Chapter 1417 Remaining Issues

A clear holographic projection appeared above the silver-white column, and the figure of Ophelia appeared in front of Gao Wen. She still used the same "posture" she had at the meeting this time: a seemingly and real "Ophelia Norton" is almost identical to the "carrier", sitting on a light golden throne, with a large number of pipes and cables extending from the back of the body and around the throne.

"Good night," Ophelia's voice came out of the screen, sounding calm and calm as always, "I hope I didn't disturb your rest."

Tyre and the Tyres standing beside looked at Princess Gondor floating in the holographic projection, then at Gawain, and asked hesitantly, "Should I avoid it? Are you planning to talk about some confidential topic?" ?”

When Gawain heard this, he looked at the deep-sea salted fish quite unexpectedly—probably because Tire's usual unreliable behavior was so frequent that he even heard a reliable word from the other party at this time. A strange feeling...

"No need," Ophelia's voice came from the screen immediately, although her body was still expressionless, but the voice sounded obviously smiling, "It's not something that needs to be kept secret——Miss Till, Don't treat me as a stranger, I am the Veronica you are familiar with, when we were in Cecil City, we discussed many things together."

"...That's true," Tyr blinked, "but I'm really not used to it all of a sudden... I'm used to dealing with 'Veronica', and now I suddenly see you in this form..."

"Okay, let's not talk about others for a guy who usually changes himself when he has nothing to do and can cut off his tail and pinch six clones." Gawain couldn't help but glanced at Tyre, and then turned to Offie. Leah, "Is there something wrong with you?"

"The core control system of the Deep Blue Well has been brought back online," said Ophelia, her tone seemed a little serious, "After initially repairing the perimeter pipeline monitoring system, I found some... things that I hadn't seen before, which may be related to the previous Sentinels. activities."

"Something that hasn't been discovered before? It's related to the sentries?" Gao Wen frowned instantly, "Tell me more specifically."

"I found that several energy conduits had been invaded and blocked, and the output logs in the relevant areas did not match. In addition, some iron soldiers disappeared mysteriously. The date of their signal disappearance was before the outbreak of the war, because of some system errors. , These data have been hidden from my monitoring, and have not been discovered until now - these intercepted energies and missing soldiers should be the sudden increase in strength and collective 'evolution' of those dark priests before, and the creeping disaster. The reason for the huge energy absorbed from the depths of the strata around the Deep Blue Well.

"However, these are not big problems. The sentinel's plot has now been thwarted, and all system failures are gradually being repaired. The real key is... I received some signals while monitoring the 'pulse flow',

It comes from the deep area of ​​the dark blue webway. "

"Some signals? In the dark blue network?" Gao Wen seemed to have thought of something, "Could it be..."

"I suspect it's the 'rune stones' that the Sentinels put into the webway before," Ophelia's voice sounded more serious, "It seems that the death of the Sentinels and the Creeping Calamity didn't automatically invalidate these rune stones, they still It's working."

Gawain and Amber looked at each other for an instant, and both of them saw the same shock and nervousness from the other's gaze - what Ophelia discovered was undoubtedly the blind spot of everyone's previous vision. The scale of this war is so vast, and this victory is so exciting that when the war ended, almost everyone fell into the joy of this final victory. Still working! !

Amidst this nervousness, Gao Wen was suddenly very grateful: when almost everyone had already set their sights on the complicated affairs after the victory of the war, fortunately there was Ophelia Matrix, the hard-working ancient artificial intelligence, who was meticulously taking care of everything. Fulfilling one's duties, if one does not have such a pair of vigilant eyes watching the dark blue webway all the time, God knows when the world will remember those rune stones!

"Could it be that those rune stones are still carrying out the instructions left by the sentry?" Amber asked suddenly.

"According to the data we have now, there should be no need to worry," Ophelia replied. "The signals collected so far are only regular transmissions and responses. Although the specific communication content needs to be deciphered, it can be generally determined that it is the source of the rune stone." There are regular signals released during communication between them, and they have no signs of large-scale activities for the time being."

Speaking of this, Ophelia seemed to think for a while, and then she paused for a moment before speaking again: "The monitoring system of the Deep Blue Well has not been able to find these rune stones before, and I suspect that these rune stones actively avoided them under the conscious control of the sentries. My monitoring, or using some kind of technical means to block my monitoring, but now the deep blue well received the signal released by the rune, which may mean that these rune stones have entered a certain... undefended automatic operation state, which means In a way it's a good thing."

"Is it on standby... From the perspective of 'no trouble', it is indeed a good thing, but when I think of so many time bombs buried in the magic power network tunnel deep in the planet, I don't know if it will explode someday. I can't sleep well..." Gao Wen muttered with some toothache, "Is there any way to 'fish' them out?"

Speaking of this, he subconsciously glanced at Tyre next to him: "Just like what the Krakens did..."

"You can try it, but it's not easy." Although Till didn't say anything, she had been listening carefully to the conversation between Gawain and Ophelia, and immediately said, "Our sisters have already tried it, like Elemental bodies like Kraken can indeed swim safely in the dark blue webway, and theoretically they can also find those 'rune stones' that have drifted deep into the webway, but the key is the scale of the dark blue webway...it is too big .”

Tyre's tone was a bit difficult, and Gawain had to nod his head: "Indeed, the Deep Blue Webway is a 'planetary power system', and it not only spreads in the material world, but its branches run through all realms and elemental realms. It's no small feat to find all the runestones in such a large webway, and we don't know how to navigate the webway at all..."

"Actually, this is still a small problem," Tyr said while pinching his chin, "No matter how large the scale of the webway is, there is a limit, and no matter how difficult the navigation is, you can slowly summarize the rules. The key is that it runs through all elemental domains, which is a bit troublesome. , you know, our relationship with the native elemental creatures is actually not very good..."

"Don't you only have a bad relationship with the local water elementals? At most, you can add the wind elementals that were dragged by the water elementals to fight with you," Huber suddenly widened her eyes, and the shadow assault goose was keenly aware When it comes to the Kraken's whole life, it may be even more exciting than she imagined, "How come all the elemental creatures are brought along..."

Till suddenly showed a somewhat embarrassed look on his face, and whispered while rubbing his hands: "... I haven't experienced the early elemental wars, but I heard that after the queen tried the spirited ones, she created There are pearls and hot drinks..."

"...Damn it!" Gao Wen swore that he had never opened his eyes so wide in his life, "Shocked, what kind of elemental bullies are you gang of fish?"

So in the eyes of the world, the gentle and friendly overall comedian is like a sea monster like the Deyun Club of the whole family, but in the world of elements, is it actually such an image of bullying and dominating the market?

Tyre herself was obviously embarrassed. Hearing Gawain's complaints, she almost rubbed her hands into afterimages—if the siren's body temperature also rises, then she is probably close to boiling point at this time: "We didn't have everything at the beginning." Don’t understand, the elemental creatures on this planet are weird, and the communication methods between different elemental species are completely different, and their way of life is also extremely autistic, so that for a long time, we haven’t figured out what the elemental creatures are. Whether the 'gadgets' that haunt crevasses or engine leaks are natural phenomena or critters of the bottom of the sea, alas, it is a sinful time to be ignorant..."

As he talked, Till probably sensed that the atmosphere at the scene was getting weirder, so he immediately waved his hands and explained: "But we didn't fight too hard with the earth and fire elements. After the experience of dealing with elements, we had a little friction with other elemental worlds for a while before we figured out the situation. Later, the queen came to the door with souvenirs and sisters to apologize. Everyone understood each other and signed a peace agreement... But despite the signing of the peace agreement, the relationship is still a bit tense."

The corner of Gao Wen's mouth trembled and he glanced at the deep-sea salted fish: "May I ask what kind of understanding you mean by 'mutual understanding'?"

"I don't know the specifics, but according to the sisters who participated in the 'Friendly Visit' at the time, the elemental kings of the earth element and the fire element acted as if they were... scary when they saw that we could freely enter and exit the elemental field with conflicting attributes? "Tyl thought for a while, and said uncertainly, "They seem to think this is a shocking thing, and then they settled their differences with us... By the way, why do you have a weird expression?"

"...I am very glad that you are allies now," Gao Wen didn't know what his expression looked like at the moment, he only felt that his head and teeth ached badly, and he was not so tired after chatting with this sea caterpillar after a whole day's meeting. That is the feeling of the san value fluctuating violently in seconds, "Okay, then let's not talk about this kind of historical issue, let's go back to those rune stones, Ophelia... Ophelia? Are you listening ?”

"Ah, I'm here." I don't know if it's an illusion, but Ophelia's voice obviously has a feeling of waking up from the sluggishness, as if even the san value of such an artificial intelligence has been washed by the world view of the sea monster, "I listening."

"Then about the salvage of those rune stones..."

"I happen to have a new idea about this," Ophelia said without waiting for Gawain to finish speaking, "It is an almost impossible task to salvage all the rune stones from the dark blue webway—even The sea monsters think that it can be completed, and that is also under their "time scale". This kind of thing that takes thousands of years to achieve has no reference value for ordinary mortal civilization, but from another perspective... will It might also be an option for those runestones to remain in the webway."

"Stay in the webway?" Gao Wen vaguely guessed the other party's thoughts, "You mean, those rune stones can also come in handy for us?"

"This is a 'possibility'," Ophelia said seriously. Although this is an idea she just came up with, it is obvious that this "new idea" has been repeatedly deduced in her pile of computing units. How many times, "Although the plan of the sentinels and the dark priests almost destroyed the world, according to the rune stone samples salvaged by the Krakens and the information we got from the captured dark priests, the rune stones they dropped were essentially just a kind of Control nodes, and as a pure technology, these control nodes may not only be used to destroy the world."

This sounds like a very feasible idea, but at the same time it is also very disturbing. Gao Wen's tone couldn't help but become serious: "...you think that this 'control system' left by the Sentry can be safely used in other fields ?”

"Essentially, these rune stones originated from Voyager technology. According to my deduction, other planets with suitable conditions should also have a 'deep blue webway' similar to our planet, and the technology behind these rune stones may have been originally used on planets. Places such as environmental improvement," Ophelia said of her thoughts, "In the eyes of the sailors, this is probably just a kind of...'reclamation', or a basic livelihood project like a 'water conservancy project'."

"The 'water conservancy project' in the eyes of super civilizations may be a doomsday flood to primitive civilizations," Gao Wen said in a deep voice, "I understand what you mean, the 'prototype' technology of those rune stones may be nothing more than high-level civilizations. Some kind of basic civilian facilities in the world, if used properly, it will be beneficial and harmless, but the key lies in whether we have reached the level of mastering this 'method of use' - if we have the technology that can change the planetary environment casually, and this Technology that’s as simple as pressing a few buttons isn’t necessarily a good thing for today’s league.”

Amber on the side nodded lightly, and quickly understood Gao Wen's concerns: "After all, pressing the button is too simple - but the possible consequences after pressing the button are beyond our current capabilities."

"I've also considered this point," Ophelia said calmly, "that's why I said that this is just a 'possibility'. Now we are facing the reality that there are almost no control nodes left in the dark blue network lane. For a long period of time in the foreseeable future, we have to face the fact that there are a bunch of 'bombs' buried in the planetary power system-since it is destined not to be dug out, it is always necessary to know more about them. It's better than doing nothing, and what I call 'control' and 'exploitation' are just inevitable by-products of this research process."

"...and even if we don't carry out research, it's hard to guarantee that there won't be another dark sect like the Death of All Things Society or someone else coming into contact with those 'stones' for one reason or another," At this time Amber's mind also When she became active, she frowned slightly and said, "Isn't it said in many horror stories that a dark wizard who lost his soul fell into the sealed forbidden place of the evil god, and then gained the power of the evil god to endanger all directions, and finally had to die?" Only a lot of male and female supporting characters and the protagonist's family can kill such a demon king—but if the person who left the seal at the beginning could directly slice and study the evil god and leave the operation instructions for future generations, maybe it would not be possible at all This kind of thing happened..."

"Although the example you gave is very problematic, it seems to have some truth." Gawain glanced at Amber, then lowered his head slightly, and said slowly while thinking, "Indeed, those rune stones have sunk into almost every corner of the webway. , except that Ophelia can now remotely receive the signal from them, it is almost impossible for us to fish them all out. Since these things are destined to stay in the depths of our planet for a long time, how much for them? Some understanding is always good... Even if it is a little risky, it is better than being helpless when the accident happens.

"But then again, based on the signals that Ophelia has received remotely, can we really 'control' those nodes?"

Ophelia's low voice came from the screen, with a faint expectation: "This... you need to take your time."