Revive Rome: Wait! Why not make the empress fall in love with me first?
Chapter 169 - 73 Leviathan

Chapter 169: Chapter 73 Leviathan

Everyone reached the top of Olin City, and the battle with the Thornbird flock was drawing to a close.

Just as Aske had said, intelligent races like the Dark Elves, in comparison with the mindless Thornbird flock, were truly different.

Even as countless companions were slain, these Thornbirds still fiercely swooped toward the illusions, lacking even the basic reasoning to distinguish between reality and illusion.

The illusion mechanism of the Undead Illusion Sword tightly suppressed the Thornbirds’ reliance on their "revenge" ability.

With the pressure in the skies greatly reduced, some Arcane Mages began to join the battle.

For instance, using air pressure to force the Thornbirds to land or leveraging gravity to lower their flying altitude, thus facilitating Peggy’s illusions in the killing.

Suddenly, a cry of grief and anger erupted from the flock of Thornbirds, as if they could no longer endure the massive damage, countless dazzling light spots soared into the sky, like brilliant pillars, vanishing into the cloud layer of the night sky.

The Mages and the defenders visibly relaxed, followed by cheers from some.

"Take a break," the City Lord Apilius said to Peggy, then stood up and looked toward the North.

They were not looking at the Crusaders’ siege camp to the south but rather at the city of Thessalonica in the North.

(Due to the southern low and northern high terrain of Mount Olympus, the Crusade had actually traveled in a circle from inside the city to start the siege from the south)

Because the previous Thornbird flock came from the south, the Crusaders’ camp and Olympia City blocked these Extraordinary Creatures from reaching Thessalonica.

The seaside city under the cover of night was lit up with scattered lights, seemingly unaffected by the wars of recent days.

Is it over just like that? Apilius furrowed his brow. Of course, it would be best if it ended here, but...

His expression suddenly changed as he looked towards the Aegean Sea to the northeast, his Spirituality abruptly becoming uneasy.

Under the cover of the night, a huge shadow emerged from the sea, its breath like a hurricane, causing the forests along the coast to fall one by one.

As it surfaced, the port of Thessalonica was also hit by a gigantic tsunami. Waves over ten meters high violently crashed down, capsizing fishing boats along the shore, crumbling buildings, and washing over the trembling docks.

"That’s impossible!" exclaimed a Mage nearby, "With the current Magic Tide Level... how could there be a Demigod creature!"

"It’s not a Demigod creature!" Apilius shouted.

His voice seemed to have a special Magic Power, causing everyone’s Spiritual Bodies to tremble violently, unconsciously drawing their attention towards him.

"That is the juvenile form of the Leviathan! It’s currently only Lv.10, not unbeatable!"

Not bloody unbeatable... Aske thought to himself. Even a Lv.10 Leviathan juvenile had the "Giant V" Extraordinary Trait, with an intimidatingly large health pool.

Not something an NPC or player of this stage could defeat in combat.

The girls of The Azure Longsword Team, observing the figure slowly clambering ashore in the distance, also turned pale.

However, as a Demigod who had lived for who knows how many years, Apilius definitely had some aces up his sleeve, so Aske was convinced the Leviathan wouldn’t be a problem.

Just wait and watch the cinematic unfold.

Seeing Aske’s calm demeanor, the girls gradually recovered their coolness too—a habit and tacit understanding fostered by The Azure Longsword Team over a long time.

As long as their Squad Leader was there, there was nothing to fear.

After all, even if the sky falls, they still have their great god of a Squad Leader to hold it up!

In the distance, the Leviathan juvenile had already climbed onto Thessalonica’s port, and soon obvious unrest stirred within the city.

Lights flickered, buildings collapsed, and many citizens woke up from their sleep, rushing out of their homes in their nightgowns, running barefoot in the streets, desperately fleeing the city.

Apilius silently stared at the distant Leviathan, his face expressionless.

If he had his full Demigod powers, he could certainly handle that monster.

However, the current upper limit of the Magic Tide did not permit such actions.

Soon, Leviathan completely emerged from the sea surface, revealing its mountainous bulk.

With its webbed gigantic palms, it grabbed one of the residential buildings along with its foundation, pulled it up, and then stuffed it into its mouth, slowly chewing.

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To the west, in Solomon City, at the ruins of the Pantheon.

The place, once tightly sealed by the military, was immediately put into use after the Magic Tide receded.

Countless Church Court personnel bustled about, either observing the huge machine in the center of the temple to record data or directing Temple Knights to transport component materials.

The machine, measuring 30 meters in length, 28 meters in width, and 2 meters in height, taking up an area of 840 square meters, was called the "Civilization Restorer." It was powered by water diverted from the Tiber River, driven by a sophisticated apparatus of hydraulic oil, connecting rods, and pistons.

This device was split into two parts, the front half being an SMT component placement machine that used an array of mechanical devices to install various electronic components onto the mainboard.

All the electronic components were urgently crafted after the end of the Magic Tide’s rise, using materials that had been stockpiled beforehand, and were continuously delivered by workers employed by the Church Court.

The rear half contained the DLM data reading machine, which recorded specified data information into the freshly manufactured electronic storage media.

Because the intense magnetic field outburst during the rising of the Magic Tide would burn away all electronic information carriers—including the data stored within them—it could inflict fundamental damage to technological civilizations.

The solution of humans from the First and Second Epochs was to make handwritten copies.

Backups of electronic information were transcribed by hand, to be manually inputted after the Magic Tide subsided.

Copying by hand was, of course, problematic, due to both its inefficiency and high error rate, whether during transcription or data entry.

Moreover, paper could store only a small amount of information. Bear in mind that even the simplest manned spacecraft’s blueprints, when stacked, could reach the height of an average human.

Secondly, paper as a storage medium was simply too fragile. The Peloponnesian War of the Second Epoch was fundamentally a fight over these technical documents, which resulted in the destruction of a vast number of them.

Therefore, in the Third Epoch, an Ancient Solomon mechanical engineer named Heron invented the Mechanical Column Board, made up of densely arranged probes.

If a probe stuck out, it represented a "1"; if it was recessed, it signified a "0". Storing data in the form of mechanical positions avoided the combustion effect of the rising Magic Tide (which was, in essence, what was referred to as "burning a disc").

Combined with an optical read-write device, it was possible, after the end of the Magic Tide, to quickly write all the data from the Mechanical Column Boards into electronic media.

Initially, this invention did not catch the attention of the Empire’s officials, because the Mechanical Column Boards stored the most basic "01" binary data stream. How much information could one board hold, after all?

It even held less data than handwritten paper.

Just as the firearm, when first invented, was far from being as practical as the bow and arrow, the development of scientific civilization is always a qualitative leap that crushes quantity.

In the mid to late Fourth Epoch, the Imperial Academy of Sciences gradually discovered the advantages of Mechanical Column Boards—compared to paper, they were more durable and had a lower error rate.

Most importantly, the process of re-entering the data could be completely automated, avoiding the inefficiency of manual data entry.

On the ruins of the West Solomon Empire, the Church Court of the Fifth Epoch tirelessly optimized this approach.

The Mechanical Column Boards of today are made of a special high-polymer flexible material embedded with inert material rods, spaced about 0.1 micrometers apart.

One square meter of a Mechanical Column Board can store 11 PB of data (1PB = 1000TB).

Through the opening of the DLM data reader, these boards, often tens of kilometers in length, were carefully fed into the machine. The information recorded at the beginning of the first board contained all of Raphael’s core data, and thus needed to be priority entered, with utmost care.

As the optical reader swiftly processed the information on the boards, large streams of data began refreshing on the screens outside the machine, monitored in real-time by several expert data teams.

At 11:30 p.m., the main screen inside the Pantheon finally lit up.

"The artificial intelligence Raphael installation is complete, self-check is normal, and reboot is in progress," a mechanical electronic voice declared.

Immediate enthusiastic cheers erupted throughout the hall, with numerous clergy members so moved that they knelt on the ground, fervently kissing the crosses on their pendants.

Above the temple, Pope Innocent sat on the Holy See, his face breaking into a relieved smile.