Chapter 460

Chapter 460: Secret Construction

A presence that was drawing closer suddenly cut off their current conversation.

Agatha pulled back the fingers that were touching the mirror at once: “Someone is coming. It is an Attendant.”

“I understand. I will not scare him,” the voice in the mirror spoke directly in her mind. “I am right beside you. When you look carefully, you will find me.”

Agatha nodded, but just before the “her” in the mirror left, she suddenly thought of something and spoke without thinking: “Are you… cold over there?”

“…Not anymore.”

The voice faded from her mind, and the feeling of being under a gaze also slowly vanished. The other Agatha reflected in the mirror returned to a normal mirror world – her eyes were covered with black cloth, she wore a priestess’s robe, and she stood quietly in front of the mirror.

Agatha hesitated for a moment. She reached toward the mirror again and touched only cold glass. It almost made her wonder if everything that had just happened was only an illusion.

Almost at the same time, she heard footsteps reach the door, followed by a soft knocking sound: “Archbishop, are you inside?”

The old subordinates in the Guardians still habitually called her “Gatekeeper”, while the clerical priests in the Cathedral had already started to address her as “Archbishop”.

Agatha smoothed her expression and turned around calmly: “I am here. Come in.”

The door opened. A high-ranking Attendant of the Cathedral in a gray short robe appeared in the doorway and bowed to Agatha: “Archbishop, an urgent message has come from City Hall. Please go to South Harbor at once – General Tyrian is already waiting for you there.”

“City Hall? Asking me to go to South Harbor?” Agatha frowned without thinking. The news felt unusual. “Did they say what it is about?”

“No. They only said it is an emergency and not fit to spread,” the high-ranking Attendant answered, sounding a little hesitant. “But… General Tyrian sent a word. He said, ‘The Master of Fire might be interested.’”

Agatha’s expression changed slightly at once.

“I understand. Prepare a car. I will leave immediately.”

Before long, Agatha was sitting in a steam car heading for South Harbor. In light of the message Tyrian had sent, she did not bring any attendants. She went alone.

On the way to the Harbor district, her mind was full of one guess after another.

What had happened that could make that “General Tyrian” react like this? In the last great battle, South Harbor had been occupied for a time by replica monsters. The cleanup was still going on even now… Had they found something in all that rubble? Was it a blasphemous sacred relic left behind by the Annihilators, or some suspicious “sample” that remained after the replica monsters faded away?

Either way, it still should not have made General Tyrian react like this.

With these messy thoughts that almost made her irritable, Agatha quickly passed through the streets that now looked empty and cold under martial law. She crossed checkpoint after checkpoint and finally reached the southern Harbor district, which was still under full lockdown.

soldiers of the city-state Guard Corps were holding every intersection. Heavily armed Church Guardians patrolled among the badly damaged buildings, inspecting them and marking areas of corruption that still needed to be dealt with. priests were collecting samples in those corrupted zones. Now and then she even saw Academy students in heavy protective gear moving between the ruins under the lead of their mentors – they were civil engineering students, here today to check the condition of key Harbor facilities and prepare for later repairs.

The car stopped in an open space at the edge of the cordoned-off area. Two soldiers led Agatha on foot through one busy “work site” after another, heading toward a rather remote direction inside the Harbor district.

In the end, they stopped in front of a large building that looked from the outside like a warehouse.

“We can only bring you this far,” one of the soldiers who had led the way turned back and said to Agatha with a hint of apology. “We do not know the details of what is going on below – the General will explain it to you.”

Below?

Agatha sharply caught that choice of word, but she did not ask anything. She only nodded lightly to the two soldiers in thanks and then walked toward the warehouse, which looked as if it had been sealed for a long time and still carried traces of war on its walls.

Guarding the warehouse door was not the city-state Guard Corps, but a squad of Undying sailors.

In Agatha’s eyes, living people were warm, clear figures that gave off a faint glow. The Undying were hollow, pale bodies. A smoke that made one think of ashes rose within their blurred outlines. After she realized that this whole warehouse was guarded only by Undying, Agatha became even more certain that something very unusual was going on here.

Compared with the city-state Guard Corps, General Tyrian clearly trusted his Undying legion more.

“Lady,” one of the Undying guarding the door came over. His upper body and lower body were already separated. Nearly a quarter of his torso was missing, and only a few ragged strips of cloth drifted between the two halves to hold them together. Over his upper body he wore a new coat that showed he was a Frostholm soldier, and on the sleeve of the coat he had an armband of the Queen’s Guard Corps. This Undying sailor stood in front of Agatha and, despite his terrible appearance, gave a perfectly standard military salute: “Once you go in, someone will take you to the shaft lift. The General is already waiting for you in the underground facility.”

Agatha nodded. By now she was certain that unless she reached the place herself, no one along the way would tell her what lay underground.

Inside the warehouse, she saw another squad of Undying sailors who had come to meet her. Under their guidance, she found a shaft lift hidden in a corner of the warehouse, as if it had been “dug out” from behind a pile of fake wall panels.

She stepped into the shaft lift, and the iron cage began to descend. It went down for several minutes before finally reaching an underground facility buried deep in the earth, a place that had never appeared in any official record.

She stepped out of the cage. In the dim, hazy sight of her special senses, she “saw” a wide hall. Patches of thick sludge left behind after the replica incursion faded still lay all around. Undying sailors were cleaning those things away, and a tall figure was standing at the far end of the hall, guarding a large door.

It was General Tyrian, the new governor of the city-state of Frostholm.

Agatha walked toward that figure.

“Oh, Lady Agatha, you are finally here,” Tyrian greeted her first. “I thought you would come the way the rumors say, riding a gust of wind straight from the upper central district…”

“I am used to traveling with the Ashen Wind, but I am not going to run here across half the city,” Agatha said casually. Then she raised her head and turned her sight toward the large door behind Tyrian. “What is going on here? Why is there such a facility under South Harbor?”

“You are surprised. Everyone is surprised,” Tyrian said, shaking his head. “This facility does not exist in any official record. If we had not been clearing the ruins here, we would never have found it. Guess what we discovered in this hidden large facility?”

“Do not keep me in suspense, General,” Agatha sighed. At the place where her eyes lay beneath the black cloth, a wisp of ghostly green flame flashed. “There are no outsiders here.”

Tyrian smiled, then his face turned serious at last. He stepped slightly to the side: “See for yourself. It is just behind this door.”

Agatha turned her “gaze” on the door.

She could still make out traces of blood on it, as well as bullet holes and dents left by fighting. Clearly, during the defense of Frostholm, there had also been a battle deep inside this unknown facility.

Now, both the intruders and the guardians had vanished from this battlefield.

She reached out, pressed her hand to the door, and pushed. The locking mechanism had already been broken. The heavy alloy doors slid open with a loud creaking sound. A larger space lit by gas lamps and electric lights appeared in Agatha’s senses.

The salty, fishy smell of sea water rushed into her nose.

She stood at the entrance of the hall, staring in shock at the thing in her sight – a huge machine shaped like an oval egg, fixed between sturdy beams overhead.

Below the slanted side of the machine, at the end of a long chute, lay the source of the sea smell. It was clearly a waterway that led straight to the open ocean.

She stood there for a long time in astonished silence before finally breaking it: “This is…”

“It is a Deep Dive device, Lady,” Tyrian let out a long breath. His tone carried a strange mix of emotions. “It was built from the blueprint of the last generation of Deep Dive devices and uses a lot of newer technology. It is much more advanced than the one we used back in the day.”

Her thoughts were confirmed. Agatha could not help but draw in a breath. Then she suddenly turned her head: “Who built this?”

“Maybe Governor Winston, or maybe you also have to add several former governors,” Tyrian said slowly. “We have found no detailed construction and approval records, so we cannot be sure who gave the first order to build it. From the few documents we did find, this facility was still running in secret at least up until two months ago.”