Chapter 321 — Emerging into Prominence
Blade of Dawn Page 1 of 2
The long-missed city of Illusory Pivot—its long-missed gilded splendor, its long-missed towers and halls.
The mage Daniel stood in the streets of that grand and magnificent city, gazing at the splendid buildings spread out before him and the passersby drifting to and fro along the roads, and could not help but be moved to a thousand sighs.
He had returned to this place. After a whole series of trials and a "legacy," he had finally won the recognition of that terrifying Outlander Wanderer, and obtained permission to reconnect to the Mind Network and move about within Illusory Pivot.
But he knew he was not free—and from this day forward, every day of his activity upon the Mind Network would be without freedom.
The Outlander Wanderer had already left His spiritual mark within his mind, and left it in the deepest place of all; he could never be rid of that mark. From now on he must act as the Outlander Wanderer's servant; he could not speak his master's secrets, could not do what his master forbade, could not attempt to escape his master's control, and could never, in any form, cry for help upon the Mind Network or warn the other Sleepers.
He need not trouble himself with thoughts of covert action and self-suggestion to circumvent the restrictions, for he knew that no matter how secretly he acted, he could not evade the Outlander Wanderer's surveillance. That surveillance lay in the depths of his subconscious; a man cannot deceive his own subconscious. Whether within this Mind Network or out in the waking world, so long as a "keyword" left by the Outlander Wanderer was triggered in his subconscious, that terrible punishment would surely come.
But Daniel no longer cared.
He had witnessed the Outlander Wanderer's mighty power, and had received those incredible legacies of knowledge. To the man he now was, his more important identity was servant of the Outlander Wanderer—not some cultist of the Long Slumber, and certainly not a mage of Typhon.
The old mage reshaped his own image into the form he commonly used upon the Mind Network: a refined, scholarly middle-aged mage. Then he made his way toward the places where the city's low- and mid-ranking cultists gathered.
He watched coldly as those Sleepers came and went along the city streets, watched those who knew nothing of the Outlander Wanderer's mighty power go on with their humdrum lives, and all at once a strange smugness welled up in his heart:
I am one who serves that indescribable great existence—I am one of my master's first envoys for the remaking of this world! When the new age arrives, a place at the pinnacle of the order will be mine. And then what will this Illusory Pivot—seemingly flourishing, in truth illusory—amount to?
The old mage found this sudden feeling of his rather strange, but in the end he chose to savor it.
Ahead appeared a great building with a tall, sharp spire and pale-gold outer walls. It was an assembly hall, and flanking its entrance stood two rows of giant statues blowing horns. Many cultists in gorgeous robes were passing in and out through its ornate gates. Daniel straightened his clothes, then calmly and firmly followed the crowd toward the doors.
This was where the low- and mid-ranking cultists gathered to exchange knowledge and intelligence—and the first step in his execution of his master's will.
The words his master had spoken before going offline echoed in Daniel's heart:
You are already a mature Sleeper; it is time you learned to make a name for yourself, to astonish the company with your words, to outshine all rivals, and then ascend to the summit of life.
Daniel entered the assembly hall. The ground-floor atrium was broad and bright, with many long tables laden with fine food and wine set about its perimeter; further in were round tables and half-open booths where visitors might sit at leisure, converse, and rest; and at the very center stood rows of crystal pillars—ports for connecting to the higher network, for uploading, publishing, and reading information.
Daniel ignored the wine and delicacies around him, and ignored the two female Sleepers—sweet of face and seductively curved—who came walking toward him. He went straight to the crystal pillars, laid his hand upon one, and published a message at the highest weight his rank allowed:
"Sharing of important knowledge—a significant personal discovery—hoping to draw attention.
"I believe there exist serious security flaws in the Mind Network we employ. Once an unauthorized visitor connects to the network, they are exceedingly difficult to detect, and moreover we cannot ascertain the true state of any visitor within the network...
"I have a proposal for establishing network security protocols, and also certain ideas for improving the efficiency of node management...
"In addition, the management of our archives lacks all order and is hopelessly chaotic; consulting information feels both tedious and bewildering... As the network continues to develop, the information we preserve will only grow, and the chaos of the archives will inevitably worsen. On this matter I have some suggestions for standardizing the archives, which I call database management...
"I hope to draw the attention of higher-ranking nodes."
...
Daniel sent out these messages, which he had spent so long brewing and editing, and then left the place directly.
He was not worried that his message would be drowned in the vast sea of data upon the Mind Network, for he knew that the upper echelons of the Long Slumber cult—those Nightmare Bishops and Radiant Pontiffs—kept constant watch over this network, and that even the Pontiff himself maintained an around-the-clock connection to it. Those mighty Sleepers possessed power commensurate with their station; they let no information flowing upon the network slip past, and could in an instant fasten upon anything worthy of note.
Even if they cast but a fleeting glance his way, he believed that the problems he had identified could draw enormous attention from the cult's upper echelons.
His master had instructed him first to draw the attention of Sleepers of his own rank or a level above, and only afterward to seek, by degrees, the notice of the cult's highest circles. But he knew there was a better way to bring himself swiftly into the sight of those upper echelons—and this course of action had already received his master's approval.
Daniel had once held boundless reverence and worship for those bishops; he had admired their mighty power. But after seeing the knowledge his master imparted, after learning what database architecture, directory indexing, and invocation rules meant, that reverence had vanished utterly. To control an entire network by sheer brainpower and magical strength—such conduct was truly little different from beasts brawling with brute force.
As Daniel had anticipated, within mere minutes the information he had sent drew the attention of the Sleepers' council of bishops.
Within a magnificent palace in the central district of Illusory Pivot, lights suddenly flared in a circular hall; upon the surface of the great round table at the hall's center emerged countless arcane patterns (in truth, nothing more than light-and-shadow effects), and one figure after another materialized out of thin air around the table.
These were the Sleepers' bishops, dispersed across every corner of the continent.
A bishop wearing a golden crown spoke: "Important information has appeared upon the network."
Someone beside him responded: "We are already attending to it."
"A nightmare instructor by the name of Daniel has discovered a major security risk upon the network. The lines of thought he proposes lie precisely within our blind spot..."
"It has been preliminarily confirmed that these vulnerabilities genuinely exist—yet no one noticed them, and still less did anyone propose a solution."