Chương 122: Chapter 121: Administrator Station 50 and the Ten-Thousand-Year Server Room

FSSHHH — KTCHHH! The elevator doors slid open at ten thousand meters above the ground. A blast of cold, dry eighteen-degree air hit them in the face, sharp with the smell of ozone and scorched circuit resin. What waited on the other side wasn't a gold-plated palace full of butterfly-winged angels. It wasn't some ancient temple either. It was a data center — tens of thousands of square meters of it. Thousands of titanium server racks, five meters tall, stood in perfectly straight rows down endless corridors.

Millions of blue and green signal lights blinked in steady rhythm, underneath the low, constant whir of cooling fans that hadn't stopped spinning in ten thousand years. At the front of the main hall, a thirty-meter wall of reinforced glass curved out over a panoramic view of the entire Solaris continent below, white clouds drifting past like a carpet of cotton. Lucian stepped out of the elevator, hands in his pockets, scanning the ceiling's tangle of magical fiber-optic conduit.

"No gold chests, no jade. Just scrap metal and blinking LEDs. How much would this junk even fetch?" BEEP BEEP BEEP! The ceiling speaker system flared red. A crisp, automated voice snapped through the room in the same New York accent as before:'FINANCIAL ALERT FROM CENTRAL SERVER!' Account Administrator Vance has failed to pay cloud storage maintenance fees since the Ice Age. Legacy billing estimate under the archive's statutory penalty cap: 48, 000, 000, 000 (FORTY-EIGHT BILLION) GOLD.

'Host is required to settle payment immediately or the account will be permanently locked.' Lucian staggered back half a step, both hands clutching his chest.

"I haven't even been off the elevator ten seconds and they're already hitting me with a forty-eight-billion-gold bill?! What kind of deadbeat bloodline am I even descended from?!" Beside him, Evelyn doubled over, banging her palm against a steel casing, wheezing with laughter.

"Ha! Ten thousand years of skipped cloud subscription payments! That's not a habit, that's genetics, my finance-loving friend!" This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. Click. Evelyn didn't wait for the alarm to finish. She dragged the leather swivel chair out from the central console and sat down. She cracked her knuckles, set all ten fingers on the brass keys, and started typing at the speed of a master hacker. Tak-tak-tak-tak-tak—!

Lines of magical assembly code scrolled down the crystal display at a dizzying pace. Lucian pressed his right hand to the casing and used Layered Focus to stabilize the mana interface while Evelyn bridged the security firewall. Ting! The Unified System V2. 0 panel chimed across his vision: [CONNECTION ESTABLISHED — WORLD TOWER OPERATIONS NETWORK: STATION 50!] Current access: Authenticated Maintenance Operator — Station 50 only (billing lock active) Skill 'Language Breaker' has triggered: ANCIENT SYSTEM DEBUG MODE (LV. 1)! [STATION 50 DEFENSE RATING ASSESSMENT:] Equivalent to the combined fury of 10, 000 software engineers woken up for a 3 A. M. server outage. It took exactly two minutes and thirty seconds. TIK. [FIREWALL BYPASSED — TEMPORARY STATION 50 MAINTENANCE ACCESS GRANTED].

Behind them, Sylvia stood clutching the gold scroll, and Astra stood with the Holy Sword, both watching the two transmigrators' hands fly across the keys. Sylvia swallowed and whispered to Astra:"The two Great Sages... wielding the Divine Art of Keyboard Syntax to bend the order of heaven itself..." Astra nodded rapidly, taking another bite of her ice cream.

"Looks cool." At the edge of the reinforced glass floor, Eleanor stood taking in the miniaturized view of the Solaris continent below. From ten thousand meters up, the great snow-capped mountains looked like small mounds of dirt, and the rivers glittered like threads of silver in the dawn light. She reached over and tugged lightly at the edge of Lucian's cloak.

"It's beautiful... Thank you for bringing me somewhere like this." Lucian glanced at the glass and answered evenly.

"Beautiful, sure. But the elevator ticket up here wasn't cheap. Remember, we're splitting the power bill too." Eleanor laughed out loud and pinched his side.

"Cheapskate." FZZT... FZZT... Evelyn's screen suddenly pulled up an access log from thirty years back on its own. [STATION 50 ACCESS LOG — YEAR 9, 970:] User: Fourth Knight Valeria Lilith von Vance (Age: 20) Entry method: Punched through the Floor 49 ventilation hatch Search query: "Demon-kin strawberry sponge cake recipe using a fusion-powered oven" Result: Not found. Snapped off an antenna out of frustration. Lucian stared at the log entry, both temples twitching.

"My mother... at twenty years old, she punched a hole in the wall and climbed all the way up here just to look for a cake recipe?!" Evelyn was laughing too hard to breathe.

"Your entire bloodline is a menagerie, I swear!" WHRRM! The 3D magic projector set into the ceiling activated on its own. A column of golden light gathered in midair, resolving into a recording from the past. A tall, broad-shouldered man in a white lab coat over an expensive suit, round glasses, messy brown hair, sat at a central control desk. Lucian stared at the man's face. That high nose. That sly smile. That scruffy mustache. It was Dr. Vance, the founder in the recording—not Regulus.

Yet the high nose, sly smile, and scruffy mustache made the family resemblance impossible to miss. The man in the lab coat lifted a carrot, took a bite, and looked straight into the camera. His voice was warm and unmistakably familiar.

'Experiment Log #01: The Vance World Administration Project. Beginning recording.'