Another hour passed, and the team continued to advance through the ever-expanding corridors and passageways.

The scale of this millennium facility has exceeded Gawain's imagination.

Even during the "Spark Age" of Gondor's heyday, the Empire rarely built a facility of this magnitude - even if it functioned as both a military fortress and a scientific research facility, it was much larger than Gawain had expected. It looked like it had indeed been built by hollowing out a mountain, and as the ramps and steps down more and more increased, Gawain even suspected that it had hollowed out more than just a mountain.

The mana response was still coming steadily, and it was still quite weak, and due to the excessive number of forks and corridors, Hetty's guidance was no longer reliable, and she could only judge the general direction, and use divination spells such as spiritualism to determine which fork in the road to take, but even so, the team took several detours and found many dead ends.

Although the Byron knight had been marking along the way, and Hetty had outlined the signs with the magic markers, the soldiers were still a little uneasy about advancing through an ancient ruins for so long, and after noticing this uneasiness, the Byron knight approached Gawain: "My lord, if you continue to go deeper, you may get lost in it—everyone's sense of direction has been completely lost. ”

Gawain frowned, in fact, he had also considered the problem of getting lost, but he was more confident than everyone else - the superb memory of the satellite spirit was working, he had memorized almost every detail of every fork in the road, and there was even a rough map in his mind, but these abilities were not easy to say, or even if they were to say it, it was not very easy to reassure everyone.

After all, this place is just too big.

It would be nice if Amber was there...... At the very least, she could be thrown out to find her way, and she could run around from the Shadow Realm, and she was good at sliding doors and picking locks, so she certainly wasn't as easily trapped in ruins as ordinary people - she had already proven this in the ancestral grave of the Cecil family.

This time, Gawain was thinking about it very seriously.

It's a pity that Amber is not here now, and Gawain can only shake his head: "Your concern is justified - then let's go a little longer, make a few more marks, and then return first, whether we find it or not, and come back next time." ”

Although the lord did not order an immediate return, Gawain's ambiguous statement relieved the soldiers, as if they had received some kind of reassurance, and the team once again mustered up the courage to move on.

After a flight of stairs downward, there was a hall in front of it, and there was something more in the hall than before: large obsidian cuboids lined up around the hall, like stone tablets placed against the wall, and under the cubes extended a number of metal conduits, or "tracks", all of which converged in the center of the hall, where there was a strange hemispherical device.

Gawain frowned, walked over to the hemispherical device, and rubbed it a few times with his iron-gloved hand, and the black ash and oxide on the surface of the device were scraped off, revealing the silvery-white metal underneath.

"What is this?" Hetty leaned over curiously, the facilities in this room were apparently "fixtures" that she hadn't been able to take with her, a rarity in this ruin, and the obsidian and metal connections had given her a strange instinct about magic.

"The Magic Energy Focusing Array—though I'd love to call it a mana capacitor," Gawain said with knowledge that no one knew in this day and age, interspersed with some more inexplicable words, "These obsidian stones connect to the mana wells in the facility, and this hemisphere can concentrate powerful energies to create a short-lived but extremely strong stream of energy, which passes through this leading tube—"

Gawain pointed to a thick conduit that extended from the hemispherical device and ended up buried in the wall.

“…… Send energy where it's needed. ”

Hetty's eyes widened slightly, as a mage, seeing this ancient magic device from a thousand years ago made her can't help but get excited: "Focus the powerful energy? So it's a weapon? ”

"No, it's an auxiliary energy source for research facilities, and it's usually used to provide instantaneous 'ignition' for energy-hungry devices, such as iridescent lenses or something," Gawain shrugged, "In Gondor's time, magic wasn't just for fighting—while that was one of its important roles, magic could do many, many things at the same time. In fact, it seems to me that what mages should really do is to use their knowledge and magic for this kind of research. ”

"Research ......," Hetty muttered incredulously.

She is no stranger to the word research, mages have always been synonymous with researchers, delving into the mysteries of magic, analyzing the laws of runes is their proudest work, but no matter what kind of research, the ultimate goal will come down to how to improve the ability to cast spells, and mages who cannot improve their own casting ability will be regarded as lame researchers.

Herty instinctively felt that the "research" that Gawain spoke of was probably not the same thing as the research he was familiar with.

The old ancestor always seemed to have a habit of looking at a very distant and broad perspective, and he would always refer to "universality" and "mass production", and the kind of research that the mages specialized in themselves, even deliberately isolated from each other, seemed to be contrary to his thinking.

Hetty shook her head, tossing the innocuous thoughts from her mind as she heard the Byron knight asking, "Ma'am, is the magic reaction coming from this place?" ”

Hetty felt it for a moment and shook his head: "No, but it's close." ”

"Write down this place," Gawain began, "this ancient device has been completely scrapped and no need to be repaired—but it can remove at least half a ton of Mithril and seven or eight tons of obsidian, as well as a large pile of pure gold and copper and steel. ”

"Wait a minute...... Hetty was stunned and glared at Gawain, "Ancestor...... Are you going to give this valuable ancient magic device to ...... Demolished?! ”

"Or else?" Gawain glanced at her, "This thing needs ultra-high purity magic power to 'ignite', and now there is no corresponding magic purification technology." And even if there is energy, this thing has been here for a thousand years, and the structure inside it has long been rotten, and it is not easier to repair than to build one. ”

Hetty was stunned, and his face was strange: "You may not feel it from seven hundred years ago, but this thing is an antique ......"

Gawain's face shook: "This thing was also an antique before I died - but we have to start from the practical value, it has no value here, only when it is melted, it can be reborn." ”

Hearing Gawain say this, Hetty realized that it was useless to say anything, so she had to nod her head with pain on her face.

It is said that the cub is not distressed when he sells his field, but when he sells his field, he doesn't seem to be very distressed......

The discovery of the Mana-Focused Device means that it is already very close to the Deep Research Facility, and considering the magical reaction that Hetty sensed earlier, it is very likely that the target is a working research device.

Gawain quietly activated the knight's "danger perception" skill to be on the lookout for possible magic traps or ancient radiation.

On the way on, he casually asked Hetty, "By the way, I heard them address you as Madame instead of Mademoiselle or Madame - are you married?" What about your husband? ”

He had been curious about this question for a long time, but he never found a chance to ask.

Hetty was stunned for a moment, but it was normal for the ancestor to be concerned about his marriage, so he replied, "I am not married, but I converted to the goddess of magic, Mirmina, as an adult, and renounced my inheritance in the form of a conversion of faith, so that I could leave it to Rebecca's father." According to the laws of the nobility, a woman who renounces her inheritance by conversion to the faith and reaches the age of majority is considered married, i.e., dedicated to the faith. Originally, I could have retained the title of nobility and become an unhereditary baroness, but that year the territory was difficult, so I took this title ...... Uh, sold to a merchant......"

Gawain nodded, "oh" in understanding, and at the same time, the message of the goddess of magic, Mirmina, also came to mind.

The goddess of magic, Mirmina, also known as the goddess of all laws and the Lady of Mysteries, is believed to be the master of magic and is the mentor of the world's first dragon and the first elves - hence the legendary dragon magic and the existing elven magic. Unlike the other gods, Mirmina was not a "strong believer", but more of a "symbolic god".

She can be said to have no formal religion or belief system, and almost all of her spell-casting professions are her "shallow believers", but less than one percent of mages will convert to this god as full believers, which is probably related to the general preference for mysteries and lack of fear of the gods among spellcasters.

And many of those 1 percent of believers were converted simply to prove renunciation of inheritance or something like that, like Hety.

Princess Veronica's conversion to the god of light was in a similar way, except that her royal highness was not as low as the descendants of the Cecil family, so she could still be called a princess (or a corresponding priesthood).

And Hetty was a little uneasy after answering, she was mainly worried about two things: one is whether Cecil's disgraced descendants will be reduced to the point of selling the title of nobility to make ends meet, and the other is whether it will make the ancestor angry if he is so old and not getting married, especially the second thing - what if Gawain turns his head and comes to a set of "Why don't you get married, when are you going to get married, what do you think of that XXX" Urging marriage three times?

Mom, the ancestors urged marriage seven hundred years ago, this is much more stressful than the marriage urging of parents!

This even made Hetty less worried about whether he would be beaten up for selling his title of nobility......

As a result, Gawain really asked casually, oh, there was no follow-up after that.

And Hetty's crankiness didn't last long, as she finally sensed that the magic reaction was ahead.