Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 921 - 920: Pursuit

The howling lasted for half an hour before it finally subsided.

Inside the Empire Hub Control Center, the technical personnel remained tense, each person busy checking system status, repairing malfunctioning nodes, restarting previously offline equipment. Commands and reports echoed incessantly by the minute, making the large hall seem like a battlefield, albeit without the smoke.

The facility’s power spine was back online, and the Node Tower on the surface resumed operation. Within minutes after the howling stopped, over ninety percent of nodes and facilities had returned to normal. Mage technicians responsible for monitoring the systems were amazed to find that the terrible chaos caused almost no hardware damage—it swept through the network like an ethereal storm, swift and fleeting, leaving no trace as it quickly faded away.

Only the still-disrupted nodes throughout the rest of the Empire served as a reminder to everyone that the previous anomaly was no illusion.

Rebecca looked nervously toward the center of the hall. A silver-white metal pillar stood there, seemingly penetrating the entire facility. Kamel, bathed in arcane light, floated beside it, his form swollen to nearly twice its size, standing like a giant radiating boundless light. Countless arcane light streams burst from the gaps in his rune armor plates, connecting with numerous magic symbols and magic-conducting nodes on the metal pillar—this arcane master from a thousand years ago was sensing the residual energy noise in the Magic Web in his own way. This method carried some risk, yet it was currently the most efficient and reliable means.

A moment later, Kamel finally ended the connection. His body slowly reverted, and he floated towards the head command seat at the front of the hall.

"Master Kamel," Gawain preemptively asked before Rebecca could speak, "What’s the situation? Have you found the cause?"

"It’s certain that an extremely powerful energy entity entered our network—the traces left in the neural network show that its scale is beyond our imagination. If it had rampaged out of control, it could have nearly burned down the entire Magic Web!" Kamel said with a hint of lingering fear in his voice, making everyone onsite gasp at the revelation. "However, the energy entity skillfully ’self-divided’ countless times as it passed through the network—it distributed itself, flowed through the nodes without causing any damage, like water...’seeped’ into the deepest layers of our network and then vanished."

Gawain felt as if he were listening to a fairy tale, finding it hard to understand with the ’worldview of this world’ what Kamel was describing. Even Rebecca, who was usually carefree, was stunned: "Good heavens... what is that thing... how come it sounds like... some sort of living being?!"

"This is somewhat beyond common sense, but it seems... it is indeed alive, and possibly even intelligent," Kamel said in a deep voice, "I tried to track its traces just now, but all traces were cleverly erased. This is not a phenomenon that unconscious energy turbulence could cause."

Gawain furrowed his brows, various speculations surged in his mind. He felt he might have some clue and subconsciously asked, "...Did that energy entity ’divide’ itself to avoid destroying the network?"

"Not sure. If it’s truly a being with intelligence, its division activity may also be to avoid self-destruction—even though it could indeed burn down the Magic Web, it would definitely suffer immense damage in the process, possibly even being annihilated outright—that is an empire-spanning magical energy, and its gathered force surpasses mortal imagination. I think even the gods would not actively clash with such powerful energy..."

The scene Kamel described made Gawain grow more solemn. Today’s unexpected incident exceeded any previously made plans and even gave him a rare sense of helplessness. Yet, just as he was about to inquire for more details, a shout from a technician at a nearby monitoring seat interrupted the conversation at the command table:

"Signal from Sherlin City received!"

Rebecca, Gawain, and Kamel almost said in unison: "Connect!"

The next second, information from Sherlin City was displayed via holographic projection at the front of the hall. Gawain saw Baldwin Franklin, the Grand Governor, standing there, the background a hectic and busy control hall. Apparently, Sherlin City also experienced a severe chaos, but everything looked to have calmed down.

"Your Majesty," Baldwin Franklin said urgently as soon as the communication connected, "We just experienced an abnormal incident here, all communications were cut off, energy malfunction, and..."

"The same here, but things have settled down," Gawain interrupted, "How are things on your side?"

"Ah... everything has returned to normal here as well," Baldwin responded quickly after a moment of surprise, "We’re rebooting all nodes, and have reconnected with St. Soniel and the imperial capital’s main hub..."

As this Duke of the West spoke, Gawain saw the largest projection device at the end of the hall displaying a full map, with magic web nodes that had dimmed now lighting up again. After a few flickers and pulses, nodes within the Sherlin City and St. Soniel radiation area lit up one after another.

Soon, reports from other monitoring stations filtered in from technicians: "Signal from Bitter Winter Castle received!" "Communications restored with Longwind Fortress!" "Sorinburg channel open!"

"Seems like... everything is recovering," Gawain sighed in relief, but strong doubts and unease remained deep inside himself, "Yet we still have no grasp of the cause..."

"What on earth was that suddenly invading energy entity..." Rebecca muttered instinctively, "It’s a pity we didn’t catch it and let it slip away..."

As Rebecca was muttering halfway, a small Magic Web Terminal on the command platform suddenly lit up, and an elderly voice emerged: "No, Princess Veronica, that thing hasn’t escaped yet—we have caught its tail."

"Duvalt?" Rebecca immediately looked toward the top of the terminal, where Duvalt, in black attire, appeared in the holographic projection. "You’re saying you’ve caught it?"

"In the process of catching," Duvalt nodded, "That thing hasn’t completely departed the network, it’s swiftly transferring along the ’unconscious zone’ of the neural network. Nariteer is tracking it in the border area—we need additional computing node support to enhance Nariteer’s sensing range and speed of action."

"Notify the computing center," Gawain immediately looked up at Kamel, "All standby personnel without assignments enter the Immersion Capsules!"

...

Neural network, "Unconscious area."

A vast and chaotic fog shrouded the entire world, with unknown daylight floating high above, passing through the mist and casting strange and twisted beams of light upon the gray-white water surface at the base of this world. Countless bizarre clouds and vortexes continually condense and dissolve in the depths of the fog, making the entire world constantly unstable and changing. Occasionally, the hollow sound of the wind comes from afar, making this place increasingly eerie and desolate.

This is the border zone of the large and complex network. It is the symbolic state presented by the deepest "chaos" of the neural network. It is a forbidden area generated after numerous mental nodes in the network are mutually cross-mapped, interfered, and iterated.

Here, any orderly calculation ultimately points to a disorderly result. Every moment, useless data is destroyed here, with unformed "ideas" and "memories" turning to nothingness—these ideas and memories are formed from the mutual influence of the network connectors while in their sleepwalking, a result of countless brains jointly wandering. They continually form and decompose at this border zone, presenting themselves as those clouds and vortices.

The normal connecting mind to the neural network will never access this area—dozens of security protocols protect the user’s brain to prevent rash network wanderers from being swallowed and digested by the "unconscious area." Yet today, this "border" that should be unvisited welcomes an unexpected guest.

A large phantom of pale purple flashed through the depths of the fog, projected onto the gray-white water surface at the fog’s base, but reflecting countless bizarre magic symbols and colorful light balls. Around this swiftly flashing phantom, dense webs and phantom spider limbs are continually spawning and extending like unending dreams.

A giant spider, entirely snow-white, was swiftly moving above this fog, with a vast spider web rapidly forming and spreading around her. Her long limbs stirred the thick fog below during her sprint, mobilizing the "border’s" power to continuously set up barriers and false roads for interference, while the white spider’s purposeless head always watched a direction—

Though the pale purple phantom moved quickly, it had already fallen into the spider’s web. To the predator, any attempt by the prey to escape from the spider web was merely an entrancing prelude to closing the net.

Nariteer was not a patient predator.

So, upon confirming the timing was right, she immediately constrained all information flow in the border area.

The pale purple phantom was instantly bound by an invisible force in the fog, exploding countless magic symbols and chaotic light streams on its surface as if presenting a spell mould teetering on the brink of collapse. However, in the next second, this "out-of-control spell mould" swiftly stabilized itself and began to collapse inward—a plethora of colorful light balls and magic symbols first spread outward, then condensed inward. Within seconds, this chaotic, eerie shadow had a definite "appearance."

It was a female—at least some features appeared female.

Her size was as enormous as a clock tower, her face enchanting yet exuding a hint of non-human eeriness. Her pupils were like a shattered galaxy, showing specks like broken stars, without any boundary of whites or irises. Long, black hair cascaded from the back of her head, shimmering with roaming light streams and dense lightning. Yet, from her head downward, her entire upper body appeared ethereal, resembling clouds converged from mists, with only a faint black short robe discernible over her silhouette. Underneath was the contour of a female body, and her lower half was a cluster of thin clouds, the clouds continually dispersing and gathering, with no limbs inside, only endlessly appearing semi-visible magic symbols and light balls manifesting and operating.

This "lady" as enormous as a clock tower finally halted. She lifted her head and saw the enormous white spider descending from the fog, thickly surrounded by floating webs. The threads extended to the surrounding space, forming a dense encircling web.

Finally, she shouted loudly in anger: "Why do you keep pursuing me?!"

The white spider halted on the gray-white water surface and seemed taken aback by the incoming shout. A small figure with long white hair emerged from the dense fuzz atop the spider’s head. Nariteer looked directly at the "giant lady" not far away, with a serious expression: "You broke the Magic Web, you must compensate."

"I didn’t break anything!" The clock tower-sized lady seemed increasingly angry; she glared at the small girl on the spider—in her eyes, the girl and the spider were evidently a single entity. "I conducted precise calculations, began calculating last year—nothing broke! I can’t be wrong!"

Nariteer blinked and seemed to confirm something with someone far away, then nodded: "It seems indeed there is no damage..."

"So you were wrong—I won’t argue with you, but I must..."

"But I still can’t let you go," Nariteer shook her head. "You delayed the project, this is called ’economic loss’..."

"...Damn it!"

After a moment of astonishment, the clock tower-sized lady couldn’t help but curse, then her entire figure suddenly became ethereal. Amid the white spider’s brief bewilderment, she broke free of those webs and the surrounding fog’s constraint, once again become a ghostly phantom, instantly disappearing from the spot!

Yet, this seemingly high-success-rate sudden escape did not succeed. She had only moved a short distance when the white spider’s limbs instantly blocked all her routes—she failed.

After several unsuccessful breakthroughs, the clock tower-sized lady came into form again and looked at Nariteer with expressions of shock and anger: "This is impossible...How can your speed be so fast?!"

Nariteer seriously thought for a moment, looking down at her spider body, then raised her head to look at the other party: "I have more legs."

She then examined the "giant lady" seriously for a few moments, her gaze falling on the continuously aggregating and dispersing fog at the other’s lower half. She shook her head with regret: "You don’t have any legs."

"???"