A new control center was being built in the heart of the Tarash Plains. Directly connected to the underground Ophelia Matrix, it would combine a newly designed information transmission system with the advanced computational arrays left over from the Gandor Era, enough to handle enormous computational tasks—sending and receiving signals from vast numbers of Rune Stone nodes across the Azure Network, monitoring the planet's atmospheric energy circulation in real time, and processing the immense data exchange between the Mother Star Barrier and the Neural Network.
Yet the control center in the Tarash Plains was not the Mother Star Barrier's only "brain." Two backup control centers were also about to begin construction in the Thorin Plains and the Elven Royal Court. Each would possess complete functionality and coordinate with the others through the Neural Network, whose distributed structure ensured that every communication channel maintained several redundant links at once. Even in the worst-case scenario, if one or even two control centers were severely damaged and completely taken offline, the Mother Star Barrier would not cease functioning.
Ophelia stood quietly on a platform beside the control center, her eyes watching the tense, bustling construction site before her. Yet the parallel processing threads in her mind were focused on far more than the scene in front of her.
Deep beneath the center of the Azure Well impact crater, below the ancient, energy-rich spring source, a vertical shaft plunged straight into the earth. Passing through layers of armor plating, rock, soil, and enchanted barriers, the shaft ended at a large experimental facility.
This enormous laboratory was wrapped in several spherical shell-like barriers. Thick layers of soil and rock kept it far from the sentient beings on the surface. Inside, massive facilities resembling obsidian obelisks stood in orderly rows around a circular platform at the