Chapter 1199 — The March

At this moment, in the place where kings and emperors had once signed alliances, where frontline commanders had once directed battles, where the wounded had once been rushed for treatment during the Godslaying War, a "battle" at the frontier of technology had already begun. A massive metal base with a multi-ringed structure had been installed at the center of the hall, where the Oath Altar had once stood — the covenant once kept there had long since lapsed with the dissolution of Ansu, and had been retrieved to a museum.

Around the metal base, a great many auxiliary devices were still in their rudimentary state; countless parts and materials were neatly stacked throughout the hall, and construction workers were drawing the remaining work zones and baseline marks on the floor with pigment. Technicians in short white robes or various mages' robes, engineering mages, and Typhon scholars moved back and forth between the various areas, busy taking inventory of supplies, checking the condition of equipment, and directing the workers in construction.

A tall figure brimming with arcane radiance floated beside the base at the center of the hall, fine sparks of energy leaping and flowing between the plates of his rune armor. He observed with curiosity the complex rune array set within the base apparatus, exchanging a word or two now and then with the technicians beside him — this was Kamael Thrane, Chief Grand Arcanist and head of the think tank of the Cecil Empire. As the highest technical officer of the Cecil side in the "Gate" project, he had been ordered here to oversee this vitally important engineering work.

An unfamiliar presence came from the direction of the hall entrance. Kamael at once stopped talking with the people beside him, turned in the air, and saw three figures appear at the doorway, walking toward this side.

One was a tall, dignified middle-aged lady; one was an old mage in a black robe, who looked aged and gloomy; and there was also a young female mage, likewise in a black robe, with short black hair, following close behind the old mage like a chick trailing step by step.

The arcane radiance in Kamael's eyes flashed, and then he drifted down from midair, floating toward the visitors — he met Daniel's gaze with perfect ease, wearing a cheerful "expression" on his "face," not in the least worried that the Typhon technicians nearby might detect the slightest hint from any change in his "countenance."

After all, apart from a few colleagues he saw daily in Cecil, no one in this world could read the slightest change of expression on his 200-lumen face...

"Master Kamael," Windsor came up before Kamael, a poised and proper smile on her face — except in the presence of her master and His Majesty, the president of the Royal Mages' Association could maintain her most proper smile on any occasion — "Good day. This is my master, Master Daniel; this is Mary, a senior scholar from the Imperial Artificers' Association, and also another apprentice of my master."

As she spoke, the legendary mage could not help studying Kamael a couple more times. Her gaze swept over the arcane sparks and rune armor plates that filled him, curiosity and astonishment in the depths of her eyes.

What an inconceivable form of life... Did he need to eat? To drink water? To use the toilet? To be recharged? Did he have normal perception of heat and cold? Did he need to sleep? When he slept, did he need to turn off the light? And if so... how did he turn his "light" off?

Windsor Mabel lowered her head slightly, pressing all the slightly offensive questions that had surfaced in her mind down to the bottom of her heart. Kamael, meanwhile, turned his gaze upon Daniel, and after a brief regard, broke the silence, his voice carrying a note of amusement: "A pleasure to meet you for the first time, Master Daniel — I have heard your name, in certain academic newspapers."

"A pleasure to meet you as well, Master Kamael," Daniel maintained his usual cold expression. "I have heard of you too — from my apprentice's mouth."

Mary, like Windsor, kept her head lowered, looking as though she scarcely dared to breathe, appearing excessively nervous at meeting such a "personage" for the first time.

In truth she really was nervous — because the three big problems Master Kamael had left her when they last met over the neural network were still all unsolved...

After these brief pleasantries, Kamael floated half a step forward and extended an "arm" brimming with arcane radiance. "Shall we shake hands? It is how we Cecil folk express goodwill."

Daniel glanced at the currents of energy flowing along the other's arm, and asked cautiously, "Will it burn?"

"Rest assured," Kamael laughed. "You won't even feel any noticeable heat."

Only then did Daniel extend his hand. A palm of flesh and blood met a surging mass of arcane radiance, and the two parted again shortly after.

"Well then, the necessary pleasantries and mutual introductions are done. Now let us get to business," Kamael floated half a step back, turning his gaze to Windsor Mabel. "I was just now observing the base structure of your portal, and a few questions have arisen that I hope to have answered..."

A smile at once appeared on Windsor's face. "Of course. Ask whatever you like."

...

While the technicians at Covenant Keep set their operation in motion for the march upon the Divine Kingdom, beginning the construction of a "bridgehead," on the southern slopes of the Dark Mountains another vast "march" plan was also being urgently prepared, its first step already underway.

At the southern exit of Fortress of Defiance — likewise a vital gateway on the gentle terrain south of the Dark Mountains — within the outer zone of the "Southgate Fortress," whose every wall brick was armed with magitech cannons and alloy armor, engineering vehicles were assembling inside the first ring of walls. Great quantities of resources, machinery, and personnel summoned from within the Empire had formed into several batches of columns here; magic-energy engines roared without cease, traction devices and lifting devices kept hoisting more supply crates onto the large trucks, and the tanks and multi-purpose combat vehicles assigned to escort duty were undergoing a final round of inspection, preparing to set out for the south before long.

The Grand Architect Gordon stood high on the outer wall, drew his gaze back from the convoy in the assembly area, and turned it instead toward the forest beyond the wall.

In the distance, the Black Forest still flourished, dense and twisted giant plants filling his field of view. Nourished by the chaotic magic of the wasteland, these plants had grown exceptionally tough, and through the whole winter just past they had shown not the slightest sign of decline. Then, in the midsummer that had only just ended, still more twisted plants had sprouted from the forest's edge, as though to provoke the very "border" that the Cecil Empire had established at the Southgate Fortress.

The imperial soldiers garrisoning the fortress could of course not tolerate such provocation, and so in the final two weeks of summer they delivered a righteous answer to the Black Forest with heavy incinerators and the fortress guns mounted on the walls. Now the newly grown fringes of the forest had once again been driven back, and Gordon gazed toward the direction of the last burning, where he could almost still see wisps of blue smoke curling upward.

"Build a railway straight through the Black Forest, is it..." The Grand Architect rumbled a couple of times in his throat, and a smile spread across his face. "Now that really is a bit of a challenge."

(End of this chapter)