-『CHAPTER 05』-

« Heiress of the House of Novaldein »
— Velestina von Novaldein —

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"Ugh, these black corrosion suddenly started appearing one after another all over the place. While you were talking with that Goddess, I on the other hand was checking out the areas affected by these corrosion."

My splintered little psyche complained with a high pitched tone as she stood on top of my shoulders as we both made our way towards the basement.

I decided to not teleport but instead check the overall situation of my mindscape and how the corrosion is affecting it. Currently I was situated at the third floor and I scanned the area and alarmingly found at least eight spots that's slowly turning into black. 

"Don't ever try touching these blackened spots or you'll see some hallucinations from the past or a flashback from the memory of that four eyed freak." My second psyche warned as we leaped right over a part of the floor that's partly affected by the corrosion.

I need to fix this fast.

"Hey how did you removed those black spots earlier? Let's do it once more and clean this area of such filth." I reasoned but little me just shook her head before shrugging her shoulders.

"Don't bother, it's absolutely pointless. The corrosion will simply just reappear once more even if you try removing it over and over. I bet the corrosion within that area I've found you had already returned at this point."

My mood dampened after hearing that but not a second later, I reignited my resolve as I cautiously walked towards the staircase leading down to the second floor.

I carefully placed my feet at each stair steps one after the another but a corrosion simultaneously appeared right under my feet just after I landed on the sixth step. I internally cursed as my surroundings started to bend and morph as the hallucinations began to replace my surroundings.

Tall sprawling structures that seemed it's entirely made from glass and metal began rising from the ground one after another as my ear was bombarded by a slew of chaotic noises comong from all around the busy streets. 

Me and my little psyche both stood at what seemed to be a busy intersection as throngs of people dressed in an attire I've never seen before began walking on a hurried pace. 

One guy was about to slam against me but as I expected, he just passed right through me as if I didn't have a corporeal body. 

"W-What is this place..." My little version stated in a voice mixed with both wonder and anxiety as I noticed the light from that rectangular yellow box on top of that pole turned from red to green. 

I narrowed my eyes before uttering,

"An otherworlder city."

Those box-like metals that looks like a horseless carriage all started moving one after another but I didn't tried to evade any of it as I continued walking while analyzing the structure of my surroundings. 

This city seems like a place created by those 'scientific' otherworlders and I couldn't comprehend how they could create this grand structures without the aid of magic. 

Initially I was feeling shock and astonishment because of the grandeur of these buildings but then I began seeing things from a perspective of a domain lord that manages a city and any my wonder gradually wanes as it turned into exasperation. 

"...Why did these people make their buildings so high and close to each other? If a strong earthquake struck then wouldn't this all fall like pieces of domino? And why did they put so much windows and to top it all off, why in the damned perdition did they use glass as the main outer material to cover it!? Heavens! A mid-tier spell could easily destroy these windows! The cost and upkeep of these structures must have been colossal and to completely disregard security is just plain asinine."

Maybe it's because I'm not the same as these people and living within this bizzare city but I find this place rather...chaotic and inefficient. They also seem to spend too much of their resources on things not essential to life and waste so much resources.

Valria especially the continent of Aethos is  lacking in quite alot of resources so everyone has been raised whether they are a noble or a commoner to cherish and save anything that they can as much as possible.

Looking at these garbage can full of things that can still be recycled felt as if someone punched me in the gut. 

Furthermore, why do these people looks so busy and hurried? 

This is probably the largest gathering of crowds that I've ever seen but most just simply ignore each other and go about their way either by looking at these glowing rectangular contraption on their hands or merely walking and not greeting anyone that they met along their way.

As a domain lord, my basis that I'm doing a good job is when I see my domain's people smiling and intermingling since that means that I created a thriving community but these otherworldly city seemed a bit rigid and...lonely. 

I applaud these people's advancement in technology but it looks to me as though they advanced it so fast that human morality couldn't keep up with the rapid changes anymore. 

I may be bias but I prefer my own people's slower paced life and more interconnected society.

'Technology and Morality should mature at an equal pace.'

Its an old adage from my world that probably any domain lord knew about.

Back in Valria, there was once a powerful human nation founded by an otherworlder about a thousand years ago. This otherworldly king rapidly expanded his territory by introducing lots of technology from his home world and soon it became the most dominant and largest country in the entire continent. 

Some countries resisted and even banded together but alas, due to the technological gap, this king had easily unified all the warring nations into one massive empire that no one could contend with.

At the start, this grand empire experienced its golden era and everyone lived lavishly as if they are rulers themselves due to the otherworldly things their king had introduced. However this nation's citizen only discovered the hidden dangers of these wonderful technologies when it's already far too late.

They choose 'science' over 'magic' and began to disregard and forget about Ignis, our patron deity as belief for religion rapidly declines. 

Learning these otherworldly knowledge felt as if they're becoming Gods themselves so from studying magical theorems, scholars began studying the otherworldly education curriculum instead and began propagating it to the masses.

 For almost a century, a wave of wanton decadence and wasteful living had rapidly decayed the morality of the people to the point that it desensitized them of practically everything.

Pedophilia, necrophilia, incest and all other blasphemous matters are accepted into the society as murder, rape and other crimes happened at a daily occurrence.

This powerful nation wasn't destroyed by an outer enemy but was defeated by the rotting morality inside everyone's heart. When this otherworldly king finally died, his empire also slowly crumbled internally and it only took a year before it completely splintered and a massive war for which the later generations dubbed to as 'Age of Eschaton ' had occurred. 

Instead of magic, the people used 'modern weaponry' instead for back at that time, its far more efficient...and deadly.

Each warring forces began fighting with such intensity while also continuing to develop even more powerful weapons. Eventually the state of war had reach the stage wherein they finally unleashed weapons of pure mass destruction that can eradicate any city upon a single blast to the extent that by the end of this war, no single human city in all Aethos was left completely intact. 

Every human society crumbled into nothing as less than a few human survivors still remained and they began to curse this otherworldly king for introducing this kind of atrocious technology upon Valria. These ancestors of us then decided that from that moment on, any otherworlder should be prosecuted and killed to not let this kind of war happen once more.

The damaged done by this war can still be felt up to the present day even after a thousand years had passed. There's still lots of areas in Aethos that are so toxic that anyone who accidentally entered this forbidden areas would surely die.

Walking along these illusory otherworldly city made me think of that ruined Nation in our history. I wonder if these people would suffer the same fate? 

I then shook my head.

"No matter, I have more important matters to address than worry about these people." I muttered to myself before asking the little thing on my shoulders of the method to remove this hallucination.

"Just think earnestly that you want it to disappear. Have you forgotten? we're still in our mindscape and you could control everything in this realm." She stated in a deadpanned voice and I tried doing it by expanding my consciousness and willed this hallucination to disappear. 

My surroundings began to morph once more and began fading as we finally returned to the stairs going down the first floor. I don't want to accidentally step into a corrosion once again and I think I've assessed the situation quite enough already so I decided that I'll just teleport myself to the basement. 

I closed my eyes for a second and sense the presence of that creature before feeling that force that's pulling me into something and when I finally opened my eyes—

[ ...You! Let me out of this cage!. ]

—I finally came face to face with this mind intruder once again.

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