Chapter 73: Leviathan
The group arrived at the top floor of Olympia. The battle against the Thornbirds was nearing its end.
As Asker had predicted, intelligent races like Dark Elves were different from mindless Thornbirds.
Even with countless companions slain, these Thornbirds still fiercely pounced on the phantoms, lacking the basic thinking to distinguish between the main body and the phantoms.
The phantom mechanism of Undead Phantom Sword perfectly countered the Thornbirds’ “Vengeance” ability, which they relied on for survival.
With the pressure from the air greatly reduced, some Arcane Mages also joined the battle.
For example, using air pressure to force the Thornbirds to land, or using gravity to forcibly lower their altitude, making it easier for Peggy’s phantoms to kill them.
Suddenly, a mournful cry erupted from the Thornbird flock, as if they could no longer bear the massive damage. Countless shining light spots soared into the sky like a brilliant beam of light, disappearing into the clouds of the night.
The mages and city guards clearly breathed a sigh of relief, and then cheers erupted.
“Take a break.” City Lord Appius said to Peggy, then stood up and looked north.
Not towards the Crusader siege camp in the south, but towards Thessaloniki in the north.
(Because Mount Olympus sloped downwards from north to south, the Crusaders actually circled around from the city and started their siege from the south.)
Because the Thornbird flock had come from the south, the Crusader camp and Olympia had blocked these supernatural creatures, preventing them from affecting Thessaloniki.
The coastal city in the distance twinkled with lights in the night, seemingly unaffected by the recent war.
Is it over? Appius frowned. If it was over, that would be best, however…
His expression suddenly changed as he looked towards the Aegean Sea to the northeast, his spirituality suddenly becoming uneasy.
A huge shadow emerged from the sea under the cover of night, its breath like a hurricane, flattening the forests on the shore.
As it surfaced, a huge tsunami rose in Thessaloniki’s harbor. Waves more than ten meters high crashed down, capsizing fishing boats, collapsing buildings, and washing over the trembling docks.
“That’s impossible!” A mage nearby exclaimed. “At the current magic tide level… how can there be a demigod creature?!”
“It’s not a demigod creature!” Appius shouted.
His voice seemed to have a special magic, making the spirits of everyone present tremble, their attention involuntarily drawn to him.
“That’s the larval form of the Leviathan! Currently only level 10, not invincible!”
Not invincible, my ass… Asker complained inwardly. Even a level 10 Leviathan larva possessed the “Giant V” supernatural characteristic, its HP ridiculously high, okay?
It was a boss that NPCs or players at this stage couldn’t defeat at all.
The girls of Azure Longsword, looking at the figure slowly crawling ashore in the distance, also turned pale.
However, Appius, as a demigod who had lived for who knows how many years, definitely had some hidden cards, so Asker firmly believed that the Leviathan wouldn’t be a problem.
Just wait and watch the cutscene.
Seeing Asker’s calm expression, the girls gradually regained their composure, a habit and tacit understanding cultivated over time in the Azure Longsword team.
As long as the Captain was still there, there was nothing to fear.
Even if the sky fell, there was still the Captain, this great god, to hold it up!
In the distance, the Leviathan larva had climbed onto the port of Thessaloniki, and a visible commotion quickly arose in the city.
Lights flickered, buildings collapsed, and many citizens, awakened from their sleep, rushed out of their homes in their pajamas, running barefoot through the streets, scrambling to escape the city.
Appius stared at the Leviathan in the distance, his face expressionless.
If he had his full demigod strength, he could certainly deal with that monster.
However, the current magic tide cap didn’t allow him to do so.
Soon, the Leviathan completely left the sea, revealing its mountain-like body.
It grabbed a residential building with its huge webbed hand, pulled it up along with its foundation, and then stuffed it into its mouth, chewing slowly.
…
West, Solomon City, ruins of the Pantheon.
This place, originally strictly sealed by the military, was immediately activated after the magic tide surge ended.
Countless Church personnel were busy here, either staring at the giant machine in the center of the temple and recording data, or directing Templar Knights to carry components and materials.
This machine, 30 meters long, 28 meters wide, 2 meters high, and covering an area of 840 square meters, was called the “Civilization Restorer.” Its power was drawn from the Tiber River outside, driven by an ingenious device composed of hydraulic oil, connecting rods, and pistons.
This machine was divided into two parts. The front part was a Surface Mount Technology (SMT) machine, which used a large number of mechanical devices to install various electronic components onto circuit boards.
All the electronic components were urgently manufactured after the magic tide surge ended, using pre-stored materials, and were continuously transported in by workers hired by the Church.
The rear part of the machine was a Data Loading Machine (DLM), which loaded designated data information from external sources into the newly manufactured electronic storage media.
Because during the magic tide surge, the intensely erupting magnetic field would destroy all electronic information storage media, naturally including all the information stored within, causing fundamental damage to technological civilization.
The solution for humans in the First and Second Ages was to hand-copy.
Hand-copy electronic information for backup, and then manually enter it after the magic tide surge ended.
Hand-copying, of course, had problems. First, it was inefficient and prone to errors, both in copying and inputting.
Moreover, paper could only store a limited amount of information. Even the design drawings of the simplest manned spacecraft, when stacked together, would be as tall as a human.
Second, paper as a medium was too fragile. The Peloponnesian War in the Second Age was essentially fought over these technical documents, but it resulted in the destruction of a large number of them.
Therefore, in the Third Age, the ancient Solomon mechanic Heron invented mechanical array plates, composed of densely arranged probes.
A raised probe represented “1”; a recessed probe represented “0.” Using mechanical positions to store data avoided the destructive effect of the magic tide surge (similar to burning data onto a CD).
Paired with an optical reader, all the data on the mechanical array plates could be quickly written into electronic media after the magic tide surge ended.
Initially, this invention didn’t attract the attention of the imperial authorities because the mechanical array plates stored the most basic “01” binary data streams. How much information could such a plate store?
Not even as much as handwritten paper.
Just like when firearms were first invented, they were far less effective than bows and arrows. The development of scientific civilization was always a qualitative leap over quantitative changes.
In the mid-to-late Fourth Age, the Imperial Academy of Sciences gradually discovered the advantages of mechanical array plates – compared to paper, they had better storage capacity and a lower error rate.
Most importantly, the re-entry process could be fully automated, avoiding the inefficiency of manual input.
On the ruins of the Western Solomon Empire, the Church of the Fifth Age made unremitting efforts to optimize this technology.
The current mechanical array plates were made of special high-molecular flexible materials, with excellent embedded inert materials, and the spacing was controlled at about 0.1 micrometers.
A 1-square-meter mechanical array plate could store 11 petabytes of data (1PB = 1000TB).
Through the opening of the DLM, these array plates, often tens of kilometers long, were carefully fed into the machine. The information recorded at the beginning of the first array plate was all Raphael’s core data, so it needed to be loaded first, with extreme care.
As the optical reader quickly read the information on the array plates, large amounts of data began to refresh on the screens outside the machine, monitored in real-time by several data expert teams.
At 11:30 pm, the main screen inside the Pantheon finally lit up.
“Artificial intelligence Raphael installed, self-test normal, restarting.” A mechanical electronic voice said.
Cheers immediately erupted in the hall, and many clergy even knelt down excitedly, fervently kissing the crosses on their pendants.
Above the temple, Pope Innocent sat on the Holy See, a relieved smile on his face.
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