Chapter 1248 — Seas Turn to Mulberry Fields

The captured "loophole."

Amorn was no expert in the field of magic, nor did his authority include the interpretation of such occult phenomena; yet that did not mean he lacked the capacity to learn and understand. In the days since he had come into contact with the neural network and spent time in Milmina's company, he had absorbed a great deal of cutting-edge knowledge, and so now, with only a moment's thought, he grasped the meaning in the Goddess of Magic's words.

"You mean... these motes of dust could never have existed stably in the real world? That some 'essence' of theirs conflicts with the laws of the real world?" He stared fixedly at the dust-phantoms bound within the spell array, flickering madly like a broken signal, and questioned the Goddess of Magic beside him, his tone hesitant and uncertain.

"More than that," Milmina nodded slightly, her tone grave. "These motes vanish the instant the observer vanishes—which shows they are hard-linked to 'cognition.' And when the observer returns, they reappear—which shows that a higher order of 'cognition' is anchoring them. When observer and dust vanish together, it is this higher cognition that ensures the motes still exist in some dimension beyond observation, and ensures that they can return..."

"...This is getting close to the blind spot of my knowledge," Amorn shook his head slightly, his light-forged eyes full of bewilderment. "But one thing I do understand: without your experimental procedure, an ordinary person would never have guessed that these motes were like this..."

"Only when every observer is incapable of perceiving these motes do they vanish; and when an observer returns, they immediately revert to their normal state... In a conventional experimental procedure, technicians would indeed find it very hard to notice that these phenomena had ever occurred," Milmina said softly, but then shook her head slightly. "Still, that is not absolute. Mortals are very clever—once they have a line of thinking, sooner or later they will design experiments to verify the special properties of these shadow-dust motes. This is merely an observer test."

"The hard part is precisely that 'line of thinking,'" Amorn sighed. "If Lady Enya had not pointed it out, who would ever have thought to run an observer test on this dust? Though I am a little curious—how did Lady Enya see it?"

"She was once the dragon race's 'Pantheon'; she knows the authority of every god, including those domains that touch upon dreams and illusion," Milmina said offhandedly. "With such breadth of experience, it would not be difficult for her to detect the anomaly in this shadow-dust."

Amorn fell into thought, and after a few seconds asked suddenly: "This dust was produced by Amber—what about the samples sent from Talrond? Do those 'true' shadow-dust motes also possess this contradiction?"

Milmina slowly shook her head: "Lady Enya has examined them; those motes do not possess this 'contradiction'... Of course, if we are unsure, we could bring those samples here for testing as well. But there are far fewer of those samples—every grain is precious—so I would have to redesign the spell array here."

"You are the expert in this; you decide," Amorn nodded, then could not help turning his curious gaze back to the imprisoned dust. "But then again... what do you think causes these motes to exhibit such a bizarre state?"

"...I am not certain," Milmina mused, her tone slow and hesitant. "In my memory and understanding, there seems to be only one circumstance that would barely fit this phenomenon..."

"One circumstance?" Amorn turned back, looking at Milmina's eyes, hidden within their veil of illusory mist. "What circumstance?"

"Dream-spawn... That should be the domain of Naretir and Duvalt, but I suspect even they have never seen such a phenomenon occurring directly in the real world—one that can even linger in the real world and deceive observers."

...

Gao Yang still remembered the splendor he had seen the first time he beheld Talrond—he remembered the colossal energy barrier that shrouded the entire continent, the lush ecological domes and the cities and factories brimming with neon light, the aerial traffic weaving into nets above the cities, the intercity rail threading like shuttles between the towers, the towering headquarters of the great corporate consortiums, and the unbroken halls standing upon the mountain peaks, bathed in radiance.

It was a scene of splendor that all the bards and playwrights of the Loren Continent could not have conjured even at the limits of their imagination—a scene that spanned several eras, piled up the fruits of countless years of civilization, and left even Gao Yang, a "satellite spirit," awestruck.

Blue dragons and white dragons swept across the sky, flying over the high shield-wall that had gone dark; the shattered coastline was flung away into the darkness behind, and a land covered in wounds rushed up to meet them.

Upon that land stood the molten, twisted ruins of cities and factories, and the collapsed, disintegrating palaces and sanctuaries. The magnificent vistas that had once existed in Gao Yang's memory had now become these unrecognizable shapes, lying quietly in the cold wind of the North Pole, bathed in the starlight of the polar night, silent and wordless.

Amber had fallen quiet some time ago. She walked to the edge of Metzen's back, carefully steadying herself on the horny ridges along the dragon's spine, and gazed out at the broken walls and ruined ramparts beneath the starlight and the night. She seemed to be trying hard to match those things against certain scenes in her memory, but in the end she failed, and all that remained was a sigh heavy with feeling: "Ah, it's all gone... Such a magnificent place it was, back then."

"Yes, all gone—and just in time to start over," Metzen's voice came from ahead, carrying a smile and a note of release. "At least in this moment, the fate of those who live on this land has finally returned to our own hands. Whether we live or die, whether we rise or fall, it is our own affair now."

The hatchling sprawled on Metzen's back had also gone quiet. The little one had never seen such a sight, nor did she know where her mother had brought her. It would be some time yet before she could understand what bond existed between this bare land and herself; for the moment, she was merely a little startled and nervous.

She lay behind Metzen's shoulder blades, her small claws gripping tightly to her mother's scales, her neck stretched out as she looked into the distance.

In the direction she gazed, a range of mountains rose and fell in the darkness, their slopes covered with hollows and even penetrating rifts left by colossal plasma jets, while fragments of shattered palaces lay scattered across the crystal-like, congealed slopes.

Metzen seemed to sense the little one's movement behind her. She turned her head for a glance, her long neck curving around, and said with a smile: "See those palaces in the distance? Mama used to live over there—but it's no place to live now. Our new home is somewhere else."

"Are we going straight to Agondor? Or should we stop by the Coastal Shire first?" Amber asked curiously. "I heard that you and Noretta are living in the Coastal Shire now..."

"We're going to Agondor—that was the agreement," Metzen said at once. "Noretta and I have a residence in Agondor too. Right now we lack everything except places to live."