"Before I slip into eternal silence, tell me your requirements."
With what little remained of its lingering sanity, there was no need to beat around the bush.
Across the surface of the wisdom core, the single eye emerged to scrutinize the man standing before it.
Blazkowicz detached the hilt from his waist, igniting its silent radiance. Supporting himself with the light blade driven into the ground, he dropped to one knee, showing his respect to this ancient machine.
Faced with the scrutiny, his countenance was filled with absolute candor as his deep, magnetic voice delivered his request: "Please use your strength to protect humanity once more."
"Perhaps within your cognitive logic, protecting the Nur Stars is your sole purpose. But I ask that you extend that concept of protection to encompass all of mankind."
"Because————" Blazkowicz cut a half-circle in front of him with his light blade, raising his head to meet the scrutinizing eye: "Nur is also a part of humanity!"
As the oath-like invitation fell, a dead silence enveloped the dim stone chamber, broken only by the hissing of the low-quality static.
After a long while, a raspy mechanical voice responded within the room: "I am willing to extend this duty, serving to the best of my ability before my intelligence is annihilated————"
As the heavy stone gate opened once more, the Stone Man artisans walked inside, using a gravity platform to lift and carry the intelligence core away.
Without a moment's delay, Blazkowicz led his technical team away from the Ring of Nur, heading straight toward an ancient frontier—the Resistance Wall.
As a vital node of the ancient Nur Stars' defensive belt, it had once withstood incursions from other human factions or xenos. Now that the Nur Stars were rapidly expanding, this sector fell within their controlled territory.
The ancient defensive belt drifted silently in the void of space, serving as a quiet testament to past glories and the historical mission it had once carried.
In the "Disordered Domain" where the Disordered Array had once stood sentinel, the stars were dim and devoid of light. The fierce battles that had once erupted within the system had entirely overdrawn the life of the stars.
The planets within the system had shattered long ago, forming rings of debris as they orbited the stars alongside the wreckage of countless warships. Following the recovery of the Disordered Array's core, all components of value had been salvaged, leaving behind nothing but a shattered scene of desolation.
The most eye-catching feature amidst the ruins was that giant orbital ring.
Devoid of any light, the hyper-large structure was heavily damaged in multiple sections, its circular form fractured and incomplete.
As the technical team set foot upon the ring, thick dust stirred beneath their boots. From time to time, drifting debris captured by the ring's gravity would streak down like meteors, hammering against its iron body.
This was Blazkowicz's first time walking upon a Ring of War. Although it lay in ruins, he could feel its fundamental difference.
The Ring of Nur was larger, designed to house countless functional structures and systems, making its comprehensive utility very strong. It was primarily built to sustain life and scientific research; its weapon systems were minimal, retaining only a limited self-defense capability.
The designers' line of thinking had been clear—if an enemy managed to breach all the way to the capital star of Nur, no amount of weaponry would save them.
And that confidence was derived from the defensive wall composed of countless cutting-edge war assets. The four Rings of War were the critical components of that defensive wall.
Compared to the Ring of Nur, the Ring of War seemed somewhat slender, its circular keel narrower, giving it a sleek appearance visually. Along both the inner and outer sides of the ring's walls, countless hexagonal bay doors hung open, faintly revealing the silhouettes of colossal weaponry.
Under normal circumstances, the inner and outer rings should have been perfectly smooth—nested within the system like a harmless, plain ring. But because the intelligence core had slipped into slumber before it could seal the ring, the weaponry remained exposed to the vacuum of space.
Activating such a gargantuan construct was an exceptionally tedious process.
The Stone Man artisans boarded small vessels, shuttling back and forth between various facilities, with their primary task being the rebooting of the reactor arrays.
To secure the power supply of the Ring of War, dark matter reactors were used. Such advanced energy systems had already become irreplaceable relic technologies. It had taken the top human scientific teams a full four months just to reboot the very first dark matter reactor.
Hum—!
As the majestic energy surged back into the conduits, flooding the starved iron chassis, a deep rumble reverberated through the atmospheric structures. Streams of light emerged from both sides, gradually spreading across the entire ring.
With the power supply secured, the Stone Man artisans immediately set to work installing the intelligence core. Once the intelligence core was slotted into the base and control of the ring was re-established, the automated protocols would gradually activate the war engines.
The central command room was a hive of activity as the Stone Man artisans rigged the intelligence core and lowered it onto the base. Since they had been the ones responsible for dismantling the intelligence core, installing it was naturally second nature to them.
"Wait."
Just as the core was about to be lowered into place, Blazkowicz called a halt to the artisans, who looked at him with a hint of confusion.
Gesturing for the installation work to pause, Blazkowicz watched as two Night Sentinels stepped forward carrying an encrypted weapons case, presenting it before the artisans.
"This is?"
Stone Man Musala took a few steps forward, his hazard-suit glove brushing against the encrypted case. His innate Stone Man talent immediately informed him of what lay inside. As one of the first Stone Men to follow Blazkowicz back to Nur, he instantly realized that King Novik wanted to put a safeguard in place.
Musala gestured to his colleagues to open the encrypted case, revealing the contents within.
Inside was a hexagonal, column-like crystal container, small enough to be held in one hand, with some form of invisible substance flowing within the crystal. Though invisible to the naked eye, its presence could be clearly felt.
Upon seeing it, the Stone Man artisans felt a cold dread creep up their spines, their brains shivering subconsciously and their bodies trembling slightly.
A miniature silicon-based bomb. It was designed to erase any form of artificial intelligence from a cognitive and logical level. Because the Stone Men were bio-mechanical construct beings possessing highly advanced logic, they naturally felt an instinctual terror toward silicon-based bombs.
"This safeguard measure is very straightforward."
Offering some reassuring words, Musala carefully lifted the silicon-based bomb from the case and examined it closely in his hands: "An irreplaceable, ancient relic."
"A counter-measure creation that could only have been born during the height of artificial intelligence."
He handed the silicon-based bomb to a fellow engineer: "Place it in the sealed chamber of the intelligence core and set up the trigger mechanism."
"Once the bomb is active, any mechanical or virtual creation that touches it—aside from a human flesh-and-blood body—will detonate the silicon bomb."
Hearing the grand artisan's instructions, the Stone Man engineer grew even more cautious, setting up the necessary auxiliary systems and placing the bomb beneath the base of the intelligence core.
With the safeguard secured, the installation resumed.
Unsurprisingly, with the safeguard in place, a visible sense of relief washed over the faces of many artisans. Most of them were well aware of how powerful artificial intelligence could be, let alone a severely damaged war intelligence that was on the verge of annihilation.
Aside from the miniature silicon bomb, several other fail-safes were installed onto the intelligence core. If a critical situation like a loss of control occurred, the AI could be destroyed instantly, neutralizing the threat at its source.
As the intelligence core settled into its base, the power supply responded immediately, automatically triggering the awakening protocols.
Seeing the cascades of garbled code flash across the screens made the Stone Man artisans' skin crawl.
"I truly find it hard to imagine that after suffering such severe trauma, a digital life form still has the chance to wake up."
Musala shook his head, standing at the forefront of his Stone Man colleagues as his gentle voice delivered a heartfelt sigh. His words struck a chord, and the Stone Man artisans nodded in agreement. Only those who understood advanced code could comprehend that for a digital life form within an intelligence core to wake up and hold its collapsing sanity together was an absolute miracle.
[Intelligence core connected to base: Authorization verified.]
[Executing recovery protocols: Ring of War initiating.]
The sphere of light flared with a crimson radiance, surging quickly and sharply as a mechanical voice echoed throughout the central command room.
The ring shuddered violently, the dust on the floor rippling with the vibrations. The dust across the entire ring was shaken loose, making it look as though it were enveloped in a dreamscape under the light of the dim star.
The dome of the central fortress opened under automated protocols. Beyond the skylight, streams of light flickered along the edges of the colossal ring.
With the rebooting of the Ring of War, the dark matter reactor matrices were awakened one by one, and sub-systems rumbled awake from their millennia-long slumber.
The entire system was coming alive!
Under the guidance of ancient reconstruction protocols, the drifting debris of the system began returning from its endless wandering, settling back into its original positions.
It was a wondrous sight.
As if stepping into a sci-fi fantasy, the scattered fragments and wreckage throughout the system were reconstructed back into their original forms by the action of causal forces.
[Intelligent systems successfully awakened.]
With one final mechanical chime, the Disordered Array, which had been shut down during transit, was awakened once more.
Only this time, it was returning to its post.
"Ah..."
As the armored casing of the intelligence core sank beneath the floor, the steady voice of a middle-aged man carrying a sigh of immense weariness drifted through the speakers: "The Ring's functions are being repaired, but we anticipate only reaching seventy percent capacity."
"I was struck by conceptual weaponry during the war, and with the passage of too much time, many repair protocols have decayed. We can only rely on mechanical means for emergency repairs."
"Regarding my cognitive logic, I am barely holding myself together at the brink of collapse. I must rapidly construct sub-systems to maintain the Ring's repairs and sink my consciousness into slumber to prevent the acceleration of my collapse."
As it spoke, the middle-aged man's voice gradually faded out, and the cold mechanical voice came back online.
Listening to the report, Blazkowicz analyzed the advantages in his mind.
"Stone Man artisans, copy the files from the database. Preserve what remains of the ancient technologies."
Hearing the order, the Stone Man artisans bowed in unison and began copying the technologies from the ring's database.