From Hogwarts to Sturhaven

Of course, in order to divert the Technology Alliance's defensive forces from the ground, Thor Normanger deployed the Ghost Wolf tribe's most powerful weapon: a colossal floating tank, said to be able to pierce a hole in the sky. That thing had been parked in the Ghost Wolf tribe's secret base for who knows how long. While inspecting its condition, Thor also discovered that some idiot had erected a monument to the behemoth, worshipping it as a god.

The day of execution finally arrived. The Ghost Wolf tribe's support team drove their behemoth floating tanks rampaging through the city, attracting everyone's attention. Meanwhile, Thor Normang and Silver Hand stormed into the core of Silver Mountain from underground, shattering their defenses and confronting the guardians of the Oracle Core.

The Tech Alliance uses an exceptionally terrifying automated robot, known as the Overlord, to guard the core of the Oracle. When in motion, it resembles an upright coffin, capable of unleashing countless missiles and lasers. Even its melee combat is formidable; its battle axe and chainsaw emit a noise that can calm any living being. It is even equipped with an anti-gravity module, making it virtually omnipotent, capable of flying and burrowing underground.

Thor Normanger's dream ended during the battle against the Overlord. Before waking up, she watched as her body was torn apart by the Overlord robot like a rag doll, and heard Silver Hand's heart-wrenching screams.

Now Thor Norman understood everything. She had just had a damned dream because of the Nymeria liquid, but everything in the dream felt so real, as if she had been reborn. The only regret was that she didn't know if Silver Hand had ultimately defeated the Overlord, or if he had used the Oracle Core from the Silver Mountain to save his friends.

Chapter 947 Silver Mountain

With the leader of the Tech Alliance gone, the Edge Walkers are now heading to Silver Mountain to finish the tasks assigned to them by their boss.

Recently, the Kelids in Falling Star City have been causing unrest, frequently creating disturbances throughout the city and sending barbarians armed with all sorts of weapons to attack the Technology Alliance's defenses and outposts. Now that the Technology Alliance is without a leader, its response has become even more rigid and uncertain.

Meanwhile, on the Technology Alliance side, Zenebeth, who obtained Ozmin-Zadu's head, first convened an emergency colonel committee, announcing that he had killed Ozmin-Zadu because the man had been controlled by an unknown mechanical construct from the Silver Mountains.

The Tech Alliance was never an organization started by virtuous men and women. It had long been resistant to betrayal, collusion, and coups d'état. It's hard to say how many people actually believed Zenebeth's claim that Ozmin Zadu had long since become a puppet of some mechanical creation.

Zenebeth knew her words would be unwelcome, but she didn't really care. She had originally been elected head of the Technology Alliance by the Colonel's Committee, only stepping down to deputy after Ozmin's coup. Now, with Ozmin's head on the conference room table, it could be considered a way of restoring order.

Moreover, Ozmin's head itself carried an undeniable deterrent effect. How could those colonels who wanted to cause trouble dare to act rashly without understanding what Zenebeth was relying on?

The Tech Alliance has been accustomed to bullying and oppressing people in Falling Star City, and they are quite adept at it. It is naturally impossible for them to launch a revolution out of a shared hatred of the enemy.

Therefore, at this emergency meeting of the colonel's committee, few dared to openly refute Zenebeth's claims.

Seeing an opportunity, the Winter Witch from Ellison quickly devised a strategy to quell the chaos in Falling Star City. Once this was accomplished, there would be no obstacle to Zenebeth taking over the Tech Alliance.

Zenebes's strategy wasn't complicated; it was still the same old tactic of using people as expendable resources. The most important thing right now was to keep Black King Kovacs firmly in his grasp. With the banner of the King of Numelia in hand, at least half of the Kelids in the city would be unwilling to cause trouble.

Now, fires are raging all over Falling Star City, and the Technology Alliance's task force is running around like firefighters, not actually killing many enemies, but causing considerable losses to the Technology Alliance's various industries in the city.

Zenebeth had no intention of protecting all of the Technological Alliance's businesses in the city, because those businesses, though called Technological Alliance property, were more like the personal property of the colonels. Now that the Kelids had raised the slogan of revolution, what colonel could expect to have his businesses unscathed?

Therefore, while the colonels appeared to be patrolling the city to fight the Kelid uprising, they were actually using the guise of patrolling to protect their own property for both official and private purposes.

When Ozmin was still alive, he used his personal prestige to establish several key locations, allowing the colonels to oversee important nodes of the science alliance while also looking after their own businesses.

Now that Zenebeth has taken over, things are not so easy to talk to. All the methods Ozmin previously used to control the Gearman Guards have fallen into her hands. The key is no longer the colonels' individual businesses, but the workshops under the Technology Alliance.

The most crucial one was the alchemy laboratory that produced Nymeria liquid. This concerned the Technological Alliance's standing in Falling Star City and even Nymeria, and the colonels could not afford to hesitate.

Therefore, Zenebeth used this mission as bait, offering the deputy of the Tech Alliance as payment, not worried that the colonels would not take it seriously.

Although the Technological Alliance was internally divided, these colonels were all arcane spellcasters, each with their own cunning schemes. They naturally knew that controlling the production of Nymeria Liquid was equivalent to controlling Black Lord Kovacs's vault. Which colonel with a scheming mind wouldn't fall for it?

Thus, at the Colonel's Committee meeting where Zenebeth returned to the stage, everyone recognized her as the Winter Witch as their leader.

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The events within Falling Star City had little to do with the edge travelers who were heading to Silver Mountain.

When they raided Ozmin, the leader of the Tech Alliance, Ivy guessed that he would use teleportation magic to escape at the crucial moment. Therefore, she reminded Silverhand to activate the spellcasting module installed in his body and use a [Dimensional Anchor] to block Ozmin's escape route.

Now that we have accurate intelligence about the interior of Silver Mountain, we can naturally follow Ozmin Zadu's example and use teleportation to enter the interior of Silver Mountain.

The spellcaster in the four-person team tried several spells following Ozmin's notes, but failed to get it right and couldn't get everyone into the Silver Mountain. In the end, they had no choice but to rely on other means of travel.

The Oracle spaceship is almost half-buried in the ground, with only the part that is exposed above the surface being as big as a mountain. Its internal structure is intricate and designed by the engineers of Android, so who knows how many tens of thousands of rooms and cabins it actually has?

Add to that the spindle-shaped habitat capsules that can accommodate small towns, and exploring from scratch would certainly be even more difficult.

Moreover, although the spaceship largely retained its original shape after it crashed that day, the hatch that actually led to the outside world was buried underground. For thousands of years, the only exit was a crack located at an altitude of about 1,000 meters.

Whether it was the Tech Alliance or Guiyi, the subordinate of the Steel God, they all entered and exited through this rift; there were no other routes.

Four outlaws rode the Cyber ​​Phantom Steed summoned by Cassandra to the Silver Mountains. The closer they got, the more enormous and terrifying this extraterrestrial visitor seemed. For the four who had spent their lives in Night City, they could better appreciate what an engineering marvel this spaceship truly was.

At noon that day, the edge travelers arrived at the foot of the mountain. The sun, located on the south side, cast golden light, making the exposed metal hull of the Oracle ship even more dazzling, adding streaks of rosy light and rainbows.

Upon seeing this sight, Cassandra and Lucy were both shocked and amazed, but also felt a chill. This was because the two female colleagues knew Doom well; they knew their boss held a divine position as a sun god in this world. They were fine with not being able to fly this enormous spaceship, but if they could, they would definitely take it back to present it as a tribute.

Upon arriving at the foot of Mount Silver, the four dismounted their motorcycles and used three more [Flight Spells] to ascend into the wind alongside Lucy, the cyber succubus who had spread her wings, in search of the crack in Ozmin's Notebook.

Mount Silver is actually a spaceship from outer space. The gleaming metallic mountain is in fact the hull of the spaceship, which is why it has remained pristine even after thousands of years on the land of Numelia. However, this pristine appearance is not very friendly to those who come to climb it; without the aid of flight magic, it would take an immense amount of effort to reach the top.

The cracks described in Ozmin's notes were very detailed. The four of them indeed found a crack in the hull at the top of a thousand-meter mountain. Following the hollow crack behind it, they finally reached the second-level engineering deck described in the notes.

Although it's called the second-level engineering deck, this level is quite large, comparable in size to an entire floor of a skyscraper in Night City. The Oracle's second-level engineering deck serves as a hangar, maintenance facilities, and a backup power source. Besides other miscellaneous technological marvels, it was also the first area explored by the Technological Alliance, whose troops stationed in Silver Mountain are based on this engineering deck.

Once inside the spaceship, they realized that whether it was the work of Guiyi, who claimed to be the God of Steel, or a problem with the spaceship's own performance, the entire Silver Mountain was shrouded in a magical aura that resisted dimensional travel. As a result, the teleportation spells of the four Edge Travelers could not break through the Silver Mountain's blockade and send them directly inside.

It seems that Ozmin Zadu's escape using teleportation magic in his desperate situation was due to the unification of minds, which allowed his boss to give him a backdoor.

Silver Mountain is jutting out into the wasteland of Numeria. The cabin deck is at a very steep angle to the horizon, making it extremely difficult to stand firmly in the spaceship if the Numeria horizon is used as a frame of reference.

But since the Oracle was the flagship of the colony research ships, how could the crew and supplies inside be allowed to drift aimlessly like rootless duckweed? When designing the Oracle, the Android company used a gravity well system, which allowed the entire ship to generate a large gravity on its own and fix the lower part of space in the direction facing the ship's deck.

Therefore, as soon as the four Edge Walkers stepped into the spaceship's cabin, they straightened up as if springs had been installed, and were enveloped in the same gravitational field as the other objects in the spaceship.

As soon as the Edge Walkers entered the spaceship, they knew that the building materials for the headquarters of the Technological Alliance had been taken from this Silver Mountain.

The reason is that the interior of this cabin is exactly the same as the walls and doors of the Technology Alliance, all made of blue copper, which is a mixture of refined gold and steel.

After passing the first compartment piled with metal crates, the Edge Walkers used the orange pass they had obtained from Ozmin Zadu to open the airtight door and hurried to the next compartment.

At first glance, the first cabin since entering Silver Mountain was filled with rare and unusual items that were not commonly seen in Glalieon. But what was so interesting about those sticky jelly-like instant nutritional pastes and fire extinguishers to the Edge Walkers? Aren't they just the same things that can be found everywhere in the vending machines on the streets of Night City?

After passing through the airtight door, the Edge Walkers entered the next cabin, which was dimly lit with only a little light, and appeared completely dark from any angle.

As soon as they entered, Silver Hand cursed, "Damn it... what kind of workshop did we walk into? There's a strong smell of machine oil!"

"You're a robot now, can't you stand the smell of engine oil?" V looked around, brandishing his mantis knife as a flashlight, and teased Silver Hand.

“V, I’ll get you sooner or later…” Silver Hand pushed up his sunglasses and reached towards the airtight door. “There should be a control panel in places like this, right? Let me turn on the lights…”

As they were speaking, a buzzing sound was heard, and the dark cabin was suddenly illuminated.

With this sudden light, the edge travelers could see clearly that the dark mass was not a shadow, but rather black machine oil seeping from the room walls and the buzzing machinery. In addition, there was the smell of ozone left from high-voltage electricity breaking down the air, as well as the musty smell in the air.

The edge travelers looked around and then prepared to find the next room, following the instructions in the notebook.

But after taking only a couple of steps, they saw a bright ball of light pierce through the darkness.

The ball of light, accompanied by the heavy scraping of metal and the sound of tracks, vaguely resembled a giant black scorpion-like robot.

The robot swung its overhead monitor from side to side, finally allowing the Edge Walkers a clearer view. They recognized similar creatures from the wastelands of Nymeria; the Ghost Wolf tribe, with the help of many barbarians, had once destroyed one of these things with their bare hands. However, upon closer inspection, they realized that this robot seemed to be equipped with far more sophisticated and complex weapons.

"Bang bang bang!"

Cassandra fired rapidly, releasing three scarlet magic bullets before the other Edge Walkers could react. The bullets struck the giant scorpion-like robot, bounced off its black grease-covered surface, and ricocheted between the ceiling and the walls before finally finding a weak joint and disappearing inside.

The giant robot, which had been attacked, did not immediately retaliate, but instead put all the various weapons it was equipped with into a warm-up phase.

The rotary machine gun's motor hummed, its multiple barrels spinning like a gust of wind, scattering countless amounts of black grease. Its scorpion-like serrated jaws opened and closed, posing a significant threat. On the shoulders of the monitor, numerous honeycomb-like protrusions emerged, seemingly missile launchers poised to fire. A dark tail stood erect, its tip emitting a crimson flash and bursting with intense heat, igniting the black grease covering the terrifying robot's tail.

Despite its threatening gesture, the giant robot did not launch a direct attack. Instead, a noisy audio stream drifted from its synthesizer.

V listened to something that sounded like an old-fashioned car radio, crackling and buzzing several times before finally understanding that it was a common language question: "Why are you here?"

"Holy crap, this thing can talk?" Silverhand tapped Malorian's gun butt with his head. "Is it some kind of roving AI again?"

Who knew that the terrifying robot, which was maintaining a state of full weapon warm-up, would instead engage in a question-and-answer session with Silver Hand.

"I am not a wandering AI, I am the child of Guiyi, the God of Steel... Have you come here to join Guiyi's embrace?"

Silver Hand chuckled at the monotonous mechanical voice and prepared to chat with the enemy for a bit longer.

Before she could finish speaking, Lucy interrupted, "We can't talk anymore! It's collecting our data!"

“Almost all AI is used for data analysis at the very beginning of its creation. Those automated programs that can iterate on their own are also trained on a large amount of data. There are definitely surveillance cameras in this spaceship, and the other robots are also in the same network as Guiyi. Every time we fight or talk, we are exposing our own data to it! Think about the targeted advertisements in Night City!”

As Lucy interrupted, Cassandra, a woman of few words and ruthless nature, continued firing without stopping, and V activated his cybernetic body to launch an attack.

Before Lucy could finish her long speech, the terrifying robot on the other side showed no intention of retaliating. It simply kept all its weapons in a preheated state, dodging and weaving on the slippery floor, as if waiting for Lucy to finish speaking.

Doesn't this confirm Lucy's "data collection" excuse? The Edgewalkers immediately stopped communicating and launched a full-scale attack.

The terrifying robot merely climbed and hid in the room, asking several more questions. Only after confirming that the Edgewalkers were not prepared to answer did it unleash its long-prepared weapons into full-scale fire mode, entering combat mode with the Edgewalkers.

Chapter 948 Second-Level Engineering Deck

Taking down the automated robots known as Annihilators didn't take the Edgewalkers much time; they had already learned how to deal with these robots from the tactics of the Ghost Wolf tribe's barbarians.

When facing multiple enemies, the most effort is spent on eliminating the largest enemy with the most metal armor.

Therefore, Johnny Silverhand, who was actually a half-baked bard, became the primary target of the destroyer.

While he hopped around drawing fire, the other three Edgewalkers launched a fierce attack on the Destroyer's giant mechanical tentacles.

Once the mechanical structure is damaged, the destroyer can only rely on its jet-powered 3D maneuvering system for flight. Simply put, this jet-powered 3D maneuvering system is a rocket-propelled jet. To lift the destroyer's massive metal body into the air, it requires a large amount of energy and demands precise flight attitude control.

Therefore, after the destroyer's maneuverability was disabled, V easily used the Sinwidstein-enhanced double jump to climb onto the destroyer's back and destroyed its main power supply circuit with the Mantis Blade.

“These robots don’t seem to have much resistance to heat damage.” V wiped the two mantis blades, which were covered in machine oil, cleaned them, and then flicked them back into his arm.

The wound left by the thermal mantis knife was still smoking, and the red-hot metal plate was cooling rapidly, no longer emitting light.

Through the "X"-shaped wound, V peered inside curiously: "It's quite complicated..."

"How is it different from the automated robot architecture of Night City?" Lucy unwrapped a lollipop, tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, and quickly typed on the holographic keyboard in the network access pod.

Half of the cabin was covered in black engine oil, and various strange objects were piled up in the corner. There were also torn metal plates and holes on the northeast side of the cabin, obviously collateral damage from a plane crash thousands of years ago.