16. Eagle Hunt (III)

Chapter 724: 16. Eagle Hunt (III)

"Anazion?"

No response.

Restarting communications process A-23-09. Restart failed. Process unresponsive. Preliminary assessment: communications interruption. Invoking Communications Protocol No. 29 to restart process. Restart failed. Process unresponsive.

Restart.

No response.

Continue restarting. Maintain the call until a response is received.

Belisarius Cawl gently set down the tool in his hand and temporarily stepped away from the workbench before him.

Darkness surrounded him. Most forms were shrouded within it, making him seem as though he stood in a void, while the workbench glowing with hazy light was a boundary stone marking his existence.

Unfortunately, its purpose ended there, for Cawl had already turned and left.

The light vanished, leaving only darkness here. Ancient dust and the hollow wail of mournful winds passed through, sweeping over mysterious machines born from someone's ingenuity and bloodshed.

They waited, called out, yearned to be awakened once more—we want to be used again—they whispered to him.

An enticing proposition, but Cawl could not agree.

Ultimately, they were not his designs. He did not understand them, nor could he easily come to understand them. He would never awaken any one of them under such circumstances. If he truly did so, the consequences might prove catastrophic.

The person who had entrusted this laboratory and these machines to him had placed supreme trust in him. Cawl would not betray that trust, even though every instinct he possessed as a Tech-Priest roared at him to do otherwise.

What made men nobler than beasts was precisely their ability to overcome instinct.

Cawl quickened his pace and left the darkness behind.

His engine core was roaring—the boiling emotion was not unfamiliar to him. Long before he had obtained that fragment, he had already tasted hatred in full detail.

But the situation then was likely entirely different