in a magical force field that slowed the decay of things, they did not turn into bones with the passage of time. Instead, they had become some kind of mummified existence. They were wearing the magician's robes or short robes of the ancient Kingdom of Gondor, and their attire was enough to identify them.
They were the personnel who stayed in the ancient facility after the closure of the facility!
Heidi's eyes widened. The shocking scene in front of her left her speechless for a long time. It was not until more than ten seconds later that she muttered to herself in a low voice, "They... are all here... they all died here..."
"Why were these people left here?" Tyre had also heard about the origin of the facility from Gwen. She was puzzled by the existence of these people. "Could it be that there was a mistake in the evacuation and these people were forgotten?"
"It's impossible for there to be such a big mistake." Gawain frowned and shook his head. "The evacuation back then was obviously orderly. There's no room for mistakes. The warehouses we found earlier are also a clue. Those supplies show that the people who stayed here were part of the plan."
After that, he began to carefully walk between the semicircular chairs. After passing through row after row of chairs, he came to the front of the semicircular hall.
Gwen turned around and saw the rows of chairs neatly arranged in front of him. Nearly a thousand silent corpses sat on the chairs. Due to the arrangement of the chairs, the focus of the corpses was exactly where he was.
This strange feeling made him break out in a cold sweat. But it also made him notice that there was an inconspicuous raised device on the ground under his feet, and there was still some residual magic light flowing slowly between the runes on the surface of the device.
He recognized that thing. It was the technology of the ancient Kingdom of Gondor. It was a magic device used to transmit messages. With the help of the massive power of the Deep Blue Well and the magic conductors all over the empire, these devices could connect every inch of the empire closely. But with the explosion of the Deep Blue Well, this communication network had completely collapsed and could never be rebuilt. The communication spells and magic communication towers used by the human countries today were just a remnant of this ancient technology.
This device could still be used. Although it could no longer send or receive any messages after leaving the Deep Blue Magic Net, the glimmering light on its surface showed that there was still a little bit of energy left inside, and the information it stored was not lost.
According to the memory of seven hundred years ago, Gwen tried to inject some magic into the device, and the ancient device that had been silent for a thousand years instantly 'came to life'. The runes on its surface flashed violently, and a beam of light shot out from the top of the device and shot towards the wall behind Gwen.
Gwen turned around and dodged the beam of light. He saw the ancient device projecting a message on the wall in front of the nearly a thousand corpses in the hall. It was a series of words written in the ancient Gondor common language. It was incredibly short:
"You are the last survivors. Live on and don't come back."
This was the only sentence saved in the communication device. It was obviously the content of the last communication. The other early content had either been deleted or could not survive the passage of time.
"The last survivors …" Tyre saw the message. The siren, who had lived for god knows how long, actually knew the ancient Kingdom of Gondor's language. She came up and asked curiously, "What does this mean?"
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