Chapter 244 — The Young Wolf General

In the communications hall, Camille gazed for a long while at the nine hundred and seventy-two seats that had fallen forever silent.

Name after familiar name drifted through his mind, each backed by a face already beginning to blur in his memory. He could almost hear the oath they had sworn here on the day the Watchers first took up their post in this facility.

To willingly surrender all that it means to be human, and in the name of mankind to keep watch over this fortress, over the hope and the seeds within it, through the long night, until the lights burned again, until the light of civilization once more shone upon this world.

The Watchers had not broken their oath. Today, the last Watcher would fulfill those vows made a thousand years ago.

Camille stood at the very front of the hall, before the wall where that final message had once been projected. The runic plates of his armor rasped against the air as he bowed slightly, bidding farewell to his former colleagues.

Gao Yang, Heddy, and the others stood at the entrance of the hall, waiting quietly for Camille.

"Ancestor, what are you thinking about?" Heddy asked in a low voice, watching Gao Yang's expression.

Gao Yang sighed softly. "About the things that don't add up."

Heddy looked puzzled. "Things that don't add up?"

"The sealing of this facility," Gao Yang said with a slight shake of his head. "This facility was sealed a thousand years ago, and the Watchers and the 'seeds' entered their stasis slumber at the same time. Yet the magic tide truly erupted only seven hundred years ago. That leaves a full three hundred years in between... To act so far in advance, don't you find it rather unnecessary?"

"Perhaps the scholars realized how terrible the magic tide would be, and thought that sealing the facility and entering slumber once it erupted would be too late," Heddy offered her guess. "So it was necessary to store a batch of sleeping seeds before the disaster truly struck, so that if civilization were ever wiped out one day, they could wake and rebuild the Empire..."

Gao Yang neither confirmed nor denied it. After a moment he went on: "According to Camille, apart from the 'seeds' meant to serve as the main force of reconstruction, the Watchers charged with guarding the fortress were all core executors of the old 'Defiance' plan. They were the finest mages, the most brilliant scholars, each of immeasurable value. When the Fortress of Defiance fulfilled its purpose, those who evacuated from here were all peripheral staff of the plan, while the true core, the leadership, those in the know—nearly all of them went deep into the fortress and entered stasis slumber. And outside, the 'results' they sent back to the imperial capital never once entered the public eye..."

Heddy frowned, as though she had begun to realize what Gao Yang was driving at.

And Gao Yang immediately named the third suspicious point: "Lastly, the Kingdom of Gondor seems never to have warned its neighboring nations about the magic tide."

"You mean the elves, the dwarves, the orcs?" Heddy raised her eyebrows. "Perhaps the Empire simply didn't intend to warn them. The Gondorian royal house back then only thought of preserving human civilization through the disaster, and never considered—"

"No. The Gondor of those days was nothing like what you imagine," Gao Yang shook his head. "From the latter half of the Spark Era onward, Gondor was the mightiest realm on this continent. But this human empire did not deal with the other races through violence and conquest—partly, of course, because of the constraints of the Deep Blue Well. Gondor stood at its zenith yet could not expand outward, so emperor after emperor chose to maintain friendly relations with the neighboring realms while keeping the Empire strong.

"From the years when Camille was active all the way to the eruption of the magic tide three hundred years later, Gondor was in its honeymoon with the elves and the dwarves—above all with the Silver Empire the elves had founded. The 'Covenant of the Ten Forests' brought human-elven relations to their peak: a third of the elven royal descendants studied in the Gondorian capital, while human caravans trod every corner of the Silver Empire. Had the bonds not been so close, the elves would never have been so eager to aid human refugees after the magic tide. Remember, beyond raising the great wall, the elves also took in humanity's southern pioneer legions—the Highland Kingdom in the south of the continent today was all but built by the elves helping mankind."

"So... if humans had known about the magic tide all along, they would at least have warned the elves," Heddy said, fully understanding Gao Yang's doubts now. "But Camille never mentioned anything of the sort... All he ever knew was the part about preserving human civilization."

"Camille was only a technician, so he may not have known the full plans of the higher-ups. But from the intelligence I have alone, I can be certain the elves knew nothing of the magic tide either," Gao Yang nodded. "At least... their common folk knew nothing of it."

"Everything was sealed away," Heddy drew a soft breath. "Most members of the Defiance plan were locked away, held in stasis inside this fortress, and their achievements were never made public from beginning to end. The Gondorian royal house neither told the people about the magic tide nor warned any race on the continent. If at the outset one could argue this was to prevent panic by controlling information, it still makes little sense that they were controlling it right up until the tide erupted... Those in the know—what exactly were they afraid of? Merely the panic of the people?"

"...I don't know," Gao Yang said at last, after a long silence, still able only to shake his head. "But I do know that what they feared could not have been the magic tide alone..."

Gao Yang did not tell Heddy all of his doubts. In truth, beyond that unreasonable "information lockdown" of those years, he sensed another dissonance running through the whole affair: the ancient Gondorian royal house's judgment of the magic tide's scale seemed to have gone wrong as well.

From the final message they sent to the Fortress of Defiance, they clearly believed that those within the fortress after the tide would be humanity's final survivors—perhaps even the final survivors of all mortal civilization. Yet in truth, the magic tide of seven hundred years ago did not so much as destroy human civilization; even Gondor saw a great host of refugees escape from the wasteland.

In Tyr's words, what came seven hundred years ago was merely a "minor magic tide."

The Gondorian royal house of that time had clearly made a mistaken judgment—they had taken that tide for a great one capable of destroying the entire world...

But such a misjudgment... was it truly only a blunder born of frayed nerves? Or was that tide which erupted seven hundred years ago... in fact supposed to have been enough to destroy the world?

For now, everything remained a mystery.

Camille finished his final farewell. He came before Gao Yang and bowed slightly. "I have kept you waiting too long."

"Not at all—we happened to be discussing a few things," Gao Yang said, ending his discussion with Heddy and turning to nod at Camille. "Rest assured, I will gather every body here and see them properly laid to rest. The world will remember each one's sacrifice."

"I thank you on their behalf," Camille said. "Then next, I will open all the remaining sample vaults in the fortress. I hope these ancient things may prove of some use in this age."

At that same moment, on the border between Ansul and Typhon, the young commander of the knightly order stood in the high command tower, in the chamber at its summit, gazing through the window at the dim mountain range shrouded in wind and snow.