Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 292 - 291: Theft

"Wanderers from Outer Realm," their essence is unknown, their purpose is unknown, and their life form is unknown. They are an extremely mysterious and unknown life form, speculated to possess special abilities such as traversing worlds, resurrection, and inhabiting vessels, but this cannot be confirmed for now.

Based on the intelligence we have, Wanderers from Outer Realm exist as multiple entities, but at any given time, only one will enter a certain reality.

The purpose and behavior patterns of Wanderers from Outer Realm are difficult to comprehend. Sometimes they save worlds, and other times they do the exact opposite, but in almost all cases, they demonstrate immense power and growth potential—they are almost destined to impact a world’s developmental trajectory, or even completely alter its course of development, though their reasons for doing so remain elusive.

The mental structure of Wanderers from Outer Realm is unknown; we cannot determine if they experience emotions like joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness as humans do, nor do we know if they feel emotional fluctuations while traversing worlds, saving or destroying them. However, from existing intelligence, it’s inferred they possess the ability to "simulate" these emotional responses and thereby completely conceal themselves among humans.

Given their abilities, and since they can lurk within human vessels, it is nearly impossible for anyone facing a Wanderer from the Outer Realm to see through their disguise just by physical or psychological analysis...

We have currently confirmed that the newly resurrected Duke Gawain Cecil is a "Wanderer from Outer Realm" occupying a human vessel. However, given the unique nature of these wanderers, it is temporarily forbidden for anyone to rashly make contact with him, although prolonged observation is advised...

It is suggested that church members adopt the following measures to ensure their safety in situations where contact with the target is unavoidable...

Gawain felt that he seldom found himself in such a confused state since his traversal— the last time he was this baffled was when he crawled out of a coffin, standing beside him a great N+1th granddaughter who had just smacked him with a stick...

"What a mess..." Gawain looked at the intelligence publicly released in the mental network, turning it over in his mind for quite a while before finally matching it with the mixed-cut MV he had left for the evil cult followers, "Is this the brain’s way of filling in gaps when faced with a different worldview..."

But shortly after his brief astonishment, he had to admit that this development was reasonable.

In this world, he was the only one who had undergone the brainwashing of an information explosion. When a traverser from planet Earth sees such bizarre scenes, they would think of Hollywood, scenic stages, and prank programs, but what would a local person with a normal worldview think when they see such things?

Of course, they would interpret it according to their worldview—what’s more, the Eternal Sleepers are a bunch of evil cult followers, and is there any creature in the world more adept at deceiving themselves with mental fill-ins than evil cult followers?

Well, perhaps, like that recently formed 25th Production and Construction Brigade or something...

"This works too... the effect is actually better than initially expected," Gawain closed this part of the information with mixed feelings, but felt some relief in his heart, "This way, there shouldn’t be any worry about the Eternal Sleepers for a short time."

He then expanded his mind and began to search for information more broadly within the mental network.

Unlike the last time he entered this world, this time the Eternal Sleepers had evidently activated the dream realm only after full preparation, and this place was no longer a "trial run" space but had reached a higher degree of completeness. With just a superficial search of the mental network, Gawain noticed this.

A massive amount of information circulated within the mental network, with immense and astonishing data exchanges taking place in places invisible to the naked eye, with many unciphered things being calculated and evolved within this network, constantly having new nodes joining or old ones being deregistered and leaving the network.

If the dream realm he previously saw was merely an internally operating "beta version" running only a few test codes, then this network had now entered its official usage phase—the Eternal Sleepers had begun using it to handle real instances.

Of course, this "magic network" based on spiritual spells is entirely different from the World Wide Web that Gawain knew, with the circulating data being new entities in terms of both structure and principle. However, no matter what, the fact remains that this network has already started functioning.

It’s just that Gawain couldn’t discern much from those vast data exchanges—despite having access permissions and the data being uncoded, their sheer volume and disorder served as the best encryption, much like how humans can’t directly interpret computer bitmaps from a massive pile of 0s and 1s. Gawain also couldn’t ascertain what was going on behind those massive calculations—probably only the initiators of those computations could "see" the results.

But that’s alright; Gawain himself didn’t plan to unravel all the secrets of the Eternal Sleepers using this method. He was simply seeking access points to the data and understanding the patterns of these data exchanges during the process.

Could it be... something could be done?

After a bit of preparation, he transferred himself from the surface of the network to the data exchange layer and then immersed himself completely.

His senses turned topsy-turvy for a moment but were reassembled in the next instant. Once the scene before his eyes calmed slightly, he found that his surroundings had completely changed.

He stood on a flat, vast, yet slightly rippling surface of water, which was boundlessly expansive. Above the water, there was a deep blue sky, devoid of any stellar light source but still quite bright.

He looked down and saw that the surface of the water he was standing on was like a layer of transparent glass. Under that water surface, there was a world of swirling sands, with countless minute things surging, reorganizing, perishing, and regenerating. It seemed to be an endless storm, ready to tear to pieces anyone who accidentally stumbled into it.

"...So that’s the underlying data environment of the mind network... it’s a mess..."

Gawain mumbled to himself with a frown, then lifted his head, focusing his gaze on the boundless surface of the water.

What he saw before him wasn’t a real scene (of course, nothing in this mental world was real), but rather a "virtual environment" constructed in his mind using the knowledge he had devoured. This environment was similar to the imaginary space created when that Eternal Sleepers brought him into the dreams—of course, it was still empty here because it had just been created by Gawain.

As he roamed around in the Eternal Sleepers’ mind network, Gawain didn’t come away empty-handed; he had roughly figured out how to use the "data interface" here. He began attempting to do something with this data interface, rather than merely using it as a browser to search for information.

After establishing this space, Gawain had confirmed one thing:

The computing power allocation mechanism of this mind network indeed had breaches.

It seemed like the Eternal Sleepers never considered the possibility of someone stealing computing power from their backend. Their computing power allocation had almost no security measures, the entire system only had a general division of privileges, yet this privilege system couldn’t limit the amount of "borrowed" computing power from each node...

Was this overlooked during design, or did the Eternal Sleepers believe that the network’s computing power was always sufficient, so there was no need for such restrictions?

Gawain wasn’t sure, but he could understand—after all, this was something just recently born. Like the earliest computer systems of humans on planet Earth, crudeness and vulnerabilities were unavoidable, but even with all those imperfections, the greatness of these early products couldn’t be denied by anyone.

Gawain began refining this virtual space bit by bit, establishing connections with the data ports of the mind network, using the knowledge from the Eternal Sleepers he had devoured while drawing inspiration from the thoughts of a time traveler from planet Earth.

This meant he could not only utilize the technology of the Eternal Sleepers to construct an additional "space" in the "crevices" of the eternal dream-realm but also encrypt this space, making it undetectable to the Eternal Sleepers.

Gawain sat down on the flat "water surface," reminiscing about the knowledge he had devoured while trying to implement it. Meanwhile, the sky-water-colored space around him was quietly changing.

The expansive sky gradually manifested clouds, which then turned into stars. Rain fell from the horizon and transformed into a gentle breeze before reaching the water surface. The water surface, which isolated the data layer of the mind network, was also changing, sometimes rippling, sometimes revealing land, and sometimes freezing into solid ice...

But these were all surface changes; the real, profound changes couldn’t be captured visually—Gawain was setting up encryption between this space and the mind network, ensuring that the portion of resources he stealthily acquired wouldn’t be discovered by those evil cult followers.

"Disperse the data flow across the entire mind network, and allocate in real-time according to the real nodes executing the connectivity in the network...

"Establish a constantly refreshing digital key, encrypt and disguise all data exchanged with the mind network...

"Map erroneous addresses, using different node characteristics to establish connections each time...

"Set up multi-layered jumps, with connections to the mind network executing through multiple relay points—those relay points are the Node Crystals in the dream city—they essentially are open data interfaces...

"Prepare several fake characteristic codes, hang them at the data border, and if they’re discovered, throw them out as bait.

"This should deceive those evil cult followers and their eighteen generations up and down..."

Gawain conceived all feasible encryption schemes in his mind and applied them bit by bit to this newly established space—at this time, he couldn’t help but especially appreciate the convenience of magic, especially the convenience of the "dream spells" developed by the Eternal Sleepers from primitive dream theurgies. It allowed him to quickly build what he wanted without having to sit in front of an input device, tediously typing out code.

Of course, his efficiency wasn’t only due to the convenience of magic. Another reason was that the mind network was truly a handy tool—the connectivity on a mental level made the efficiency of "man-machine interaction" reach an unthinkable level. Essentially, as long as the network could react, and as long as Gawain’s brain could react, whatever he conceived would be realized immediately after conception.

Gradually, this encrypted space, hidden deep within the Eternal Sleepers’ mind network and belonging exclusively to Gawain, took shape.