Chapter 595 - 591 – QUIET BAY, THE TORTUROUS CALIBRATION, AND THE GOLDEN DRAGON GUARDING THE PRINCESS

The morning after the gate frame was assembled, Sylvia stood in the middle of the underground hall and gazed at the colossal Black Starsteel arch before her, thinking hard. The indoor test had succeeded, but as she recalculated her grand plan, there was one fact she couldn’t ignore.

"This place is too cramped," she murmured.

Noir, curled up on her shoulder, opened one eye. ’The gate is thirty meters tall and fifty meters wide. This hall is one hundred twenty meters. Seems like it still fits, to me.’

"The gate fits. The cargo ships don’t," Sylvia answered. "Nocture’s trade fleet is hundreds of meters long. They need water to maneuver. Besides, moving thousands of tons of cargo through a spiral staircase beneath the governor’s mansion would be the same as inviting the suspicion of the entire city."

She had already studied the regional map Zhaoyue had brought. Ten kilometers northwest of the city lay a secluded bay hemmed in by steep cliffs, a place the locals called Quiet Bay. Its waters were deep and calm, there were no fishing villages there, and its rock cliffs were tall enough to hide anything from the eyes of people on land. As a secret harbor, it was nearly perfect.

An hour later, Sylvia, Sol, and Noir had arrived at the cliff edge of Quiet Bay. The sea wind carried the smell of salt and a faint trace of thin miasma from far away. Below them, blue-green water churned gently between the rock walls.

Sylvia raised her hand. The entire gate frame, along with the anchor crystal, hundreds of tons of mithril, and the altar slab, vanished from the underground hall, swallowed into the System Inventory. That boundless storage space with absolute time stasis had been made for exactly this kind of work. In a matter of seconds, the one-hundred-twenty-meter hall was empty, leaving only the spiral staircase leading into the void.

"Sol. Level the cliffs on the inner side of the bay. I need a plateau one hundred meters wide jutting out over the water."

’A most eagerly awaited command,’ Sol grumbled flatly as he unleashed earth magic. ’After prospecting for mines and digging warehouses, now I’m a beach contractor.’

"You can complain while you work."

Sol complained, worked, and grumbled all at the same time. Within ten minutes, the cliff on the bay’s side had become a gigantic stone dock, its floor smooth as a mirror, with a wide canal basin channeling clear seawater all the way to the edge of the plateau. Sylvia reinstalled the anchor crystal at the center of the plateau, connected the fifty-meter-wide gate frame at the end of the canal, and poured out liquid mithril to lock everything in place.

Then she switched on her holographic bracelet.

"Stacia, we’re at the new location. Ready to receive calibration."

Stacia’s face appeared on the screen with her lab goggles perched on her forehead and a cup of black coffee that was clearly the who-knows-how-manyth cup. Her golden hair was even messier than yesterday.

"Okay! With a ten-kilometer coordinate shift, it should only need minor adjustments," Stacia said cheerfully. "I’ll send another test package. Ready?"

"Ready."

HUMMMMMM!!

The air inside the frame pulsed. At the count of five, a small wooden crate appeared. But not above the plateau. The crate appeared three hundred meters up in the sky and fell freely into the sea with a thunderous SPLOOSH.

A brief silence.

"...Sorry?" Stacia chuckled awkwardly. "That... there’s a slight deviation on the vertical axis."

Sylvia massaged her temples. "Slight, you say."

"I’ll fix it! Wait just a moment!"

The second attempt. The crate appeared in a different form: half of it embedded in the cliff wall, and the other half hanging absurdly in empty air. Sylvia nearly let out a long sigh. Fortunately, the spatial stasis that accompanied the transfer kept the crate pinned without being crushed, and she could pull it back with a snap of her fingers.

The third, fourth, fifth attempts. The test crates appeared in different places: on the seabed, behind a rock, and once even over the head of Sol, who was lying down, making the Golden Dragon leap up like a startled cat.

’Hey! That almost hit my head!’ Sol protested.

"It was an empty crate," Sylvia replied without turning around.

’It’s still a crate!’

By noon, Sylvia was sitting cross-legged on a mithril slab, staring at the series of complicated numbers scrolling across Stacia’s holographic screen. She realized something she had suspected from the start: pinpointing a spatial coordinate across five hundred thousand kilometers was far more torturous than killing a hundred Tier 7 monsters.

"Stacia, why is the drift inconsistent? I’ve set the anchor at the same point."

"That’s because this earth keeps moving, Sylvia," Stacia explained as she swiped through a tidal chart. "Not just rotation. After the apocalypse and the fusion of the continental crusts, the new plates are still slowly shifting, and on the Tianhua side there’s a magnetic anomaly from the Deathcloud Mountains that bends the wave trajectory. Every ten minutes, your anchor point drifts about eleven centimeters from its origin. Over a distance of five hundred thousand kilometers, eleven centimeters means hundreds of meters on your side."

"So we can’t rely on fixed coordinates."

"Exactly. We have to build dynamic coordinates that follow the anchor automatically. I need real-time data from your side: underground mana currents, wind pressure, even the waves of the sea."

Sylvia rubbed her chin. "I have the True Sight eyes. Maybe I can read the spatial flow directly."

"That would help a lot! But be careful, don’t use them too long. I’m worried your brain will overheat."

"I’m a Rank 7 Demigod. I won’t overheat just from calculating numbers," Sylvia snorted.

But two hours later, Sylvia began to take her words back. The True Sight gaze could indeed pierce layers of space and see the thin threads of spatial energy flowing around the gate frame, but there were too many threads, tangled together, and their pattern changed every second. It felt like trying to assemble a spiderweb in the middle of a storm.

"Noir," she finally called.

’Yes.’

"You’re an element of darkness and miasma. You’re more sensitive to spatial fluctuations than I am. Help me."

Noir leapt down from her shoulder, transforming bit by bit until the black shadow around his tiny body stretched out across the floor. The shadow spread over the entire plateau, touching the gate frame, the anchor crystal, even the surface of the water in the canal. The cat’s violet eyes glowed dimly.

’There’s a vortex at the lower left of the frame. The spatial flow spins against the direction of the sea current,’ Noir reported in a calm, flat voice. ’That’s why the crates slipped just now. Cover it with a balancing crystal, roughly thirty centimeters from the bottom.’

Sylvia was startled, then smiled. "Clever."

’I’m not Sol.’

’I heard that,’ Sol replied lazily from a distance.

With Noir’s help, the calibration began to show progress. Sylvia embedded three small balancing crystals at the points Noir indicated, while Stacia adjusted her dynamic coordinate formula at Nocture. Every few minutes, they sent another test package, and each time the positional deviation shrank: from three hundred meters to one hundred, then thirty, then ten.

In the middle of that grueling process, a large shadow passed over the bay. A blue-silver-winged eagle the size of a horse swooped down with a piercing cry and landed on the stone plateau, beating its wings until dust flew everywhere. On its back, a young man in the uniform of an Association of Hunters courier was gasping for breath, his face pale and sweat drenching his forehead.

Tianhua did not yet have long-distance communication devices. The only way to deliver a message quickly was to send a Tamer with his pet bird monster, and this young man had clearly pushed his Tier 3 courier eagle to the limit. Before leaving for the bay, Sylvia had told Zhaoyue where she would be.

"Miss Sylvia! A message from Her Highness Princess Zhaoyue!" the courier cried, bowing deeply and handing over a sealed scroll. "She instructed me to deliver its contents directly! The Noble Council’s fleet has arrived, earlier than expected! Six mana-crystal ships, twenty wyverns, and thirty mages! They’ve stopped above the city square and sent an envoy bearing a decree of ’territorial inspection’. They’re demanding that all military governors surrender their seals of office!"

Sylvia raised an eyebrow as she opened the scroll. Zhaoyue’s neat handwriting confirmed everything, plus one line at the bottom: I need your advice, Sylvia.

"They’re half a day early," Sylvia remarked flatly. "They must be impatient."

Sylvia thought for a moment. She looked at the calibration screen, at the numbers where the positional deviation was down to ten meters, then at Sol, lying on a warm rock doing something that seemed like snoring.

"Sol."

’Hn?’

"Go back to the city. Guard Zhaoyue."

In an instant, Sol sprang up. His tail stood straight, his whiskers quivered, and his eyes sparkled with enthusiasm like a kitten told that fresh fish was on its way.

’Guard the princess? That’s all? I don’t have to dig, don’t have to level, don’t have to lift anything?’

"Just guard. And if anyone bothers her, you flatten them."

’With pleasure!’ Sol practically danced in the air. ’That princess always gives me dried roast meat snacks and salted fish. Her bed is soft. And nobody tells me to carry things!’

Noir looked at Sol coldly. ’You sound like a real house cat.’

’I am a Golden Dragon carrying out an honor guard duty,’ Sol replied proudly, shooting off in a small flash of gold, leaving Quiet Bay within seconds.

Sylvia sighed and turned to the courier, who was still bowing. "Go back and tell the Princess: Sol is on his way. Don’t resist, don’t engage with their provocations, and let the envoy talk as much as he likes. Leave the rest to Sol."

"Only... Sol?" The courier swallowed and glanced at the tiny golden cat that had just disappeared. "Forgive me, Miss, but thirty mages of Tier Six to Seven..."

"He can destroy a mountain with one breath. Thirty mages are no problem." Sylvia smiled. "Also tell the Princess to prepare enough snacks."

The courier nodded nervously, climbed back onto his eagle, and flew toward the city. Sylvia was almost certain his message would arrive long after Sol got there first.

"Stacia, continue."

"Huh? You don’t want to watch the fight?"

"I can see the result later. Right now I’m more interested in this."

A few minutes later, through the telepathic bond she had deliberately left open, Sylvia heard Sol’s report, delivered in a tone so casual it was as if he were reciting a lunch menu.

’I’ve arrived on the roof of the governor’s mansion. There’s a Council envoy shouting in the hall below. A short old man named General Mo Lan. He keeps citing royal law and telling the Princess to hand over the seal.’

"Let him talk first," Sylvia replied as she adjusted a balancing crystal at the corner of the frame.

’He’s started threatening to arrest the Princess if she doesn’t comply. Three Tier 7 mages are standing behind him. And they called me a "stray cat". I feel offended.’

"Ignore the insult."

’Can’t. I’m a sacred Golden Dragon.’

"Whatever."

Sylvia closed her eyes for a moment. From ten kilometers away, without needing to look, she could feel a surge of pure golden aura suddenly enveloping the governor’s mansion like a sun abruptly descending to earth. At once, the faint hum of magic from the six mana-crystal ships in the sky stopped.

’Done,’ Sol reported a few minutes later, this time in a satisfied tone. ’I only released a little dragon pressure. All six ships landed in the square right away, or rather, fell. Their wyverns all fainted. The Tier 7 mages knelt trembling and begged for mercy. General Mo Lan wet himself in the hall. Princess Zhaoyue is now pouring tea for them.’

"No casualties?"

’None. But all their ships are badly damaged. I only pressed on them with a little gravity. A little. Now they’re being gathered in the square, and the Princess asked me to guard them while sitting in her lap. She gave me grilled salted fish.’

"...Good. Very good. Keep guarding them."

’With pleasure.’

Sylvia opened her eyes and couldn’t hold back an amused smile. Beside her, Noir merely flicked his tail with a flat expression, as if he had expected all of it.

She turned back to Stacia’s holographic screen and looked at it seriously. "Now the problem of the Council’s fleet is settled. Let’s continue the calibration. What’s the latest deviation?"

"Three meters!" Stacia exclaimed with delight. "I think with one more adjustment to the vertical axis crystal, we can hit zero!"

The next three hours felt like a century. The sun slid from mid-sky toward the western horizon, coloring Quiet Bay with an orange glow as beautiful as the blackish-red sea Sylvia had once seen in the Outer Ocean. On the stone plateau, she and Noir kept working in silence: moving crystals, adjusting formations, and recording numbers. At the edge of the screen, Stacia occasionally shouted in panic or delight, and occasionally cried when a calculation failed. Sofia came several times to serve tea and calm the scientist.

When the sky began to darken, and the first star appeared above the cliffs, the eighty-third test package was sent.

HUMMMMMM!! POP!

The small wooden crate appeared right in the center of the plateau, exactly at the spot Sylvia had marked with a mithril circle, and landed soundlessly. There was not a single centimeter of deviation.

Sylvia stared at the crate for a long time, then looked at Stacia on the screen.

"Eighty-three times," she murmured.

"Eighty-three times!" Stacia cried and laughed at once, dropping her goggles. "Sylvia, we did it! The dynamic coordinates are locked! Now the gate can be fully activated!"

Noir dropped to the floor and sprawled his small body out. ’I need a week of sleep.’

"Me too," Sylvia admitted with a soft laugh, sitting down on the wooden crate. "But there’s still something left to do. Tomorrow, we open this gate."

She gazed at the giant black frame, now pulsing calmly under the starlight, facing the silent bay. Far across the ocean, a great fleet was waiting for her call. And in the city square, a Golden Dragon enjoying grilled salted fish was guarding a young princess from the nobles who could now only kneel.

’Tomorrow,’ Sylvia thought, ’we open the door between two worlds.’