Chapter 618 — Front and Rear

Inside the Lunburg base, Gao Yang met the royal soldiers that Suo Jilin had rescued.

Leading them was a man of medium build from the north, with short brown hair and a high-bridged nose. He had already shed his original battered armor and changed into the comfortable clothes the base provided. A trace of exhaustion still lingered on his face, but his spirits had plainly improved a great deal.

When Gao Yang stepped into the rather crude barracks, the knight who had escaped death at once rose to his feet. Together with the few somewhat dazed-looking soldiers beside him, he bent and bowed with a touch of nervous fluster: "My lord, I am Barnard Mitchell, from the royal capital. My soldiers and I are deeply grateful for your generous shelter..."

"Please, sit down, Mr. Mitchell. I have a few questions for you." Gao Yang gestured for the knight before him to be seated, then casually took a chair nearby himself. "First, allow me to introduce myself—you can probably guess. I am Gao Yang Cecil."

So this was the legendary knight—the man who, only a few years ago, appeared solely in tales of legend and the tomes of historians, and who had now returned from the realm of the dead to once again take up rule over the Southern Frontier.

The nobles of the royal capital held descriptions and conjectures about this Southern Frontier ruler in every conceivable variety. Most chose to keep their distance; a small number regarded him as a threat; a very few harbored the malice of conspiracy theorists. Yet almost everyone agreed on one point: this legendary pioneer did not fit his age. He carried the arrogance of the Gondorans, the roughness of a pioneer, the savagery of the first-generation nobility, and the unreasonableness of one who had risen from the dead—such were all the impressions that Barnard Mitchell of the royal capital had built up concerning Gao Yang Cecil within his social circle.

Mitchell briefly sized up the legendary duke before him with the least discourteous of glances, then lowered his eyes just as that appraisal was about to breach propriety, adopting a posture of one awaiting orders.

The pioneer hero before him wore no outlandish attire unfitting the age, nor did he exude any disturbing aura. He was just as the most orthodox histories recorded: tall, majestic, clad in armor, as though forever on the battlefield, his gaze sharp but not cold.

"Are you finding it comfortable here?"

This first question caught Mitchell somewhat off guard. He froze briefly, then hurried to reply, "Yes—thank you for providing such comfortable surroundings..."

There was clean hot water, tidy rooms, clothes, food, and precious medicine, and most important of all, safety—anyone who had just escaped death from a hopeless situation could hardly find fault with such conditions.

"Good." Gao Yang nodded slightly. "I would like to know the specifics of the 'crystal cluster infection,' and the final breakout routes of the northern legions..."

...

On the outskirts of Pompeii, a temporary camp.

Barbed wire and rapid-fire gun towers interlocked in layers. Fully armed soldiers kept watch over the surroundings from their posts. Inside and outside the camp, overt and covert magical monitoring and alert devices hummed away. Though the camp itself was not large, its astonishing level of protection made it a fortress armed to the teeth.

There was only one reason for such rigorous defenses: this was the site for researching godfiend contamination.

Deep within the camp, in a spacious, brightly lit laboratory, Kamael floated a dozen or so centimeters above the ground. On the platform before him, a cage composed of a shield generator and solid steel bars was firmly embedded in a reinforced concrete base. Within the cage lay the core purpose of this laboratory—

A crystal giant that had undergone complete mutation and lost all human cognition.

The colossal three-meter humanoid stood quietly behind the sturdy barrier of energy shields and solid bars. It was nothing like the "monsters" of common conception—ferocious and raging. In fact, quite the opposite: its gaze was calm and rational, even carrying a kind of detachment. It stared fixedly at the archmage beyond the barrier and said not a word.

"I heard from Pi Yun that you refuse to speak with 'the frail humans of the old era,'" Kamael hummed, drifting closer. "So I've come—I'm curious. In your understanding, does a form like mine count as the old era?"

The crystal giant made no response whatsoever.

"It seems you still refuse to talk. Do you think someone will come to rescue you? This place is far from the front lines, and you are a great distance from your malformed kin..." Kamael continued. "I know you are rational—you can still think. It's merely that an entirely new worldview has been substituted into you. In your understanding, perhaps crystal cluster infection is the normal form of life, and uninfected humans are in fact some kind of pathology... But what I am curious about is this: after undergoing such a transformation, do you still remember the thoughts you held as a human, the emotions you felt as a human..."

After another round of silence, the giant finally spoke, its voice carrying a certain deep, resonant tremor: "When the new era arrives, you will realize the flaws of a body of pure flesh and blood—extinction will come of its own accord, and we... are helping you."

The giant evidently hesitated a little as it uttered that last word, for it was not quite sure whether the glowing spirit form floating before it should also be included within the category of "you."

No matter how one looked at it, Kamael seemed to have no human organs left that could be mutated...

Kamael paid no mind to the sensational parts of the other's words. He merely fixed the mutant before him with two orbs of blazing arcane light, his voice low: "This so-called new era of yours—it's the magic tide, isn't it."

The crystal giant maintained its silence.

"From what I know, individuals like you—possessing special power and intact sentience—are the commanders among the 'crystal giants.' And the dark druidic magic lingering upon you indicates that you were originally a theurgist of the Church of Ten Thousand Realms—or perhaps a martyr."

"..."

"To which rank did you once belong in the Order of All Things Perishing? A canon? Or the withering theurgist one level below? Or a forest herder?"

"..."

"Where did you obtain your data on the magic tide?" "Why are you certain that becoming this form will allow you to survive the magic tide?" "Have you heard the term 'godfiend'? Do you know what it means?" "This transformation technology—where did you get it?"

Kamael's questions came one after another, yet the crystal giant remained utterly silent. At last, after a stretch of silence even harder to endure, Kamael suddenly said, "Do you know—the Gondoran Empire walked this road once before. I was part of that project. With my own eyes I witnessed its failure. And this form you fancy an evolution is merely the failed scheme we discarded earliest of all..."

He had expected such words to move the prisoner before him at least somewhat, but the crystal giant only regarded him calmly, and after a moment said:

"I have heard that a fortress from the Gondoran era has been unearthed in the Southern Frontier...

"Your existence does not surprise me in the least.

"But you have gotten one thing wrong, ancient archmage. Your failure was not due to technical factors, not because something was wrong with this path.

"You failed because you did not defy enough..."

After saying this, the crystal giant retreated two steps, returned to the center of the cage, and sat down where it stood, accepting no further conversation.

Kamael's efforts came to naught, and at last he left the laboratory in helpless resignation.

Outside the laboratory, Pi Yun, in a gray robe, and several researchers had been waiting a long while.