Release that Witch

”We know too little?” Celine dropped her tentacles, looking a little distressed. ”You’re right. The longer I stayed at the Quest Society, the more ignorant I felt I was. The book you brought from the Dream World just blew my mind. I shouldn’t say that the stone is incredible, because there’s something even more incredible than that.”

”What is it?”

”Us,” Celine said with a faint smile. ”According to that book, everybody is comprised of elements. Like a tree, we’re also constituted of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, etc. However, we can laugh, weep and think. That’s more amazing than just being able to illuminate.”

”I read that book too, but I still can’t believe it,” Nightingale remarked on a sigh. ”As much as I hate to admit, our skins aren’t a lot different from scaly tree bark.”

”That’s probably what His Majesty refers to as the beauty of structures.”

Celine looked at Roland, who did not respond.

”Your Majesty?”

”Hey, are you OK?”

Roland finally came out of his reveries. He asked blankly, ”Celine, what did you say?”

”We’re more of a wonder than the illuminating stone tablets.”

”That’s it...” Roland muttered, feeling something dawning on him. ”The so-called stone tablets are not some sort of monuments, but they are people who got killed.”

”Are you saying — ” Celine said in surprise.

”The tablets were those people’s bodies,” Roland said slowly with a shudder. They were indeed a type of new creatures entirely different from carbon-based lifeforms — they were actually silicon-based.

As the thought struck him, Roland soon found a reasonable explanation for the ”illuminating tablets”, and the murals in the temple immediately made sense to him.

First of all, why were the tablets so densly patterned? Not only the surface of the tablet was patterned, but its inner part was engraved as well. If this was an artifact, even Anna would find it hard to cut it so deep in a short period of time. According to the two explorers, those tablets were carved in exactly the same way.

However, if he viewed this matter from a different angle and regarded those tablets as creatures, that would explain a lot of things.

These engravings were probably ”blood” veins. Under the blood pressure, silicon oxides produced a piezoelectric effect. Those electrical signals thus intertwined with each other and gradually formed thoughts. In the meantime, electric currents transformed into visible light through some mechanism so that these creatures were able to communicate.

Roland thought of the giant man and the huge pool of blood depicted in the murals.

Oil was actually more stable than water.

There might be a specific reason that the enemy of those dead people worshipped radioactive weapons.

Strong radiation would interfere electricity and might even render ”electronic devices” ineffective. That was probably why the ”radiation clan” put their faith in radioactive weapons.

Roland saw in his mind’s eye how the war had begun.

Two entirely different civilizations had fought a fierce battle at the Southernmost Region for the relic. The blood of the defeated party had formed the underground river and the Choke Swamp. As their bodies did not decay, they remained underground for thousands of years in the form of tablets. The party who had gained the victory had disappeared, leaving the slightest trace behind them, except the ruin and the Magic Ceremony Cube at the Cage Mountain. Roland could now only trace this distant history via the murals that survived years of frost and winds.

This was so unbelievable!

”The illuminating tablets are living beings like us?” Celine asked meditatively. ”Forgive me, but I can’t believe that this is actually true. It just doesn’t make sense to me that those tablets had consciousness and could move about at will. Do you have proof of any of that?”

Roland managed to remain his composure. He shook his head slightly and said, ”This is my personal speculation. The truth might be very different, because from the perspective of evolution, it’s almost impossible for such things to happen.”

Environment determined how lifeforms came into being. Demons and demonic beasts were, after all, the offsprings of the same biosphere. However, a silicon-based living being evolved in a completely different way. It was not likely that there would be two fundamentally different creatures living in the same natural environment.

”But according to you, that fits the stories on the murals...” Celine said after a moment of silence. ”Let’s put it aside for the time being. I believe as long as we continue to do our research, we’ll find the answer. Only in this way will human beings continue to progress.”

”Sounds very convinceable...” Nightingale said while twitching her lips.

”This is also one of the rules at the Quest Society,” Celine replied with a smile. ”By the way, I conducted some tests on the illuminating tablets. I was thinking perhaps it could replace the illuminating Magic Stones, but it seems that doesn’t work.”

”No?” Roland said, frowning. When he had read the report, the first thought that had come to his mind was to use the tablets for illumination. Due to the limitation in power generation, lightbulbs were currently only used in the plants and a few residential areas nearby. There was still a long way to go before the mass could enjoy the convenience brought by electricity. If the tablets could be used for lighting, it would definitely make the life in Neverwinter a lot easier.

”Well, you can make it work, but it’s too much hassle. Your Majesty, please look at this.” Celine then picked out two samples. One was as thin as paper and the other the size of a block of tofu. They were both further sliced into smaller pieces. Celine applied some strength to both of them. Two jets of light erupted from her auxiliary tentacles. The light from the thin fragment was more dazzling than the other. Soon afterwards, the light from the former gradually faded away and stopped illuminating while that from the latter continued to illuminate for another half a minute. Ceine said, ”I applied exactly the same amount of strength to the two fragments.”

Roland immediately took the implication. ”Its illumination intensity and lasting power have something to do with its size and the extent to which it’s deformed.”

”Exactly,” Celine said while tapping her main tentacle. ”The light from the tablet fragment will extinguish eventually. The smaller the fragment is, the faster the light goes off, and it will take a very long time to recover its power. If we want to illuminate the whole underground hall, we will probably need hundreds of tablets and place ton of iron on them. When the light goes off, we then need to remove those iron. That’s going to be a huge project.”

Roland thought he might be able to use an assembly pulley to transport heavy objects if he wanted to use the tablets as stationary lights, though it was a little complicated process. He stared at the lusterless fragment and sank into thought. The smaller the stone fragment was, the easier it would be deformed, and correspondingly, the shorter the light would last. It would be almost like a flash —

”Hang on, a flash?”

An idea suddenly flashed across Roland’s mind.

He immediately had a perfect idea to make the best use of those ”tablets”, although that might involve a lengthy production process.

This had been a historical problem for the First Army, which would just further impede their operations in the future if not solved in a timely fashion.

However, he now found a possible solution.

He could use the tablets to produce tracers that pointed soldiers directions.