Fate's Choice: Livestream at the Start Summoning Billions of Ravens

All eyes turned to him at the same time.

The Home Secretary pushed his chair two inches toward the table, placed his hands flat on the table, and interlaced his fingers.

"Contact France."

The Prime Minister raised his eyebrows by half a centimeter.

The Home Secretary did not pause.

"In the name of the EU's common security concerns, we request the DGSE to send a technical assessment team to conduct infiltration reconnaissance from the periphery of the force field and assess the feasibility of physically isolating the base of the sword in the stone."

The Chancellor of the Exchequer opened his mouth slightly.

"Let the French in?"

The Home Secretary looked at him.

"We're not letting them in, we're letting them look around from the outside to see if there's any way to dig that rock away from the south bank of the Thames."

The prime minister ran his fingertips back and forth along the edge of the cracked ashtray, the rough edges of the shards of glass scraping against his fingertips, the slight sting drawing his attention for a moment.

He did not respond immediately.

Twenty seconds passed.

"Contact request approved."

The Prime Minister’s voice was so soft that people sitting at the other end of the long table had to lean forward to hear him.

"But this is only for assessment purposes; no actual contact is approved, and DGSE personnel are not allowed to set foot inside the force field."

The Home Secretary nodded, took out a pen and a blank notepad from his pocket, and began to write down the key points of the contact request.

There are many things he doesn't know.

For example, two senior aides in the French diplomatic system have independently completed an internal assessment memo in the past 48 hours. The core issue of the two memos is exactly the same: should the French Republic formally extend an invitation if Arthur Griffin, the holder of the sword in the stone, is willing to leave Britain?

These two memos are currently lying quietly in a file basket on the second floor of the Élysée Palace, waiting to be read.

The Pacific Ocean.

Ninety-third hour of formation sailing.

The main engine speed of the Tanyuan has been reduced to the lowest power cruise setting, and the propeller rotates as slowly as stirring honey in water.

Less than thirty nautical miles ahead were the dive coordinates personally designated by Funina.

Stern deck.

Funina sat on a steel stool welded to the railing, her feet dangling in the air, her heels about three centimeters off the deck, her ten bare toes swaying gently with the rhythm of her breathing.

She had her eyes closed.

The brightness of the blue teardrop mark between the eyebrows is increasing at a speed visible to the naked eye.

After crossing the third pollution zone, she actively compressed her perception range to 5,000 kilometers and maintained a recovery period of nearly six hours with minimal power consumption.

Now she has to snap this tightened spring back to its full tension in one go.

Thirty seconds.

She completed a violent stretch from 5,000 kilometers to 12,000 kilometers in 30 seconds.

Blue light radiated outward from the center of the mark between her eyebrows, penetrating her skin, the air, and the steel deck, spreading in all directions from her body like ripples created by a stone thrown into a pond.

But the medium for the ripples is not air.

It is water.

Starting from the seawater at the bottom of this warship, following the ocean currents, the boundary of the temperature and salinity gradient, the slope of the continental shelf, and the fissures of the trench, it spreads at the speed of light to a distance of 12,000 kilometers.

The massive influx of information at that moment caused her to lean forward slightly, her back curving into a tiny arc.

Then he stood up straight.

She "saw" it.

Directly below our current location, at a depth of 10,800 meters, lies an unusual bulge 300 meters high in the pitch-black abyss. Its surface is covered with a layer of viscous, putrid abyssal residue, like a giant's coffin wrapped in a moldy shroud.

A 0.07 Hz signal emerges from beneath the residue layer, completing a full oscillation cycle every fourteen seconds—extremely weak, extremely regular, and extremely persistent.

The signal source is not on the surface of the raised area.

Inside the core.

Her perception was like an extremely fine needle, piercing through the surface of the residue layer and touching the edge of the signal source below.

In that instant, the mark between her eyebrows changed from blue to a deep indigo color that she herself was unfamiliar with, lasting for less than a second before fading back to blue.

That signal was not a random vibration caused by geological activity.

It is not acoustic communication by deep-sea creatures.

It was an entity with a clear will, repeatedly emitting the same message at extremely low power, using a frequency so ancient that it resonated with the very essence of water.

She couldn't translate the specific content of that message.

But she can discern the nature of the information.

Call for help.

Zhou Ruo stood inside the cabin door, clutching a notebook and a recorder, not daring to make a sound and disturb her, only staring at Funina's back.

Funina opened her eyes.

She remained seated on the steel stool, her gaze fixed on the white wake churning at the stern of the ship.

After about five seconds, she turned her head and looked at Zhou Ruo standing at the door.

There are two layers below.

Zhou Ruo immediately pressed the power button on the recorder, and the red light came on.

Fu Ningna's voice was devoid of emotional fluctuations, and she spoke slightly slower than usual.

"The outer layer is dirty and must be scraped clean."

She paused for a moment.

The pause lasted almost twice as long as her usual speaking intervals.

"The inner layer..."

She shifted her gaze from Zhou Ruo's face back to the sea at the stern of the boat, her lips parted briefly, and when she opened them again, her voice was half a tone lower.

"What's inside isn't an enemy."

Another pause.

"But I'm not sure what it is."

Zhou Ruo's pen tip glided rapidly across the paper.

After writing the last period, she capped her pen, took out her encrypted terminal from her pocket, typed Funina's exact words into the text box without alteration, and selected the highest priority in the priority bar above the send button.

The moment the finger pressed the send button, the encrypted terminal's screen flashed, and the data packet was sent along the satellite link to the command center on the east coast, more than 6,000 kilometers away.

On the stern deck, the sea breeze blew Funina's long, white-and-blue highlighted hair, which reached her waist, to one side.

She jumped off the steel stool and stepped barefoot onto the deck, which was soaked by seawater. Her toes curled up and then unfolded.

"Zhou Ruo".

Zhou Ruo raised her head.

Funina stood with her back to her, facing the sea, her slender figure outlined in a golden halo by the afterglow of the setting sun.

"Do you have any more cream puffs?"

Zhou Ruo paused for a second, then turned and quickly walked towards the lower deck.

The footsteps echoed rapidly and dully on the iron ladder, fading into the distance.

Furnessa stood alone at the stern of the deck, looking down at the deep blue sea below.

10,800 meters below, an ancient will is tirelessly sending the same signal to the entire Pacific Ocean at a frequency of once every fourteen seconds.

No one responded to it.

It's still being issued.