Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 291 - 290: Psychic Network Invasion

Amber was completely confused by Gawain’s request. She blinked as she looked at the leader who suddenly declared he wanted to sleep, her face filled with the expression of someone worried he might pass away immediately: "Are you sure you’re just going to take a nap?"

"What does that expression mean?"

"I always feel like you’re going to sleep forever..."

"What?!"

"Seriously, I’ve heard so many bards tell stories about legendary heroes, and usually when those heroes suddenly say to the people around them ’I’m going to nap, stay by my side,’ it’s when they’re going to die, and none of them survived—do you want me to call Rebecca and Aunt Heidi? You can talk to them first, and I’ll go dig a hole..."

"Can you think better of me! I’m just going to sleep!" Gawain, who was focused on locking onto his spiritual frequency, really hadn’t thought much before speaking with Amber. It was only now, hearing her words, that he suddenly reacted and his veins started to throb, "Don’t ask why, but I need to immediately enter... well, you could call it a meditative state, anyway, I can’t be disturbed during this time. Keep watch over me, if someone comes to deliver a report, just take it—after all, you stick by my side all day, you know how to file and record various information."

Amber thought for a moment, realizing she should be able to handle such work, she nodded. Although she was still curious why Gawain, a Knight, suddenly wanted to "meditate," seeing his serious demeanor, the half-elf girl quickly subdued her mischievous thoughts and nodded to show cooperation.

Gawain didn’t waste any time—his study didn’t have a bed, and he didn’t actually need to sleep, so he found a comfortable position in the wide chair and prepared to dive into the Eternal Sleepers’ mental network. Before connecting, he looked at Amber one last time: "If something urgent comes up, hit me hard, or use shadow magic to drag me into the shadow realm."

"Got it, got it, don’t worry."

With this final instruction given, Gawain completely released his mind, actively integrating his thoughts into that special spiritual frequency.

After a wave of familiar drowsiness, his mental visual field crossed the hazy darkness, a glorious, magnificent, unbelievable world appeared before him, it was the "imaginary world" he had seen before—the eternal dream-realm of the Eternal Sleepers.

Just as it was during his first connection, when he just entered this world, he couldn’t see anyone, the wide and beautiful streets were empty, the whole world seemed like a dead city. Gawain knew this was some kind of "loading" process, so he quickly changed his appearance while no one was noticing, then boldly walked down the streets of this dream city.

A moment later, silhouettes gradually appeared on the streets, coming and going, bustling with activity.

Gawain moved towards the central area of the city according to the route he remembered, but after taking only a few steps, he sensed a faint voice echoing persistently in his mind, a voice he couldn’t ignore. So, he found a corner where no one was around, then focused intently, trying to understand what the voice was saying.

Thanks to the knowledge he had absorbed, he quickly locked onto the voice, and as his spiritual concentration formed, an odd piece of information suddenly emerged in Gawain’s mind:

"Calling all middle and high-tier nodes, Project Zero is recruiting computational power, upon receiving the message immediately connect."

Gawain frowned.

This was a broadcast "announcement"—and it was sent to him?

Was it because he had received this message that he sensed a fluctuation in the mental world just before connecting?

What is Project Zero?

Gawain felt he had stumbled upon another big secret of the Eternal Sleepers, but with insufficient information, he decided to proceed cautiously, first understanding what the so-called "Project Zero" was.

After confirming the voice in his mind was just a broadcast message, Gawain left the corner where he was hiding, then smoothly found his way to the central area of this dream city.

On his way, he also kept an eye on the current appearance of the city, comparing it to what he saw when he last visited.

Just as he expected, the city had changed.

Though the layout hadn’t changed at all, during this time, the Eternal Sleepers had evidently been refining their dream realm. The last time he visited, many of the large buildings in the city were "hollow", oddly resembling unfinished game scenarios due to incomplete modeling, but this time he noticed many of the hollows had been filled, and some previously unreasonable or unreal architectural details had been fixed.

This dream city seems to be constantly being perfected... Besides causing trouble and harm, those cult followers sure are diligent folks.

Gawain easily passed through the invisible barrier that was used to detect permissions in the city’s central area, and at the central square, he saw the large and small "Node Crystals", as well as the avatars of the Eternal Sleepers connecting with them.

Acting openly in a city filled with evil cult followers was indeed a bit strange, even though Gawain had once been prominent in various game worlds, this level of immersive virtual reality was a bit too advanced for him. But it didn’t matter, since he was wearing Charlie’s face—he had also seen more than ten Charlie’s on his way here, realizing everyone was disguised, Gawain felt relieved.

With the mindset of "even if something goes wrong, he could mentally blame Charlie", Gawain calmly found a Node Crystal with few people around it, then gently placed his hand on the crystal’s surface.

Streams of data immediately filled his mind, and the knowledge needed to manipulate these data streams emerged with it.

That group of cult followers truly haven’t made any progress in this area... Despite making such advancements in virtual reality, their database management, permission authentication, and security protection are still as awful as before. Isn’t there a master to guide them?

Gawain jested in his mind while beginning to search for key information regarding "Project Zero".

Soon, he received feedback, yet the content of that feedback made him furrow his brows even further:

"Project Zero, Category: Initial Plan Group, Classified Project, Accessible by Bishops or Above Only."

In this mind network where the database structure was chaotic and security measures were virtually zero, only a few things were meticulously organized and encrypted, and Gawain had not expected that the "Project Zero" he learned about accidentally would have such a high level of secrecy.

Accessible by bishops or above... Have the permissions I’ve obtained through absorption reached this standard?

Gawain hesitated for a moment, and then, with a mindset of "at worst, I’ll get banned, anyway those evil cultists can’t chop me up through the wifi", he decided to give it a try.

Facts proved that his decision was the right one—after issuing a further read command, some information about Project Zero quickly entered his mind, but what he saw was still puzzling:

Memory Segmentation Project (Incomplete);

Full Consciousness Immersion Project (Complete);

Time Iteration (Incomplete);

Sensory Deviation Calibration (Incomplete);

Guardian Plan (Proposal);

Dream Loop and Open Loop (Under Bishop Team Discussion, No New Meeting)...

This seemed to only be a catalog; just from the list, it seemed like it could lead to many associations, yet not a bit of valuable content could be analyzed. Gawain, of course, would not be satisfied with this, but when he wanted to delve further into these materials, he only saw a special prompt:

Project Zero is operating in isolation; no information available on the surface consciousness network.

In confusion, Gawain tried several keywords and retrieved some related information, finally confirming that he couldn’t view the full content of Project Zero here—although the Eternal Sleeper didn’t have a mature concept of information encryption, they still put a significant level of protection on some extremely crucial things, and Gawain didn’t dare to try breaking in without understanding their encryption rules.

Moreover, he sort of figured something out: the dream realm he was seeing didn’t seem to be the entirety of the "eternal dream-realm" created by the Eternal Sleepers, if he wasn’t mistaken... This whole space, including the dream city, seemed to just be the "surface consciousness network"?

Gawain couldn’t help feeling a bit emotional in his heart: This mind network seemed rough and simplistic in many places, filled with breaches, yet it’s overall advanced and complex. It achieved an unbelievable virtual reality world through rather simple and crude means... Is this also a technological feature of the magic world?

Putting aside his curiosity about "Project Zero", Gawain started browsing various materials in the mind network and gradually confirmed one thing:

This mind network wasn’t just recently activated. Judging from those accessible logs, it seemed that the Eternal Sleepers restarted this virtual world shortly after shutting it down last time. Theoretically, he could have connected to this network long ago.

It’s just that he ultimately wasn’t a true, complete "Eternal Sleeper", so he never knew about this network’s restart until today, when the Eternal Sleeper network sent a group message targeting all mid to upper-level nodes, allowing him to reconnect here.

Unclear about the situation with "Project Zero", Gawain decided not to bother with that "recruiting computing power" information for the time being, in case he accidentally got himself into danger, anyway that message was just a voluntary recruitment notice, ignoring it shouldn’t be a problem.

With Amber watching over him in the real world, there was no need to worry about anything happening there for now. Gawain decided to take this opportunity of connection to dig up some useful things from the Eternal Sleepers’ mind network.

But before any "useful" information appeared, an interesting piece of intelligence first jumped into his mind:

"Known Intelligence and Temporary Response Plan Regarding the ’Outland Wanderer’ (Temporary Codename Gawain Cecil)."

Gawain looked completely baffled: "What is this?"

This piece of information was posted in the lowest reading permission area of the mind network, basically accessible to any Eternal Sleeper cult follower upon connecting to the network, and was clearly intended for the entire church to see. Naturally, Gawain could not resist his curiosity and was the first to expand it, so a line of big letters came into his mind:

"First of all, advise all church comrades—do not lightly make contact with the Outland Wanderer, its danger far exceeds that of the Gondor wasteland!"

It was only after this that the body of the text appeared.

The more Gawain read, the more confused he became, with only one thought in his mind: Last time, he only showed them a mixed-cut MV, and it evolved into this?

Emmmm... Do programmers all have such rich inner drama?