Veronica/Ophelia's answer was so quick and direct that Gawain didn't react for the first two or three seconds, before he realized that he had so easily found the key clue to Amber's origins—an insider, standing right in front of his eyes.

"Why did you suddenly mention the Shadowkeep?" Veronica noticed the change in the expressions of the three people in front of her, and asked with some curiosity, "Where did you hear this name?" ”

Gawain didn't answer the other party immediately, but followed up with a question: "Let's not talk about this - since you know about the Shadow Fortress, have you heard of a royal shadow guard named Sally Randolph?" ”

Theoretically, during the period when Surrey Randolph was active, the "Holy Princess" was not yet born, but Gawain knew that under Veronica's young appearance was hidden the soul of an ancient disobedient, this rebel has been moving in the world through soul parasitism, and has changed many shells, maybe one of her shells was active in the Ansu Kingdom decades ago, and even the mission that Surrey Randolph performed back then was related to her.

But Veronica shook her head: "I don't remember the name. ”

Her expression didn't seem to be lying, but it was difficult for Gawain to see her true thoughts from the ancient disobedient man's usual indifferent expression, so he could only believe that what she said was true.

"Surrey Randolph is a Royal Shadow Guard from decades ago," Gawain pondered for a moment, deciding not to mention Amber's identity first, but to start with that classified mission many years ago, "We found some information from the past, and found out that the Royal Shadow Guard was ordered to find the ruins of an ancient Gondor called the Shadow Fortress - it now seems that this fortress was indeed part of the disobedient plan?" ”

Amber next to him followed Gawain's words: "Can you tell us more about the situation of this fortress?" What is it studying? Why do you say it's abandoned? ”

Veronica gave Amber a deep look, causing the latter to subconsciously feel a sense of weakness before she spoke, "It's the wrong route—the route of flight and evasion." The Shadow Project attempts to completely change the nature of human life, by transforming into some kind of shadow creature and hiding in the Shadow Realm to escape the magic tide in the real world, and even to avoid the power of the gods, Shadow Fortress is the main research base of this project. ”

"Changing the nature of human life? Transform into a shadow creature and hide in the Shadow Realm? Gawain frowned, this answer was vaguely in line with some of his speculations after seeing Surrey Randolph's diary, the essence of the Disobedience Plan was actually the "Human Continuation Project", so the Shadow Fortress must have been established to allow humans to avoid disasters, but is the Shadow Realm really a world that can escape the Demon Tide?

Veronica nodded slightly: "The Shadow Realm has existed for eternity, and the Shadow Dwellers are a race older than humans, elves, and all the intelligent beings known on the continent, so after starting the Disobedience Project, it was only natural that we noticed them. All kinds of evidence show that all kinds of changes in the real world will produce corresponding changes in the shadow world with certain mapping laws, so after the magic tide occurs in the real world, things in the shadow world will also change, and in this process, the shadow dwellers have never been affected......

"They possess a certain elemental creature trait that allows them to evade the effects of the Tide and quickly adapt to the new environment and re-stabilize their form after a dramatic change in the magical environment.

"On the other hand, the Shadow Realm is the most mysterious and widely distributed force of all known elemental and elemental-like realms, the Shadow Realm covers our real world 100% and does not have the same huge limitations as other elemental realms, and from the point of view of 'development potential', the Shadow Realm is a more worthy choice of shelter than other elemental realms.

"With all these factors in mind, the Disobedient initiated the 'Shadow Project' in the early stages of the project, and built a subspace fortress in the space gap near the Shadow Realm. Due to the need to study the environment, the fortress has no physical entrances and exits, but is connected to the physical world through a number of specific space-time anchors. ”

As promised, Veronica was very honest when it came to the disobedience plan, and she did not hide a brief information about the Shadow Fortress, giving Gawain a general idea of the ins and outs of the fortress.

"How?" Pittman, who had never spoken, suddenly said, "How did you convert humans into shadow creatures? ”

"The initial approach was simple and crude, to something like ' In this way, we have created some mutants with strong shadow power, but the state of mutants is extremely unstable, and the human soul cannot fully control those external shadow powers, and its bodies are also difficult to withstand huge mutations......

Veronica shook her head as she spoke.

"After that, we accumulated experience and realized that it was not enough to simply introduce external forces and change the physical body, but also to transform the soul level, and cultivate the adaptation of the test subject to the shadow power from the embryonic stage, so we started the 'Artificial Man' project."

Gawain visibly felt that Amber's breathing paused when Veronica mentioned the words "android project".

But he didn't interrupt Veronica's narration, but listened to the other party continue—

"With the help of the biochemical technology experience accumulated by the 'Divine Sin' project, the Shadow Project team created a batch of synthetic embryos, the somatic cells of these embryos were derived from the first batch of failed mutants, but they were deeply modified and stabilized, and we also captured the same number of Shadow Dwellers, and after piecing and recoding their souls and human souls, we created synthetic souls that can maintain both humanity and control the power of the Shadow, and injected them into the embryos to form 'artificial humans'."

At this moment, Gawain finally couldn't help but speak: "The soul of the android is a shadow dweller?!" ”

"It's a mix of humans and shadow dwellers," Veronica corrected, "as incredible as it sounds, the shadow dwellers have a similar soul structure to humans - in fact, they are almost a 'spirit' type of being, except for the shadow clouds and rune cloth of unknown origin, they are left with only souls - and in the ancient Gondor period, the Empire had very advanced soul extraction and transformation technology. ”

Speaking of this, the ancient rebel pointed at himself and smiled faintly: "You should be able to imagine that I am also a user of this technology. ”

There is no doubt that "Ophelia Norton", who has survived for more than a thousand years in the form of a soul parasitic, has also undergone a transformation at the soul level.

However, at this moment, Gawain didn't have the extra heart to pay attention to these technical details, he just subconsciously glanced at Amber.

She's not a half-elf at all.

She is a "half-blood" of humans and shadow dwellers, a half-blood on the soul level.

Amber also turned her head to look at Gawain, and after a brief moment of thought and silence, she turned to Veronica: "How many of these 'embryos' were made back then?" ”

"One hundred and twenty-six survived," Veronica said, "and that's what I received that year." ”

"And why was this project abandoned?" Gawain then asked, "Is it a hidden danger?" ”

What he is most concerned about now is the reason for the abandonment of this project, because it is directly related to whether there is some kind of hidden danger in those "artificial human embryos" - although Amber has been growing up healthy for decades, who can guarantee that she will not have problems one day in the future?

Veronica's gaze swept between Gawain and Amber, and after a few seconds of recollection, she whispered, "If the android survives, there is no hidden danger in itself, but there is something wrong with this project itself.

"After the experimental process entered the embryo culture stage, the entire Shadow Fortress, and even the subspace rift where the experimental group was located entered an unstable state, with additional energy streams of unknown origin appearing in the energy loop of the fortress, mysterious and short-lived echoes frequently appearing in the communication system, and the projections of the Shadow Residents wandering around the building, and in the later stage, there was even a strange phenomenon of some rooms disappearing out of thin air, and additional branches appeared in some corridors.

"At the same time as the fortress was abnormal, the core personnel of the project began to suffer from frequent hallucinations and auditory hallucinations, many reported hearing the embryos that were still in the culture chamber talking, hearing the embryos talking to each other in a hoarse noise, but all the monitoring equipment found no evidence of this, and these strange situations intensified as the project progressed to the point where the embryos gradually grew into larvae - the phenomenon of auditory and visual hallucinations began to spread to rooms outside the central area, Researchers are finding it increasingly difficult to discern the boundaries of reality, and the entire Shadowfortress begins to appear to be 'reality fragmented'.

"We tried a variety of extraordinary countermeasures, but in the end they all failed, and the risk assessment department judged that the experiment in the Shadow Fortress may have pried the 'domain boundary' outside of the Shadow Realm and the current world, in order to prevent the project from breaking through the security barrier and attracting the attention of the gods, I had to order the termination of the entire 'Shadow Project', and the Shadow Fortress was also abandoned."

This is the end of the Shadowkeep.

Pitman looked into Veronica's eyes and asked slowly, "What about after that?" Those embryos just stay in the fortress? ”

"The embryos had grown into larvae, but they were all inactive, and I ordered them to be destroyed - before they could open their eyes," Veronica said, "the project was out of control, nothing could be left, and it was better to let those subjects disappear before they gained their own will, than to let them die after they were born." ”

Amber took a light breath and asked in a low voice, "Are they all destroyed?" ”

"All destroyed, at least that's what the report I received."

"But there's one left." Amber looked at Veronica and said word by word.

Veronica raised her eyebrows slightly, but didn't speak, just responded to Amber's gaze.

Amber pointed at herself, her tone calm, "I'm Android Thirty-Six. ”

"Ah," Veronica whispered, but not much surprised, "is that so......

Gawain looked at her, "What do you mean?" Wouldn't you have ...... long ago

"No, I didn't recognize her before," Veronica shook her head, "but how hard is it to guess the truth after you've asked so many questions?" ”

As she spoke, she looked at Amber seriously for a long time, with a slight sigh: "I see...... That's how you grow up. ”

Amber couldn't help but take a step forward: "Don't you have anything else to say?" ”

"For a thousand years, there have been few things that have surprised me, and what happened today finally surprised me...... I know that's not what you're trying to hear, but that's my truest thought right now," Veronica responded calmly to Amber's gaze, but there was really not much surprise in her calm expression, "I don't know how you survived, maybe it had something to do with the hallucinatory phenomenon that enveloped the entire Shadowkeep at the time, but your survival was a surprise to me - I'm glad to see you standing here so healthy." ”

"Oh? Isn't it a pity that you didn't destroy me back then? Amber stared at Veronica, "Isn't that a danger to you?" ”

Veronica's answer was very calm and indifferent: "You have grown up safely and are no longer a hidden danger." ”

Gawain's gaze moved between Amber and Veronica, and he thought Amber's reaction would be fierce next, but after a few seconds of silence, the other party just shook his head: "Then let it be like this." ”

Her figure gradually disappeared into the air, and a voice that gradually drifted away gently floated: "I'll go out and blow the wind first." ”