Uncle here isn't your average office worker!

It seems that humans back then anticipated the possibility of technological stagnation and regression after a natural disaster, and thus preserved this USB interface.

Roy took a deep breath and inserted the USB drive.

The next second, the computer, which had been dormant for a long time, made a loud start-up noise, and the dim screen lit up.

"Identifying permission codes."

"Authorization code successful".

"Welcome, Dr. Trevor Friston. The glory of mankind will live on forever."

"You have 15,000 unread messages whose senders are unknown. Please decide whether to read them."

information?

Roy was stunned. He had thought about many things that would happen after activating the machine, but he never expected to receive a message.

After a moment of silence, he did not ask Ivangelista XI to leave, but instead spoke to him directly:

"Help me open the first one."

Volume 1: Chapter 279 The People on Both Sides of the Barrier

"Sir, our defenses have been breached."

"I know we need to regroup our troops!"

“But we have no troops left, sir.”

"No, I have already sent messages to all the nearby Imperial outposts. Reinforcements will arrive soon! When that happens, the Moon of War will sweep away all enemies before us!"

In the empty room, an old man with white hair and beard stared at the silent radar screen before him, his bloodshot eyes flashing with a fanatical light. He answered incessantly, confidently listing one possibility of victory after another, but only the empty command room reflected on the screen revealed a chilling truth—no one else remained in this room except him.

But he seemed completely oblivious to this, continuing to repeat the same things he had said countless times before:

"No, sir, Terra has been fallen for a long time. All our messages to the base have gone unanswered, and the War Moon has fallen silent. It's time to face reality. Either continue to live a wretched life, or die gloriously with our past glory!"

Suddenly, his expression turned extremely angry, baring his teeth as if he wanted to devour his own image on the screen, roaring and howling:

"What nonsense are you spouting! You're undermining morale! Even if I'm the only one left on the defensive line, I will never admit it has collapsed!"

The roar echoed in the room, lingering for a long time. The old man took several deep breaths before finally calming down. He reached out and stroked the screen, as if stroking each of the faces, before letting out a long sigh.

"Sir, you're too stubborn."

A long silence fell over the room.

Outside the porthole, the dark universe remained undisturbed, unaffected by this madness. The countless stars, like indifferent spectators, twinkled, watching this pathetic farce unfold. Until the old man spoke again:

"The defense line has not collapsed. We are soldiers. We are still alive. As long as the defense line will not collapse, it will not collapse."

“You are younger than me, you should walk behind me, soldier.”

He looked away, refusing to look at his reflection on the screen, where he was already pursing his lips, and said resolutely:

“Send an email to Terra.”

"This is the Human Third Line of Defense Command. I am Commander Attlee C. Mascamara."

"The third line of defense is on the verge of collapse, but we are still holding our ground. If anyone receives this email, please send reinforcements immediately."

"The glory of mankind will live on forever."

........

"They've returned, my soldiers, my warriors, they've returned." — Year 3 of the Defense Era.

"The monster that devoured their souls and tore their bodies apart was shimmering with eerie, flashy light from head to toe. I'm not sure if it had a physical form, but fortunately, the defense line has weapons that can target energy beings." Year 10 of the Defense Era.

“It’s a bit too big. Just getting close is enough to destroy the outer perimeter of the defenses. I suspect that even a battleship is less than a tenth of it, but it is still far inferior to the Overlord, let alone the War Moon. If we could have even one of these as support…” Year 15 of the Defense Era.

"Are there still living people in the universe? Why have all my distress calls gone unanswered? Why is it that apart from space stations and outposts like ours, no other planet can respond to our calls?" Year 30 of the Defense Era.

"Damn it, what did I just see? A planet exploded right in front of us! No, it was that kind of monster that burst out of the planet's interior, like a chick hatching. Was the entire planet just one of their eggs?" Year 36 of the Defense Era.

"Human efforts have been exhausted, and the will of Heaven cannot be defied." Year 100 of the Defense Era.

Roy categorized all the letters he had read. In these 100 years known as the Human Defense Era, apart from these few recorded events, most of the letters were requests for help, obituaries, and venting of curses and pleas sent to various planets.

Roy didn't know how to describe his feelings upon seeing these letters. Compared to the speechless shock on the face of Ivangelista XI beside him, he felt a greater sense of heaviness.

It felt heavy, like something was pressing down on my heart, like wanting to do something but finding myself powerless to do it.

The enemy in the sky was finally mentioned directly. It was an energy creature ten times the size of a starship, with an extremely high density, capable of tearing apart the defenses of outposts using only gravity. Its body shimmered with an eerie, dazzling light, and it could hatch from planets like an incubator.

Roy increasingly felt that this was like a virtual being that appeared after the planet was destroyed, fifty years after signing a contract with Madoka.

In the emails, Roy also noticed something unusual, most importantly that the outpost claimed it had not received any communication replies from Terra.

This is abnormal because Trevor Friston stated that he had been sending distress messages into the universe for tens of thousands of years, but no human had received a response. He himself had not received any information from the universe, not even a distress message.

This doesn't make sense. If this outpost could detect the War Moon hovering over Terra and form a defensive line to request aid from Terra after the Cataclysm crisis, it couldn't be too far away. The human commander couldn't possibly have missed the signals from Terra!

What is blocking communication between the two sides?

Roy couldn't help but look up at the ceiling, and through the ceiling, his thoughts seemed to reach the star pod above him.

Trevor Friston may have misjudged one thing: the Star Pod, or Guardian Angel, was not entirely a failure.

It did indeed serve its purpose, failing to notice what was happening on Terra as the monster hatched from the planet roamed around the defensive line. While it didn't possess the monstrous barrier of the Angel of Ecstasy, which was impervious even to the Aether Engine, it fulfilled its original design mission with extremely limited resources.

But it also brought about a problem that no one had anticipated: it blocked Terra's communication with the universe.

This double-edged sword turned the planet and the outpost into two isolated islands, forever unable to communicate. Thus, Trevor Friston's 20,000-year-old calls went unanswered, and the white-haired commander's 100-year-long steadfastness received no support.

If Roy hadn't appeared, they might have all faced a darkly humorous ending—dying alone in a space so close to each other.

"At least I can be a witness."

Roy reached out, closed the email he couldn't finish reading, and looked at Ivangelista XI.

The Pope looked at him as if he were an alien.

Volume 1: Chapter 280 Towering Waves

Bio-environmental alteration communities, sea colonies, large colonies—they have had countless names throughout history.

Their creator endowed them with a near-Gestalt-like consciousness structure, making them indiscriminate, without hierarchy, selfless and innocent, knowing only to give. They are a near-perfect race in biology; evolutionary processes that ordinary creatures take millions of years to complete can be accomplished by them in just a few days or months. Yet, they are also the most humble race. Their sole mission at birth is to obey the creator's command, to transform this planet, making it a habitable environment for humans. Beyond that, they are unworthy of humanity, emotions, life, and everything else that humans cherish.

They roamed and multiplied in the depths of the sea, possessing the power to sweep across the land, yet they never truly turned their gaze toward this land. They awaited the return of the Creator, but for ten thousand years they received no reply.

Until one day, they suddenly discovered that the creatures on land that were once no different from them—the fish, the cats and dogs, the bears and deer—had unknowingly imitated the appearance of the Creator and even walked up to them.

Following the original design of the Great Clan's will, these created races were no different from these beloved pets of the Creator, so He called them "Scaleless Fellows." They helped them, led them to the ruins left by the Creator, nourished them with the flesh and blood of the Great Clan, supported their development, accepted their research, and endured their attacks—even though this was incomprehensible infighting in their eyes, which only made the losses meaningless.

But they never regret, never retreat; they are the great multitude, the faithful executors of the Creator, carrying out the Creator's will.

This continued for thousands of years until a group of scaleless people voluntarily broke away from their main group, came before them, called themselves "their followers," and formed the church called the Deep Sea.

"The Sea Ones are indeed rigid creatures. They have always followed the rules left by the group called the Creator, and have no other goals."

"But this simplicity can also be exploited. We may not be able to manipulate Haisi no matter what, but we have ways to guide him. You know, no matter what era or church, they are only good at one thing—interpreting the words in the scriptures from different or even completely opposite directions."

The Creator says your mission is to transform the environment of this planet. So you should take the initiative to transform it, rather than passively waiting for instructions. Those who take the initiative will receive more praise from God.

Is this planet not yet in such a state that it must be transformed? Then I will prove to you that the endless struggle and infighting of the Terrans, both on land and in the sea, has brought about devastating disasters. Iberia is irrefutable proof. It was they who turned the Originium, a calamity from beyond the earth, into nails and drove them into the body of the ocean.

The intelligence of the swarm of wills is not high. Humans wouldn't endow a robot vacuum cleaner with much intelligence; the threat of a highly intelligent AI potentially leading to a rebellion has already spread throughout the galaxy, fueled by the civil war within a Star Empire. While the swarm of wills possesses intelligence, it is limited in number and clearly unable to distinguish between sincere conversations and malicious deception in the Deep Sea Church's words. Even adhering to their initial setup, they mostly ignore the incessant chatter from the Deep Sea Church, whom they perceive as "unauthorized entities," but there are always exceptions.

This unexpected event shattered the great tranquility of Iberia.

The will of the masses judged that the Originium material in the Iberian Lighthouse inserted into the sea did indeed pose a great threat to the planet. They felt genuine anger at the foolish actions of their scaleless brethren on land who attempted to use the Originium, and thus took minimal defensive measures.

The primordial lifeline roared in fury, silencing all the lighthouses of Iberia, transforming almost the entire Iberian coastline, and sinking more than three-quarters of Iberia's coastal cities. For the horde, this was merely a small application of their environmental transformative power, but for the history of Iberia and Terra, it was a powerful and dramatic alteration of the course of history!

From that day on, the Deep Sea Church, having witnessed the true power of the Sea Si, began to plot a Great Tranquility, initiated by the Origin Lifeline and manipulated by Isamara, which was enough to transform the entire planet.

This was difficult. Following its initial furious roar, the Primordial Lifeline quickly drew criticism from within the larger group. The Unyielding Iceberg, a fellow leader of the ecological modification cluster and possessing the "biological DNA, identification and verification" authority, was the first to notice the Primordial Lifeline's anomaly and criticized its unauthorized use of modification privileges without the consent of those with authority or its own verification. This criticism directly led to the Primordial Lifeline falling silent, ceasing all responses to guidance from the Deep Sea Church.

But it was precisely during that Great Stillness that the Deepsea Cult finally understood several of the rulers within the Sea Cult. They discovered a more easily angered and easily manipulated corrupted heart—Isamara.

They schemed and plotted, using the language of their fellow humans to guide and mobilize the Sea-Child individuals, attracting land dwellers to undergo Sea-Child cell modification to become Sea-Childs, pursuing and manipulating deep-sea hunters to kill Isamara, showcasing human brutality, and then reviving Isamara, thereby triggering the primordial lifeline's aggressive reaction to humanity, and the [struggle] Isamara's counterattack.

Everything is almost ready.

But now, the horns sound again, not from the awakened Isamara, but from within the city of Laterano.

It was indeed difficult for the Church of the Deep Sea to plant spies in the Lateran city, where synesthesia was rampant. That small Iberian specialty shop was simply a means for an elderly Iberian Lateran believer to make a living. Amaya did not use the horn she bought in the souvenir shop; she made that transaction only to conceal her action of turning around and taking out another horn from her bosom.

“Woo—” Amaya put the horn to her lips and murmured softly.

Lateran was thousands of miles from Iberia, and the Terrans could not possibly have heard the horns coming from Lateran. But the Haisi were different.

They do not rely on hearing to act; in order to synchronously carry out the task of transforming the entire planet, they possess a neural network covering the entire planet. When the specially made horn of the Sea Heir was sounded, the Church of the Iberian Deep Sea received the message immediately.

"The Knight of the Sea, Roy, is a member of a large group of outcasts! He is currently in Laterano and has apparently facilitated an alliance between Casimir and Letania. Once he is brought to Laterano, he could launch a devastating attack on the Church at any time!"

Yes, as a deep-sea bishop, a fanatical believer who never rejected merging with the sea creatures and was even willing to become food for them, Amaya could smell Roy's familiar scent even from ten meters away.

That "compatriotic" taste that Skadi, also a deep-sea hunter, mentioned.

"I might not be able to come back. Please stimulate the Sea God immediately!"

Volume 1: Chapter 281 The Great Tranquility

Iberia, coastline, Ilias tide watcher station.

Tide watchers originated along the early Iberian coastline. Larger fishing villages would obtain the consent and guidance of tide watchers before organizing collective fishing trips. Initially, they acted as shamans and prophets in Iberia, but later, with the progress of time, during the monarchical era, they gradually evolved into official personnel in port cities monitoring maritime activities.