Chapter 556: It’s Alive

Chapter 556 It’s Alive
Silence fell in the corridor of the underground archive.

This place is located in the underground of Light Wind Harbor’s highest-ranked city-state university, similar to the city-state under the administration of the Deep Sea or the Church of the Dead, this place is equivalent to the central cathedral of the entire city – of course, the “seal” that can be housed in this kind of place is extraordinary, and at least must be an “abnormal” or similarly dangerous contamination carrier like Alice’s top 100 number. The “seal” that can be housed in such a place is of course extraordinary, at least it has to be an “abnormality” or a contamination carrier of similar danger with a number in the top 100 like Alice.

And anomalies and contamination carriers of this level have one characteristic in common: the characteristics of living things.

They may have the ability to think incredibly, may have the means to communicate with people, may have the tendency to move and escape, and regardless of the strength or weakness of this “living creature characteristic”, they can at least achieve the instinct of avoiding harm – just like Alice at the time when she did not know Duncan at all. Alice’s instinctive honesty despite not recognizing Duncan at all.

In short, they have more or less brains, not much, but they are afraid of death.

Duncan liked this kind of more or less brains, and it would save him a lot of trouble in many cases.

Lucrecia looked this way with a hint of awe, while Nina and Shirley’s eyes widened in surprise before they raised their faces in triumph – not sure what either of them had to be so proud of.

For his part, Ted Riel froze for a moment, and then looked at Duncan with a somewhat complicated gaze – not awe-inspiring like an ordinary person, but not wary and hostile either; he seemed to be thinking about something, and only after several seconds did he suddenly pop up with a sentence, “You can come over here more often when you stay in Lightwind Harbor .”

“Oh?” Duncan was a bit surprised, “Other city-states were all anxious for me to stay away when they first dealt with me, and places like the Central Cathedral were heavily guarded at the first opportunity, so how did it come to you that you even took the initiative to invite?”

Ted raised his hand and pointed to the quieted corridor, “You’re here, I can take a vacation.”

Duncan: “……?”

However, the “Keeper of the Truth” in front of him did not care about the subtle reaction of the others after his words, he just mentioned it and took a step to continue walking towards the depths of the corridor.

The others raised their feet to follow, but this time Duncan deliberately lagged a few steps behind, he came to Lucrecia’s side, lowered his voice and asked: “I can’t remember anything about this ‘Keeper of the Secrets’, has he always been like this? I mean …… this kind of resentment as if he’s been working extra shifts all his life.”

Lucrecia similarly lowered her voice, “Lord Ted has been leading the graduating class lately.”

Duncan froze at that, “And the leader of the Guardians of the …… city-state is responsible for doing this? I don’t remember Vanna having similar extra work when she was an Inquisitor.”

“Divine power is closely related to the words and deeds of the believers, seeking and spreading knowledge is originally a necessary process for the believers of Rahm to ‘perform the sacraments’, that’s why the entire clergy system of the Academy of Truth is constituted in the form of an ‘academy’. Superior Magi must act as mentors to teach the students, and the higher the rank the heavier and more difficult the teaching task – so the Secretaries of Truth have to lead the graduating class, and it’s the hardest class to lead.”

Duncan: “……”

Listening to this marvelous new knowledge told by Lucrecia, he couldn’t help but feel some peculiar feelings flooding his heart, so he couldn’t help but raise his head to look at the Secret Keeper not far away twice more.

Ted Riel, who was walking in front of him, instantly noticed this gaze, and as he glanced back, a trace of doubt flooded the Secret Keeper’s heart—

This “Captain Duncan”, who had lost his memory due to the influence of subspace, and who had been like a stranger to him just now, why was his gaze suddenly filled with inexplicable understanding, nostalgia and sympathy?
After a short period of doubt, Ted Ryer shook his head and stopped in front of a door near the end of the corridor.

“This is it, holding room twenty-four.” He raised his hand and pointed to the door in front of him.

The door was depicted with many sacred runes, and the whole thing seemed to be cast from black steel, and the surface was inlaid with stars and silver-white metal particles. Shirley curiously looked at the door for a few moments, and then she felt as if her gaze was going to be drawn in by the deep blackness and dots of silver-white, and a feeling of her senses leaving her body came over her, frightening her into hastily retracting her gaze.

Nina, on the other hand, raised her head to look at the corridor she came from, and then looked around the twenty-fourth Sample Shelter Room, her brows slightly frowning with some curiosity: ”There’s not even a single guard to be seen here? Don’t they arrange guards for such an important and dangerous place?”

“There are guards at the necessary nodes, but in the vicinity of the various containment rooms, the fewer people the better,” Ted Riel glanced at this very curious girl and casually explained, “Because certain ‘anomalies’ possess the ability of psychological parasitism and mind jumping, the less people there are, the better. and mind-hopping abilities, too many guards near the intake room will instead give those things the possibility to break through the intake.”

“For the vast majority of ‘anomalies’ and contaminants, the correct method of sealing is far more important than the number of security guards,” Lucrecia added to the explanation from the sidelines, “A correctly placed stone or a sprinkle of metal powder on the floor can keep certain anomalies quiet for years, but an extra ‘person’ can cause invisible and intangible forces to break through the containment, which is why many sealing facilities have the least amount of people at their core instead, with numerous seals taking effect on their own when no one is around.”

“Those guards arranged outside the core area are not so much to deal with the monsters that are inside, but are actually more to deal with outside intrusions, preventing people from coming in and disrupting the conditions of internment,” Ted Rill nodded, reaching out and pressing his hand on the door of the sample internment room, accompanied by an out-of-nowhere “The door opened with a click from somewhere, “But …… this sample is one of the most unusual I’ve ever seen, and I’m not even sure if I should put it in the sample holding room or somewhere else.” something.” The door opened, a brightly lit but not very spacious room appeared in front of everyone’s eyes, the room’s floor and walls are depicted with complex and sophisticated sacred symbols, added special oil lamps and wall gas lamps to a surprising degree, but in addition to this, there is no extra furnishings and furniture in the room, only in the center of the room there is a quadrilateral platform, on which placed the The strange …… “sample”.

A cleric wearing academy robes, wearing a strange black mask on his face, with his hands tightly locked by locks is standing next to the platform, seems to be the guard of this room – when Ted Riel brought a group of people into the room, this “guard” with strange locks on his hands looked up at him When Ted Riel entered the room with his party, this “guard” wearing strange locks on his hands looked up, and then his eyes fell on Ted, nodding slightly.

“Any sign of activation in the samples?” Ted asked.

The watcher shook his head in silence.

“Do the shackles show signs of opening?” Ted asked again.

The Caretaker raised his own hands, showed the Secret Keeper the shackles on his own hands, and shook his head again.

“Okay, after all that hard work, you go ahead and rest,” Ted said with a slight nod as he looked relieved, “I’ll take over from here – remember, personally put the ‘shackles’ ‘ back onto the ‘stone statue’, don’t try to swap places with it, and don’t react to its ‘pleas for help’.”

Without a word, the caretaker nodded and turned to walk out of the room.

“That shackle is part of the Anomaly-087 ‘stone statue’,” Ted Reel explained to Duncan and the others only after the caretaker had left, “and through a special ‘protocol ‘ ritual, we can borrow shackles from the ‘stone statue’ for a certain period of time; the wearer of the shackles may not speak, and may confine and bind a chosen entity in front of him or her for the duration of the wear, and we usually use them to aid in the control of dangerous objects of as yet unspecified nature that have just been discovered. ”

“For example …… a ‘reality intruder’ of enigmatic origin that suddenly appeared at the fairgrounds.”

Lucrecia muttered softly, looking up at the odd, quiet-looking mass of iron-grey metallic luster on the platform in the center of the room.

It looked like a piece of steel that had already cooled and solidified, but the surface lines and contours left a strange soft, smooth feeling, as if it was once like some kind of mollusc writhing and undulating, and then quickly solidified into this, and on its smooth “skin”, there are occasionally visible some angular bumps, those raised structures give people the feeling that they are not the same as a mollusc, and that they are not the same as a mollusc, and that they are not the same as a mollusc. Those raised structures give people the feeling ……

It was as if something was about to break free from the interior of this mass of “matter”.

“These bumps appeared after the sample was sent to the holding room,” Ted Reel explained, “in the minutes after it was sent to the holding room, it suddenly showed strong activity again, the surface structure has changed a lot, we thought it would try to break free from the seal, and even considered sending it to a more secure place, we thought it would try to break free from the seal, and even considered sending it to a more secure place. Even considered sending it to a higher level holding area, but after those few minutes, its activity dropped off a cliff again, all the way down to what it is now – almost a hardened piece of metal.”

“Almost?” Duncan noted keenly the key in the other man’s wording.

“Yes, almost, because it’s actually still ‘alive’,” Ted Reel nodded, “and there’s always a faint active ‘signal’ in the very core of the mass of matter ‘, and even when the entire mass has solidified down like this, that core is still active, and you can even hear it-“

While saying that, this Secret Keeper opened his big magical book again, and after turning one of the pages, he stretched out his fingers and lightly tapped it.

A device like a stethoscope appeared out of thin air from the air above the page.

Ted Ryer casually clipped the book back under his arm, picked up the “stethoscope” and hung it around his neck, and carefully pressed the other end of the stethoscope onto the surface of the “solidified metal”.

In the next second, a rhythmic sound echoed throughout the room –

Plop, plop, plop ……

“It has a heartbeat,” Ted Reel looked up, “and inside this mass of metal, there is a heart that is still alive.”

(End of chapter)