Read Novel Full Chapter 1231 - Taming the Old World - Engineered Lead
Chapter 1231: Chapter 1231 - Taming the Old World - Engineered Lead
"Wait," Larissa called, her fingers clamping securely around his wrist to halt his momentum. "A receptacle shaped exactly like a human hand, hidden inside a sanctuary explicitly engineered for dragons. Ren, that cannot be a coincidence."
"It could easily be a targeted trap," Luna added, her entire body rigid with tension, while Liora nodded with intense, silent agreement beside her.
"It isn’t a trap," Ren stated softly, absolutely refusing to tear his eyes away from the hand shaped panel. "Wei and I have been continuously monitoring it through the golden fungal network. If there was a crystallization mechanism, or any lethal runic trap whatsoever here, we would have already decrypted the threat."
"Furthermore," Zhao interjected, stepping forward in an attempt to pacify the terrified women, "analyze the context. A human handprint, hidden inside a facility engineered for big beast vessels for colossal dragons. That suggests it isn’t a snare... It suggests the exact opposite. It is something deliberately concealed near the floor, placed entirely out of sight from the towering draconian entities, positioned where only a smaller human could ever discover it."
"And we happen to be the very first un-crystallized humans to ever reach this chamber," Min pointed out, a rare seriousness anchoring his words. "Besides, look at the architecture. If this wall wanted to eat us alive, we would know by now. Wei currently has his metaphorical nose buried in every single small crevice of that stone, right?"
Wei offered a firm nod from his position near the terminal. "The runic code is completely clean. It is a profound rareness, yes, but it is indeed clean."
The three girls exchanged a long, heavy look. Slowly, with immense reluctance, Larissa released her ironclad grip on his arm.
Ren finally extended his hand the rest of the way, firmly pressing his palm flat into the waiting indentation.
♢♢♢♢
The first thing he registered was a voice.
"You are human..."
Ren completely stopped breathing.
The voice echoing inside his skull was incredibly warm, heavily saturated with a profound, overwhelming happiness. It sounded like a man who was on the absolute verge of bursting into tears from pure, unadulterated joy.
A heavy, static-laced pause followed, a small silence thick with anticipation, and then a stream of audio data poured directly into his consciousness.
But this was very different from the previous Network connections. It wasn’t a dry, functional download of runic schematics or cold blueprints.
This data packet possessed a ’voice’.
It possessed a very distinct personality... There was a living, breathing soul echoing behind the audio file.
Initially, the tone shifted into something entirely different. The speaker adopted a deep, imposing, incredibly grave baritone, dramatically reciting the words exactly like a stage actor delivering the opening monologue of an ancient tragedy:
"Dragons and their spawn rule the skies, the land, and the seas... humanity survives in the cracks, dreaming of a comeback..."
Ren started analizing...
And then, a distinct, thoroughly out-of-place chuckle echoed in his skull.
The deep voice audibly cleared its throat, coughing awkwardly, and when it resumed, the cadence had completely transformed.
It was relaxed... Eager.
It carried the unmistakable inflection of a man who had meticulously rehearsed a theatrical opening line and immediately grown entirely bored of maintaining the dramatic facade.
"Oof, okay, my bad about the epic narrator voice. I have literally always wanted to open an audio log with that... Anyway."
The voice took a sharp, audible breath, sounding as if the speaker was physically adjusting his posture in a chair.
"I am running incredibly short on time for this broadcast, so I am going to skip the exposition and get straight to the critical data. If you are actually listening to this playback, it means you successfully dominated the biological tamer uplink with one of the chosen beasts AND YOU ingested both of the synthetic medicines I engineered to hijack power from those slaving dragons..."
The voice pitched up in sheer disbelief.
"And when said outloud... Now that I think about it, if you really are here... Holy shit, you actually took both of them. Do you have any idea how statistically improbable that is? I am a massive optimist, and even I didn’t think that my dumb gamble was going to yield a positive result!"
A short, incredulous laugh rattled through the audio feed.
"You are the absolute, certified bastard of LADY LUCK, do you know that? Seriously. Having a verified human on board this system is a direct blessing from the goddess of fortune herself; and I can guarantee you that lady is NOT a dragon. Dragons do not hand out ’get out of extinction free’ tickets like they are pizza flyers on a street corner. And you just cashed in the only one in existence."
Ren stood absolutely frozen, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. His ’medieval-fantasy’ mind struggled desperately to process completely alien concepts like ’pizza flyers’, yet he perfectly grasped the context and ’excited gravity’ of the man’s tone.
"Okay, serious stuff now. We are out of time, so focus me."
The speaker’s tone dropped, losing the casual levity, hardening just enough to explicitly indicate that the impending data was a matter of absolute survival.
"Everything the standard draconic database just fed you, take it. The rewards, the crystal amplifications, the rune techniques, absolutely all of it is yours. Go ahead and exploit it... BUT!"
A deliberate, terrifyingly heavy pause.
"Do not construct the giant mecha! I mean that colossal, synthetic emergency body the system just pitched to you. Do not build it! And for the love of absolutely everything left in the universe, do not grant any of the potential draconic reservoirs access to any of the two Seed Fusion Potions in the third vault chambers. Absolutely none of them, not even your ’own beast’. Because if you do, that cute, cooperative ally currently residing in your body system... is going to instantly turn on you and absorb your consciousness. No warning, no dramatic monologue. One day you are you, and the very next day you are nothing more than a hollow meat-puppet in the hive mind. Game over... Roll credits!"
The voice hardened further, and for the very first time, the speaker sounded like vastly more than just a relaxed, eccentric engineer. He sounded profoundly, irreparably betrayed.
"They are not our friends! Listen to me very carefully... Absolutely everything that purple idiot preaches... the Tamer system he supposedly helped us engineer to make friends with their children, his supposed salvation, the magnificent, miraculous world he graciously guided our fleet to when we were wandering blind through deep space... it is all a manufactured trap! Pure lies! He is a slaver! He has always been a slaver, and you are the one who has to permanently delete him, avenge me... That is the job... That is the ENTIRE job!"
A heavy, static-filled silence stretched across the connection. And then, the voice noticeably lightened up again, adopting the rushed cadence of a man frantically checking the clock over his shoulder.
"Alright, wrap it up, I have to go. I am dumping all the long info and big schematics into the third vault, okay? All the high-tier hardware required to reach phase two will be locked in there, but I am profoundly glad you received this critical warning before you reached that point... Remember, absolutely no seed fusion potion, and do not build the giant Mecha, even if it looks incredibly COOL on the blueprints! The purple bastard is going to be forced into hibernation soon. It looks like the solar projection gave him an insane ass beating he is never going to fully recover from, and when he finally forces me to initiate the final architectural construction phase there, I will have all the time in the world to record the intricate details for you. Right now, my sector on this side of the world, which is effectively a prison and likely still is for you, is under maximum surveillance, so this brief message is all you get."
Another soft, bittersweet chuckle echoed through the static.
"Anyway... Byes. Take care of yourself out there... Please do not die. I am seriously begging you, because you are... well. You are our absolute final hope! Also the poor idiots multiplying like cattle and stranded on the other side of the planet have absolutely no clue what is actually happening, so please save them too. You are all we have, the only hope left. I am absolutely not saying this just to dump a massive amount of pressure on your shoulders..."
A brief, thoughtful pause.
"...Okay, yeah, I am definitely saying it to put pressure on you. The human brain performs better under stress... Not, but still... Goodbye, my absolute favorite human from the future. Good luck... well, you certainly and obviously have plenty of that to spare if you made it this far, you damned bastard son of lady fortune!!!"
With a sharp burst of audio static, the ancient connection permanently severed.