"Yes, and though this may sow discontent with you," Alina brandishes her scythe, her eyes showing a dead seriousness. "Her Highness asked me to keep the woman alive."

 

*Click*

 

In response to Alina's action, Bryn slightly pulls out her sword. Members of the Reichguards also tense up, ready to engage if need be. Though Alina is a revered Einheri and has a fearsome reputation as a soldier of Mother Goddess, she is ultimately not a part of the Belkan military nor its governmental body. Alina only answers to two people, Yggdrasil the Mother Goddess, and Yuki the Goddess's Chosen One. So, Bryn and the Reichguards, under the direct command of Lu, are perfectly fine with pointing a weapon at the woman. After all, they're trained to be loyal to the Empress, not the religious body that is the World Tree. In fact, conflicts of interest between the two running factions of Belka aren't a rare occurrence. Nonetheless, this is the first time that both sides point their weapons at each other.

 

Alina understands the underlying political implications if they trade blows with each other. Hence, she mentioned that her order came from Yuki herself, playing at the heart of Lu. After all, no matter how she wants a good fight, Alina can't cause trouble for her liege. She does not doubt that Lu is also thinking the same. The woman treasures her daughter too much to upset the girl.

 

So, even though she really wants to end this charade once and for all, Lu chooses to relent. "Everybody, stand down!" Dispelling her rapier, Lu continues while looking Alina in the eyes.

 

 

"Our questions will be answered when we're done here. Now tell me, Yuki asked to keep this woman alive, so there must be a reason."

 

"For that, I will need to lead you to the secret this castle is hiding. There, the elf will have much to say." Alina directed her sight at Avera. Knowing the meaning behind her words, Avera can only smile wryly.

 

Taking the initiative, Avera speaks up. "Since you already know about what's underneath this castle, I see no reason why I shouldn't lead you there. Be warned, what's down there won't be pretty."

 

Hearing the seriousness in Avera's words, Lu and Bryn frown. Still, they need answers. Ones that will hopefully shed some light on Yuki's motives.

 

Letting Avera stand up on her own, albeit with a bit of a struggle, they all follow behind the woman. Alina included, though she opts to remain hidden with a camouflage spell. Surprisingly, the spell isn't artifacting like the one the Night Witches use. This allows Lu and Bryn to infer that the Einherjar isn't being restricted by the world, unlike them.

 

That begs the question if that's the case, what's stopping Yggdrasil and Yuki to use the Einherjar to blast the enemy with army-killer magics? It's food for thought at a later date.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The group moves across the tattered castle, its elven decoration is now tainted with blood and dust. What used to be a venerable witness of ancient history, is now but a place filled with dead, gore, and ruins.  Along the way, they see other Reichguards cleaning up the site for valuable intel or just putting away bodies. Aside from Avera, none of the traitors present at Castle Itter survive. It was a blood bath that dwindled the already low number of wood elves. It will take the rest a lot of effort to continue the bloodline, making sure that they won't go extinct.

 

After making their way down many flights of stairs and into a basement, one of the Reichguards moves to turn on the lighting system. The flickering lights illuminate not only speckles of dust in the air, but also a pair of greenish steel doors. The dusty condition here suggests that the place has been abandoned for quite some time. 

 

Bryn motions for the Reichguards to check the site, wary of a potential trap. Avera, seeing her cautiousness, chuckles with a grimace. "There won't be any trap here, Brynhyldr, not even behind the doors."

 

Scanning the doors with signs of them being welded shut, Lu can even infer traces of a permanent barrier being cast on them. And albeit barely, Lu can feel a stench of death in the sealed-off room. Whatever it is being stashed here, it won't be pretty, Lu's instinct told her.

 

"Do tell, what is it that you are hiding here?" Lu questioned Avera with her arms crossed. The woman in question just shrugs. "A failed investment of mine, one Project Chaldea. Though saying anymore won't be as effective as seeing it for yourself."

 

That's the cue for Alina to appear, she materializes her scythe, and faster than the eyes can see, she cuts apart the doors. The doors, now turn into chunks of metal with the edges glowing red hot, fall heavily to the ground. This kicks up a heavy wave of dust that Bryn then uses a wind spell to clear for them to see. Before that, Alina has already stepped inside the now revealed chamber where an unpleasant secret is buried. Holding her scythe up high before slamming the end of its shaft onto the floor, a wave of mana flows out because of her action. The mana powered up the equipment inside the chamber, shedding light on large constructs of the sort, covered up by curtains.

 

Following Alina's footsteps, Lu and the rest move in with Avera in tow. "What is this place?" Lu pondered. 

 

Alina answers. "The place of buried childhoods and dreams." Before she snaps her fingers.

 

The curtains blocking their view obey Alina's command, they retract to showcase the most nauseous sight they've ever seen. Behind the curtains are medical pods containing not just a green liquid, but also brains and eyeballs! And there are at least a thousand such pods in this chamber alone!

 

Disturbingly, the eyeballs move, darting everywhere when light from the world outside the curtains bombarded their view. Finally, a thousand pairs of eyes rest on their group, it's such a disgusting sight that a Reichguard can't help but express himself.

 

"What the fuck!?" He said what was on everybody's mind at that time.

 

It doesn't take a genius to find out that the brains in the pods, somehow, are still alive after all this time. Lu feels her skin crawl with repulsiveness, she can feel the desperation in the gazes. And if her instinct is correct, Goddess please don't be, all the brains here belong not to adults, but to children!

 

"Avera!" Lu screamed out the accursed name, Bryn was fast to act with her blade already on the neck of the elf. Just one word from Lu, she will cut off the head of this damnable elf. "Talk!"

 

Lu's voice leaves behind a deep grumble. Though Lu prided herself to be a Devil, the ultimate Devil, she also has draconic blood running in her vein. Now, as if being touched on her reverse scale, Lu is slowly releasing a draconic aura onto Avera. 

 

Though sweating heavily, Avera still maintains her grin. "Years ago, during the time we first integrate ourselves to this Earth. We received a rude awakening in the form of our powers being suppressed by the world. One of them is Divination, an aspect we elves take pride in. Unable to accept that we lost access to our main strength, the seers, we did some research. Divination is a high-requirement spell, that needs a vessel that has a strong soul and mind to cast. With both being suppressed by the world, we sought ways to expand the existing vessels with limited success. Still, it provided us with groundworks to build up into Project Chaldea, the place you're in right now." 

 

Unafraid of the blade, Avera uses her remaining hand to put away Bryn's blade. She calmly strides forward to the middle of the chamber, all the while saying. "Knowing that it's very hard to break the restraints imposed on us by the world, we thought up a solution to bypass it. And that was to create a vessel of our own, born on Earth, yet strong enough to match the Previous Era's most powerful seer." 

 

Walking to an analog console, Avera presses some buttons before injecting a strand of mana on a nearby pedestal. Suddenly, the floor opens up, revealing a sunken compartment. The elf operates the console for a few seconds before the compartment rises. Now in full view, Lu sees that it's another one of those medical pods, albeit bigger. This particular pod is containing a female child with short black hair, floating in the green life-support liquid.

 

Avera approaches the pod, placing a hand on her creation. "This was our attempt, utilizing techniques and technologies lost to time, we made an artificial vessel. Ironically, though we sought to revitalize elven Divination art, the result is a child not dissimilar to a human."

 

To say that Lu's shocked would be an understatement since Avera was playing God right under her nose! Back in the Previous Era, before Ragnarok, lifeform creation wasn't all that strange in the Omniverse. There were three ways to perform the feat: Scientifically, magically, and godly. With science, ones can create automata or androids that can achieve true sentience. By using magic, you can create golems or spirits that slowly grow to have their own soul. And by godly, Lu means that if you have a deep enough understanding of the Laws of Creation and Soul, you can create the perfect lifeform such as dragons or devils. Nevertheless, with Ragnarok and the eventual Omniversal wipe after it, only the Mother Goddess is privy to the knowledge of how to perform such feats. Even Hel, a Goddess with divinity in Life, also doesn't know how to create life, thanks to her knowledge being sealed.

 

Lu has an inkling suspicion that Yggdrasil, the Mother Goddess, doesn't want people running left, right, and center to commit taboos, just like Avera here. Because to create life, a suitable price must be offered like a large quantity of mana and lifeforce. And to create a powerful vessel to rival the strongest seer as Avera said, mana and lifeforce alone wouldn't be enough. Lu is forced to come face to face with the conclusion she dreaded the most.

 

Having arrived at the answer to the sight she just witnessed, Lu can't stop herself from wrapping her tail around Avera's neck. Yanking it back, hard, she forces Avera onto the ground. "Damn it, woman! Just how many children have you sacrificed!?"

 

Coughing up a mouthful of blood, Avera snickers before answering. "We lost counted after reaching the thousand... Cough, cough! There was a time when we tried to target your daughter... Though we gave up when you adopted her out of the blue."

 

Lu knows that to create a vessel that these wood elves needed, one needs to have materials of the highest purity in form and essence. And who can supply them best than children? Considering that a child's soul is both innocent and malleable, they make for the perfect ingredient in this case. Yet, her rage reaches its peak when Lu knows that they tried to lay a hand on her daughter! Judging from the timeline, she wasn't even nine months old by then!

 

Letting out a growl from the depth of Hell, Lu uses her tail to slam Avera hard onto the floor again, cracking it in the process. A part of her, her wrathful side, is screaming at her to snap the woman's neck for the treacherous act. Lu couldn't help but imagine that if they were late in the adoption for one day, Yuki would have died and been forgotten by the cruel world. She couldn't accept such a scenario and she almost submits to her rage but Alina intervenes. 

 

"Your Majesty!" The woman's sentence smothers her wrath, only for a moment. "Remember that Yuki wants the woman alive!"

 

Still, Lu only lessens her hold on Avera when Bryn puts a hand on her shoulder. The woman in question only shakes her head at Lu. "We still have questions unanswered. Let her continue before we decide on anything."

 

"Tsk..." Lu knows that they're right to stop her, yet she doesn't feel any better because of it. Everything about Yuki is her reversed scale so knowing that this woman has threatened her life many times, Lu won't contend with giving her a painless death. Avera will suffer!

 

Though the decision may not be her to make.

 

Sitting up with a struggle, Avera wipes the blood from her mouth. The woman is in pain, very much so, but she has nothing else to lose so why be afraid? After all, she's lived long enough.

 

"We sacrificed the children of many races, human, dwarf, yokai, even demi-god,... Using their flesh and blood, we've grown the body. As for the souls, we used a forbidden art, not dissimilar to the ones used by necromancers of old, to break them down into their purest form of energy which is Astral energy. We pumped the vessel with Astral energy in vain hope for it to coalescence into a soul, one without limitation like ours. And to our complete surprise, it worked. There exist a soul in the vessel, we've succeeded in playing God!" 

 

God, the word that Lu and Bryn dread to hear. For aside from the Mother Goddess, many of the Old Gods were insufferable lifeforms, the epitome of arrogance. And now, they're witnessing the retelling of a mortal, performing the heinous acts, not unlike the Old Gods.

 

"Yet, it wasn't enough!" Avera said with a laugh of a defeatist. " No matter what we did, the soul remains dormant, the vessel refuses to wake up. Though the Project succeeded in creating the vessel, we can't use it. After investing so much, we couldn't accept giving up, not when the literal future of our race rested on this Project. So, we committed more unforgivable crimes." 

 

Ignoring Alina, who now starts moving around to prepare something, Avera takes a breather before continuing. "We theorized that the vessel needs external stimulation to wake up, hence we sought for more children across the world, primarily from orphanages. Like before, we used their flesh and blood to empower the vessel. Only this time, we preserve the brains and souls before connecting them with the vessel. We hoped that the hyperactive mind of many children would stimulate the vessel to wake up. And once again, we've failed. No matter what we've done, she wouldn't open her eyes."

 

"Oh Goddess, all those children..." A female Reichguard prayed to Yggdrasil, her motherly instinct ached at the atrocity Avera did.

 

No sane person will be able to stay calm in this place, hearing such an atrocious tale.

 

Chuckling at their uneasiness, Avera continues. "Chaldea was a Project to create the most powerful seer, able to predict or answer anything she is queried with. She's the living personification of a quantum computer, according to the Previous Era's scientists. No doubt us elven kind would have dominated the world with her help. Yet, in our pursuit of greatness, we put even bona fide Evil God to shame. We've achieved nothing at the cost of everything. Unable to continue, we mothballed the Project," Turning to look at the vats, the medical pods containing the children's brains and eyes, Avera mutters with an emotionless gaze. "And we've doomed a generation into perpetual suffering..."

 

No one can say anything during her confession. To be honest, what can you even express at this point? Rage? Grief? Hatred? What can they even say in front of the children, forced to suffer by the wantonness of the adults?

 

In the end, they can only swallow the bitter pill, knowing that the process is irreversible and words are useless. The only option left is to put an end to their suffering, and let them be embraced by the Mother Goddess. Let them rest.

 

"This has gone on for long enough." Lu said darkly. She had heard enough to make a judgment on Avera's sins. A part of Lu regrets that others of Avera's cohort died in the raid. They have the easy way out of what's about to come.

 

Alina picks this moment to interject, having finished her preparation. "Your Majesty, if I may?"

 

Frowning, Lu looks at the Einheri. "Now what?" Her voice carried a trace of impatience.

 

"While I understand your need to punish this vile woman, it's time to tell you Her Highness's objective. By keeping the elf alive till now, we can use her to wake up the sleeping beauty in the pod. The process no doubt will cost her life, and we can make the sacrifices here, worth it."

 

"What!?" Avera is shocked that she is the means to finish the Project. While Lu and Bryn exclaimed in surprise because Alina's words, mean that Yuki knows about this accursed Project from Goddess knows when.

 

Knowing that she has to clarify the matter, Alina speaks up. "Please don't misunderstand, Her Highness only knew about this recently when she ordered the Einherjars to investigate Castle Itter. Frankly, she and we all are disgusted with the depravity this Castle has been hiding. Still, the notion of a biological quantum computer is too good to pass up, especially in the tumultuous period we're in. Which is why the Princess instructed me to lead you here, for you to make a choice..."

 

Lu finishes the sentence. "To let the past be buried, or to finish what they started and give some meaning to the deaths."

 

Alina nods at her words. She and the others stay quiet to let the Empress makes her decision. As a mother, Lu can't justify the death and suffering of these children, she wants nothing more than for Avera to burn in the Ninth level of Hell. Yet, as a ruler, with such a tactical advantage presented before her, Lu must accept the losses and move on. She has to get the girl to wake up.

 

Steeling her resolve, Lu asks. "You confident that her death can wake up the girl?"

 

Alina responds in a heartbeat. "What the girl is lacking is a trigger. Said trigger is the experiences in life: how to wake up, how to walk, how to talk... She needs a mature soul, so to speak. By sacrificing Lady Everwood here, converting her mature soul into Astral energy before injecting it into the girl, we can wake up the Sleeping Beauty."

 

Turning to look at Avera, who now sports an acceptance smile, Lu says with finality. "Then do it, wake up the girl."

 

"As you wish, Your Majesty." Alina bowed before dragging Avera to a magic formation carved into the floor.

 

 Avera is laid down in the middle of the formation, and from there, gutters and pipes spread out, intertwining with the carvings before connecting to the medical pod. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that they will be used to transfer Avera's essence into the sleeping girl.

 

With a twirl of her scythe, Alina channels her mana into the magic formation, lighting it up in a sickening green. Knowing her time has come, Avera says her last words.

 

"I just wanted to make the world a better place for my daughter, for my liege..."

 

Shaking her head, Lu replies. "No, you don't. You wanted to shape the world into your misguided view. Whatever ounce of respect I have for the love you have for your daughter, is now gone." Though Lu ponders a bit on the liege Avera mentioned, for sure that isn't Lu she's speaking of. "Nevertheless, I give you my words that your family will be taken care of. As long as they don't follow in your footsteps, they will be fine."

 

Letting out one smile, Avera's consciousness blackouts when the formation gives out a blinding flash of light. Then, her body crumbles, her flesh melts while her blood seeps onto the formation. Her soul, being anchored by the sacrificing spell, breaks down into a gaseous energy form. After that, the formation directs her essence into the medical pod containing the girl.

 

The life-support fluid in the pod starts boiling before slowly turning blood red. Even after the formation stop glowing, leaving behind nothing of Avera, the absorption process in the pod continues for five minutes. While Lu and the rest watched with unwavering eyes. Avera deserved an end like this, dead to the very thing she sought to create.

 

The last bit of red being absorbed into the girl also marks the end of the process. Alina operates a console to drain the fluid, letting the girl's body be supported by the wiring attached to her. She opens the glass panel of the pod, allowing the rest to take a closer look at the girl.

 

The girl has a body of ten years old at best. Short black hair and extremely pale white skin. She looks no different than a doll while her chest moves up and down in rhythmic breathing. Suddenly, her eyelids open, revealing her eyes that are golden in color. In them, a trace of confusion is apparent before it's quickly replaced by an inquisitive but scared look. Her mood swing doesn't escape Lu's and Bryn's notice.

 

With a bit of a struggle, probably due to her not being used to her vocal cord, the girl asks. "Who... are you? Who... am I?"

 

Lu thoughts internally. 'Seems like the process was a success, just like the Einheri promised. Though dealing with the aftermath, will be tough work...'

 

Seeing the girl's insecurities, Lu moves up to pat her on her head. "Hi there, I am Lucifer. You may call me Lu, girlie. Now be a dear and stay still, let us get you out of your bindings."

 

Though still wary, the warmth from Lu's hand patting her head dissuade her fear somewhat. So, the girl complies with Lu's request. "Um!"

 

Letting out a caring smile, Lu thinks to herself Yuki may get a sister soon.