Chapter 16
No matter what tricks everyone used, they were powerless against Snowsant's Absolute Domain. This outcome was exactly what Yoren expected.
Snowsant's backpack was no ordinary object. The special metals woven into its structure were more complex than even Originium itself. Not even Kal'tsit or Hemer—experts in their fields—could decipher its origins. In fact, even Snowsant herself had no idea where it came from.
After becoming infected, parts of her body began to deteriorate. However, in return, she gained a unique ability: she could channel the power within her backpack through Originium Arts, generating an impenetrable blue barrier—her Absolute Domain.
If Kal'tsit's knowledge wasn't enough to explain this artifact, then surely Hemer, the head of the Originium Project at Rhine Lab—funded by Columbia, the world's largest superpower—would have the answer. But even Hemer had no explanation for its composition.
This led Yoren to a bold hypothesis: Snowsant's backpack wasn't a product of their time at all.
Much like his original world, where Earth had existed for over four billion years while human civilization spanned only a few thousand, Terra's history was equally uncertain. What if, before the great natural disasters, there had been an advanced technological civilization—one now lost to time? And what if this backpack was a relic from that forgotten era?
Unlike firearms, which were mass-produced and later rediscovered by the Lateran people, this backpack seemed far rarer. It wasn't a weapon for war but a unique, high-grade piece of equipment. Its purpose? Defense, and nothing else. Yoren speculated that ancient scholars might have foreseen the coming of Terra's cataclysmic disasters and had developed this artifact as a safeguard against them.
The Pitram people, to whom Snowsant belonged, were exceedingly rare. Beyond her, Yoren had never encountered another. And strangely, despite her nickname "Turtle," there was nothing distinctly turtle-like about her besides the backpack. In fact, she seemed completely human. This realization unsettled him.
The Sakota, or Angel race, were the only known species with access to advanced weaponry like Originium guns. But rumors suggested that these firearms hadn't been invented by the Sakota themselves but unearthed through archaeological digs deep beneath Lateran. If angels were considered messengers of God, then perhaps their access to lost technology was no coincidence.
If Snowsant's backpack was even rarer than Originium weaponry, then its existence pointed to something even more profound—something that had been deliberately hidden from history.
Perhaps Snowsant's amnesia wasn't an accident, but an inherited condition. Maybe the Pitram people were connected to this ancient technology in ways even they didn't understand. What if their memories were systematically erased to prevent them from uncovering the truth? If so, that would explain why the Pitram population had dwindled over the years. Deprived of their past, they lost not only their history but their very purpose.