Gideon stared blankly at the scene before him, his mind temporarily ceasing to function.
After smiling at him, the baby in the Nutrient Tank simply closed its eyes and pursed its lips, as if everything before had been nothing but his hallucination.
Yet that bright glow became even more dazzling, obscuring most of the details within the Nutrient Tank and making Gideon squint instinctively.
The intense light in the Nutrient Tank lasted for a second or two before dimming slightly. When Gideon recovered and looked again, he saw that the chubby baby had begun to shrink dramatically.
It was not merely shrinking. It was as though time had reversed, taking it from a fully developed infant that had already left the womb and sending it backward.
Its fully formed bones, along with its eyebrows, hair, and everything else, visibly receded. Soon, there was barely any human shape left, its facial features and limbs all returning to that undifferentiated state of chaos...
Then it shrank further, until nothing could be seen at all!
Gideon had no idea why such a nightmarish scene had occurred.
The shock had practically brought his thoughts to a standstill. He could only instinctively reach for the Nutrient Tank's lid.
But he could not lift it at all. Only then did he remember that he had locked it, specifically to prevent anything from going wrong while the baby absorbed the Origin Mother's power.
Something had indeed gone wrong, but how had it regressed the more it absorbed?
Gideon fumbled frantically with the lock. While he was operating it, the bright glow in the Nutrient Tank continued to fade, but the half-full nutrient fluid no longer contained the baby... not even the shadow of an embryo.
At the sight, Gideon went numb and rigid from the tips of