Sword of Dawn

"It's finally dawn..."

With a sigh, Victor Kant's figure gradually disappeared into the air, and "Lilith Kant" standing outside the stone pavilion also disappeared into thin air at the same time.

An angry roar came from the direction of the main building of the castle——in the end, the faceless visitor failed to step into the real world after all.

Knight Philip left the underground hall wearily, and after climbing up to the surface, he looked at the sky with a little surprise: the rainstorm had stopped at some point, and a gleam of light was rising from the horizon.

"It's finally dawn..."

The young knight grunted.

Chapter 0182 Letter and Mess

Gawain was a little surprised to see Lilith Kant's figure disappearing with Viscount Kant.

He didn't expect that Lilith Kant was also a product of a nightmare.

In his original deduction, Lilith Kant should be a living person, the only "dream maker" who remained awake in the entire castle, but obviously, he made a mistake in his judgment in this regard.

He and Amber came to the huge stone hall together, saw the two skeletons inside and the body of the Viscountess who was protected by magic and had not decomposed, so it suddenly dawned on him: Lilith Kant is really dead, Perhaps in order to start this terrible dream-making ritual, or perhaps in order to better "contact" her husband and son, she really gave up her life.

It is only her shadow that wanders in the cellar of the North Tower, and wanders in the castle with a lantern—no wonder the Viscountess, as a "dream maker", has not left the castle for 30 years. Gao Wen didn't want to leave as he imagined, but she couldn't leave here anymore.

But these things are no longer important, the dream is over, the real world is shining on this dark and ancient fortress, whether it is the dreamer or the dreamer, they have returned to the place they should be with the end of the dream. Places to go.

All they left behind was the mess of the real world.

Amber was still a little dazed, this incredible adventure made her mind messed up (of course, her mind may often be messed up), looking at the stone hall in front of her and the three corpses in the coffin, it took her a long time to say a word : "So we have actually been entangled with three dead people for so long?"

"It's the whole land that has been entangled with them for 30 years," Gawain shook his head. "The Eternal Sleepers... are indeed the most dangerous of the three dark sects."

"A person crawled out of the coffin and looked at the three people lying in the coffin and lamented that the cult has harmed people. I have never seen anything more supernatural than this in my life..." Amber was thinking something crazy , suddenly shivered and said to herself to scare herself, then she looked down at her feet, and suddenly found something, "Hey, Gao Wen, here are some pieces of paper!"

Several sheets of enchanted parchment that were emitting shimmering light were scattered in front of the stone hall. This was where Viscount Victor Kant disappeared before. Gawain picked them up in surprise and saw Viscount Kant's handwriting on them: "This is... left by Viscount Kant?"

"He left it? Is it a letter for you?" Amber blinked her eyes in a daze, "Look what it is!"

"It is indeed a letter, but not all of it is reserved for me. There are also letters addressed to the king and made public." Gawain quickly flipped through the parchment, and the neat handwriting on it came into his sight:

"I am Viscount Victor Kant, a nobleman entrusted by the Ansu royal family, the lord of Kant town in the south and the surrounding farms, manors, and villages. I swear in the name of the ancestors of the Kant family that everything I say is true. And these facts should be made public to alert the world.

"My family is cursed by the Sleeper.

"...The heretics have corrupted my territory with evil ritual magic. In the past 30 years, countless innocent people have died in this ritual magic. My wife was controlled by the magic, and my soul could not escape the curse. I became its owner." accomplice……

"...I shall never be at peace without the help of the Duke of Gawain Cecil - the Duke who answered my plea, and it was he who gave his life to help lift the curse upon me and my family ..."

"Sincerely, Your Majesty the King—your loyal vassal sends you greetings. This will be the last confidential letter I send to you. The incident that happened in Kant...

"As it happened, I assure you, with the last of my humanity and my last name, that it is true.

"I have no heirs or immediate family members who can inherit the title and property, and so does my wife. There is only one nephew of the two of us who is qualified to inherit, but he is congenitally mentally retarded and difficult to inherit the honor of the nobility. According to the laws of the kingdom, the fiefs inherited from the ancestors will be returned to the royal family, but before that, I must repay the kindness of Duke Cecil—this is the kindness of saving souls.

"I would like to donate all the wealth in my name except the land - including the books, treasures, antiques and other things in the castle, as well as the six developed farms in the southern part of the Kant Territory that are not fiefdoms - to Duke Cecil without compensation, and recognize him. The right to dispose of these properties at will.

"All the wealth produced in my territory this year, in addition to the part that should be handed over to the royal family, is also given to Duke Cecil."

In addition to an open letter to the nobles in the southern region and a secret letter to the king, there is another letter to Gao Wen:

"Duke Gawain Cecil, when you read this letter, my soul should have regained peace.

"For this ending, I only have joy and peace, without any resentment. If I have to say that there is something regrettable, it is only that I failed to fulfill my promise - I swore to reverse the family's extravagance and degeneration, Don't join forces with the cruel and cold-blooded new generation of nobles, and vowed to follow the pioneers of your generation, open up territories, shelter the refugees, and become the protector of the innocent and the poor, but the final result is a mess.

"I'm very glad that you appeared in time and dispelled the haze on this land before my soul completely fell into darkness and everything was irreparable.

"When I was young, I always regarded you as a role model and idol, and I even yearned to become a knight, rushing into the darkness like you, and opening up a new place for the people to live-thus there is The six farms in the southern part of Kantland, that may be the only light in my sad life.

"If I could change the timing and the way, meeting you would be the most glorious moment in my life, and I would even abandon my title and all my possessions to become one of your knights in this old age." Apprentice, I will go with you to the pioneering territory at the foot of the dark mountains, to fulfill the dream that I failed to achieve when I was young...but all of them will not be realized after all.

"Besides the belongings in the castle and the six farms that belong to me, I really can't think of anything else that can be used as a reward for you, but I think you should be grateful for some information about the cultists of the Eternal Sleeper." interested.

"Over the years, I have lived as a puppet of dreams, and even my thoughts are always under guidance and control, but perhaps because I have been in contact with the power of the eternal sleeper too much, the moment after finally gaining free will, I have insight Some truth behind this 'curse'.

"Please be alert, the conspiracy of the Eternal Sleepers is by no means as simple as a Kant land. The sensational and terrible sacrifice they set up in this castle is actually just a 'node' in their series of plans. This node is called by them Computing nodes, and they have a huge plan that needs more souls, more victims involved...

"Their conspiracy may spread throughout the world, and once this plan succeeds, they will drag all intelligent creatures in the world into the abyss of eternal doom.

"However, their actions are not without trace. According to the facts I have learned, each of their 'computing nodes' needs a large number of living people as 'consumables'. In the southern border, they may be able to capture refugees secretly. Slowly make up enough for the ceremony, but in other places where there are fewer refugees and better order, as long as you carefully observe the disappearance and flow of the population, you can find their clues.

"I have reported these things to His Majesty the King, and at the same time, I also hope that you will be vigilant, and be alert to the resurgence of those heretics around you—in the southern part of this declining kingdom, you are already the only hope for the people.

"—Victor Kant, a guilty man who really wanted to be good."

Gawain's eyes moved between those words, and he turned over the parchments one by one until the last piece of paper appeared before his eyes.

Amber has sharp eyes, and can tell at a glance that this is not a letter: "Hey! This letter doesn't seem to be addressed to anyone!"

"That's right, this is the lord's order, and it was announced on the territory after it was signed." Gao Wen saw what was written on it, and couldn't help sighing softly, "He exempted everyone in the territory from their debts to the Kant family , liberated all the serfs directly under the lord and the slaves in the castle, and declared that they have the right to leave the territory freely."

Amber blinked, and suddenly remembered what Gao Wen had said: "Hey, I remember you said that this kind of liberation should be gradual..."

"That's right, it should be done step by step. Directly emancipating serfs into freemen can only make them lose the basic security provided by the landlord. If there is no perfect and follow-up land distribution and security system, these slaves who become freemen can only rely on a little dismissal Fei simply can't last long, they will soon lose their freedom again, and eventually sell themselves back to the old ways of servants or even slaves," Gawain shook his head, "But Viscount Victor Kant is not a whimsical idealist, he is sure He can also think of these, but he has no other choice - the Kant family is gone, and with the current administrative efficiency of the Ansu royal family, the new lord may not come within a year or two. According to Ansu's law, this All property in the castle belongs to the nobles themselves, and any servants have no private property. Therefore, during this period, the people left by the old lords are the most miserable. They either run out to find ways to make a living, but slaves make a living by themselves. To commit a crime, or to steal the contents of the castle and sell it-but this is also a crime.

"That's why Viscount Kant liberated these people as free citizens and allowed them to leave freely—at least they left a way to survive."

Hu Po was stunned for a moment, and suddenly felt that her head was a little big: "It feels like... a big mess!"

"It's indeed a mess, but someone has to take care of it," Gao Wen curled his lips, "and I feel that this matter has already fallen on me."

Amber blinked sluggishly: "So it's better for us in this line of work. Usually, we walk away after the work is done, and we don't have to think about the aftermath at all—it's just that when we walk slowly, we will be dealt with aftermath..."

Gawain glanced at this guy, went up to grab her arm: "Yeah, you walked slowly last time you dug a grave, so now go with me to clean up the aftermath."

Chapter 0183 The Technology of the Eternal Sleeper

Climbing up the stairs in the cellar and leaving the north tower from the ground, Gawain and Amber saw exactly how the castle had changed.

As Gawain speculated, the castle as a whole is shrouded in a long-term illusion, and all the appearances it presents are created by the dreamer Lilith Kant in the dream, but at the same time It’s not just a dream—the boundary between reality and fantasy is particularly blurred here, they overlap and influence each other, things that happen in the real world can interfere with the dream, and things in the dream will also be reflected into reality.

Only when the dream fades away completely can one see the eroded and riddled appearance of the castle.

In the most severely eroded area of ​​the dreamland, half of the tall and majestic north tower has disappeared. It broke from it, and the entire upper half has collapsed and collapsed as early as many years ago. The remaining megalithic structures are uneven like broken bones. The ground points to the sky, showing a hideous appearance in the early morning light, while the open space around the high tower can be seen everywhere with bricks and tiles that have been buried in loess and vines; the main body of the castle that is far away from the north tower is preserved It is still intact, it is a place where "reality is better", so the servants living in the main body of the castle have indeed maintained the castle. The uneasy cracks and the wanton growth of vines and moss, and as the power of the dream faded, some of those vines and moss had even climbed to the high spire of the main building.

On the way to the main building of the castle, Gawain and Amber met Knight Philip who was hurrying over.

The young knight has not experienced battle, but destroying a huge magic center by himself is enough to make him exhausted. Philip looked very tired, and there was still a deeper psychological fatigue in his eyes, but after seeing After Gao Wen, he immediately cheered up and stood up straight: "My lord! I am glad to see that you are safe and sound!"

Gawain looked at Philip's expression and nodded slightly: "It seems that you have seen something that is psychologically stressful."

"Yes, my lord, as you expected," Philip sighed, "The place where Steward Carter disappeared is the 'inner boundary' of the dream, where there is a... ritual place full of profanity and sin, I really can't describe the atmosphere there. scene."

Gawain nodded: "Take me there to have a look - you probably didn't demolish the whole place, did you?"

"Of course not, my lord, those are all evidence of cult members," Philip nodded, "but those people... I'm afraid they can't be saved."

"...I guessed it," Gawain sighed, "take me there to see the situation. By the way, Amber, you go to the castle first. I guess everyone there should be awake and panicking. You Go find the advisor, treasurer, chief knight and priest in the castle, let them calm down and call the directors and knights in the territory, I will go to the main hall to preside over the overall situation soon."

Amber blinked: "Are you sure those people will listen to me?"

"You are more or less the Duke's guard now, do you think you will have no right to speak in front of the servants of ordinary minor nobles?" Gawain glanced at this guy, "And now that the dream is over, what is true about this castle for the past 30 years?" Cognition is coming back into everyone's brains, and this unbelievable shock will send everyone into a huge panic-in this case, people are easy to accept guidance."

The second half of Gawain's sentence didn't seem to enter the half-elf's head at all. Amber's whole body started to drift just after listening to the first half of the sentence. After a quick turn of the mind, at least sixty ways to make money popped up. And the eighty ways of cheating—basically they all revolved around the central idea of ​​Hu’s false prestige, but it was a pity that Gao Wen saw through the details of her just a few seconds after she floated, and the latter glared directly: "If you dare to borrow If you are cheated by my name, I will slap you on the wall!"

Amber rolled her eyes: "Can't you threaten in another way?"

"Then slap the ground," Gao Wen waved his hands, turned his head and walked away, "Anyway, if you dare to lie, slap the wall, and if you dare to steal, slap the floor..."

However, the upright knight Philip asked worriedly after following Gawain's footsteps: "Then what if she lied to you that she didn't steal something after stealing it?"

Gawain stopped in his tracks and looked at Philip silently: "...Have you considered getting your head permed?"

"what?"

Gao Wen sighed in his heart: Sure enough, the most difficult thing about living in another world is not being able to communicate with the locals, even if they are flattering.

The two came to the underground hall discovered by Philip Knight.

The magical power entrenched in the hall has dissipated, and the depressing and crazy atmosphere has also disappeared, but it is still a eerie place. In Gawain's sight, the platforms neatly arranged around the stone pillars are like a An anatomy table exuding a bloody smell, and on these anatomy tables, the "lambs" to be slaughtered are still alive.

Gao Wen noticed the tubes that connected the victim's head and the stone pillar, which seemed to be some kind of biological tissue. They were entangled and growing blood vessels and nerves, but they obviously did not proliferate or mutate from the human brain. One end is connected to the foundation of the stone pillar, where there is a layer of swelling and distorted flesh and blood structure, like some kind of independent organism tightly attached to the runes of the stone pillar, while the other end of them is connected to the human body. Should be some kind of parasitism (and possibly surgery).

Since Knight Philip destroyed the runes on the stone pillars, these "biological tissues" attached to the stone pillars have shown obvious signs of weakness and dying at this moment. They began to shrink and crack, and a light red liquid flowed out from the cracks. More than half of the victims connected to them are dead.

Even those who did not die obviously cannot be saved - they have been connected to those "nerve cords" for too long, their individual consciousness has long been completely obliterated, and their brain tissue has been irreversibly and destructively damaged. The nerve cells in the brain are only providing computing power for this huge "human brain array computer". As the magical power here dissipates, they will die soon.

The only thing to be thankful for is that they no longer feel pain in the process.

"I can't recognize what it is," Knight Philip suppressed his disgust, and squatted with Gawain near the foundation of one of the stone pillars. He pointed at the twitching and shrinking biological tissues in front of him with his scabbard, " Even in the ancient books that record the craziest black magic, and the crazy ravings of those heretics, I have never heard of such...creatures in the world. The eternal sleepers are not druids, they have not modified species or The ability to summon life, these biological tissues should be found and bred from where they are specially used to extract souls, but... where did they find these things?"

"Perhaps these are the ones cultivated by the End of All Things to help the Eternal Sleepers," Gawain frowned. "After all, they are related."

Knight Philip was very surprised: "Will the cooperation between those cultists be so close?"

"If the reason for their fall is as I think, then the close cooperation between them may exceed the imagination of most people in the world," Gawain sighed. This 'technique' of

After all, Philip is a warrior, and he is a little slow in this regard: "Technology?"

"The letter left by Viscount Victor mentioned that this is a 'computing node' built by the Eternal Sleepers," Gawain pointed at the victims connected by nerve cords, "They seem to be trying to create a Replacing the 'real dream' of the real world, and using the power of the dream to achieve something, requires terrifying computing power - you can simply understand it as brain power. Any great magician's brain can't do this feat, so they came up with this crazy idea of ​​connecting brains together to create a 'brain-array computer,' you know what that means?"

"Meaning they're going to kill more people?"

"This is just the appearance, but the deep meaning is: this means that these cultists are not only crazy, but also possess crazy technology!" Gao Wen said seriously, "They are still living in the world even though they are rejected by the mainstream society and live in seclusion. It is constantly developing, and has even developed new technologies that far exceed the level of contemporary magic. You must know that cultists with crazy thinking are not scary. !"

While speaking, he stood up and looked around the entire underground hall.

"The most terrible thing is that if the crazy technology they created is used in the right place, it will make their technological progress even more terrifying..."

After collecting some rune rubbings and wreckage samples, Gawain and Philip Knight left this place.

After the power of the dream receded, the main hall of the castle was one of the areas that had changed the least. Except for the sudden signs of aging accumulated over the past 30 years on the outer walls, pillars, and ceiling, it was still brightly lit and clean—— The cleaning behavior of the living servants living in the castle is real, and the characteristics of the intersection of dreams and reality ensure that their cleaning effect is not limited to dreams.

In fact, due to the end of the dream effect, the vaguely eerie aura that had always been entrenched here also disappeared, and the main hall of the castle was much warmer and more peaceful than before.

It's just that the warm and peaceful atmosphere couldn't reassure the people gathered in the hall.

Fear grips everyone - even Mr. Chief Knight, who has faithfully guarded this place for 30 years.

When the dream is over, the people in the castle suddenly wake up, their shielded consciousness and memory are fully functioning, and at the moment of gaining the ability to think freely, everything they have experienced here in the past 30 years has become a bizarre nightmare —sleepwalking through an aging castle, tending to a phantom who's been dead for decades, and a ghostly mistress wandering the ruins of the North Tower, it's all creepy.

And for those servants and knights, advisors, and executives who are old enough, things are even more terrifying: they clearly remember when the bones of the old and young masters were secretly sent back to the castle, and they also clearly remember 30 years ago. How the former mistress used magic to control everyone's minds in madness, what happened every day after that, and the changes that happened to the castle every day, all flooded their hearts.

And those who were called back and lived near the castle were also in fear, because as long as they frequently entered and left the castle, they were all affected by dreams, but compared to those who had never been in the castle for 30 years, they were all in fear. The servants and knights who left the castle had less fear.

But no matter what, as long as you realize what you have been through, no one can remain calm.

Amber was standing on the high platform at the end of the main hall, scratching her head anxiously.

It is the place where the lord can usually stand, but now no one has any opinions on the "little girl" standing on it, because everyone knows that it is the Duke's bodyguard. In this emergency situation, she is the Duke's The spokesperson stood there, so instead of questioning her, everyone cast their expectant eyes on her.

But this made Amber wish to find a chance to get back into the shadows right away—it turns out that the feeling of being a big shot is not as good as I imagined before!

"Don't panic, don't...don't be nervous! The Duke is going to purify the last lair, and he'll be here in a while—don't panic, he'll be here soon!"

Amber stood on the stage and comforted everyone in vain. Just when she felt that she would lose control of the scene if she dragged on for another second, Gawain finally appeared with Philip Knight.

Chapter 0184 Arrangement

As soon as Gao Wen walked into the hall, Amber rushed over with an afterimage, and the first thing he said when they met was: "Oh my god, you're finally here! If you don't come, I won't be able to hold on!"

"Aren't you looking forward to playing with my name?" Gawain gave her a strange look, "Why do you look like this when you have the opportunity this time?"

"Don't mention it, it's totally different from what I thought!" Amber said with a bitter face, "When I was working, there weren't so many people watching beside me—this kind of work environment that attracts so much attention is too unfriendly... ..."

Gao Wen: "...I really still can't understand where your mysterious professional pride comes from."

Then he tossed the enigmatic half-elven thief aside, and strode out onto the ledge himself.

Dozens of eyes in the hall immediately shifted to him.

Gawain scanned the people below. He saw the advisors, treasurer and chief knight in the castle, as well as the Holy Light Priest he saw last night, and several anxious country gentlemen with morning dew on their bodies. That should be the territorial steward who just came from the town to help the Kant family manage the property, and seeing their respective expressions, Gawain knew that the situation should be similar to what he expected.

"Gentlemen and ladies," Gawain said in a low and steady tone, coupled with his impressive height, he managed to calm down the people below, "I think you should be in a daze. , You should have suddenly realized what happened in the past few decades, and these things are completely different from what you remember and perceive, and I am here to answer your doubts."

"Last night, a major event happened in the castle. I want to tell you with regret that the Kant family came to an end that night..."

Gao Wen told the truth to these people in a simple and direct way as much as possible. He let these people know the truth because they wanted to maintain the order of the Kant Territory in the next period of time, and they had to bear the responsibility of handing over to the surrounding nobles. , and the investigators sent by the king, but he chose to describe the parts that were too sensational—such as the pile of bones under the old stable area, and the fact that the land was only one step away. The fact that it will be corrupted by a horrible nightmare creation.

After all, that "Master Belm" had already stepped into the real world with both feet at that time!

These things, if he said them, would probably make people feel sensational. It would be better to let the people present see with their own eyes, so that they can better understand what happened.

When Gao Wen's narration came to an end, the hall fell into a short and dead silence. It was not until a few seconds later that people's uneasy discussions finally sounded. The pastor of the Church of the Holy Light kept drawing the holy Symbols, trying to dispel the fear entrenched in his heart, but the chief knight, who is almost completely greyed and is now the instructor of the Knights of Fort Konder, couldn't help asking loudly: "Then what should we do?"