Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 1359: Chapter 1358: The Optimal Exploration Team

Asharena was profoundly shaken by the endless stars scattered across the boundless void, and throughout the entire "observation capsule segment" that followed, her gaze almost never left the vast starfield beyond the high?strength transparent polymer conduit—even though the scene that seemed to rush straight at her brought a near?trembling sense of oppression to someone facing the stars for the first time, even though she felt as if she might tumble out of this tiny orbital capsule, "falling" into that limitless darkness, she still could not pull her eyes away.

The stars seemed to possess a certain Magic Power, drawing the gaze of every intelligent being who beheld them deep into their midst.

And after a while, something else suddenly entered Asharena’s field of vision—metallic objects drifting in the distant void, gleaming like sparkling gems under the starlight.

She saw a Voyager Satellite moving along a nearby orbit, floating against the dark backdrop of the universe; its metal hull still shone with luster, yet along some of its edges one could see mottled scars left by impacts from tiny meteors. Having entered space for the first time and never lived through the Voyager era, the Dragonbranded Witch did not recognize what it was, but she still thought of the "Voyager" at once, and her eyes instantly widened.

"Lady Cassandra!" She immediately turned her head toward her temporary "travel companion." "Look out there, that thing, it looks like... Lady Cassandra? You... what’s wrong?"

Asharena stared in astonishment at the sea demons beside her. It was the first time she had ever seen such a complex expression on the face of a race that always seemed so carefree and cheerful—the carefree sort who looked as if they never had a care in the world. Cassandra had seized a nearby handrail, fixing her gaze on that shining satellite in space and on some even more grandiose facility in the distance, yet the focal point of her eyes seemed to fall even farther away, somewhere in the depths of the Star Sea that Asharena could not comprehend. The tail of the sea demons slowly tightened and coiled, then gradually relaxed bit by bit. At last she spoke, her voice emerging as a low, murmuring whisper: "Ah... so they’re still up in the sky..."

"Are you alright?" Asharena was somewhat frightened. "You look a little... have you seen these things before?"

Cassandra seemed to finally remember that there was still a "travel companion" at her side, and only then did she turn back: "Sorry, I recalled some things from the past... I lost my composure a bit."

"Things from the past?"

Cassandra tugged at the corner of her mouth, revealing a complicated smile: "You know this, right? We sea demons are not a race born on this planet—in a time long, long ago, we made an emergency landing here because of an accident."

"I’ve heard about that..." Asharena thought for a moment and nodded lightly. "The Encyclopedia of World Races issued by the Cecil Officials mentioned it, and back in Talronde I also heard the local Dragonkin talk about this."

"When we fell from space back then, I saw these things," Cassandra said softly, lifting her head to gaze at the Star Sea beyond the polymer conduit. "That was the last time I looked out upon the stars from beyond the atmosphere... I truly never imagined that the second time I saw such a sight would be under circumstances like these."

Asharena opened her mouth, yet for a moment did not know what would be appropriate to say. Only then did she belatedly become aware of a shocking fact, and she lowered her head to look at her feet: "Wait... we came up from that tower... So that high tower standing on the sea surface actually... actually extends all the way into space?! The Voyager could build something like this too?!"

"If my judgment is correct, this should be an orbital elevator," Cassandra said with a smile, explaining to the Dragonbranded Witch before her. Though the sea demons were now confined to the planet’s surface, they were, after all, a race that had once roamed the Star Sea; many of the things left by the Voyager were not hard for them to imagine. "There should be two orbital elevators of this kind, the other one also lies on the equator—that’s the ’tower’ Gawain Cecil climbed back then."

"Orbital... elevator?" Asharena repeated the term, which sounded unfamiliar and awkward to her. "I’ve heard the word ’elevator.’ I heard Byron Kirk say that Emperor Gawain likes to use that word for the Magic Power lifting platforms in large buildings. So where is this ’lift’ going to take us?"

"If my memory hasn’t slipped and my guess is correct... it should be something that will amaze you even more than the orbital elevator itself," Cassandra said thoughtfully. Then her gaze suddenly swept toward the outside of the polymer conduit, an expression of slight excitement rising on her face. "Ah, just as I thought, this angle lets us see it—Asharena, look over there!"

Asharena followed the direction indicated by the tip of Cassandra’s tail in surprise, and in the next instant, an overwhelming shock and rush of oppressive awe filled her body and mind—she saw a vast arc?shaped "land" covering the space above, encircling the planet with staggering grandeur. The endless steel ring was covered in complex structures and enormous capsule?like modules whose names and purpose she could not even begin to guess. Within the ring’s partially transparent sections were clusters of buildings shrouded in tranquil darkness, and faint lights flickered and flowed between those structures. It was as if she were staring at a mythical giant serpent coiled around the heavens above the planet, that serpent sunk in an ancient sleep, while she herself was hurtling toward its belly at astonishing speed.

Only now did she realize that the hazy, immense space structures she had glimpsed from afar earlier were merely parts of this ring—and this ring... was in fact the "terminal summit" of that high tower standing on the sea.

"How is this possible..." Even under the tremendous impact, Asharena still managed to think clearly. "Something this gigantic is wrapped around our planet in orbit—no matter how far away it is, it shouldn’t be invisible... Yet for thousands of years we’ve looked up at the sky..."

"Optical masking—everything’s rendered invisible. Perhaps it’s to avoid affecting the normal developmental process of the intelligent beings on the planet’s surface," Cassandra shook her head. "Just like the ’authentication’ we went through when entering that ’tower,’ everything the Voyager left behind has very strict ’security measures’... They seem to care deeply about the ’normal development of civilizations.’ I suspect that for them, it’s practically a law carved into their bones."

Asharena blinked. She was just about to speak again when that synthesized voice once more echoed in her mind: "Capsule decelerating, approaching terminal station, docking guidance protocol activating... Core protocol set missing, shifting to default docking protocol..."

Accompanied by a series of announcements whose meaning remained unclear, the two "visitors" felt the floor beneath their feet tremble once more. The "elevator car" speeding through the transparent polymer conduit rapidly slowed, and the next moment, a fast?descending mass of metal structures appeared outside the conduit, blocking their view of the stars— they had entered the interior of Firmament Station and were in the midst of the "docking" process.

Asharena gripped the handrail nervously, afraid that this overly ancient alien device might suffer some malfunction, but in the end, everything concluded smoothly. The elevator car came to a halt, and the transparent protective walls surrounding the capsule reverted to that silvery?white metallic texture. A few seconds later, a soft humming noise sounded from not far away, and just as before, a wide "doorway" opened in the silvery?white metal wall.

Outside lay a vast, unfamiliar space, dim lighting and dust?sealed space station corridors extending forth, as if inviting the two explorers to step inside.

"...All right, good thing I told the two sisters to wait down below," Cassandra let out a breath, muttering as she walked out, "No matter how high-powered a Magic Web Terminal is, there’s no way it connects to this side..."

"You can still communicate with those two sea demons who stayed down there?" Asharena looked at her in astonishment. "You sea demons can maintain a mental link over this kind of distance?"

"It’s not a mental link, it’s Psyche Echo—a racial talent," Cassandra corrected her seriously. "On a higher level, the minds of us sea demons are ’unified,’ the way lesser elementals in the elemental plane are, in a sense, all ’extensions’ of the elemental plane itself. On the same planet, all sea demons can sense one another... Of course, distance still affects how clearly we can perceive things. For example, up here I can’t directly communicate with the sisters on the surface, but at least we can sense each other’s existence and confirm we’re both safe."

"...That really is an enviable talent," Asharena couldn’t help saying. "We Dragonbranded Witches also have a similar ’group resonance’ skill, but we definitely can’t sense one another across such a ridiculous distance."

Grumbling under her breath, she quickened her pace to keep up with Cassandra’s "feet," and, maintaining a high level of vigilance, finally stepped into this ancient alien facility that had been sealed off from the outside world for one point eight million years.

The first thing that met her eyes was an extremely vast hall—so vast it reminded her of the astonishingly huge docks in Northport. A very dim light shrouded everything in sight, allowing her to just barely make out the large units that were in standby mode and the yawning black openings at the hall’s edge. It seemed there were many corridors that connected to this hall, but they were all buried in darkness.

Considering this was the "terminal station" of the orbital elevator, this "hall" should originally have been a busy transport hub. But now, after a million years, all that was left here was emptiness and deathly silence.

"...Completely different from the section on the surface," Asharena couldn’t help saying. "Down there it still looked bright as day..."

"Maybe the facilities out in space are quicker to degrade and break down under harsh conditions. This place is obviously in pretty bad shape," Cassandra analyzed. "In theory, a place like this should have an automated welcoming protocol, especially since its design even includes procedures open to ’native races.’ Yet we’ve already arrived and nothing has activated... Odds are it’s broken."

"As long as the orbital elevator isn’t broken," Asharena couldn’t help looking back in the direction she’d come from, seeing that silver-white metal column standing in the center of the hall, the passenger hatch still in the open state as though it were ready at any moment to send visitors back, "If this thing breaks, we really won’t be going home..."

"I’m fine. I can die my way back. At this distance I can respawn in the ocean on the planetary surface. You’re the one in trouble. Jumping from this height down towards the atmosphere... Never mind the long stretch of vacuum and radiation in between—the heat from atmospheric entry alone is lethal. A dragon would probably die halfway down," Cassandra said, earnestly analyzing something that would sound completely insane to anyone else. "But if it really comes to that, I can try turning myself into a giant pufferfish. You burrow into my belly, and we jump to the surface together. I’ll try to hold out until the Magic Turbulence Layer before I die, and once I’m dead you figure out your own way to decelerate—of course, the biggest prerequisite is that we first have to find an airlock leading outside, and it also has to be able to open..."

The more Asharena listened, the more horrified she became. In the end she stared wide-eyed at this utterly serious sea demon. "Is this how you sea demons normally think?"

"What’s wrong with it?" Cassandra looked totally baffled. "Does it not sound reasonable to you?"

"Reasonable, very reasonable," Asharena said, utterly convinced. "...When it comes to courting death, you lot really are more hardcore..."

She suddenly felt that, compared with these sea demons who go all in on suicidal stunts precisely because they can’t really die, even those Dragonborn brats who used to jump off Dragon Leap Cliff every day were mild and harmless, like toddlers under three...

"Most of the things here seem to have already shut down," Cassandra paid no attention to what Asharena was thinking. She had already started exploring this ridiculously huge place on her own, and had walked up to a piece of equipment that looked like a control terminal. "Our arrival hasn’t triggered any kind of response..."

"Which direction do we explore next?" Asharena followed and asked this sea demon companion who, although she didn’t look very reliable, was at least technically a "member of an advanced civilization." "Are we going to pick a corridor and squeeze in?"

"...We better not wander too far right away," Cassandra said very seriously. "The scale of an Orbital Ring Space Station is beyond your imagination. At the pace the two of us can manage, the larger our search radius, the more meaningless it becomes relative to the whole station—and we’d be more likely to get lost in those convoluted corridors that have already ceased functioning. I suggest we first feel our way around this hall. Gravity’s normal here, and the air is still circulating, which means at least the life-support systems in this zone are still running. It’s comparatively safe."

Hearing the word "safe" from the mouth of a sea demon who had just been seriously analyzing ways to die was a bit surreal, but Cassandra had to admit her companion made a lot of sense. She herself didn’t know much about space facilities or spaceflight, but with just a bit of imagination she knew how dangerous things could get if certain sections of this enormous "space station" completely lost control—energy lines leaking, toxic gases venting, air circulation failing, or simply a breach opening somewhere. Out here, far from the planet’s protection, even a mighty dragon was little different from a weak rabbit.

Meanwhile, Cassandra had already circled that piece of equipment that looked like a control terminal twice. After some thought, she retreated a bit farther away, then extended her tail, and from the farthest possible distance used the very tip to gingerly poke a spot that looked like an operation panel.

Asharena saw this scene—and her brain didn’t even have time to generate any thoughts.

The next second, she saw the surface of that terminal, which looked as though it had been shut down for years, suddenly light up.

Lady Cassandra’s incredibly piercing voice rang in her ears:

"Deep-sea, this thing is lighting up ahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!"