Listening to the description of the ruins narrated by Bishop Megal III, Gawain gradually fell into contemplation.

Ancient facilities buried deep underground, distinctly different from the architectural style of the Gondor Empire, and incomprehensible ancient technology, storing "samples" related to deities... all these features gave him a strange feeling of familiarity.

The hints revealed by Megal immediately confirmed this sense of familiarity for him.

"There’s another point," a deep voice came from within the starlight polymer, "The ruins we discovered beneath Orlandeau seem to have some stylistic connection with those found by the Oblivion Association in the Sorin Region—they appear to be two facilities built by the same civilization influenced by either different historical periods or different regional cultures. But as the ruins are too ancient and lack critical clues, we haven’t been able to determine their exact connection for many years, let alone decipher the ancient technology within the ruins..."

Gawain suddenly took a gentle breath: "It’s the heritage of the Inversion Tide..."

Megal had clearly never heard of this term and instinctively asked: "Your Majesty? What did you say?"

"The ruins you discovered, and the underground palace in the Sorin Region found by the Oblivion Association, should all originate from an ancient civilization called the ’Inversion Tide.’ It was completely destroyed in the war with the dragons, and this empire had countless ties with the deities."

He thought of the "Ultimate Tome" handed to him by Beltira, which was a heritage from the Inversion Tide Empire. Its function was to forge keys, communicating with satellite databases on planetary orbits. Additionally, according to the clues provided by Beltira, there were rooms subjected to unspeakable forces of erosion and pollution, clearly related to the deities, in the depths of the collapsed area of the Sorin Underground Palace.

And now, new clues suggest that the underground at the old capital of the Typhon Empire, occupied by the Eternal Sleepers, is highly likely to be the second existing Inversion Tide ruins!

Megal obviously hadn’t expected Gawain to unravel the mystery of the mysterious ruins so easily—the issue that had puzzled the Eternal Sleepers for centuries seemed like common knowledge to Gawain, but he quickly remembered the true identity behind this seeming "human emperor," and his shock gradually faded.

Gawain did not continue discussing the Inversion Tide with Megal—after all, what he knew was limited. He looked at Megal, steering the topic back: "You also have some understanding of the underground palace occupied by the Oblivion Association?"

Megal immediately answered: "We have some cooperation with them, sharing some not-so-crucial information."

"Hmm," Gawain nodded, "So, back to the ancient ruins you discovered—what happened after that? At the time, the Typhon Royal Family, ruling at Orlandeau, was kept in the dark?"

"The ruins were buried extremely deep, and the entrances to the surface were nearly all consumed by earth and stones. Finding the entrance was pure luck for us—upon realizing it was an excellent hideout, we altered and concealed the entrance while transferring personnel and supplies into it, making it even harder to find. Over the years, we carefully hid ourselves and the underground facilities.

"The Eternal Sleepers is a group extremely adept at hiding themselves, and as you imagined, over hundreds of years... the Augustus Clan had no idea we were hiding right under their noses, nor did they know what kind of... secret was buried beneath their city.

"We are the shadows and symbionts under the city of Orlandeau. We rooted and developed together with that city, infiltrated many of its facilities, and in these ancient halls and corridors, we slowly recovered—the Order that had once been severely damaged gradually regained its strength. Initially, we only gathered in the relatively safe shallow layers of the ruins, sufficient for all our members at the time, but as the Order slowly recovered, we decided to advance to deeper areas.

"We at least wanted to understand the appearance of our ’abode.’

"We soon explored the safe dome area and the almost empty middle connecting corridors, eventually discovering... something still functioning in the deepest part of the ruins."

Gawain’s expression immediately turned serious: "Something still functioning? What is it?"

"Allow me to show you the scene I witnessed back then—"

Megal spoke in a slow, low voice, and his amorphous body of starlight gradually dispersed, transforming into a mist. Through the faint haze, Gawain saw a holographic image (a Magic Illusion) quickly extract and replay from Megal’s memory.

He saw a massive circular hall, surrounded by a vast ring-like structure formed of metal and crystals, with many black obelisk-like devices tilted and stationed inside the hall, their tips pointing toward the hall’s center. In the middle of the hall, he saw a brilliant object akin to an ocean of light, surging amidst a circle of ancient devices. It appeared like a viscous liquid, yet as it rose, it displayed a hazy, ethereal radiance, with something inside resembling starlight continually moving and flickering.

Gawain immediately frowned: "What is this thing?"

Megal’s voice came from the surrounding dispersed mist: "A powerful energy containment device, composed of astonishing magnetic fields, circulating arcane energy, and a series of element stabilizers, of such an enormous scale that the entire hall and some corridors around it are its ’shell.’"

Then the former Pope paused and added: "It took us nearly a century to figure out these rough ’functional components.’

"...At the center of the containment field, are the remnants of the God of Dream Realms?" Gawain frowned, "Is this a prison device?"

"We once thought so... and that was one of our biggest mistakes," Bishop Megal III said in a deep voice, "After discovering this area, we couldn’t understand its purpose. We only thought it was the ruin’s energy source, like a magic well in Mage towers. We carefully studied it, spending a century understanding its basic functions, yet found its technology couldn’t be replicated or utilized—of course, we didn’t dare to arbitrarily turn it off, as no one knew the consequences of doing so."

After many more years, we finally found some ways to control the energy flow, and during an attempt to adjust energy flow, a very small fissure opened in the center part of the containment field—what had been sealed inside finally leaked a hint of its essence, and I was present at the scene.

"In that hint of aura, I sensed some terrifying and familiar ’voices’—"

Megal’s voice suddenly had a trace of tremor and hesitation, as if that terrible feeling still haunted his now transformed body and mind. But after a moment of composure, he steadied his tone and continued:

"I sensed the breath of the gods. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

"An astonishing truth shocked all of us—the thing ’imprisoned’ within the confinement field is not any other entity, but the god we once worshipped and revered, or rather, a part of the god...

"It is a fragment of the God of Dream Realms. We do not know where it came from, nor what kind of power could slice a fragment off a god’s ’body’, nor how many years it has been imprisoned in that device. We only know one thing—that terrifying, brink-of-insanity god, destined to engulf the whole world, can indeed be harmed and confined.

"After the Ancestral Peak incident, everyone was enveloped in a long-lasting despair, for the power of gods was so mighty that mortals could not possibly contend with it. At the same time, this power was on an unstoppable, gradually maddening path, like a doomsday countdown, irrevocable. Yet the device we discovered underground gave us a ray of hope—it was a god’s fragment! A fragment confined by the device, one that could be studied!

"After overcoming great fear, we... began to study that thing.

"The powerful force of the confinement field can shield against the mental pollution of the gods, making our research feasible, but it was also the properties of the confinement field that led us to make terrifying, erroneous judgments—we mistakenly thought the entire underground facility was a prison, mistaken that the confinement device was meant to trap gods..."

Just as Gawain was about to ask, Amber couldn’t help but break the silence: "Isn’t it?"

"Of course not, that thing... is actually an altar.

"An altar meant to welcome the god, converse with the god, provide a temporary vessel for the god—the so-called vessel is the confinement field in the hall.

"The god’s will ’descends’ in the form of ’fragments’ at the center of that confinement field, like an out-of-body eye. The God of Dream Realms observes the world through that eye, while we, under its watchful gaze, have been busy for hundreds of years."

Amber gasped: "...Oh my..."

Even Gawain felt a chill creep up his spine. He could entirely imagine what a terrifying truth it was, to the extent that Megal III’s voice trembled when mentioning related matters.

"Everything you did was watched by the God of Dream Realms?" His tone was particularly serious, his brows furrowing as he looked at the now-reformed Megal.

"Ironically fortunate—the ’Eye of the God’ within the device is not in real-time connection with the god’s true body," Megal said with a complex tone. "The ’Eye of the God’ in the device functions more like a segregated avatar, collecting information in the real world. Once it reaches a certain level, the core polarity of the confinement device would reverse, releasing the fragment back to the Divine Realm. Only then would the God of Dream Realms learn what the ’eye’ had seen. But the confinement device we found might be too ancient, or perhaps some functions got stuck due to damage—it never released the ’Eye of the God’ from the energy field center.

"In a sense, the malfunctioning device is practically a real prison... yet unlike a true prison, the ’prisoner’ inside is theoretically the owner of the prison, and the prison door... could open at any time due to system self-repair.

"You can imagine how dreadful this is for us."

"I can imagine," Gawain nodded gently, "but I’m curious, how did you discover this truth? Was there an instruction manual placed beside the ancient device?"

Megal was silent for a moment, the starlight polymer slowly pulsing: "...Your Majesty, do you know how I ended up like this?"

Gawain raised an eyebrow: "Wasn’t it to extend your life, by transforming your life form?"

"At that time, I had already used the technology provided by the Oblivion Association to extend my life, and I could have lived for several more centuries," Megal’s voice carried a sigh. "What turned me into this was an experimental accident.

"Due to an error in manipulating the energy flow, I was struck by a ray emitted from the confinement field. The ray destroyed my body, but the powerful energy of the confinement field trapped my soul. I got caught in those streaming energies and... slightly touched the ’Eye of the God’ bound at the core."

Gawain understood: "The knowledge of the gods has a coercive infusion trait—you ’saw’ the truth of the device from the fragment of the God of Dream Realms?"

"Yes," Megal III confirmed Gawain’s guess. "The moment I touched the ’Eye of the God’, I learned about the truth of the device, and the dire consequences if the ’Eye of the God’ were released back to the Divine Realm—all our secrets would be laid bare before the god, and the god would never permit such a rebellious act.

"Luckily, I ’survived’ that terrible accident because my brethren from the evil-cult operated promptly. My soul was released before being completely obliterated, but it also underwent severe distortion and mutation—from that day on, I became like this.

"But compared to the truth of the Eye of the God, the mutation of the soul is negligible. We must resolve the hidden threat of the Eye of the God, either by utterly destroying it or permanently severing its connection with the Divine Realm, ensuring it could never return to the God of Dream Realms."