Chapter 1171 — Preparations Before the Rain

To make the expensive cheap, the rare commonplace, and the unreliable stable and controllable—that, above all else, is what allowed magitech to transform the way the entire world turned in this age.

The elves had the Radiant Dome. For the past thousand years and more, that sky-fortress which never fell had been the Silver Empire's greatest guarantee of standing above all other nations. Though the aging of the sanctuary itself confined its deterrent power to the southern half of the continent, so long as that fortress drifted in the sky even a single day, the vast majority of the nations on the Loren Continent could only look up at it in awe—and this had nothing to do with whether the elves themselves "abided by peace and neutrality." It was the inevitable outcome of overwhelming power.

Under the present international circumstances, Gao Yang and his entire governing team had no intention of turning Cecil into a hegemonic empire. Even so, he still hoped to achieve a breakthrough in the Empire's air power. The sky-fortress in the elves' hands was an extremely attractive and practically meaningful target; even setting aside military deterrence, a flying fortress capable of long-duration operation at high altitude, possessed of powerful defensive strength, and able to provide reliable support for expeditionary units, held enormous significance for one of Gao Song's long-term plans:

Counterattack on the Wasteland.

There was only one Radiant Dome, and owing to problems of power and maintenance it could not stray far from the Silver Empire. Expecting it to serve as the main force in a counterattack on the Wasteland was unrealistic—yet the threat of the Wasteland was simply there, and the hidden forces within it grew stronger by the day. Those living around the Wasteland would have to find some other means to ensure their own safety. To attempt to build a mass-producible magitech version of the sky-fortress, leveraging the unique advantages of magitech and accumulating strength for a future counterattack on the Wasteland—that was the plan Gao Yang had devised. One of many plans.

But a project so bold would not be easy to realize. Even with the Origin Laboratory—that cheating test system with its built-in acceleration and full-fidelity simulation—with the substantial technical support provided by the elves, and with convenient magical assistance and relatively mature anti-gravity technology thrown in, building humanity's own "Radiant Dome" was still no easy matter. This was not merely an oversized "Dragoon."

Rebecca's attention returned to the sketch before her. Her gaze drifted slowly over the regularly arrayed anti-gravity devices and the power spine, and she muttered to herself as she studied them: "The biggest problems we've run into so far are two... The first is the arcane oscillation and resonance damage produced when large numbers of anti-gravity rings run simultaneously within a single system. Last time we test-fired the Dragoon's anti-gravity rings, we burned out every test device outright and nearly blew up the entire platform. We have a line on a solution now—adding isolation layers and energy-release devices between the power spine and the consumption units. Whether it actually works will have to wait for the next test.

"The second problem is how to make such an enormous system function as a coherent whole, so that every part of it can operate in concert—what we've designed is simply too large and too structurally complex. The number of magitech devices operating together under one arcane system is staggering; there are at least a dozen anti-gravity rings alone, and they're all interconnected... If the coordination fails, the whole thing may well shut down. A sky-fortress is something that has to fly in the sky—it's not like a cart or a ship. If the system shuts down, it falls..."

"Which is why we need an 'operations center,'" Malin Leslie said with a nod. "This operations center could perceive the condition of every system across the entire fortress at the first instant and control each part with high efficiency. Considering the scale of the sky-fortress's overall systems, the complexity of this operations center would exceed the limits of all our current control technologies—even if we managed to build it, I'm afraid there wouldn't be many people in this world who could actually operate it..."

"Which is exactly why I say servo-brains and wetware mainframes are wonderful things, even if the Zuyan people always think they don't look good enough," Rebecca laughed. "Nothing is better suited to commanding such an enormous, complex system than a neural network. I quite agree with something Mr. Egg once said—the most beautiful creation life has produced is the machine, and the most beautiful machine is life itself. Wetware mainframes and neural networks can break down the boundary between machine and organism. So long as the neural cabling can cover the entire system, the control problem of the sky-fortress ceases to be a problem. Next we just need to consider how to modify and upgrade the system Ghelan Heavy Industries has already validated and fit it into our blueprint..."

"When you get right down to it, this approach is also modeled on the elves' Radiant Dome," Malin Leslie remarked with a somewhat complicated expression. "I hear the control technology of their 'sanctuary' is essentially some kind of neural-network-like thing as well..."

"That's different," Rebecca shook her head at once. "A wetware mainframe doesn't consume population—at most it costs some sugar. The silver elves' Radiant Dome costs empresses."

Malin Leslie's expression turned strange for an instant: "That's a rather..."

"I'm not making it up," Rebecca said, rapping the table with great seriousness. "I talked with Empress Belantia last time. She said that once you sit on the Throne of Dominion, you become part of the machine—you have to control the system with total concentration, and the selection of operators is extraordinarily strict. First, you must be a member of the Morning Star imperial house, or you won't pass biometric authentication; second, you need something like a synchronization rate... If the synchronization rate won't rise, the Radiant Dome's efficiency drops accordingly. How is that essentially any different from the mages of the old era who relied on innate talent to cast spells, or those magic items that demanded spellcasting ability?"

At this, Rebecca crossed her arms over her chest and delivered her judgment with a completely serious face: "So in my view, the elves' Radiant Dome is fundamentally flawed—even if the elves repair it, that thing will sooner or later become a shackle. If the Silver Empire wants to develop, sooner or later it will have to find a way to cast off this 'antique legacy' that's riddled with problems. How does that saying of the Zuyan people go? Something about breaking and then standing up... Anyway, I think the Silver Empire needs that process of 'breaking' right now."

"Uh... you're right, but that wasn't what I meant... Never mind, you're right." Malin Leslie coughed awkwardly twice, raised a hand to wipe at the sweat on his brow that wasn't there. This princess before him had always had a curious way of speaking. People like himself, with somewhat traditional ways of thinking, invariably felt extra pressure when they inadvertently drifted onto certain "higher-level topics" with her. He even suspected that at least half his hair had been lost in conversations with Her Highness.

Rebecca seemed not to notice that she had once again inflicted fresh pressure on her reliable subordinate. Her attention was caught by Malin's gesture, and her gaze followed his hand upward. She was immediately a little surprised: "Oh, Malin, your hair's thinning again?"