"Do not worry—the 'barrier' will protect your minds," Camille said, seemingly taking Heddy's cry for fear of the consequences of facing a deity directly. He raised a hand toward the hazy energy barrier outside the metal partition. "This barrier is the most valuable result we salvaged from the remnants around the god's corpse. We simulated the energy fluctuations of those remnants and discovered that mana of the same frequency can offset the harm a god's power does to mortal minds. So long as the barrier stands, you are safe."

Gao Yang stared in shock at the translucent energy barrier, and through it at the metal wreckage around the divine corpse of "the giant stag Amorn." He had never imagined he would come into contact with the secrets of the gods so soon—with the relics of those "godslayers"—and now that all of it was truly before his eyes, he felt nothing but astonishment and a shock that rose from the depths of his heart.

This was where a god had fallen; this was the fallen god; this was the "weapon" that had killed a god...

The ones who forged that weapon had long since departed, but their creation remained here—and the "surveillance satellite" they had left in this world was still operating to this very day.

Gao Yang withdrew his gaze and looked at Camille not far away. "So it was the god's power that turned you into this?"

"Even now I cannot be certain whether my mind had already been influenced by the god back then. Barrier or no, I lived alongside a god's corpse for several hundred years—my mind could not possibly have remained wholly sound," Camille said with self-mockery. "I opened the gate and entered that unprotected space, carrying no protective device and casting no ward. I walked toward the giant stag and channeled His energy into my own body, hoping in that way to kill myself. Then the energy erupted—my body was torn asunder by the divine impact, and in the end... became what you see."

"You became an energy being, even less able to die," Gao Yang said, wiping Tyr's drool from beside him and looking up at Camille, whose life form had been transformed. "How many years have passed since then?"

"I cannot remember clearly. After my life form was transformed, my memory has been intermittent," Camille said helplessly, raising a hand to the armor plate upon his chest. "I carved these into myself to remind myself, to keep from sinking completely into a mindless monster. But if I had not suddenly encountered you, I fear it would have been only a matter of time before I became one..."

"When we first met, you questioned whether we were real," Heddy said, still remembering what had happened at the start. "What did that mean?"

"Do you know—before you appeared, I had already 'seen' living people before my eyes at least seven times," Camille's voice was steeped in bitterness. "I saw someone find this dust-sealed, forgotten fortress; I saw someone open that magic gate; I saw those colleagues who had withdrawn back then return to this place—they had come to fetch me, to tell me the mission was over... I was hallucinating, hallucination after hallucination. At first I thought it was my own mind failing, but later I realized it was the god's power ceaselessly influencing me—its power would seep through the barrier now and then, conjuring all manner of illusions before my eyes. That is why, when I saw you, I doubted whether you were phantoms, whether the barrier had failed again..."

Gao Yang finally understood what had been behind Camille's strange behavior at the beginning. He gazed with emotion at this ancient mage before him, moved that the man's mind had held out until today. Though his own "history" was countless times longer than Camille's, he knew it was because his life form had been altered from the very start—whereas this man before him... before his life form was transformed, he had endured for several hundred years as a human!

After a long silence, he let out a soft breath. "Rest easy. We are real."

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