With a flicker of arcane sparks, Kamel turned, staring silently at the nearly a thousand seats in the hall and the nine hundred and seventy-two former colleagues who had fallen asleep on them.

"It's been a thousand years...... A thousand years ago, I was one of the chief researchers of the Imperial Royal Magister Order, and a secret order from His Majesty the Emperor himself transferred me from the imperial capital to this fortress on the northern border, and when I first saw it, I was as surprised as you are now.

"The Empire built this facility in secret, and the project began 1,200 years ago. Yes, as you said, we are here to fend off the tide - the royal family has long been aware of the approach of the tide and has been looking for a solution, it is a large and secret project, the royal family and the entire Magus are involved, but very few people really know the whole picture of the plan, even as the lead researcher of the Royal Magister, I can only know what I am responsible for in this plan.

"My mission is to analyze the power of the gods and find a way to combine the genetic factors of the gods with human cells......

"Please don't interrupt me, I know these things may sound strange to you, but a thousand years ago, it did.

"When I came to this fortress, this plan had been running for two hundred years, and we found the exact point of 'White Star Fall', it was not in the present world, but needed to pass through the Shadow Realm and reach the edge of the Shadow Realm, so we built a space gate on the bottom floor of the 'Disobedient' fortress, this space gate used the power of the gods to break through the barriers between several 'realms', and from there the exploration team brought back a sample of the flesh and blood of the god of nature......"

As he spoke, Kamel raised his arm condensed by arcane energy and pointed at the wall, and with a small spark jumping, a hidden isolation door suddenly appeared on the originally integrated wall, and the isolation door slowly opened with the creak of mechanical operation, and Kamal slowly floated towards the door: "Please follow me, I hope you can stay calm no matter what you see." ”

Gawain and Hetty glanced at each other and led the men to follow Kamal's pace.

"We paid a huge price, mortals can be fatal if they come into direct contact with the flesh of the gods, not to mention the extraction of energy and genetics from it, but we have found something in the shadow world that is 'mixed' with the corpses of the gods, and that thing has helped us find a way to resist the erosion of divine power...... Although only partially effective. ”

Following behind Carmel, Gawain saw the hidden rooms and the secrets that still remained in them.

In one of the labs, he saw the remains of large pieces of metal and crystal, bound and sealed by an intricate array of magic, that seemed to have been stripped from some larger man-made object, and that had retained their new texture even after an unknown number of years.

"Their material ......," Gawain looked at the metal and crystal shards with a serious expression, "It seems to be the same as the Eternal Slate?" ”

Kamel nodded, "That's right, it's exactly the same, these things are with the corpses of the gods, and it even seems that they caused the fall of the gods - but we don't know the true connection between the Eternal Stone and these things." ”

Gawain's heart moved, he had vaguely guessed the truth, but he didn't say anything.

Kamel walked through the room and continued to float forward, "I don't know the full picture of the whole plan, but I know that the power of the gods is the only thing that can withstand the tide, and the only way for humans to survive the tide is to change our life forms. After decades of research, the forerunners have found a way to extract energy from the flesh and blood of the gods, and my team has taken this foundation one step further: injecting the genetic factors of the gods into human cells, thereby altering the nature of human beings in the basic biological structure.

"In this way, it is possible for humans to carry the 'power of the gods', even a faint trace of power, which can bring hope against the tide of demons. In the 'outside' lab, I cultivated the first phase of the test subject, which I named 'Divine Sin'......"

"......I see," Gawain muttered under his breath.

Kamal didn't hear clearly: "What? ”

"No, it doesn't matter," Gawain looked at the ancient mana spirit, "and then?" Has the Divine Iniquity succeeded? ”

"In the end, we succeeded in creating a stable genetic factor, which can safely bind to human cells and pass it on from generation to generation, and the human beings who carry the genetic factor will not die of malignant mutation like the 'gods' in the first stage, but can undergo beneficial rapid mutations when the demon tide arrives, mutate and adapt to the new environment in the demon tide before the body dies...... Theoretically. ”

Kamel led Gawain and the others to the next room, where they saw neatly arranged culture containers, well-preserved, soaked in translucent biomass solutions with human samples from different periods - the first samples were large corpses swollen with distorted crystals spreading from the surface of their bodies, but the further they went, the more stable they became, and in the final containers, it was almost a healthy human.

"Theoretically, you say?" Gawain looked at Kamel floating in front of him, and had a faint conjecture in his heart, "You didn't test? ”

"Can't test," Carmal paused, "All the information about the Tide can only be simulated, we use the Well of the Deep Blue to simulate, but what does the real Tide look like...... Probably only the gods know, but we are disobedient to the gods. ”

With that, the spirit of ancient mana continued to walk forward with the group, and Gawain noticed that they were heading towards the upper level: there was a third level of this facility.

"After the final sin is completed, the mission of this facility is over, the personnel are evacuated, and the materials and samples are sent back to the imperial capital, but not all of them are evacuated," Kamel's voice echoed in the empty corridors, as empty as the undead, "We are not sure if the gods can really fight against the demon tide, and we are not sure if there will be a new catastrophe to destroy humanity, so a group of people were chosen as 'seeds', and the seeds were sealed in the deepest part of this facility, sealed in a different space isolated from the present world, if." If the 'outside world' is truly destroyed, then we will at least leave the last glimmer of hope for humanity. ”

"The ...... we saw in the hall," Hetty muttered to herself, then raised her voice, "Are you planning to rebuild human society with a few hundred people?" ”

"No, there are more than a few hundred of us," Kamal seemed to smile, but all of his expressions mingled with the hazy arcane spark as he paused in front of a large door at the end of the hallway, "Behind this door is the Hall of Silence, which originally had sixty thousand people inside. ”

"Sixty thousand?!" Hetty's eyes widened, but then she realized the key to Kamel's words, "You say...... Originally? ”

"Yes, originally."

Kamel opened the door, and as the heavy, ancient isolation door slowly opened, the scene in the hall of silence was revealed to everyone.

Everyone lost their words in shock.

Behind the door was a fragmented space, there was no static hall at all, and there were no 60,000 "seeds" to rebuild civilization - a kind of crazy darkness shrouded the outside, huge spatial cracks and violent energy turbulence raged in the distance, and there were only floating gravel, broken wreckage, and chaotic shadows in the air, and a small piece of ground and a few torn walls and domes were the only vestiges of the static hall.

It was as if a wild storm had struck the place, completely tearing apart and engulfing the Hall of Stillness.

It was a desperate scene, but Kamel had come to terms with it many years ago, quietly closing the floodgates, leading everyone in the other direction, and slowly telling what had happened: "We made a fatal mistake...... Even if you hide here, you can't hide from the demon tide.

"The Magic Tide struck the Vault and caused a chain reaction of space collapse, except for a small number of facilities that were saved, everything was destroyed by the energy tide and the space storm, and 60,000 people disappeared without a sound, and only the 'Watchmen' in the center of the facility survived.

"The watchmen are the caretakers who have volunteered to stay, and we sleep in a small hall of stasis, waking up every twenty years to check on the hall of stasis and to receive the latest news from the hall of communication—we sleep and wake up again and again, and watch sixty thousand people lie unconscious in the hall of stasis, where all is well for the Empire.

"You can't imagine what that feels like...... In the first hundred years of the closure of the facility, the last person we knew in the outside world passed away, and in the one hundred and sixty years, the Demon Tide had not yet happened, the Empire was still thriving, and we even began to doubt the necessity and significance of this plan, maybe the Demon Tide would not have come at all, our more than 900 volunteers and 60,000 ' The Seed was just worried about a ridiculous doomsday prophecy and spent all of our lives on this illusory doomsday panic, but we faithfully carried out the orders and fulfilled the vows we made back then. In the two hundred and forty years of the facility's closure, some of the people were a little overwhelmed, and we had a small internal conflict, and some people were about to open the door from the inside, but in the end the Grand Magister Wigmar took control of the situation, and then ......"

Kamel was silent for a long time before his voice sounded in a low voice: "We woke up in a shrill alarm, received information in the chaos that the fortress had been battered, and in the communication hall we saw the last message from His Majesty the Emperor, and we were the last survivors - the necessity and significance of this plan were finally confirmed, yet nothing went as we expected.

"The Hall of Stillness has been destroyed, two-thirds of the structure of the facility has disappeared into the storm, and the magicians leading to the present world have been closed due to the influence of the magic tide, and even if the magic door is not closed, we will not be able to leave here - the outside world is no longer viable, and the only thing that can keep us alive is this place of cones.

"We went through chaos, we went through despair, we went through hysteria and even violent conflicts, but in the end, we decided to live."