From Hogwarts to Sturhaven

“Uh…” Lucy’s question made V glance at the damaged parts of the destroyer again. “Completely different… I hardly saw any similar parts… There are quite a few luminous crystals on the circuit board… They emit light but don’t generate heat, so they might emit radiation…”

“Those crystals should be capacitors, or something that does a similar function…” Lucy’s nimble tongue moved the lollipop in her mouth to a different position. “The French-Japanese dictionary that Lord Notticula gave me doesn’t have a pronunciation… so you can just call it a capacitor.”

“Okay… so should I use a similar term to replace it?” V reached up and fiddled with the destroyer’s armor. “The joints and transmission system look hydraulically driven… the liquid inside is this dark stuff in the room… does this spaceship use a similar liquid for all its mechanical devices?”

V tapped his head: "My scanner's built-in program can't analyze the composition of these oils, but it can roughly guess their uses—lubricant, coolant, and engine oil; it seems to be something with a wide range of applications."

“In Ozmin’s notes, this viscous liquid is called Numerian Liquid by the Technological Alliance. If ingested through injection or drinking, it can cause all sorts of strange consequences and is addictive. This is how the Black Lord Kovacs of the Kelids came to be controlled by the Technological Alliance.” Cassandra opened Ozmin’s notebook. His name was written in fairly neat font on the thick leather cover. Contrary to his rugged appearance, Ozmin actually had a scholarly air about him.

"So this is some kind of robot drug? It makes me want to try it..." Johnny extended his chrome-plated mechanical arm, scooped up a little bit from the wound on the Annihilator that was dripping black slime, and then licked it with his tongue.

"It tastes weird..." Johnny smacked his lips with his silver hand, commenting with the experience of a rock star on drugs, "Is it really addictive? The crude fentanyl that the Tiger Claws made fifty years ago was stronger than this stuff..."

“You’re a fucking robot now, Johnny!” V cursed, grimacing. “Don’t be so disgusting!”

"It's precisely because I'm a robot now that I want to try it! Robots eat engine oil, what's so strange about that?" Silver Hand retorted, wiping his hands on his jeans.

“If you consider yourself a robot, then this thing lying on the ground is your kind… Conversely, this is cannibalism, which is equivalent to you eating people!” V grabbed the destroyer’s tail and twisted it twice, finally sawing off the weapon at the tip of the tail with the thermal mantis knife.

During previous battles, the destroyers used this weapon system to launch plasma fluid, leaving several large, still-heating craters in the floor.

“Machines aren’t human!” Silver Hand rolled his eyes. “This body’s sensations are all electrical signals, and the Relic chip doesn’t have corresponding receptor signal receivers… If I could experience pleasure from smoking and drinking, I wouldn’t be trying robot oil! To be honest, what I can feel now is not as good as when I was in your head.”

“I remember you have sensory enhancement devices in this body…” Lucy stopped typing on the holographic keyboard, unfolded her mechanical arm, and a cable extended from it, connecting to a large device on the west side of the room.

It was a giant glass tube placed in front of a glass window. In addition to a panel full of buttons on the base of the glass tube, two very thick metal antennas extended from the back of the base, extending from the interface in the wall to the outside of the glass window and into the darkness.

“But I have no brain, and the Relic chip has no decoder. Almost all my senses are based on text descriptions… It’s incredibly miserable.” Silverhand shifted his stance and scratched his stubble impatiently. “Aren’t you going to move on? Hurry up and finish this so your Lord Doom can revive me, and then I can go and announce to Arasaka that Johnny Silverhand is back.”

“This is a gravity fusion generator. There’s a similar power generation device underground at the Technology Alliance headquarters, but it uses geothermal energy.” Cassandra turned another page of her notes. “Turning on the generator will restore power to the Level 2 engineering deck. If we’re lucky, we can use the Oracle’s own transportation system to quickly reach our target location.”

"A transportation system?" V fiddled with the plasma cannon she had taken from the tail of the destroyer. As a fringe traveler with strong hands-on skills, she was very interested in modifying a personal plasma cannon for herself, but only if she could find a suitable workshop. "There's a transportation system in the spaceship?"

“A maglev monorail,” Cassandra explained. “The Oracle is too big; we can’t move it fast on foot alone, and we can’t use teleportation magic here, so we need a suitable means of transportation.”

As Lucy spoke, the huge glass tube connected by cables suddenly emitted a pale purple light, and a dim star appeared in the center of the glass tube. The energy it released was converted into electrical energy by the machine itself and supplied to the entire engineering deck.

The dark space behind the glass window was also illuminated by a dim purple light. The Edge Walkers saw the damaged inner walls of the spaceship, where condensation and constantly seeping oil mixed together, leaving winding trails on the inner walls.

The bluish-gray metal structure was covered with gaps and burrs, and there were thick tracks that stretched into the deeper darkness below.

“The second-level engineering deck is a movable compartment within the Oracle ship,” Lucy said, pointing to the tracks outside the glass window. “Through those tracks, the second-level engineering deck will move to the vicinity of compartments that need repair—mainly the hangar and the ship's buffer walls, and so on. The Androids will disassemble the components that need repair nearby, then replace them. If they can be repaired on-site, they will be done immediately; if they cannot be repaired on-site, they will be moved to other locations via the second-level engineering deck for further processing.”

"Level 1 Engineering Deck?" Cassandra pressed her hand against the glass window, creating a glowing star on the other side, then watched it fall into the abyss, illuminating the surrounding environment.

The dark void was filled with all sorts of debris, like a large landfill with countless mountains of garbage. This garbage was mainly broken mechanical artifacts. The Oracle had no crew members left alive when it crashed in Glalieon. However, among the fragments of mechanical structures and broken circuit boards, one or two sets of tattered protective suits could still be found.

“Maybe, who knows.” Lucy shrugged and walked away from the window. “The logbook for this compartment doesn’t mention the specific name of the facility. If we can find the main control computer on the second-level engineering deck, maybe I can tell you what it’s called.”

The gate on the south side of the room was opened by the silver hand, and the edge travelers cautiously peeked out, surveying the now-lit corridor to rule out any potential dangers.

Apart from some dust, there was almost no clutter in the corridor; the most noticeable thing was the dried bloodstains on the floor.

“Someone was attacked here.” V pointed to the bloodstains that stretched into the left-hand door at the front of the corridor. “They’re still relatively fresh. They’re probably from the Tech Alliance’s forces in Silver Mountain.”

“Let’s go check it out,” Cassandra said. “If anyone is alive, perhaps we can ask them what’s going on inside the Silver Mountain.”

The Edge Walkers passed by several cabins on both sides of the corridor, which, according to Lucy's interpretation, were a precision machining workshop, two storage rooms, a garage, and a security room, while the room where the bloodstains disappeared was the canteen.

Although it's called a canteen, it's more like a small self-service restaurant, connected to a tiny kitchen. Overturned tables and chairs are everywhere, turning the long, narrow restaurant into an obstacle course.

Upon opening the door, the Edgewalkers saw four giants eyeing each other menacingly. Each of them occupied a corner of the dining hall, their bodies covered in wounds, and the bloodstains outside the door were likely left by them.

Cassandra recognized the giants as Ash Giants enslaved by the Technological Alliance, serving as porters and miners.

The four giants all looked extremely hungry and were planning to use one of their companions for dinner. Although they were guarding the Anfa people's canteen, their low intelligence prevented them from understanding how to use the synthetic foods packaged in bags.

These Ash Giants looked like deformed freaks, hairless, obese and sluggish, their skin covered with pustules and tumors, and their wrists and ankles shackled by the Technological Alliance.

Upon seeing four diminutive humans enter through the door, they immediately set aside their differences and roared in the broken Common tongue, "We're not going back to the Alliance! We're going to eat you!"

However, the Ash Giants failed to complete their charge, collapsing to the ground halfway through.

The equipment left behind by the Remote Control Technology Alliance posed no problem for Lucy, an elite hacker. The alliance's self-developed equipment had not considered intrusion protection at all; the real technical challenge was transmitting control signals into the equipment.

The electronic shackles used to make the Ash Titans obey clearly had signal receiving devices, so Lucy simply turned the holographic button on the network access chamber, and the four Titans immediately tripped and fell face-first into the dirt.

“That was efficient…” Johnny put down his silver hand. “You remind me of the legendary hacker, Spider Murphy. Ever heard of her? She and Bartmouth reportedly even published a book that was very popular among hackers at the time.”

“Were you forty when you died? I don’t think so.” V pressed Silver Hand’s shoulder and walked past him. “So stop reminiscing about your youth like some old geezer, okay?”

"Fuck you, V." Silver Hand shut his mouth.

Cassandra fired a shot at a fallen metal table in the dining hall, the magic bullet leaving a large hole in the surface. Then she pressed her revolver against the head of the nearest ash giant and asked, "What's going on here? Where are the advance teams from the Tech Alliance?"

The Ash Giant blinked its comical little eyes and stared at Cassandra with a puzzled look.

“They don’t seem to be very intelligent, speak slowly,” Lucy said, spitting the lollipop stick out of her mouth.

Cassandra slowed her speech and repeated her question. This time the Ash Giants understood, but they still refused to answer: "Hungry! We won't work for the Alliance! Unless you feed us!"

Cassandra remembered the synthetic food they had seen in the airlock at the ship's entrance, but instead of revealing its location, she flicked the hammer of [Doomsday].

The threat of weapons was clearly effective, and the Ash Giants spilled out everything they knew, one after another.

These giants were indeed laborers of the Tech Alliance, originally working alongside members of the Tech Alliance and other robots on the exploration of Silver Mountain.

But a day earlier, the robots in the advance team of the Technology Alliance suddenly went berserk. Many robots rushed out of the various doorways inside Silver Mountain and launched an attack on the Technology Alliance.

The mechanical attacks inflicted heavy losses on the Tech Alliance forces, forcing them to retreat outside Silver Mountain.

However, the only passage was blocked by the destroyers, and the remaining Alliance members had to temporarily hide in various compartments on the second-level engineering deck, waiting for rescue.

Besides the four Ash Giants in front of them, there was another squad of survivors, whom the Ash Giants called their backup food, hiding in another place. The leader of the squad was a colonel left behind by the Tech Alliance in Silver Mountain.

Chapter 949 Notticula's Desire

Leading four Ash Giants out of the mess hall, the Edgewalkers followed the corridor to a key location on the Level 2 Engineering Deck—the Engineering Monorail Station.

This place doesn't look much different from the Night City subway station, except that the surrounding walls, which are also mottled and broken, are made of metal.

Many benches were smashed to pieces, serving as one of the few decorative elements in the room. The train carriages waiting to depart weren't laid out horizontally on the platform, but rather ran north-south, vertically inserted into the lonely tracks.

The carriage's windows were all shattered, and it lacked a locomotive, resembling more of a square metal cage. The interior space was surprisingly large, easily accommodating even four obese giants. Furthermore, the tracks connecting the carriages were astonishing; aside from the section in the station, which was also made of blue copper, a deep purple gravitational beam extended beyond the second-level engineering deck, capable of pulling the carriages across the dark abyss below.

The second-level engineering deck has no fixed location within the Oracle spacecraft. Therefore, for the monorail here to integrate with the spacecraft's internal transportation system, it must be connected to the interfaces of each compartment via a traction beam, meaning there will always be a section that spans the void.

Power had been restored to the secondary engineering deck, and the train's panel clearly displayed a series of destinations, but most of them were unavailable, with only Habitat 1 and Security Department options lit up.

In addition, there were many fresh signs of battle in the engineering station, indicating that the advance team of the Tech Alliance had suffered a major blow here, and the bodies of the dead were thrown into the abyss below the second-level engineering deck.

The four Ash Giants whispered among themselves for a while before confirming that the survivors of the Technological Alliance had gone into the northern corridor when they were attacked.

Having received the answer, the Edgewalkers had nothing to say. Lucy pressed the holographic button on the network access pod, forcing the four Titans to walk ahead.

After passing through two airlocks spraying disinfectant gas, the Edge Walkers entered the next room. The walls were covered with monitor screens, blue structural diagrams, and yellowed papers. Near the door, on the other side, there was a pile of straw and scraps of cloth, roughly pieced together to form a few mattresses.

"Hey! Who are you?" There were three agents from the Technology Alliance in the room, two men and one woman, all human. Their protective suits were mostly torn, and they didn't look too good.

“Perhaps it’s a rescue team sent by the Alliance…” said female agent Izoga.

"Too late!" the last agent complained. "But it's good you came... Which colonel sent you? Colonel Zadu?"

The four Edgewalkers were equipped with a considerable amount of technology, and Silverhand even had a signature mechanical arm. In addition, Lucy could control the shackles on the four Ash Giants through her network access pod. Therefore, the three agents hiding here quickly believed that these people had come to rescue them.

"Attention! You bunch of idiots! The Alliance's discipline is fucking awful!" Silverhand, carrying his Malorian, stepped forward with a swagger and immediately began to reprimand, "I'm Colonel Silverhand, here on a secret mission. Rescuing you was just a side job. Who's the highest-ranking officer among you? Get him out here and report!"

The three surviving agents looked at each other in bewilderment, because there was no such silver-armed colonel on the Technology Alliance's colonel committee.

An agent put away his laser pistol and gave a standard military salute from the Tech Alliance.

Silver Hand raised his chrome-plated iron arm and gave it a perfunctory slap.

The saluting agent seemed to take Silver Hand's gesture as a sign of superior authority and didn't feel particularly insulted. Only after receiving Silver Hand's permission did he speak and ask, "Report, we do have a commander who survived the previous turmoil... However, it seems there wasn't a Colonel Silver Hand in the Alliance before we came to Silver Mountain to set up camp."

“That’s because things aren’t peaceful within the Alliance and in Falling Star City.” V, who had shared a body with Silverhand for a long time, immediately stepped in to smooth things over. “The Kelids staged an uprising in Falling Star City, which not only ruined several of the Alliance’s businesses but also killed two colonels. Colonel Silverhand filled the void left by the former colonel’s shadow.”

This explanation, though full of loopholes to those in the know, was unknown to the advance team of Baiyin Mountain, which had been cut off from the outside world for some time.

They immediately believed the bluffers and sent one of them to the gate on the west side of the control room.

Soon, a woman with orange-brown hair emerged from the gate. She introduced herself, "Nice to meet you, Colonel Silverhand. I am Colonel Sera Distorlis of the Silver Mountain advance team, and also the leader of these survivors. What exactly is happening outside?"

Colonel Celia Distorlis was also dressed as a mage from the Tech Alliance. Apart from her light robes, the most eye-catching thing about her was her technological equipment: an armored vest worn over her clothes, with a third mechanical arm extending from her shoulder to help her hold up the bizarrely large ray gun.

In addition, near her orange-brown hair bun, there was a spinning Ain Stone.

The Aion Stone is a very special magical item. It looks like a stone with a peculiar shape and color, but once it establishes a connection with an intelligent creature with a brain, the Aion Stone will float and rotate above the creature's head.

The Pioneers' Guild believes that the Ainstone was created by the ancient Azrant, while the Sersilons used everything they could find in Azrant doctrine to advance its development. However, apart from the Sersilons, no other civilization on the continent has achieved a similar level of mastery over the Ainstone.

Most users simply found the Aion Stones by chance and let them float around their heads.

The Aion Stone atop Colonel Sera Distorlis's head should be earthy red, or perhaps dirty rose-colored, and it enhances the wearer's insight to better prepare for impending attacks (Gain +1 Insight bonus to Defense Level).

Colonel Sera Distorlis was undoubtedly more perceptive than her surviving subordinates. She could roughly guess that these Edgewalkers who had entered Silver Mountain and stood before her were not members of the Technological Alliance, but she was already exhausted from the previous battles and had no intention of waiting any longer in Silver Mountain. As long as she could escape from here, anything was fine.

Silver Hand did not answer Colonel Sera Distorlis's question, but V stepped forward and subtly glanced at the survivors around him.

Sera Distorlis hesitated for a few seconds, but still invited the Edge Walkers to her room on the west side of the main control room.

Sera's room resembled an observation deck or vantage point, featuring a huge floor-to-ceiling window with strange energy ripples emanating from its surface. The tables and chairs were piled up on the other side, forming a makeshift workspace. Judging from the tools and parts on the table, Sera was attempting to repair a radio device, presumably to contact Colonel Ozmin, who had dispatched her there.

"Ozmin-Zadu is dead. The current leader of the alliance is the Winter Witch, Zenebeth." V immediately unleashed a powerful move, seizing the initiative—a common tactic used by the company in negotiations. However, for Arasaka's counterintelligence department, the usual tactic was to tell the negotiating partner how the previous person in charge of the project died and what methods they used to kill him.

Sera shuddered, her expression shifting as she surveyed the Edge Walkers in the room, calculating her chances of winning if a battle broke out.