Chapter 166 Electric Generator

Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled around Mount Thunder, the ceaseless storm relentlessly scouring the entire mountain. The closer they got to the massive cylindrical black stones, the more they felt the overwhelming pressure exerted by this colossal ancient device.

Gala-卓尔 led the group past the floating stone rings surrounding Mount Thunder. Lily craned her neck to look out and saw tiny houses and spires on one of the rings, resembling a miniature town protected from the outside storm by a thin, hemispherical shield. She asked curiously, "Are people living up there?"

"That's the stronghold of the Quel'Serrar mages. Quel'Serrar is a famous magical city on this continent. Most of the city's population are mages. They're also the only mortal race that successfully explored the outer reaches of Mount Thunder and built a stronghold here," Gala-卓尔 answered loudly. "But they can only establish a base on the first magnetic loop. The environment gets even harsher further in; only dragons can enter."

"What are they doing in this place?" Nangong Sanba asked, puzzled.

"Studying magic. The first magnetic loop is an endless treasure trove for lightning mages. They build magic towers here to collect lightning and analyze the elemental forces of Mount Thunder. They're a bunch of guys with a lot of exploratory spirit and are worthy of respect. People die here every year, but mages keep coming to this place one after another."

Hao Ren asked loudly, "How about we go say hello?"

"Say hello? If a dragon queen has nothing better to do than visit a town of human and elf mages, a lot of people will lose sleep," Gala-卓尔 shook her head. "They've already seen us, but if we just pass by at a distance, it won't cause any trouble. Everyone, hold on tight, we're going to pass between the second magnetic loop and the cooling tower!"

The golden dragon let out a loud roar, and a semi-transparent film, like a magical shield, lit up around it before plunging into the thundering forest of lightning. Beams of light flashed in the Quel'Serrar stronghold on the first stone ring as the mages paid their respects to the dragon queen. Several white-haired old mages were measuring the lightning readings of Mount Thunder on the platform at the top of the magic tower. They watched in horror as the golden dragon, possibly the strongest creature in the world, plunged into the storm right under their noses, and couldn't help but look around in fear: "The Dragon Queen? Why is she here again?"

"I remember she came here a few days ago—is she planning to nest on Mount Thunder?"

"Hopefully not… I thought I saw a few people on the Dragon Queen's back just now…"

"Oh, your eye drops are on the shelf next to you, go get them yourself."

Meanwhile, Hao Ren and the others had already entered the inner layer of Mount Thunder. Amid the omnipresent lightning storms, the golden dragon expertly navigated the gaps between the black stone pillars. Lily couldn't help but stretch out the sound of her "oh" as she gazed at the spectacular scenery all around.

Hao Ren reached out and touched Lily's tail. The beautiful silver-white tail had completely puffed up into a furry ball: "This place has a lot of static electricity."

"Stop it, it's ticklish," Lily shook her tail, her pupils reflecting the bright lightning. "Speaking of which, such a giant generator… won't there be a problem?"

"It's definitely not safe, so after I took office as the inspector thousands of years ago, the first thing I did was secretly find the Fiery Consortium and have them send engineers to modify the reactor core inside Mount Thunder. While maintaining the mountain's operation, I eliminated some hidden dangers, otherwise this legacy of the last season's civilization might explode and blow up half the continent," Gala-卓尔's voice was a bit depressed. "Those treacherous merchants… just repairing a reactor core cost me a lot."

Hao Ren nodded in agreement. From the dragon queen's brief words, he could tell that this colleague also had a story…

滚 looked at the lightning flashing all around with fear and trepidation and couldn't help but rub against Lily. The two long-haired creatures were now fluffy, and the static electricity made them look cuter than usual—of course, Lily's tail was bigger, so it was more obvious. After the static electricity built up, she looked like she had a person growing out of her tail.

The area where they were now was inside the shell of this giant generator. In this world, this was an absolute forbidden zone that no one except a few dragons could reach. Here, high voltage electricity was just an insignificant risk factor. There were many more deadly things: this fusion reactor was very different from similar facilities designed by Earth humans. It was driven by magic technology and decomposed many base minerals during operation, which caused its shell to be filled with toxic gases. At the same time, the unique electromagnetic environment here would cause backlash in almost all magic, so it was also called "the Magician's Purgatory." If a lucky warrior could persist here for a moment, then the mage would only have a momentary death: the strong electromagnetic environment of the reactor would detonate the magic energy in their bodies in an instant, and no one could resist.

"Interestingly, the operating principle of a well-known forbidden spell of human mages, the Ravensbane Magic Field, is very similar to this reactor," Gala-卓尔 was always telling her new friends all sorts of interesting things about this world. Perhaps being a dragon queen was really boring. After finding someone to chat with, she seemed particularly talkative. "Using a strong magnetic field to trigger a large-scale magical backlash is very different from ordinary human or elf magic, so I suspect that a lucky mage once walked out of the inner layer of Mount Thunder alive… Of course, these are all just guesses. Oh, we're here."

The golden dragon flew everyone into a hall filled with light. Saying it was a hall, it was actually the bottom of a super-huge hollow cylinder. Around them were a circle of closed tube walls that were so high they couldn't see the top. The walls were lined with neat pipes and metal rails, while a pillar of light that reached the sky and the earth ran through the entire cylinder in the center. The ground of the hall was made of a transparent material, embedded with complex metal patterns. These metal patterns were obviously not just decorations, but should be some kind of magical symbol.

Lily looked down and saw a large pile of slowly rotating giant disks and a fireball that looked like a sun under the transparent ground. After thinking about it, her legs softened and she squatted down to walk…

Here, there was no sign of any lightning storm. Electrical energy was transmitted out from the tubular objects and rails in all directions, making the core area seem very peaceful.

"The temperature below is tens of millions of degrees, but you can't feel it at all here. Only two layers of crystalline material a few millimeters thick isolate them," Gala-卓尔 said with some emotion. "This planet once had a very advanced civilization, but unfortunately it died young. Life is not easy… Let's not talk about this, this is the Angry Spirit I mentioned."

Gala-卓尔 pointed with her chin to the center of the hall. Beside the huge pillar of light that reached the sky and the earth, they could see several magic stones suspended in mid-air. These magic stones drew power from the pillar of light to form a spherical magnetic field, and the magnetic field was bound to a group of violent things that kept jumping.

The data terminal immediately flew over and checked it back and forth: "...Well, it's very energetic, and it looks better than the one we caught."

"Better?" Hao Ren immediately perked up when he heard this. This was definitely the best news he had heard since coming here. "That means it should be easier to read?"

"That's just in theory. The specifics depend on the data," the data terminal shook its body. "But it should be easier to deal with than the one we caught, after all, your fish daughter's roar almost made the Angry Spirit's soul fly away, and there might be some data misalignment or something. As for the one in front of us - it was obviously caught in its complete state."

"Have you tried to analyze it?" Hao Ren looked up at Gala-卓尔.

The Dragon Queen transformed into a human and came to the magic stones, inputting some signals to them with dragon language runes: "I've tried a few times, but with little effect. My data terminal is not very good at decoding… I heard you created a device that can communicate with the Angry Spirit?"

Before Hao Ren could say anything, the data terminal immediately floated up triumphantly: "It's the result of this machine's far-sighted, brilliant design…"

Hao Ren slapped it aside: "Go, go, go, go play with your machine friends - oh, I do have a special device here, but it's installed on my spaceship. Wait for me to take it out."

The data terminal was slapped away and let out an angry scream, but still resignedly floated to Gala-卓尔's data terminal: "Yo, you see, this guy is so boring… Let's chat for a while?"

"Refused, valueless behavior. Suggest checking your logic library."

"Damn, you're not much better."

(I'm thinking… I'll ask for next month's monthly ticket now, to prevent forgetting it tomorrow. I've given up on treatment this month.)