Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 1285: Chapter 1284: Fellow Runaways

Outside the control room, it remained silent all around, with bright lights illuminating the long corridor, and the steady operating machinery sending out a slight low hum from deep within those ancient walls and floors—inside and outside the door felt like two different worlds, standing outside gave the impression that the flashing alarm lights and incessant siren inside the control room were somehow fake.

This spaceship is still operating ”steadily” and ”normally,” even though its core control area has completely collapsed, and even though its main control system has not issued any commands. It’s like a hollow iron shell, with every part inside functioning on its own without higher-level instructions, and countless self-running components collectively maintaining the voyage of this steel body—however, the reason driving them to operate in this manner remains a mystery.

Gawain and his party returned to the brightly lit corridor within the ship, previously they felt nothing when walking here, but now facing the surrounding bright lights and the steady hum of machinery, everyone felt an inexplicable chill rising from all directions, an icy touch that came from accidentally uncovering the truth—they keenly realized that they were walking within an enigmatic shell, with every component inside operating under some mysterious force.

These components might even have ”eyes.”

”I’m a bit nervous... I’m a bit nervous again...” Amber muttered, her eyes constantly scanning around, ”I feel like this ship can ’sense’ us...”

”Don’t scare yourself,” Gawain turned to glance at the nervous half-elf, calmly walking forward, ”Let’s get back outside quickly.”

The group quickened their pace in the corridor, swiftly passing through the connecting passage and wide open doors they had come through, traversing the area within the ship they had previously slowly explored in a short time. Along the way, Amber kept worrying about unexpected incidents, like a bunch of traps or automatic weapons suddenly appearing in the corridor, but fortunately, none of these happened; they soon saw the door leading to the ”Steel Ground,” and the dark chaotic ”sky” outside the door gave everyone a sense of safety even more than the brightly lit areas within the spaceship.

The group returned to the ”Steel Ground,” and Victoria quickly found the Memory Crystal she had set up on a nearby platform. She carefully secured the crystal that might be storing important data close to her body, then looked at the leader of the team: ”King, what do we do next?”

After the actions at the Tower of the Inversion Tide, she knew her legendary leader, knowledgeable in many mysterious realms, could recognize the Voyager language and even understand quite a bit about these ancient ”heritages.” She was, of course, curious about this, but loyalty and trust had led her to set aside her doubts, viewing it as an unsurprising established fact.

Gawain looked up for a moment, recalling the blurred image he had seen on that faulty terminal (it might have been a navigation console?), and strode forward into the distance: ”This way, I suspect this direction leads to the ’docking’ area for when the ship stops.”

The group immediately followed Gawain’s footsteps, walking forward, as this giant spaceship once again sent out a tremor from its depths, but this time, everyone seemed much calmer than before.

The ship was decelerating, possibly even adjusting its orientation—there seemed to be an independent gravity generator on board, thus everyone barely noticed the changes in the ship’s structure, but it was certain that it was preparing for ”docking.”

At this moment, a glimmer suddenly appeared in the dark chaos outside the barrier; Mary, walking on the outermost side of the team, instinctively looked up and let out a faint cry: ”Ah! Something’s emerging there!”

Gawain immediately lifted his head to follow Mary’s gaze, and in that shadowy dimness, a vast structure indeed started to emerge—that was a large, polygonal giant structure with irregular edges, its overall outline somewhat reminiscent of a snowflake. Due to distance and darkness, its details could not yet be seen, but its blurry style was unmistakably of the same origin as the massive ship beneath everyone’s feet. On the surface of the giant structure, unevenly distributed lights could be seen, illuminating a portion of the ground, while the rest remained entirely shrouded in darkness.

In the next moment, the steel giant structure emerging from the darkness slowly began to ”sink” toward the edge of the ship, and Gawain instantly realized: the ship beneath their feet was adjusting its posture, steering toward that vast facility, which was its ”Mother Harbor.”

Melita ran a short distance to the side, enveloped in a light shield, swiftly transforming into her dragon form, her deep and commanding voice emanating from her mouth: ”Everyone, get on, we should hurry, this ship might soon dock—and the time it stays is limited, as is the time we have to explore.”

Gawain’s group quickly climbed onto the dragon’s broad back, Melita stirred the great wings, taking flight directly from the surface of this ancient ship. She cautiously adjusted her posture within the space formed by the ship’s barrier, flying swiftly at a thrilling height over numerous facilities and platforms on the deck, and soon, the edges of the structure began to vaguely appear.

”What is that?” Amber, clinging onto Melita’s neck, stretched her head down to look, seemingly discovering something.

Gawain immediately walked over, following Amber’s pointing finger, and quickly saw the situation below, his brow slightly furrowing.

That was an area the group had not yet explored, located at the polygonal edge of this ancient spaceship, resembling some sort of interface, and on that silver-gray alloy deck... Gawain suddenly saw something that seemed like remnants of vegetation.

Enormous trunks, withered and coiled vines, massive leaves scattered on the deck, and alongside those remnants, some smaller shrubs or plants were resiliently growing out—they were clearly enormous remnants of dead plants, yet what emerged from them defiantly was evidently still alive, thriving under the illumination system of the spaceship, growing prolifically.

”...It looks like a very, very, very massive... plant,” Melita’s voice came from ahead, even the tone of this dragon carried a hint of astonishment, ”And it looks like those things are only part of that plant... my egg incubator, look at those thinnest branches, each is like a beam... I don’t think even the Sorin Giant Tree is this large!”

”Indeed, it seems to be remnants of a massive plant, and some smaller plants growing out of those remnants...” Gawain was equally stunned, he muttered softly, suddenly recalling something, turning to Kamel, ”I remember you mentioned before, when you first saw this ’Steel Ground’ from afar, you seemed to notice something ’hanging’ from its edge, right?”

”Yes,” Kamel also saw the giant vines and dry branches below that were gradually drawing closer, after reminiscing briefly he nodded, ”What I saw at the time were probably these things—but being far away, it didn’t even occur to me they actually... were a heap of dead vegetation?”

”The structures resembling vines or roots seem to have been torn off, or twisted with great force,” Amber leaned forward, inspecting for a while, and pointed at the broken plant edges on the spaceship, ”Look, there are obvious tear marks—while those branches and leaves clearly fell from a larger entity after withering.”

Gawain nodded thoughtfully, and just at that moment, Daniel, sitting on the dragon’s back, looked into the distance. The old mage’s expression became serious, ”Everyone, I think... we have already seen that ’larger entity.’

”Huh? What are you talking...” Amber muttered instinctively and then raised her head to glance at the nearby dark space. The next second, her expression froze, eyes wide open, ”What is that thing!!!”

The enormous ancient spaceship finally completed its final maneuvers and deceleration, and ahead of it, the ”Mother Harbor” also revealed its clear form to the unexpected visitors. Gawain and Amber saw an artificial structure much larger than the spaceship beneath their feet floating in the darkness. Compared to the spaceship below, that thing was indeed worthy of being called the ”Steel Ground.” How large was it exactly? The human eye could no longer judge. Even the most perceptive of Transcendents could only see its iron-gray alloy surface extending infinitely into the darkness, swallowed by sparse lights and mysterious glows from afar. On the edge of this true ”Steel Ground” was the ”port” connecting with the spaceship, presenting an irregular polygonal ”docking band” that fit perfectly with the ship’s edge.

What made Amber exclaim was not the ”ancient massive structure” floating in the darkness, but what lay on that ”port.”

It was a tree, a tree that had been dead for an unknown number of years, sprawling on the ground, a gigantic tree that could blot out the sky and cover the sun. It laid there, its vast canopy covering the entire port area, even extending over roads and facilities near the port. The leaves and many branches from its canopy had long withered and disappeared, but its remaining structure was still grand and magnificent, almost reminiscent of a layered gigantic city. Most of its roots had already broken; unable to penetrate the tough alloy of the Voyager, they had collapsed and scattered like debris across the port’s surface. The entire tree, without root support, leaned and fell at the port’s end. Part of its canopy extended beyond the ”massive structure”—matching precisely with the plant remnants at the edge of the spaceship under everyone’s feet.

Amidst these huge and astounding old remnants, one could vaguely see patches of greenery. These were plants thriving on the nutrients from the remnants; or perhaps... merely the ”echoes” produced after this gigantic entity’s death.

Melita let out a low growl; even an ancient dragon, upon witnessing the scene, couldn’t help but exclaim, ”I’ve really never seen anything like this... even the Sorin Giant Tree seems smaller.”

”This thing definitely wasn’t here from the start; it doesn’t fit the style,” Amber quickly concluded, ”It looks like it ’fell’ here from somewhere else, and who knows if it was still alive when it fell—anyway, it’s obviously dead now. And the spaceship beneath us just happens to dock where this giant tree died, so it ’carried’ a part of the remains onto the deck... Honestly, I think I might know what this is.”

”Not hard to guess, Amon has described his ’courtyard’ to us more than once,” Gawain said in a low voice, ”At the center of its kingdom was a giant tree, called ’Samsara,’ with a city named ’Life’ on its canopy, and roots coiled like vines, entwined with a large tomb called ’Death.’ In fact, the Sorin Giant Tree was influenced by this mythological description and grew into the form you see. And what we are seeing now...”

He did not finish. Amber naturally picked up the second half of the sentence, ”Is probably the original version.”

Amber paused for a moment, then continued, ”This time when we go back, we can have a good chat with those two in the Defied Court. We first discovered Mirmina’s home, and now we see Amon’s Samsara Tree dead among the Voyager’s relics... and from the traces here, it looks almost like it came crashing directly.”

”That’s not the critical point. The key is why this tree is here... as relics of a kingdom, how did it fall into the relics of the Voyager? Did it drift here? Or was it brought by the spaceship beneath us?” Gawain whispered with a frown, ”Theoretically, such a collision shouldn’t happen... wait, a collision?”

He stopped suddenly, his mind recalling a scene from the surveillance logs of the Firmament Station—

A giant stag, enveloped in powerful energy and divine radiance, charged from the planet’s surface into space, resolutely colliding with the Voyager’s space station.

If the giant steel structure floating in dark chaos corresponds to the space station in space, and Amon and his kingdom correspond... does this explanation make sense?

When the deity’s entity chose to crash into the space station left by the Voyager in space, its kingdom, left behind, crashed into the ”Mother Harbor” that the Voyager left in the deep-sea at the same time. This precisely matched a research conclusion by Typhon’s tech experts: the gods and their kingdoms are essentially two sides of the same coin.

The more Gawain thought about this, the more plausible it seemed, yet he couldn’t shake off a peculiar feeling—Amon probably didn’t know any of this, didn’t know what happened to his kingdom when he collided head-on with the Firmament Station.

He didn’t even know about the existence of the spaceship cruising through the God kingdom or the Mother Harbor.

While they spoke, the ancient spaceship gradually approached the port ahead. The ”Reincarnation Giant Tree” leaning on the port loomed like a massive, foreboding cloud, pressing down, making those who witnessed it hold their breath. Melita quietly lowered her altitude, cautiously searching for a suitable landing spot on the ship’s edge, while Gawain snapped out of his contemplation, raising his eyes to gaze intently in the direction of the steel structure.

Like the ancient spaceship, that steel structure did not respond to the Voyager identification signal he released.

That thing... is a larger-scale ”hollow shell.”

The dragon landed slowly on the spaceship’s edge, and almost simultaneously, a medium-sized tremor came from beneath Melita’s feet. In the vast ”heaven and earth,” the sound of some giant locking mechanism activating echoed.

The spaceship had docked at the ”Mother Harbor.”