Gawain gradually fell into thought as he listened to Megall III describe the ruins.
The Ancient Facility buried deep underground, its architectural style clearly different from that of the Gondor Empire, its incomprehensible Ancient Civilization technology, and the "sample" related to a god... all these features gave him an inexplicable sense of familiarity.
Then, the clue Megall revealed confirmed that sense of "familiarity."
"There is one more thing," said a deep voice from within the Starlight Aggregate. "The ruins we discovered beneath Orandell seem stylistically connected to the ruins The End of All Things discovered in the Sorin Region—they look like two facilities built by the same civilization under the influence of different historical periods or regional cultures. But the ruins are simply too ancient, and we lacked crucial clues. Even after many years, we were unable to determine their exact connection, much less decipher the ancient technology within them..."
Gawain suddenly drew a quiet breath. "It's the Counter Tide Legacy..."
Megall had clearly never heard the term before and asked instinctively, "Your Majesty? What did you say?"
"The ruins you discovered, as well as the Underground Palace occupied by The End of All Things in the Sorin Region, should both have originated from an Ancient Civilization called 'Counter Tide.' It was completely destroyed in a war against the dragons, and that empire had countless ties to the gods."
He thought of the Ultimate Book Beltira had given him. That Ultimate Book was a legacy of the Counter Tide Empire; its purpose was to forge keys and connect to a satellite database in planetary orbit. Furthermore, according to clues Beltira had provided, there had once been rooms deep within the Sorin Underground Palace, in an area that had since collapsed. Those rooms had been eroded and contaminated by some indescribable