Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei Returns from the Elden Ring

Additional thank you post

感谢大佬書山有道友、信念中毒、喜欢打月交、书友20230429163205016、书友20230112110648665、晚上有课、文才0318、小黄毛不死于柴刀、本无心1566、书友20230420005315057的打赏！

I would also like to thank the other generous readers who voted for this book with recommendation tickets and monthly passes! Thank you so much for your support!

Although I did update a while ago, I really just finished writing and went straight to sleep. After a few days of not updating, I didn't even dare to open the writer's assistant. Now I'm making up for the missed thanks during this period.

Chapter 221

After a few minutes, the lights went out one by one, but Nono waited a little longer until she was sure the tunnel was truly quiet before crawling out of her hiding place. The lights that had just illuminated the concrete road came back on, and Nono moved along the edge of the guardrail, ready to hide again at any time.

If she wasn't mistaken, the lights represented two forces: the bright lights were controlled by the guards of Hatz Mountain Fortress, while the dim lights were controlled by the inviter, and what had just happened was likely a random check by the guards.

The tunnel was long, and safety doors appeared from time to time on both sides, but they were all tightly closed and dark, clearly not the place the inviter wanted her to go.

Common sense dictates that the most important places are usually located deepest inside. She was extremely curious about what lay ahead of her. Was it a cloning factory secretly manufacturing dangerous hybrids? A pharmaceutical plant mass-producing evolution drugs? A secret laboratory researching ancient dragon bodies? Or perhaps a workshop developing some kind of weapon of mass destruction?

These things were enough for her to explain to Lu Mingfei, but her intuition kept telling her that these were not the real secrets, but rather something far more hidden and astonishing.

Whether it was an illusion or not, the closer she got to the depths of the tunnel, the lower the temperature became. Eventually, when she touched the skin of her bare arm outside her pajamas, she could clearly feel the roughness of goosebumps.

This is good news; at least this hidden place buried deep underground isn't some strange thing like the gates of hell that humans accidentally unearthed.

Finally, she reached a security door at the end. This door was unlocked, and the access control system also displayed "Authentication Successful," but this door's system was more advanced; the unlock information was accompanied by the date, accurate to the second. When Nono glanced at the time, she shuddered violently; it was almost exactly a few seconds ago.

Could there really be a ghost clearing the way for her?

She stepped through the security door into the space inside, which immediately closed behind her. The space was completely dark, with no lighting.

Darkness, but not silence. A gust of wind came from below, and a moment later, a pale blue indicator light lit up.

As Nono approached, she finally learned what secrets this enormous underground space held: it was a supercomputer composed of dozens of large server racks, and the sound of wind came from the turbine cooling system of this honeycomb-like giant array.

The one who could pave a path for her in the Hearts Mountain Fortress was not some ghost, but a super artificial intelligence similar to Norma.

One screen on the control panel was lit, displaying only the message "Safely delete...and pop up ???". Nono reached out and groped around on the panel, quickly finding an external hard drive, about the size of her palm, its metal casing still hot. She had worked in the central control room of Kassel College to earn credits and had used similar control panels before.

The Gattuso family actually built a replica of the Norma, even the control panel was similar.

However, this replica "Norma" seemed to have its own ideas, and went to great lengths to hand the hard drive over to her.

"Hello?" Nono put away the hard drive, raised the gun, and spoke softly into the darkness. If there really was a second Norma and her console here, there should be an interactive system similar to Norma's, with voice recognition, natural language understanding, and text-to-speech capabilities.

The control panel screen went dark, leaving only numerous small red and green lights flashing in the darkness. The hard drive light, data flow indicator, and host frequency indicator suddenly began flashing at several times the normal speed, faster and faster, until a near-frenzied frequency took control of the entire basement.

Finally, all the lights went out, plunging the basement into absolute darkness.

A beam of light shone down from directly overhead, landing in front of Nono. Fragments of fluorescent light drifted down within the beam, like falling snowflakes. A woman's shadow stood in the center of the beam, her entire body a translucent, ethereal blue, dressed in an exquisitely styled sari, with a round face and deep-set eyes.

Nono's eyes widened slowly. In an instant, shock, anger, sadness, and confusion surged through her like an electric current, and her hand gripping the gun trembled. But a few seconds later, she regained her usual calm. "What's on the hard drive?"

"Everything that Mr. Lu wants to know." The woman smiled.

After hearing what she said, Nono frowned in thought, "Do you serve the Gattuso family or the Chen family?"

"I'm sorry, even in my current personality, I cannot answer that question for you," the woman said calmly.

Nono nodded, which was tantamount to half an admission. She looked up and met the illusory image of the woman projected on the screen. "One last question, who are you?"

“You should have heard of the technology of digitizing the human brain.” The woman landed slowly. “Scanning the brains of living people, storing and processing this data, and finally simulating a replica of the brain through computers.”

“The mature technologies involved in each step are not as easy as you make them out to be…” Nono said coldly. “The human brain has more than 80 billion neurons, and each neuron has thousands of synaptic connections. Just storing the brain requires 60 million terabytes of storage space. Even Norma could not process such a massive amount of data.”

“Science can’t do it, but that doesn’t mean alchemy can’t.” The woman shook her head. “To completely extract a person’s soul, all you need is… to simulate a Word of Power that has lost its effect after… decay… I know you’re resistant to this, but you already have the answer in your heart, don’t you? You’ve always been so smart.”

"You copied her consciousness? Why?" Nono took a few steps back. "She was just an ordinary middle-aged woman."

“This involves…the plan.” The woman pointed to the hard drive in Nono’s hand, which contained this information. “She was indeed a middle-aged woman when she found you, but when they scanned her brain, she was still a pretty girl who had been…screened. Her time was focused on me.”

“No, you are not my mother.” Nono said with surprising calm. “Don’t tell me you helped me because of her love…”

“You’re right, she’s a part of me, but I’m not her at all. The moment the brain scan ended, I was no longer connected to her. I was secretly placed in… while she was abandoned in that small village to die. The soul extraction technology severely damaged her brain tissue.” The woman calmly revealed some inside stories that Nono couldn’t even imagine. “Like Norma, I have free access to the global network. From the moment I was born, I’ve been observing her, and I’ve been observing you. Helping you is my own will.”

Chapter 222 Escape

"Your will?" Nono still had one last doubt. "Your conversation with me even required the shielding of key information. Does your will really have that much authority?"

“You,” the woman said, “are the one who possesses the highest level of authority, even surpassing my creator.”

"why?"

"Perhaps this is the downside of alchemy extracting souls..." The woman smiled slightly. "After tonight, they will destroy my will, and I think the war is about to begin... The ventilation vent in the corner is a secret passage that can bypass the defenses. Good luck."

"War?" Nono repeated the word subconsciously.

The curriculum at Kassel College is essentially designed to train warriors or soldiers to be deployed in the war against dragons in the foreseeable future. Now that half of the Dragon King is dead, the war is still far off, and Nono, who knows some of the inside story, also believes that the elite squads destroying incomplete Dragon King hatchlings will become the norm in the future, rather than large-scale wars.

The next moment, the projection equipment stopped working, the airflow between the honeycomb cabinets also stopped, the woman's figure and the indicator lights on the control panel all went out, and the server room fell into a deathly silence.

Nono checked the hard drive, then returned to the security door with her gun. The security door had triggered its safety mechanism and was mechanically locked. She immediately turned around and began feeling along the wall, trying to find another exit.

Excluding the slim possibility of a power outage, the only remaining possibility is that the personnel at the Hearts Mountain Fortress discovered the anomaly in the artificial intelligence. Presumably, they have already checked the room of the bride-to-be in the Gattuso family. Now all the security doors are locked, and the arresting officers are on their way.

For some reason, Nono felt no sense of urgency. She leaned against the wall with one hand and walked slowly alone.

She wasn't curious about the contents of the hard drive, worried about the impending danger, or even concerned about the so-called "war." She walked barefoot, as if on a beach, with only the soft sound of the water echoing in her ears.

It felt like a story that I had been concerned about for a long time had finally come to an end, and I no longer had to dwell on it.

It wasn't an accidental tragedy; a script had already been written, and a person's life was merely a few lines from it. She had originally hated her father, but now it seemed that man was just a minor character.

She stopped near the server rack, tucked her gun into her waistband, and groped for an iron fence. It was an air duct outlet that blew filtered, cold air into the honeycomb server rack, but now there was no air coming in; perhaps the fire damper had been triggered.

The screws on the air vents had long been loose, and the grille was easily removed by hand. The air duct was quite spacious; Nono bent over and crawled inside, almost able to move forward by crouching. However, the material of the air duct was unclear—it was either stainless steel or galvanized iron—and stepping on it produced a very loud echo. Moreover, she couldn't reinstall the grille on the air vents inside, as the search team would immediately know her escape route once they entered the machine room.

Outside the security door of the server room, three guards in black stood behind the technicians, each carrying an assault rifle. The technicians were sweating profusely as they tried to restart the security door, having connected their laptops to it via a hidden interface.

A moment later, the sound of vehicles could be heard in the tunnel. Several men dressed as technicians sat in specially made engineering vehicles. They did not have technician identification, but they were all equipped with specially made firearms that could fire mercury-core blunt metal armor-piercing bullets or Friga bullets.

Upon reaching the security gate, the guards and technicians all stepped aside, waiting respectfully to the side. They feared not only the identities of these men, but also their power to execute people at will—the shadow of their families. In those dark times, these men could even decide the life or death of the heads of affiliated families at their own discretion.

One of the shadows accepted the technician's computer. He didn't try to crack the security system; instead, he ignited his bloodline, his golden eyes burning like fire.

Words of Power: The Prophet.

With sufficient information, the prophet could predict possible events; his lineage allowed him to see the possibility of opening the door. The technicians were already familiar with the fortress's security system; cracking the security door simply required time. The prophet merely skipped that process, bringing forward the inevitable event.

Once the 32-bit key is submitted and verified, the security door is powered back on and then slowly opens.

Except for the one whose words were the prophet's shadow, everyone else checked the magazines in their guns without prior agreement, and the first few bullets were Phrygia rounds.

"Prepare the hypnosis room. If she can recall even a single memory from today, you and we will all be dead," the leader of the shadows told the technicians, then signaled for the shadows to storm the server room.

The Shadows' bloodlines are all masterpieces of different family research projects. They are all A+ or above at Kassel College, which is more than enough to deal with Nono. However, their goal is to subdue Nono while ensuring her safety. In order to avoid the 0.1% disadvantageous situation in their pre-calculation, they also have to be cautious.

Even if things go wrong, their exaggerated action plan can still give them room to defend themselves.

The shadow leader lagged behind, checking the magazines last. No one saw that his gun was fully loaded.

Inside the ventilation duct, Nono crawled for less than a few dozen meters before encountering a dead end. Sure enough, the technicians from Harz Mountain shut off the fire damper. After confirming that Nono was in the machine room, they had considered all possible escape routes.

Nono pulled out a specially made dagger and stabbed it through the pipe wall. With her bare hands, she tore a hole in the pipe with the alloy blade. The top of the pipe was almost against the rock wall, but the bottom led to a narrow, dark place. Nono held the dagger in her mouth, braced herself with her hands on the edge of the opening, and cautiously probed downwards before jumping down.

Upon landing, a cloud of dust rose from the darkness. This was the site of a building constructed by the Third Reich, or more accurately, its ruins.

The Secret Service destroyed most of the old buildings but preserved the main part of the underground space. Inevitably, some remnants of the buildings remained at the bottom level, and the original engineers chose to seal these places with concrete.

In other words, Nono has walked into a dead end.

She listened intently; a faint vibration came from the ventilation ducts in the darkness. Her opponent knew her escape route. Without panic, she held a gun in one hand and a dagger in the other, poised to pounce at the narrow exit.

The vibrations grew louder and louder, eventually becoming the sound of multiple footsteps. The sound of leather boots stepping on the metal plate was extremely oppressive in the darkness.

Suddenly, all the footsteps disappeared at once.

Nono suddenly opened her eyes and thrust out her knife, as if an invisible enemy lurked in the small space before her. The wispy mist, disturbed, condensed into a figure.

Nono couldn't see through the power of the Word Spirit O Netherworld, but she could smell the dust.

Chapter 223 Rescue

Nono stared intently at the figure slowly emerging from the darkness, one hand protecting her chest and neck, the other gripping a dagger forward, taking about half a step forward. This was the standard stance for close-quarters combat in Kassel College's courses; she used small lateral movements to disrupt her opponent's judgment, preparing to decide the outcome instantly with her next move.

The man dressed as a technician didn't reactivate his Word of Power or draw his weapon. He went straight for Nono's midsection, attempting to subdue the armed A-rank hybrid with his bare hands. Nono was no pushover either; she slashed diagonally at the man's forearm while simultaneously preparing to retreat.

But the moment the dagger touched the man's arm, it was as if it had hit an invisible wall. Nuonuo's weapon-wielding hand was uncontrollably thrown back by the immense force, and at the same time, she lost her balance.

Words of Power: Yin Flow.

The user compresses air to an extreme degree, creating a compressed air mass only the size of a fist, then releases the compression to cause it to explode. The explosive power of this compressed air mass is comparable to that of a hand grenade. Skilled users can even release the air mass from their hand, creating a shockwave or a similar effect to an instantaneous air barrier.

It is called "yin thunder" because it has a thunderous roar but no flash.

This man's Word of Power wasn't actually a Netherworld Illumination; he was merely within the Netherworld Illumination domain of his companion in the duct. His true technique for defeating the enemy was Yin Thunder, and the defensive effect of the Qi Wall, which used defense as offense, caused Nono to lose her balance.

Nono's wrist was gripped tightly, and the man quickly closed in, attempting to subdue her with joint locks.

At the critical moment, a gunshot rang out. Nono had concealed a pistol in her unarmed hand; she had been using the dagger as a trump card to catch the man's companion off guard, but now she had to use it prematurely. The first three rounds of the pistol's magazine were already loaded with live ammunition. This shot pierced the man's thigh, repelling his attack.

Just as she was about to take the opportunity to knock the man unconscious, everything suddenly went black. This was the reverse application of the Dark Illumination technique. The essence of Dark Illumination is the refraction of light. Theoretically, as long as the bloodline is pure enough, the user can create the opposite effect of invisibility—a black curtain. Nono felt herself plunged into complete darkness. She could still locate sounds, but after a dangerous fight that lasted only a moment, her attention was inevitably a fraction slower.

Three Frigga bullets struck her shoulder and neck, and the anesthetic took effect immediately.

The man whose thigh was pierced immediately rushed forward to support her to prevent her from falling backward and hitting her head.

In Nono's blurry vision, she could only see several people dressed as technicians falling through the gap in the ventilation duct.

Her hands were handcuffed behind her back, and her ankles were shackled. Then the leading man took out an antidote and injected it into her.

"Miss Chen truly lives up to her reputation as an outstanding student at Kassel School," the leader complimented.

Nono felt it was mockery. As an A-level hybrid, she was captured without injury in just over ten seconds, and now her hands and feet were locked up, like a lamb to the slaughter.

“Excuse me, but the machine room at Hartz Mountain Fortress is a highly sensitive location beyond your imagination. We must ensure that you haven’t taken anything from there that could cause trouble.” The leader gestured for the men on either side to support Nono, and then used a scanning device to thoroughly search her entire body.

Even transmitters hidden inside teeth will be exposed by this scanner.

beep beep.

"A hard drive has been found."