Chapter 286 — Where They Came From
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
As one of the chief architects of the old "Defiance" Project, Camille knew the "godspawn" that project had produced inside and out. Both the first generation and the final, fully mutated generation had come into being before his very eyes. So when Tyr handed him a purified fragment of a mutant's remains, it took him only a short while to spot the features in it that set his mind on edge.
A few simple tests, a few readings that could not be faked—and unease became fact.
"Without more specialized equipment I can't sequence the genetic factors in the remains, but the mutation pattern alone is enough to draw a conclusion: the mutants are a mutated product of the 'godspawn,'" Camille said, his tone heavy. "The power of the magic tide has overwritten the godspawn's gene expression... Our project contained a terrible flaw. We underestimated how drastically biomass would mutate when exposed to the magic tide. The godspawn's genetic factors could not withstand mutation on that scale, so the carriers became... monsters before they could adapt to the tide."
Camille had done his best to steady his emotions, yet Gao Yang could still sense the immense grief in this ancient mage's heart. It was a grief he could well imagine—Camille and his colleagues had given everything to that cause, a price beyond what any human should have to bear, and in the end the outcome was worse than failure. Their work had not saved the people they meant to save; it had turned those people into monsters. Even putting himself in Camille's place, Gao Yang doubted he could have stayed as composed.
Still, he had to ask: "Do you know what happened to the godspawn your research produced after it was sent back to the heartland of the Empire?"
"My part was confined to research and development. I wasn't privy to the later 'application' stage, but even without the details I can guess the broad strokes," Camille said slowly. "You mentioned that word never came from the outside of any magic tide, didn't you? So I assume it all happened in secret. After the godspawn was sent back to the imperial capital, the royal house must have used something like mass immunization drives to gradually introduce the godspawn genetic factor into every person's body over three centuries, until it became a stable hereditary element of the human race. Our goal was to save everyone, so every Gondorian subject had to become a godspawn carrier. And that explains... the endless mutants that sprang up overnight when the tide arrived."
Gao Yang suspected Camille had hit on the truth.
Genetic modification is not something achieved overnight. Camille and his colleagues could use powerful magic to alter themselves directly and turn themselves into godspawn carriers on the spot, but for the countless ordinary citizens of the Gondorian Empire, modification on that scale was impractical—and impossible to keep secret. So the royal house at the time could only have taken a covert, gradual approach: transferring the mutating substance into the bodies of fathers and mothers, so that their children would be born as natural godspawn carriers.
Modifying the entire population of an empire would take more than a single generation. But from the completion of the Defiance Project to the true outbreak of the magic tide, there was a gap of three hundred years. Three hundred years—with the technological capacity of the Gondorian Empire in those days, that was ample time to complete so vast a plan.
"Now that you put it that way... I think I really do remember something," Gao Yang said, stroking his chin as a valuable memory surfaced. "At the tail end of the Spark Era, the Empire did suddenly add several kinds of mass immunization and newborn screening programs. The official line in the capital at the time was that it was to ease the worsening problem of elemental assimilation, and to select magic-adaptives from among newborns... If I'm right, that must have been the application stage of the Defiance Project."