Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 304 - 303: The Evil Cult Followers’ Technology

Gawain made no extra movements, merely standing quietly in place, watching the woman named "Selena" walk into the distance, and then after a few seconds, he withdrew his gaze, leaving the place nonchalantly.

That was Selena Gerfen, almost without a doubt!

Although she wore a veil, in the memories of Gawain Cecil, there had been several instances where Selena Gerfen appeared wearing a veil, so since he first saw "Selena" in the mind network, he had faintly felt a sense of familiarity. However, those were the memories of others, and the current "Selena" had subtle differences from Selena Gerfen, mainly a significant change in her voice, so he never paid much attention to this feeling, until just now, when the image in his mind overlapped with the person in front of him the moment she turned and left, allowing him to instantly make a judgment:

The person before his eyes is the Dream Church priestess from seven hundred years ago, Selena Gerfen.

Is she alive? Has she lived for seven hundred years? And now she’s a high-ranking member of the Eternal Sleepers Cult?

Gawain quietly walked on the path back to Crystal Square, his thoughts gradually settling down.

Whether or not she is Selena Gerfen, his plans cannot be affected.

After the changes of seven centuries, everything has transformed, the Church of Dreams has turned into the fanatically paranoid cult of the Eternal Sleepers, the once gentle and kind priestess has also become the leader of an evil cult organization, perhaps every sect’s downfall has its own reasons, perhaps Selena Gerfen has her own plans, but now is not the time to investigate such truths.

One must not expose their identity, especially in front of Selena.

After making up his mind, Gawain stopped in his tracks, released his connection with the mind network, letting his spirit plunge into a void.

Upon opening his eyes, Amber was predictably staring straight at him, her face planted less than half a meter away.

Gawain raised an eyebrow: "I swear, aren’t you afraid that one day I’ll get startled by you and subconsciously smack you into the wall?"

Amber seemed unfazed: "Stop bluffing, you don’t even have a sword in your hand, you’ll just flail your arms."

"With your barely effective combat skills, I could use a mere eggplant to smack you into the wall!" Gawain casually pushed the half-elf’s head to the side and then got up to stretch, "Run an errand, go call Jenni and Kamel... never mind, I’ll go myself, the study here is lacking."

Amber excitedly jumped over: "Hey, hey? Did you have another epiphany in your dream? Or did you see a little girl?"

Gawain paused mid-step and looked at Amber with a blank expression: "I really did see a little girl—plus a pretty big girl."

Amber was momentarily taken aback, then leapt up: "I told you that autobiography is non-fiction but you wouldn’t admit it, then you hit my head!"

At the Rune Research Center, Jenni and Kamel were discussing complex interference issues in middle-ranked magic circles. They were quite surprised by Gawain’s visit—usually, this time was when Gawain handled affairs or studied mechanical blueprints; it was rare for him to come here.

And he wasn’t accompanied by Amber—the half-elf guard was typically always by Gawain’s side, hardly ever absent.

"She’s too noisy, I let her find a place to play by herself, so she doesn’t cause chaos at the research center here." Gawain explained Amber’s absence, then approached the desk, pulled out a sheet of draft paper from a stack, picked up a dip pen nearby, and started brushing strokes over it.

Jenni and Kamel curiously moved closer, observing that what Gawain was drawing was not a new type of mechanical design but an unfamiliar rune array. That rune array was evidently some unoptimized, traditional magic circle with a cumbersome complex rune expression. Numerous magical power lines were interspersed among repetitive rune structures, and what surprised Kamel the most was seeing single characters among those runes that did not belong to elemental language; those symbols looked more like deformed religious sacred symbols than elemental runes...

"What is this?" Jenni didn’t know much about the "divine rune symbols" used by clergy. She just found the magic circle in front of her quite odd and wasn’t structurally reasonable in many places, as if it had been cobbled together. "Is this... a type of magic circle you designed?"

Gawain raised his head, looking seriously at the two in front of him: "No, it’s not mine, it’s the technique of the Eternal Sleepers."

Jenni gasped: "The Eternal Sleepers?!"

Kamel’s eyes lit up instantly: "Is that the cult organization that you mentioned last time, that was formed from the fallen Church of Dreams?"

"That’s right, this is their type of brainwave amplification and transmission magic circle. Originally, there was a complementary technology to connect human neurons with external devices called ’artificial nerve cord,’ but there is no clue on that part yet. I’ve only found this magic circle."

Jenni listened in shock, displaying an expression of disbelief: "Sir Byron...how did you come by this?"

"I consumed the soul of an Eternal Sleepers member, remember?" Gawain provided an explanation he had long prepared, "I obtained his memories, and I’ve been continuously digesting them. This rune array is the latest result of that research."

Of course, this was not the real answer. The real answer was that he found this reliable information in the mind of the old mage, Daniel.

The network connected to the Eternal Sleepers relies on "dream theurgies," which, like any supernatural power, also requires a certain talent from its user. Not everyone’s magic and mental powers are as strong as Gawain or the nightmare bishops, able to link to the network without external assistance. Thus, they have auxiliary connection technology. From Daniel, Gawain obtained part of this auxiliary technology’s information.

Neuron linking, artificial nerve cords, brainwave amplification and transmission are the keys to this technology.

Daniel is a powerful mage, having reached the rank of a Master Mage, logically he should not need such external aid. However, this involves an issue of "compatibility." The "dream spells" derived from the dream theurgies of the Eternal Sleepers do not align with the traditional magic system. Human "magical talent" and "spiritual gifts" are often unbalanced. For those deeply entrenched in traditional magic, their mental structures and brain functions are heavily influenced by magic forces, thus reducing their efficiency when using "Divine Magic." Therefore, Daniel had to use auxiliary linking to access the Eternal Sleepers’ network.

He acquired this technical information from the Eternal Sleepers, and now, it’s in Gawain’s hands.

"The technique of an evil cult follower..." Jenni hesitated upon learning the origin of these runes, "Do you plan to study their power?"

"Technology itself is neither good nor bad, it depends on the user," Gawain said flatly. "Seven hundred years ago, such powers saved countless souls in despair, and inspired many warriors who had lost the will to fight—not the power had gone bad, only humans can fall."

Kamel agreed deeply with Gawain’s views: "I know what the Church of Dreams used to be like; they were always the most gentle and tolerant of all religions. Everyone dreams, whether a king or a farmer, a noble or a slave, dreams comfort everyone equally. This is the essence of dreams, and it’s the guiding principle for all followers of the God of Dream Realms. They always saw safeguarding the peace of humanity’s spiritual world as their mission—if not for the evidence before me, I couldn’t have imagined such people could become ’Eternal Sleepers’..."

The ancient Master Mage shook his head: "I still can’t quite believe this even now."

Unlike others, Kamel had participated in the "defied" plan, knowing the true reason for the God of Nature’s downfall, and Gawain had subtly hinted about the "anomalous situations" of other gods. Naturally, Kamel could surmise reasons for several dark sects’ falls into corruption, but could only sigh at it.

Jenni’s thinking wasn’t rigid; she accepted Gawain’s perspective and felt no qualms upon seeing the runes: "Do you want me to complete the simplification and reconstruction of these magic circles?"

"Simplification and reconstruction are the final goals, but first, we must figure out the working mechanism, understand the role each rune part plays; otherwise, reconstruction is out of the question," Gawain said. "In this area, you can ask Pittman for help. The process of converting dream theurgies to dream spells and the process of converting Druid theurgy to Spell share similarities. The runic transformation patterns should have commonalities. Additionally, Kamel, you should be able to help, right?"

"Of course, the past ’defied’ plan itself studied godly powers, and today’s Inversion Circle in the Alchemy Factory is one of our past results," Kamel’s voice was confident, "Mystical explanations and confusing auras attached by priests and believers to theurgy runes are merely to maintain their gods’ loftiness. When truly included in a logical system, theurgy runes are no different from elemental runes."

Gawain nodded satisfactorily: "Very well. The focus is to understand how their ’transmission’ technology is realized and if the ’content’ of such transmission can be introduced and extracted through mediums other than neurons. If I’m not mistaken, this research might simultaneously advance your studies in the magical power field."

As these words fell, Gawain and Jenni simultaneously felt a sudden brightness before them, especially bright.

Arcane Sparks flickered on Kamel: "Indeed, this direction...the propagation of the magical power field! You reminded me, they might be in the same field! And communication spells...these should all belong to the same area!"

The ancient Master Mage fell into excitement, a moment of excitement that no researcher could avoid—the joy of a possible breakthrough in his subject spurred him on.

He and Jenni had been studying magical power fields for a long time, with shifting interference curves and oscillating magical forces entangling him day and night. Even though Gawain gave him a direction using concepts of field and wave and provided new mathematical tools to analyze abundant data observed in experiments, one question still blocked his path:

Can the "waves" of magical power be precisely controlled? Can they carry information? Can they be applied beyond energy transportation?

What’s the link between communication spells, long considered a "black box," and the fluctuation of magical power?

For Kamel, communication spell arrays were not unfamiliar. Even without tools, he could accurately draw one, but a single array lacks comparability. An isolated instance is the hardest to analyze. Even for him, simplifying and reconstructing a communication array had not been completed—because he couldn’t understand what each part of the complex array’s runes did, making segmentation and reconstruction impossible. Without rune function segmentation, applying rune logic formulas for simplification would create a jumbled mess, rendering the array non-functional.

But now, he had samples for comparative analysis.

The Eternal Sleepers’ thought transmission technology is essentially just another form of communication spell.

With two different communication spell samples before him, perhaps this was the key to unveiling the black box of technology...