Chapter 240: The Truth

With a flicker of arcane sparks, Kamail turned around, quietly surveying the nearly one thousand seats in the hall—and the nine hundred seventy-two former comrades who had long since fallen into eternal slumber upon them.

“A thousand years… A thousand years ago, I was one of the chief researchers of the Imperial Royal Mage Corps. His Majesty the Emperor personally issued a secret order transferring me from the capital to this fortress on the northern border. When I first saw it, I was as astonished as you are now.

“The Empire secretly constructed this facility. The project began twelve hundred years ago. Yes, just as you said earlier, it was designed to resist the magical tide—the royal family had long foreseen the approach of this calamity and sought a solution. It was a vast and covert plan involving both the royal family and the entire Mage Corps, but very few knew the full scope. Even as a chief researcher, I only understood the part I was responsible for.

“My task was to analyze divine power and find a way to combine the genetic material of gods with human cells…

“Please don’t interrupt. I know this sounds unbelievable, but it truly happened a thousand years ago.

“When I arrived at this fortress, the project had already been underway for two centuries. We pinpointed the exact location of the ‘Falling White Star.’ It wasn’t in our world but required passage through the Shadow Realm to reach the edge of the Umbral Plane. So, we built a spatial gate in the lower levels of the ‘Rebellion’ fortress. This gate, powered by divine energy, pierced the barriers between several ‘planes.’ Exploration teams brought back samples of flesh and blood from the Nature God…”

As Kamail spoke, he raised an arm formed from condensed arcane energy and pointed at the wall. A tiny spark leapt, and suddenly a hidden isolation door appeared in the once seamless wall. With a creak of ancient machinery, the door slowly opened, and Kamail floated toward it. “Please follow me. Whatever you see, I ask you to remain calm.”

Gawain and Hetty exchanged a glance and led their group after Kamail.

“We paid a heavy price. Mortal contact with divine flesh—even merely gazing upon it—can be fatal. Extracting energy and genetic material was even more dangerous. Yet in the Umbral Plane, we found something intertwined with the divine corpse—something that helped us discover a way to resist divine corruption… though only partially effective.”

Following Kamail, Gawain glimpsed the hidden chambers and the secrets they held.

In one laboratory, he saw massive chunks of metal and crystal debris sealed within a complex magical array. These fragments seemed torn from a larger artificial construct. Despite the passage of countless years, they retained a pristine texture.

“The material…” Gawain’s expression grew serious as he examined the metal and crystal shards. “Is it the same as the Eternal Slate?”

Kamail nodded. “Exactly the same. These objects were found alongside the divine corpses and may have caused the gods’ downfall. Yet we don’t fully understand the true connection between the Eternal Slate and these fragments.”

A thought stirred in Gawain’s mind. He was beginning to piece together the truth but said nothing.

Kamail drifted through the room and continued. “I don’t know the entire plan, but I learned that divine power was the only possible defense against the magical tide. The only way for humanity to survive was to alter our very lifeforms. After decades of research, the pioneers found a way to extract energy from divine flesh. My team took it further: injecting divine genetic material into human cells to fundamentally change human nature.

“Through this method, humans could carry a fragment of ‘divine power.’ Even a faint trace could offer hope against the magical tide. In the outer labs, I cultivated the first generation of test subjects, which I named ‘Divine Scourge’…”

“I see…” Gawain muttered softly.

Kamail didn’t catch it. “What?”

“No, it’s nothing,” Gawain said, looking at the ancient arcane spirit. “And then? Did the Divine Scourge succeed?”

“In the end, yes. We created stable genetic factors that could safely integrate with human cells and be inherited for generations. Those carrying the genes wouldn’t suffer the malignant mutations of the first generation. Instead, they could undergo beneficial rapid mutations when the magical tide arrived—adapting to the new environment before their bodies failed… at least, in theory.”

Kamail led them to the next room, where neatly arranged incubation vessels stood intact. Inside translucent bio-solutions floated human samples from various stages—early specimens were bloated corpses covered in twisted crystals, but later samples grew increasingly stable. The final vessels contained nearly healthy humans.

“You say ‘in theory’?” Gawain looked at Kamail, suspicion growing. “You never tested this?”

“We couldn’t,” Kamail stopped. “All data on the magical tide is simulated. We used the Deep Blue Well for modeling, but the true nature of the magical tide… only the gods know. And we defied the gods.”

With that, the ancient arcane spirit led them onward, ascending to the facility’s third level.

“After the final Divine Scourge was completed, the facility’s mission ended. Personnel evacuated, and data and samples were sent back to the capital. But not everyone left,” Kamail’s voice echoed hollowly through the empty corridor, like a ghost’s lament. “We weren’t sure if the Divine Scourge could truly resist the magical tide, or if new disasters would still destroy humanity. So a group was chosen as ‘seeds’—sealed deep within this facility, isolated in a pocket dimension. If the outside world perished, at least humanity would have a final hope.”

“Those are the ones we saw in the hall…” Hetty murmured, then raised her voice. “You planned to rebuild human society with just a few hundred people?”

“No, not just a few hundred,” Kamail seemed to smile, though his features were blurred by chaotic arcane sparks. He stopped before a massive door at the corridor’s end. “Behind this door is the Stasis Hall. It once held sixty thousand.”

“Sixty thousand?!” Hetty’s eyes widened, then she caught the key word. “You said… once?”

“Yes. Once.”

Kamail opened the heavy, ancient isolation door. As it creaked open, the scene inside stunned them all into silence.

Beyond the door lay a shattered space—no Stasis Hall, no sixty thousand seeds. A wild darkness engulfed the area. Massive spatial rifts and raging energy storms tore through the distance. Floating debris, broken ruins, and indistinct shadows filled the view. Only a small patch of ground and fragments of torn walls and a dome remained—the last traces of the Stasis Hall.

It was as if a savage storm had ravaged this place, utterly destroying and devouring the hall.

Despair gripped them. But Kamail had long since accepted this truth calmly. He quietly closed the gate and led them in another direction, slowly recounting what had happened:

“We made a fatal mistake… even hiding here couldn’t save us from the magical tide.

“The magical tide struck the refuge, triggering a chain reaction of spatial collapse. Except for a small portion of the facility, everything was destroyed by energy surges and spatial storms. Sixty thousand vanished without a trace. Only the ‘Watchers’ at the facility’s core survived.

“The Watchers were volunteers who stayed behind as guardians. We slumbered in a smaller Stasis Hall, waking every twenty years to check conditions and receive updates from the communication hall. We slept and woke repeatedly, watching the sixty thousand lie unconscious in the hall, while the communication hall relayed news of the Empire’s prosperity.

“You can’t imagine what that felt like… In the first hundred years of the facility’s closure, the last person we knew outside passed away. At year one hundred sixty, the magical tide hadn’t come yet, and the Empire still thrived. We even began to doubt the plan’s necessity and meaning. Maybe the magical tide would never come. We, the nine hundred volunteers and sixty thousand seeds, were just anxiously fearing a ridiculous doomsday prophecy, wasting our lives on a phantom fear. Yet we faithfully followed orders, honoring our vows.

“At year two hundred forty, some began to falter. Small internal conflicts broke out. Some tried to open the gates, but Archmage Wigma restored order. Then…”

Kamail fell silent for a long moment before his voice resumed, low and heavy:

“We awoke to a piercing alarm and chaos. We received news that the fortress had suffered severe damage. In the communication hall, we saw the Emperor’s final message—we were the last survivors. The plan’s necessity and meaning were finally confirmed, but everything unfolded differently than we expected.

“The Stasis Hall was destroyed. Two-thirds of the facility vanished into the storm. The magical gates to the outside world closed under the magical tide’s influence. Even if the gates remained open, we couldn’t leave—the outside world was no longer habitable. This tiny refuge was all that kept us alive.

“We endured chaos, despair, hysteria, even violent conflict. But in the end, we chose to survive.”

(End of chapter)