The Strange Adventures of Hearn the Believer

Page 33

“Okay, I admit it… buddy, you need to be honest with me. What are you planning to do about Christmas a week from now? You’ve got all the girls booked for that day. Even though I just said those things, to be honest with myself—I can’t have a peaceful Christmas without you telling me the truth,” Makishima said seriously.

"It's simple. I used some connections to get a certificate for a non-life-threatening acute infectious disease from a medical institution with shady practices. It's a disease that has been eradicated by genetic modification technology, and since I'm a 100% natural person, it's normal for me to have such a genetic defect."

"Make it even simpler."

"Is your brain all muscle? In short, contracting an ancient infectious disease isn't a serious matter, because modern medical technology can cure it with ease. What it exposes is the fact that my genes are defective and that I am a natural person, which is enough to cool down most girls' enthusiasm for me. After all, in this day and age, 'natural person' is somewhat of a derogatory term, and no one would consider incorporating genes with potential genetic disease risks into their family's genetic system."

"Damn it, a Natural being like me could crush three Coordinators and Cybernetic beings with a single slap." Makishima Gorilla jumped up and down upon hearing this.

“Maybe to outsiders you’re a muscle-specialized genetic modifier.” The believer smiled. “Anyway, that’s it. Don’t worry about me. Go home and spend Christmas with your family.”

"Well, now that you've said that, I can finally go back home and celebrate Christmas in peace. I'm not kidding, I really didn't want to be having a good holiday at home and then suddenly see a news report about a man in Zurich being beaten and dismembered by nearly a thousand people on Christmas Day, about a hundred of whom were men and the rest were women. The details are still under investigation." Makishima breathed a sigh of relief.

"Alright, I appreciate your kindness, now get lost." The believer waved goodbye.

"Wait, there's something else."

"How come I never noticed before that your muscular personality is like that of an old woman?" the believer said with a laugh.

“Let me finish. The news came from the Pan-European University community forum. Since you live alone, I think you should pay attention to it.” Makishima raised his hand to signal him to calm down. “If you don’t believe me, you can check it yourself. The post is very popular; it’s on the homepage.”

“It’s a waste of time to purify any information that has been contaminated by a bunch of people just joining in the fun. I’d rather hear your conclusion, Makishima.” Nobunaga shook her head.

"Okay, it's about the urban legend of the [Electronic Sea Abnormal Login Disappearance Incident] - the poster is a friend of his in real life. Although it's unclear whether it's the old trick of 'making friends out of thin air', there have been more than one similar reply in the comments below. It has already become a hot topic in the pan-European university student circle, the kind that doesn't see the light of day."

"Electronic Sea? Abnormal login? We usually use two IP addresses, one corresponding to the real coordinates and the other to the electronic sea anchor point. This is a well-established technique. Even if there is a login error, it could be due to incorrect parameter settings or a malfunction of the physical personal terminal. These are minor issues that can be ruled out at the technical level. Makishima, which one are you referring to?" Nobunaga raised her eyebrows slightly in confusion.

"The reason it became a topic of discussion is that several 'passerby A's, including the poster, claimed that their friends or relatives encountered a strange incident where they tried to log in from their real-world IP address but failed to reach the corresponding electronic anchor point. Furthermore, when their real-world relatives and friends finally arrived to check on the person's situation, they discovered that the person had disappeared."

"That sounds really... chilling, like something out of an antique."

"However, everything has a cause. The post has already attracted the attention of the police, and the mainstream opinion in the community is that there may be multiple criminal gangs that have interrupted the electronic sea link, causing people to faint and exposing their real coordinates. They have kidnapped the unconscious victims. Most of the missing persons are young men living alone. I think you fit this condition, Hern, so I feel I still have to remind you."

"The fact that the victim was a young man rather than a single woman of marriageable age... is truly baffling."

"Okay, I'll correct you. It's young people living alone, both men and women."

"Okay, I understand. I'll be careful."

"I really can't tell from your tone that you care..."

It took a little time to completely send the muscular old woman away. When Xin Nu returned to her second-floor apartment, took a comfortable bath, and then returned to her bedroom on the third floor wrapped in a plain, loose-fitting winter yukata, the hands of the mechanical wall clock had already silently skipped past 10 p.m.

He stared at the hands of the wall clock in silence for a moment, then stood on the spacious mahogany floor of the bedroom and began to relax his limbs. The heating in the bedroom was kept at a pleasant temperature, and Zurich's mild winter would not affect his sleep quality in the slightest.

On Christmas 2092, the believer Hearn chose to spend her time leisurely slacking off and taking naps.

His life before the age of eighteen was busy, restrictive, and exhausting. This was the first vacation he had experienced that he could completely control.

In the eyes of most of his peers, this guy, who lived alone in an expensive Gothic mansion on the north shore of Zurich, where land is incredibly valuable, at the beginning of his college life, should be an absolute luxury fanatic, a spendthrift spendthrift, a womanizer who throws parties at home with girls every week... and so on.

However, only close friends like Makishima knew that Nobunaga's lifestyle was actually quite simple and frugal, and perhaps it wouldn't be an exaggeration to describe it as self-disciplined.

Mr. Hearn didn't need intense pleasure, nor did he experience profound pain. He lived a peaceful, quiet, and self-disciplined life, just as he had hoped. He had no bad habits, didn't smoke, and drank only in moderation. He habitually went to bed at 11 p.m. and slept for more than eight hours every night. Before bed, he would take a relaxing bath, drink a glass of warm milk afterward, and then do 20-30 minutes of stretching exercises or yoga. After fully relaxing his body, he would immediately go to bed and log on to the electronic world before falling into a deep sleep, sleeping soundly until dawn. He never carried fatigue or stress to the next day and woke up every morning like a baby without any weariness. After his routine physical examination in the winter of his first year of university, the doctor said he was perfectly normal.

Mr. Hearn is also very satisfied with his current life.

At 12:23 PM on December 19, 2092, the believer Hearn, lost in thought about Christmas gifts, comfortably closed her eyes in her warm and cozy bed and, as always, began logging into the electronic sea world.

**!,!*...】

……

Chapter 64 The Silence of the Lambs (Part 1)

"Ring the bell once!"

Push the lever to start the piston and pump...

Ring the bell twice!

Press the button, the engine ignites, the turbine is set ablaze, life is injected...

Ring the bell three times!

Sing in unison, praising the god of machines!

Outside the window, a biting wind howled past, carrying fine snowflakes.

The classroom was warm as spring, with pale sunlight streaming in through the thick, multi-pane glass windows. Under the guidance of a middle-aged woman with brown hair, the children read textbooks with yellowed pages and worn ink stains on the tattered pages.

"Tokman."

“Ah… I’m here! Mrs. Vanessa!” The boy whose name was called seemed to have been lost in thought just a moment ago. Caught off guard, he stood up from his seat in a panic.

A soft chuckle came from all around.

The students sitting in this old classroom ranged in age from five to twelve. They all wore the same old but thick gray cotton-padded coats and hung them on the wall at the back of the classroom. In the corner, a brass radiator shaped like a morning glory diligently maintained the room temperature.

"Tokman, could you explain to everyone your understanding of the ancient maxim on page 231, line 7 of the textbook: 'Educating those without conviction is nothing more than turning them into clever demons.'"

Mrs. Vanessa, whose figure had become slightly plump due to overwork, did not delve into the poor acting skills that the thin student was trying to maintain. Knowing that he had not been paying attention in class, she still asked the question in a gentle tone.

"..." The boy whose name was called blushed. This little boy named Tokman had a head of mottled flaxen hair, one of the characteristics of residents living in the Arctic Circle where sunlight is scarce all year round. The lack of sunlight causes the pigment in their bodies to be unevenly distributed and rarely flows. After a brief and futile sound of pages turning, Tokman replied to the female teacher as loudly as possible in his hoarse voice that was about to go through puberty, hoping to cover up his embarrassment, "Report, Mrs. Vanessa, I... I don't know what 'devil' means!"

Instead of the expected bursts of laughter, almost half the children cast puzzled and curious glances at Mrs. Vanessa; it was indeed a new word to them.

The middle-aged female teacher frowned slightly. She cleared her throat, gestured for Tokman to sit down, and then called on a girl she thought was quite bright. "Jeanne, tell everyone what the [devil] is?"

This time, the girl chosen was quite tall among the children. In fact, female secondary sexual characteristics had already quietly appeared on her. She had bright blonde hair, fair skin, and a few freckles on either side of her high, well-defined nose, but they were insignificant because her sapphire-like eyes were enough to make others overlook those minor flaws. The girl's voice was naturally high-pitched, perhaps indicating a talent for high notes. She answered in that voice, "Reporting to Mrs. Vanessa, my father always told me—children who disobey their parents, are unsociable, stay out all night, lie habitually, and are full of bad intentions are devils..."

The atmosphere in the warm classroom began to liven up. Mrs. Vanessa pinched the bridge of her nose with a slight headache and waved for the girl to sit down.

“…And, Mrs. Vanessa, I think Pandora is a devil because she never plays with us,” Jeanne added stubbornly before sitting down.

“This is not a reason to slander your roommate without cause; it will hurt the person involved.”

“Mrs. Vanessa, my father says Mr. Fratin often searches for his daughter in the middle of the night,” a boy sitting in the corner said confidently, his nose very red.

"Yord, do you want to stand on the roof as punishment?" The female teacher glared at the corner, and the boy named Yod, whose nose was red, shrank under the table.

“Mrs. Vanessa, I saw Pandora stealing people’s wallets while she was selling flowers. She’s incredibly fast!” A short, red-haired girl near the front row said in a high-pitched voice.

"The time Mr. Holmer came to math class drunk, Pandora was slapped for daydreaming, but she didn't shed a single tear."

"And let's not forget that flowers are very precious things, and they can only be found in plantations overseen by the Mechanical Church. Uncle Fradin's income from maintaining the boilers simply cannot cover such expenses in the long run."

"So Holmer lost his job as a teacher a week ago, and Pandora still hasn't come to school!" Mrs. Vanessa suddenly raised her voice, her tone serious, and the chatter in the classroom abruptly stopped.

After the children quieted down, the female teacher's kind gaze swept across each of her students' faces, and then she said softly, "Children, I teach you knowledge not only to teach you to read and do arithmetic, but also to hope that you can maintain rational thinking and treat everyone around you with tolerance. Only in this way, only when we are all closely united, can we continue to survive on this frozen land..."

As the bells of the Highland Church rang out for the third time throughout Ys, pedestrians on the street looked up from the bottom of the Great Hollow. Through the loudspeakers deployed throughout the city, the prelude to the hymn, sung routinely by the choir led by the priest, began to play softly, the children's voices clear and bright.

Today is a day of prayer, and snowflakes are falling as usual in the pale sunlight.

A nimble figure darted swiftly through the crowd of onlookers like a fish—she wore a worn-out grey cloak and barely reached the waist of an adult male. The solemn hymns blaring from the loudspeaker did not hinder her progress; she even had the leisure to take a wallet from the pocket of a more respectable passerby without being noticed.

After a relatively smooth but strenuous journey through the crowd, the thief broke free and ran quickly towards a tower-like building on the side of the road. Behind the old, gray-white concrete building was a similarly rusty iron gate with a crude padlock. This didn't pose much of a problem for the thief; in fact, she easily opened it with two thin wires. After putting her tools into her cloth bag, she pushed open the iron gate, strode into the building, and climbed the spiral staircase.

This abandoned building was once carefully maintained as one of the eight main boiler towers in the Lower Town until it was completely abandoned after a horrific boiler explosion and subsequent rerouting of the heating pipes. In its prime, the boiler tower was nearly fifty meters high, just touching the bottom line of the Upper Town, but there was still a vertical drop of nearly five hundred meters from the large, hollow dome. This was not her destination.

Pushing open yet another rusty iron door, the wind howled into the abandoned boiler tower—its back was pressed against the inner wall of a large, hollow cavity. At the end of a man-made platform lay a deep cavern. The air from the depths of the cavern didn't carry the dusty, decaying smell, but rather a cold, refreshing quality—proof that an exit existed on the other side. The thief didn't linger long. She took a small lantern fueled by aviation kerosene from her handbag, lit it, and quickly stepped into the darkness.

The cave was empty except for the sound of the wind. The rugged and pale frozen rock walls were not suitable for leaning against. The thief's journey did not last long. After going deeper into the cave, about seventy meters in, a steel skylight appeared in front of him. It was clear that a regularly maintained industrial lifting platform was stationed on this level. The thief walked forward and pressed the up button on the already unlocked control panel. The platform slowly rose amidst the howling wind pouring into the skylight from above and the clanging of the mechanical gears.

It's unclear how much time passed, but after the noise from the machinery subsided and the howling snow replaced everything, the still pale but much more dazzling sunlight shone into the courtyard. The elevator reached its upper destination, a much larger artificial platform. On the rock walls on both sides, military green tarpaulins were fixed with rivets. A hundred meters away on the opposite side, through the open cracks in the rock wall, one could see a sight that many people in the lower city would never see in their lifetime: a vast snowfield and the frost storm that had not dissipated for the past hundred years, like a curtain surrounding the city of Yisu beneath the great void.

The thief stumbled and staggered across the hundred-meter distance. As the elevator reached the artificial platform carved out of a natural fissure above the vast void, the fading roar of an engine carried on the howling wind made her think of the worst-case scenario. Finally, she collapsed onto the cold ground a few meters from the edge of the platform leading to the outside world, watching the slightly oddly shaped, silver-white aircraft streak across the sky in a celebratory red, white, and blue contrail, eventually piercing the Sighing Wall of Snow and Dust like a sharp sword, disappearing from sight.

"XXXX!"

The thief rose again from the cold, makeshift track, muttering short curses. Her chest heaved slightly; the erratic breathing from her long run hadn't subsided. She threw her newsboy cap into the air in a fit of rage. Her light gray mid-length hair shone with an equally pale light in the stark sunlight—it came from the ends of those dull strands, the new growth displaying a thin, platinum-gold hue. She had a pair of enviable yet unsettling violet eyes, but now they only revealed resentment at being betrayed.

The gray newsboy cap flew off the edge of the platform in the swirling snow, only to eventually fall back to her feet, as if mocking her powerlessness and foolishness.

Even though she helped those people decipher the ancient document from the previous era, they never thought of taking her away.

She was cheated.

……

Chapter 65 The Silence of the Lambs (Part Two)

“Bra.vo!”

The view outside the cockpit suddenly opened up, and bright sunlight streamed into the cabin. The wall of sighs formed by the relentless blizzard was left far behind. Looking out the window, below the permafrost snow line, starting from the mountainside, lush greenery filled most of the field of vision. Melted snow water gathered at the foot of the mountains to form a vast lake, its water as clear and blue as a mirror, like the tears of a goddess fallen to earth. The lake's shores were surrounded by vast forests of subarctic pine trees. As the line of trees gradually transitioned from white to dark green, the view stretched further into the distance, where a winding river rushed through the forest, flowing south and merging into the even wider, fertile plain.

A blond young man wearing a thick winter cap and an old-fashioned film camera around his neck could no longer contain his excitement. He longed to embrace the two highly skilled pilots, but for the sake of the aircraft's smooth operation, he had to refrain. He stood up from the back seat of the cockpit, turned around, and crossed the narrow aisle to the passenger cabin. The rear half of the passenger cabin and the cargo hold were piled high with survival supplies and a small amount of printed materials, making the otherwise fairly well-decorated cabin appear somewhat rough.

Sitting on the soft deerskin sofa was a tall, middle-aged man. His warm coat did not make him look bulky at all. His silver-gray hair was neatly combed back and tied into a small braid at the back of his head. He stopped flipping through the heavy book that was spread out on his lap, raised his head, and cast an inquiring glance at the young man through a pair of slightly bookish silver-rimmed glasses.

"Professor Morgan! We did it! I mean... we made it through the Great Froststorm!"

“Igor, calm down. I think you’ve forgotten that the cabin also has windows.” The middle-aged man, whom the young man called Professor Morgan, pointed to the cabin window and smiled. “Sit down first.”

“I’m sorry, Professor Morgan, I’m a little too excited. You know, I’ve aspired to be a journalist since I was a child. I mean, I’m very, very…” The young man named Igor found a seat and sat down. Even so, he was still trembling slightly with excitement and was incoherent. “I am very grateful to you for approving my participation in this project, allowing me to have the honor of being a witness to this historic moment.”

“Igor, you have to believe that at this moment, all the crew members, including myself, feel the same way you do.” Professor Morgan put his hand on the young man’s shoulder, signaling him to calm down. “One hundred and ninety-eight years, eleven months and eleven days, we are the only group of humans in the past two hundred years of Issu to have successfully broken through the Froststorm and come to the outside world.”

“It’s been too long, Professor Morgan, really too long. I was born in the seventh generation after Ys entered the Frost Calendar. From the moment I opened my eyes, all I’ve ever seen is the steel city under the vast ice and snow. I never thought I would have the chance to leave there one day. Professor Morgan, look out the window. Do you see those forests, lakes, rivers, and the fertile fields in the distance? Those are things I’ve only heard about in the bedtime stories my grandmother told me, and my grandmother heard them from her grandmother’s bedtime stories. When I grew up, I thought for a long time that they were all lies, until I met you.”

“Igor, you should thank your grandmother and the others. I have always firmly believed that as long as the transmission of culture is not interrupted, civilization will always be rebuilt one day.” Professor Morgan looked at him and said, “So, put away your high spirits. We still have a heavy responsibility on our shoulders and a long way to go. Do you still remember what our mission is?”

“Yes, Professor Morgan, I understand, of course I understand. We remember everything you have taught us,” Ego replied. “We are messengers, and we are heading to the nearest human settlement on the southern plains to establish a bridge of communication.”

“Yes, I’m glad you still remember our goal.” Morgan nodded approvingly, tapping the heavy ancient book on his lap. “The journey is still long. Let’s review the research we’ve done over the past decade. Igor, tell me what day it is today?”

"On the eleventh day of Frost Moon, from the moment our glorious ancestors drove the first rivet into the bottom of the Great Hollow, we began to use the Frost Calendar to mark the years. That was the beginning of the Fourth Era, and this year is Frost Calendar 198."

“Very good, but let me correct you. Our ancestors are worthy of respect, but not of glory. In fact, they were just one of the twenty-seven human exile regimes that roamed Thranheim at that time.” Morgan picked up a rather old research notebook from the table beside him and handed it to Ego, indicating that he should use it for reference. “All my research originated from a batch of ancient fragments that ended up in my hands by chance. They were once under the strict guard of the Mechanicus of Ys and were written in ancient runes. No one in any of the existing educational facilities in Ys teaches this script, but I am sure that the priests within the Mechanicus can still understand them. This problem puzzled me for nearly eight years until I met her five years ago.”

“Pandora.” Igor thought of the little girl they left behind in Ys, the young girl who wore a tattered gray cloak and often had a smear of boiler ash on her nose. “Professor Morgan, I still don’t understand how such a young child could understand such obscure ancient script.”

“I don’t understand either. Of course, you can simply think of her as a favored child of the gods, whose language skills are a gift from heaven. But as a rigorous scholar, I am more inclined to another possibility—she is actually one of the children secretly trained within the Upper City’s Mechanicus Cult. She approached us only to infiltrate, with the aim of assisting the cult in fully acquiring the ancient aircraft knowledge we possess and eliminating us. This has already been confirmed. If I hadn’t made the last-minute decision to secretly change the takeoff platform, we would have been captured by the Iron Paladins who launched a surprise attack.”

“Yes…you’re right.” Igor recalled the harrowing experience when the aircraft successfully took off, the terrifying sight of those steel paladins in power armor ambushing and chasing after it from behind. The last bit of unease in his conscience vanished.

It was Pandora who betrayed them, not the other way around.

Looking back now, wasn't the little girl who was able to help them decipher the ancient cryptic texts written in runes at such a young age the most suspicious thing about her?

Although she looked as thin and small as the children in the lower town, wearing a gray cloth coat covered in patches, she was fundamentally out of place among them.

No one knew better than him, a child who grew up there, how terrible the environment of Isle's lower city was—all the city's light and heavy industries were located there, the fragile supply chain would break down from time to time, intermittent food shortages, bitter cold, industrial fumes, water pollution, and violent conflicts tormented the children of the lower city, leaving them emaciated, crippled, and even born with birth defects; natural births and healthy bodies were no longer a given. However, just as rats and cockroaches thrive in the dirtiest sewers, seven generations of such weathered children had stubbornly grown up in the lower city over the past two hundred years.

Professor Morgan was right. The little girl wasn't a resident of the Lower City at all. Although she looked like any other child who had rolled around in the dust, her eyes weren't cloudy; on the contrary, her vision was excellent. She could see things that Igor wouldn't be able to see for several minutes. Igor also knew that her gray hair was dyed that way with cheap dye. He had found some of her hair while cleaning the lab and noticed the strange color at the ends. He washed it with diluted bleach and obtained a thin white strand. Golden hair; once, at Mr. Morgan's behest, he secretly followed the girl home and saw through the window that she was being brutally beaten by a tall, middle-aged man for missing curfew—it was Mr. Fradin, one of the boiler maintenance workers for the heating system in the upper and lower city. The bald man was very heavy-handed, and Igor outside the window was terrified. But the next day, she came back as if nothing had happened to help them decipher the documents. She was the second most enthusiastic researcher in the group after Professor Morgan. She said that her biggest dream in life was to leave this place and go to a warm place where it was spring all year round.

Igor believed in her from the bottom of his heart at that time.

Until now...

"Igor, Igor!" someone called out in front of him.

"Excuse me, Professor, I've been thinking about something from the past." The young man quickly bowed his head and apologized, snapping out of his reverie.

“Concentration is a luxury that is a waste of time for scholars,” Professor Morgan said, forgiving his lapse in concentration and making a gentle joke. “Where were we?”

"Our ancestors were one of the twenty-seven exiled regimes."

“Yes, exile. I think you understand the meaning behind that word.” Morgan nodded, his tone becoming solemn and serious. “With Pandora’s ‘help,’ we spent five years deciphering those forbidden texts that were once strictly guarded by the Mechanicus. As the research deepened, some buried past events and chilling truths gradually emerged before our eyes—a human empire that once existed in the Third Era, spanning the entire continent of Thranheim, named Yale. It was an era of unparalleled glory. In the middle of the Third Era, the ancients could cross oceans in giant ships, soar through the skies in airships, and instantly process hundreds of millions of high-speed machines placed in every city to maintain the normal operation of urban order. Firearms and cannons drove all dark creatures that threatened the lives of their fellow humans into the depths of the earth, ensuring the peace and purity of their surface home.”

“It sounds like a myth.” Igor tried hard to piece together such a magnificent picture in his mind, but found it was no use. He gave up and sighed with heartfelt regret.

“Yes, just like a myth,” Morgan said, gazing out the window with a deep look in his eyes, “and then one day, the myth ended.”

"That was the end of the Third Age, a day known as the 'Day of Weeping Gods,' a term repeatedly emphasized in ancient texts. Ancient records state that on that day, the entire sky of Thranheim was dyed a blood-red color; the stars vanished, and the cries of the gods echoed from the blood-red sky, like the grief of a mother who had lost her beloved child—from that day on, our race was cursed. Newborns were reduced to a pitiful state, the mortality rate soared to unprecedented heights, and the plague, which had been completely eradicated by a mature immune system, returned, propelling the progress of civilization and scientific development. The physical laws, established by countless predecessors, collapsed in a single day; common sense was overturned; fire no longer brought light and warmth, water no longer..." The fertile land teemed with life, the flowing air transformed into a distorting etheric storm, and the land dragons upon which civilization stood rose abruptly. When panic exceeded its breaking point and erupted completely, chaos ensued. After the giants of order fell, the dark creatures, banished underground for centuries, returned to the surface, sounding the horns of revenge against the waning humanity… Plague, war, famine, death—the once invincible Yale Empire collapsed completely in less than a year. Twenty-seven brigades, led by the bloodline of the Yale royal family, embarked on a journey of exile, leaving their homes, fleeing the ravages of war, and seeking new settlements—and our ancestors were merely the remnants of that long-vanished great empire.

"And the aircraft we're in is also a product of technology from that era?" Igor asked instinctively, "so much so that even the lofty Mechanicus wanted to obtain it."

“Yes,” Morgan nodded. “These are the blueprints I obtained when I was excavating the underground ruins of Ys years ago. Ironically, the builders of those ruins were not humans, but grey elves, a group of dark creatures driven underground to eke out a living during the Third Age. By the time our ancestors came here to establish a stronghold, they had already disappeared. As for these aircraft blueprints, I personally suspect that they were left behind by a human team that went deep underground to fight those dark creatures during the Third Age. In fact, I found them on the remains of an ancient human.”

“Professor, but there’s still something I don’t understand.” Igor recalled the process of flying over the storm. “Perhaps I’m not using the right word, but I have great confidence in the crew’s skills, but I still feel that our flight over the Great Froststorm went too… smoothly.”

“Yes, very smoothly, which just proves my previous academic hypothesis, Ego,” Morgan replied. “Our success proves that the Great Froststorm that has besieged us for nearly two hundred years is not actually a pure blizzard, or rather, its intensity as a blizzard is not very high. Its essence is actually the wind of ether.”

“Etheric winds? My God! Professor, won’t our bodies soon become deformed?” Ego jumped up from his seat in fright when he heard a familiar term.

"Keep calm, Ego. If we could resonate with the etheric elements like the humans of the Third Age, then your concerns would be valid. However, thankfully and unfortunately, we who were born in the Fourth Age have lost the constitution to resonate with the elements, so the winds of the ether will not cause us to mutate. This is the only compensation we have received for no longer being favored by magic."

“That scared me to death… I mean, it’s really a shame, I’ve always loved the wizards and sorcerers that my grandmother told me in her bedtime stories.”

“That’s about enough,” Morgan said, closing the old document on his lap, rising from the suede sofa, and gesturing to Igor. “Don’t forget our goal. Our destination is the Southern Plains marked on the map of the Upper Ages, to find the trail of the Twenty-Fourth Exile Brigade, who originally planned to settle there. Igor, pray for us and for our compatriots from two hundred years ago. If they had ultimately succeeded in settling down, they would be better off than we are now…”

A crew member peeked out from the passageway leading to the cockpit, looking strange and puzzled.

“Mr. Morgan, I think there are some things that you must see for yourself.”