Chapter 285 — Camille and Betty

The little maid had no idea what had happened, so she simply returned to the desk and went on daydreaming.

Before long, the study door was pushed open, and Gao Yang came back in carrying a roll of blueprints. He saw Camille apparently studying the bookshelf, and Betty standing by the desk with her mind wandering far away, and could not help smiling. "Were you all getting impatient waiting?"

Kamael turned and drifted toward Gao Yang. "No, I was just chatting with the little girl. It wasn't boring at all."

Betty, meanwhile, came running up to Gao Yang clutching the big teapot. "Master, Mr. Kamael doesn't drink tea! He says he doesn't have a mouth..."

"Ahem—yes, yes, I know," Gao Yang said, a little embarrassed, patting Betty on the head and sending her off. "Go on back and rest. I won't be needing anyone here for the moment."

"Mm!"

Betty pattered out, leaving Gao Cen to look at Kamael with a face full of awkwardness. "The child can be a bit blunt sometimes..."

"It's nothing. I paid it no mind. She's a very sweet girl," Kamael said mildly. "My lord, there is something I wish to report to you."

Gao Yang had been about to show Kamael his ideas for the cannon design, and at these words he blinked. "Oh? What is it?"

"It concerns the aberrations," Kamael said. No one could read his expression, but his tone now carried utter gravity. "I think... I know where they came from."

"You've worked out the origin of the aberrations?" Gao Yang's expression turned serious at once. He strode quickly to his desk and set down the papers and diagrams in his hands. "Where did they come from?"

"We made them," Kamael said slowly. "The product of the Defiance Project."

"..."

Gao Yang fell silent, saying nothing for nearly ten seconds, until even Kamael was beginning to feel uneasy—then he shook his head with a soundless smile. "So that really is the answer..."

"You had already guessed?"

"Only a conjecture," Gao Yang said with a sigh. "After learning of your Defiance Project, I formed a faint suspicion based on the intelligence I came across back when I broke out of the Gondor wasteland. I just never imagined... that things would truly match my guess. Go on—how did you find out?"

"Miss Tire gave me a sample of an aberration—a clean sample, purged of chaotic magic energy, that could be analyzed by magic. In that sample I found signs of mutation in the genetic factors, and that mutation... bears precisely the characteristics of the 'Godspawn' we created back then."

"Sit down," Gao Yang said with a sigh, settling into his chair behind the desk and gesturing to a chair beside him. "We may need to have a proper talk about this."