Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 303 - 302: Reunion Once More

Mary looked at her mentor nervously, not really wanting to know the meaning behind the sudden remark.

She feared her mentor—almost to the point of terror—if given a choice, she would rather have never shown any magical talent or climbed into the Ownerless Tower out of curiosity ten years ago and met the mentor who had just moved in. Now she was a second-ranked formal mage, and according to her mentor, "might reach middle-ranked within her lifetime," but in Mary’s view, becoming a second-ranked mage was nothing glorious, and she would rather be an ignorant village woman in a mountain village.

At least, a village woman wouldn’t have to dissect countless animals, cultivate deformed monstrosities, learn how to connect human brains to non-human monsters, or endure the pressure from her mentor’s deranged mental state.

Daniel was a mage with mental issues, and in the eyes of the few apprentices in the tower, this mentor was downright insane. He often immersed himself in bizarre dream states, and even when awake, he lacked sound emotions. He was irritable, angry, gloomy, and terrifying. He would make his apprentices eat mice and snakes and release terrifying non-human monsters and spell creatures in the tower because of some hallucination, then drive the apprentices to fight those monsters, not to mention the horrific magical experiments he conducted on himself...

Although Daniel occasionally showed a gentle and kind demeanor, his periods of madness far outweighed these times by tenfold. Under such madness, his occasionally gentle moments became even more frightening.

The old mage remained in a dazed state for several seconds before he finally moved his body. The young female apprentice promptly lifted her head.

"Mentor..." Mary slightly bowed, "I’m glad you’re alright..."

Daniel stared at Mary for a while, seemed to remember she was his student only after noticing the collar on her neck, muttered some unclear words in his throat, and then waved his hand: "Clean up the lab, you can take a rest today."

Mary blinked, feeling genuinely relieved. She then watched the old mage slowly turn around and walk towards the exit of the laboratory. The mage’s robe bulged at the back as if snake-like artificial nerve cords peeked out from the hem of the robe, twitching spasmodically.

Gawain didn’t stay in the "Simulation Experiment Field" for long. After ensuring that the old mage had been kicked out of the network, he withdrew from the data submersion state and returned to the surface of the mental network.

Implanting informants among the Eternal Sleepers and seeking controllable pawns was already part of his plan—especially after discovering that the Eternal Sleepers had fabricated a "Wanderers from Outer Realm" persona. This idea of his became more refined. After all, this evil-cult group was bizarrely strange, and he couldn’t possibly investigate everything himself. Therefore, finding such a pawn was inevitable, only that the pawn happened to be a mage from Typhon, which was an unexpected gain.

After learning about Daniel’s general situation, Gawain quickly sketched many ad-hoc plans in his mind. He believed that with proper use, the old mage would have many unexpected uses.

He wasn’t worried that this would increase his risk of exposure—after successfully breaking down Daniel’s mind defenses, he had already controlled his permissions in the mental network and set an "activation switch." If Daniel mentioned anything about "Wanderers from Outer Realm infiltrating the network," the network connection would be cut off immediately. Even if this security measure failed and the information was leaked, how could the Eternal Sleepers possibly find Gawain?

Their network was full of breaches and backdoors, Gawain had already found numerous of them. This primitive and shabby network firstly had no real-name system and secondly didn’t restrict skin changes. The address mapping and feature queries were also terribly done. Gawain thought that the difficulty of the evil-cult followers trying to find someone in the mental network was probably higher than finding a spell other than the Fireball Technique from Rebecca’s spell list—

Rebecca did not have a spell list.

"Oh, it’s the uncle I saw last time!"

A crisp voice suddenly came from the side, waking Gawain, who was lost in thought while walking along the shaded path, with this somewhat familiar child’s voice.

He turned towards the voice and saw a little girl with light brown long hair running towards him joyfully, her steps bouncing.

Was it that "little girl" he saw last time?

Instantly, in Gawain’s mind, a persona of a stereotypical middle-aged greasy male online scammer matched her, the type with a voice changer and a loli voice model, making him feel spiritually transparent as he looked at the "little girl" without any emotional ripple: "Patty?"

"Ah, uncle remembers me!" The little girl immediately showed a very happy expression, skipping and hopping around Gawain, "Uncle, you’re here again?!"

Gawain twitched at the corners of his mouth, finally admitting to himself that the true form behind this little girl probably wasn’t a middle-aged greasy male evil-cult follower. After all, the mental network was an immersive virtual reality, and even if the perversion index of the evil cult followers was five plus signs higher than that of normal people, it was quite challenging to skip and jump to this extent, even a big shot like Soldrin couldn’t manage it...

Perhaps it’s a middle-aged greasy female online scammer with an excessively young mindset...

"Uncle, what are you thinking?" Patty’s voice came again, "Uncle, do you like daydreaming?"

Gawain glanced at the little girl who wasn’t even to his stomach, noticing that she really couldn’t stay quiet for even a second, prompting him to frown: "Why do you always skip around?"

"Because I like it!" Patty said with a matter-of-fact expression, then scrunched her nose, "But I can’t do it at home..."

"At home?" Gawain felt he heard a very curious word, but before he could ask, a gentle female voice came from the side: "Patty, are you bothering a stranger?"

Gawain looked up and saw a woman in a long skirt with a veil standing not far away, slightly frowning at Patty.

Patty immediately rushed over with joy: "Ah! Sister Selena!"

Gawain watched as the little girl pounced into the veiled woman’s embrace, whom easily subdued the little girl and then looked up: "I’m sorry, this child has no sense of stranger danger."

"Uncle is very nice!" Patty said, looking up.

Selena bent down and patted Patty’s hair: "Then let’s talk to Uncle next time when there’s a chance, Patty—you should go rest now."

The little girl’s expression suddenly became disappointed: "But I still want to play a bit longer..."

"You’ve been playing for a long time," Selena shook her head gently but firmly. "You can’t be willful, understand?"

Patty hesitated for a moment, but then obediently nodded: "...Oh."

With that response, Gawain saw the little girl’s figure rapidly fade in the air and within a few seconds, turn into glimmering particles scattered by the wind: she had left the heart network.

Selena straightened up, smiling politely at Gawain: "Sorry for the scene."

"No problem, I didn’t mind at all." Gawain shook his head while quickly making judgments in his heart—

Unless the Eternal Sleepers’ methods are too advanced or this was a staged play specifically for him, based on Patty and Selena’s interaction and what he saw last time... could that "little girl" really be just a little girl?

A child? An Eternal Sleeper who can access the heart network at eleven or twelve years old? That seems unrealistic, even for a magical prodigy!

Or... was she a "family member" brought into the network by other Eternal Sleepers?

He had seen other children in this dream city, although very few, they surely existed, are those children in the same situation?

Do the Eternal Sleepers have technology that allows people without magical abilities to connect to the network?!

This final speculation made Gawain’s heart race; if true... then the technological value of the Eternal Sleepers’ heart network would far surpass his previous imagination!

His thoughts raced, but he did not show it, instead casually mentioning, "There seem to be very few children here."

"Considering the rare conditions, indeed," Selena smiled faintly, "We still can’t expose ourselves."

The implication is, does it require certain screening conditions... unable to expose, so is this an experimental project with exposure risks?

Gawain casually chatted a bit more on the topic without extracting any valuable information. Realizing that continuing might appear suspicious, he smoothly shifted the topic: "I saw the notice recruiting computational power for Project Zero..."

"A gap in computational power appeared in the time iteration experiment," Selena nodded. Those who could reach this area were already high-level Eternal Sleepers, and those who could stay for a long time were at least middle-ranked Nightmare Bishops. It wasn’t strange to briefly discuss Project Zero here, "Accelerating thoughts to adjust the deepest time stream is difficult, and the longest-run Sandbox One sustained only for a few hundred years—we need more computational power."

"Sandbox"—Gawain’s heart skipped a beat as he heard a very intriguing term.

This term didn’t belong to the contemporary common language but was a combination of two words from ancient Gondor common language. Because its meaning was quite simple and straightforward, Gawain could understand it directly, yet upon understanding this term, it only led to more confusion in his heart.

However, he couldn’t ask directly because, based on Selena’s demeanor, those standing in this area of the Eternal Sleepers were expected to know many truths about Project Zero.

And he had already asked enough questions.

Specifically targeting someone for questioning easily raises suspicion, so Gawain decisively ended this topic, having gathered ample information and vocabulary. Next time, he could try to find other Eternal Sleepers in this region to probe for information—or try to develop the "pawn" he just found.

After transitioning through some small talk, he nodded at Selena: "I’ve taken up enough of your time, I should be leaving."

Selena smiled slightly: "It was a pleasure chatting with you."

Then, the veiled lady bid farewell to Gawain and turned to walk towards the other side of the lane.

In the instant she turned, Gawain’s eyes suddenly focused:

In that moment, this woman looked exactly like Selena Gerfen from seven hundred years ago!