The Defiers' Long-Term Plan

The study fell silent for several seconds. Ophelia seemed to be gathering her thoughts, while Gawain digested the information she had provided. After a moment, he broke the silence. "You launched the Defiance Plan just because of those two statements?"

Without waiting for Ophelia to answer, he added, "I thought of another possibility—could it be that the knowledge and essence of gods are simply too far beyond human perception, beyond what the human brain can process, so that any act of approaching a god would itself cause madness, regardless of whether the god truly bore any malice? Could what those dead explorers and half-mad returnees saw have merely been knowledge that drove humans insane, rather than the gods themselves?"

Those words seemed to be excusing the gods, but Gawain knew Ophelia would understand what he meant—he was not a believer, nor did he hold any innate goodwill toward gods. But out of rigor, he had to voice every possibility he could think of, and as a researcher of the ancient empire, Ophelia should regard that same rigor as professional ethics.

Ophelia's reaction was exactly as Gawain expected. "That was one possibility, and we considered it at the time—so we conducted a series of verifications and further investigations. Yet the deeper we delved into the knowledge of gods, the more unsettling that vague truth became.

"While excavating ancient ruins, we found fragments left behind by civilizations that had fortunately endured the Magic Tide. Their destruction had been sudden and without warning. They had met extinction at the height of their prosperity, when their societies had been highly stable. That allowed us to rule out nearly every possibility except 'the gods destroying the world.'

"We contacted several ancient races, including the sirens and dragons you know of, as well as some ancient