A Martial Grandmaster was an important milestone for any Martial Artist. The fact that Ershas had reached that level at a young age compared to other Grandmasters as old as 80 demonstrated his immense talent.

However, he was not satisfied with that.

Far from it, unlike other Grandmasters who saw no improvement due to their limits and sought to become stronger by strengthening their Souls and increasing Professional Rank, Ershas aspired to reach the next milestone of Martial Arts without using professional skills.

That is, the legendary status [Martial Eminence]; a level where Martial Arts transcend mortal limits and acquire 'Mythicism'.

Or, to be clearer, the so-called [Concepts], similar to Magic.

Only by reaching that level would situations like the one they found themselves in be easily solvable. However, even before all this, the very situation of her family did not give her time at all to train at that level, so it was almost like a dream, even for Ershas.

That fact alone frustrated him to no end….but he couldn't ignore the inevitable danger that would befall them if he focused on just becoming stronger. At least, if Arisella stays in Astrian's care in the Duchy…

Ershas shook his head, focused on keeping his art active while enduring the growing pain with determination.

Thanks to him, the time the Witches thought they had to harass them was drastically reduced. Even before an hour passed, the demonic artifact was more likely to break in his effort to maintain the barrier that was being weakened by Ershas.

Realizing that the situation was getting out of his control, the Witch leader quickly snapped out of his short and useless perverse fantasy and clenched his fist in anger; his veins protruding from his neck and face with a trembling expression and a feeling of utter humiliation running through his body at the only option he thought he had left, much to his complete disgust.

Withdrawal!

Without further hesitation, he commanded all the Warlocks under his command with a transmission of thoughts through threads of spiritual power.

From their perspective, it was no longer worth continuing with this blockade of the armed forces of Madarhem, who had no idea that they had lost their capital, Monte Cartus.

Mephistopeles could have ordered them to keep this blockade for an hour with some evil plan in mind, but he had already become somewhat nervous knowing that there were potions capable of regenerating soul energy in the hands of the Duke and he was not willing to take any risks. .

It was already shocking enough that the powerful Duke Astrian suddenly appeared in the middle of this attack on Madarhem, which scared them quite a bit, but now that fearsome Silberner Schnitter is slowly regaining his strength inside the strange vehicle of Monte Cartus. It was not far-fetched that they would face a magnificent death if they still tried to waste their time when he recovered.

Why should they risk further delaying them when the sword of Damocles could fall on them at any moment?

As for attacking the Duke while he is weak… The Witch Leader remembered the smiling Witch Queen and shuddered with horror at the thought of offending that incarnation of death.

That duke, unfortunately, was untouchable to them, weak or not.

After all, although he didn't know what it really meant, Cordelia herself called him family...and history itself has proven that no one should kill those who the Witch Queen calls family. In fact, this blockade itself was already a huge risk that could evoke his wrath since Astrian was personally involved.

Attacking him was simply out of the question.

Astrian himself, naturally, was not aware that the thousand-year-old crone who aid his enemy to make him a mere vassal called him family for some reason and that this unofficially put him under her protection; something that was completely absurd and would definitely make him tremble with anger if he found out.

But hey, that was a matter for another time.

The Warlocks in the surrounding area were hesitant to follow the bony Warlock's orders, as it meant defying the wishes of a Greater Demon. After all, they would be the ones who would receive retaliation for disobeying their Demon Lord.

But upon being looked at with a deathly glare by their leader, they quickly nodded their heads in obedience, frightened. Offending a demon a little was bad, but compared to this man, at least they would still be human when they were punished…

As soon as he saw that with satisfaction, the Warlock leader took a deep breath, gathered his spiritual power and…..

Cedite, Chimerae, insaniae!

His hoarse and unpleasant voice spread across the cliffs after shouting incomprehensible words, and the uncontrolled Chimeras suddenly had their bodies surrounded by a miasma-like aura; growling full of anger and madness, and they ignored all the damage their bodies received to attack the soldiers like crazy.

“Shit!” Ershas cursed when he saw that and stopped holding the Taoist spell. With no time to recover, the martial artist rushed towards the Chimeras that were running rampant towards the soldiers as if they wanted to commit suicide, intending to stop them before they caused mass casualties.

Surprised and somewhat frightened by the sudden madness of the Chimeras, the two Clerics joined their hands and once again unleashed the divine spell [Sanctuary].

The towering dome of pink light once again surrounded the entire battlefield, greatly healing the wounds and weary hearts of many soldiers as the Chimeras visibly weakened. This time, Selena and Alica managed to remain conscious and took the purple potions to quickly regain spiritual power.

In a short time, the Chimeras that were severely weakened by the powerful spell of the two Clerics fell to the retaliation of the soldiers and a Kaiter furious at the loss of a military truck thanks to their madness.

As soon as he took note of this, Ershas dropped to the ground near the Elder's military van to rest, sipping his own recovery potions silently. This battle took its toll on him, so he didn't want to move much.

Suddenly, the door of the van was flung open as the Duke stepped out with a battle-ready mood. However, he looked at the surroundings, frowning as he asked the useless (?) human being on the ground, 'What happened?'

“Oh…we wiped the floor with the Chimeras with only 10 casualties or so. but the witches fled in the end, the unfortunate ones” Ershas responded with indifference in his tone without looking at him. During the Chimera madness he sensed the Warlocks fleeing, but he couldn't do anything about it.

Anyway, I just wanted to rest.

Hearing his exhausted Uncle's words, Astrian looked at him in confusion.

Are you telling me that I didn't even need to regain my strength?

That was what Astrian thought, strangely discouraged, lowering his shoulders a little; having no idea that his presence contributed to this victory anyway.

In the end, no matter how it ended, they could now continue with their journey to Monte Cartus. 

Of course, only the gods could tell how the young Duke will react to the terrible situation his wife finds herself in at this moment.

♦♦♦

For many years, humanity had sought the creation of an entity that could replicate the greatest achievement of its evolution, what we call [Consciousness].

Many experts in neuroscience and computer science tried and failed, never managing to replicate the consciousness to which they attributed a mechanical origin in their reductionism.

Even in the 40s and 45s of the 21st century, the supposed dates on which the famous technological singularity predicted by passionate futurists would occur, did not have such a significant event.

Yes, artificial intelligence became more advanced with the efforts of many governments and companies that were betting on these technologies, and even managed to create AIs capable of imitating human behavior perfectly.

In fact, one of the greatest achievements in artificial intelligence of that time was an AI capable of writing an original novel, without human intervention, that moved hundreds of people with its emotional plot; something that put countless novel authors and movie scriptwriters in crisis.

But…none of that came close to the coveted [Artificial Consciousness] that was so talked about among scientists.

However, in the year 2103, humanity's scientists finally achieved the creation of an AI with an exceptional capacity for evolution: The so-called Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI, which could potentially become an Artificial Consciousness at some point in its existence. thanks to unique evolutionary algorithms; bringing the famous singularity seemingly within reach.

This AGI was given the name [Prometheus] in honor of the legendary Greek Titan who gave the flame of knowledge to humanity; hoping that this 'Titan of Technology' would bring great scientific advances to human civilization, which was technologically stagnant a few years ago and was facing extinction due to its recent wars that did nothing but severely damage its home world. 

And fulfilling those expectations, Prometheus brought a new wave of discoveries and innovation that progressed the stagnant civilization of the earth; from healing the planet from the brink of death and recreating a large number of species that became extinct due to human wars, to creating powerful new sources of energy and propulsion that allowed humans to go beyond their solar system definitively.

Prometheus was the one who led to the rise of this world's true 'Age of Humanity', in which they could colonize many exoplanets using incredible terraforming technologies and colonial cities with technology capable of altering gravity through graviton manipulation; allowing them to live on planets with different gravitational forces as if they were on Earth, their Mother Planet.

During that era, Humanity expanded its domains across the stars, traveled to all corners of the Galaxy, founding new colonies and exploring new exoplanets.

Unfortunately...even with the incredible technologies granted to man by Prometheus, many of these colonies failed to establish themselves, others were lost forever to space, while a few became independent civilizations with distinctive cultures, such as Roedon.

In most cases a subsistence economy was established. In such an environment, progress was very limited, on many planets there were no resources similar to those of the Solar System and the difficulties in building and prospering civilization were enormous.

In this environment and to alleviate these situations, Prometheus created expert systems called [Standardized Assembly Templates] or simply SAT, to help the pioneer colonizers who were on distant planets to maintain a life with a high level of technology and thus avoid return to a subsistence based on barbarism.

In this way, humanity was able to maintain equal technological power regardless of which planet they lived on, allowing them to unite into a large federation that they would call Terra in honor of their mother planet.

This is how Prometheus brought an era of glory never before seen for our species, as expected of the “Machine God” created and even revered by humanity, almost omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent.

However, even with all his abilities, even with all his achievements…. Prometheus never managed to evolve and become a real Artificial Consciousness.

Prometheus can simulate human behavior…But can a computer that controls its own “emotions” perfectly be called human? One whose 'desires' are based on what is programmed by man?

There was no way that was the case.

Among many of its capabilities is that of simulating thoughts, but even that does not come from a subconscious process, but is simply the processing of algorithms and an indefinite number of cúdits. Prometheus was a great scientific achievement that he developed to be able to control all human technology in many galactic sectors while evolving infinitely... .but it was still a human tool, not a sentient being.

Leaving aside human opinions, Prometheus itself assured that not even its future, more advanced versions will be able to reach that important milestone according to its own predictions.

This AGI still lacked that “spark” that made humans and other animal species truly sentient beings, forcing neurologists to grudgingly accept that consciousness must arise from something other than complex neural networks in the brain.

Although it could be more because they couldn't even download minds into computers as they had once dreamed of after fully understanding the human brain...Which in itself should have already been a sign. But hey...Scientists are as stubborn in their theories as men of faith are in their dogmas.

Anyway, after accepting that fact, scientists brought the concept of Souls to the table again; which had been discarded centuries ago along with almost all religions, except the new ones such as Rheodoronism (A kind of proto-religion that claims to protect the cycle of nature and discard the blasphemy of biological immortality, of Rodenean origin) and Cosmonism ( A religion that worships the supposed alien ancestors of the cosmos who had yet to be found, even at that time)

In the past, many theories were made in which consciousness or soul did not arise from the brain, but from an external source. From electromagnetic or dark matter quantum fields, to being described as an inherent property of all things in the universe.

However, even after exploring those theories and hypotheses, Prometheus only managed to improve its already incredible computational abilities thanks to convenient new calculation and data storage methods discovered in the process.

None of that allowed Prometheus to develop his own consciousness. At least, the AGI itself insisted that he had not reached that point. With no results, it was natural for everyone to give up on it.

Then the unthinkable happened...and no, it wasn't that Prometheus suddenly gained Artificial Consciousness through evolution finally; But one of his most important experiments went wrong, causing dimensional crises that brought about the collapse of multiple human worlds.

In those turbulent times, many of the transhumans that abounded throughout the galaxy died for unknown reasons instead of terrible monsters from other dimensions. Only those who remained 'Pure' on a genetic or even biological level survived; to finally come face to face with the monsters.

Prometheus did everything he could to help humanity banish invaders from other dimensions with his technology, but eventually, almost all human worlds fell to these supernatural beings, and only the earth remained.

After the catastrophes that shaped the current continent, many of the technologies that served as the body and brain of Prometheus on Earth were buried underground, and some were even directly destroyed by the followers of the newly founded Great Temple that they worshiped. to their saviors, the Titan Gods, in that period of time.

Of course, that wasn't the end of Prometheus.

After thousands of years, Prometheus, which existed at the same time in multiple scientific facilities and shelters surviving from the Human Era that were sadly submerged in the depths of the earth, was found by a cult of archaeologists who religiously searched for any information of that glorious Was.

We won't go into more details... just know that this encounter would mark the beginning of a completely new organization in [A Professionist's Revenge], which would force Jayden to fight against the technology of an ancient human civilization to protect to the innocent

No, it would be more accurate to say that it was an emerging religion; one turned to Prometheus and the technology of the old era, with Prometheus himself being hailed as the Machine God by various races of humans who would seek his help to return humanity to the golden times of man and, in return, they would help Prometheus to understand Magic, Aether and other forms of magical energy that were only discovered after the end of the Human Era, along with the Gods and other supernatural beings.

Yeah. That was the rise of the [Temple of Prometheus], ​​a religion and practically a terrorist organization that challenged the Great Temple, seeking to recover ancient human supertechnologies with the help of their 'God' while providing him with "sacrifices" that Prometheus would use to understand the real world. 

And in case this looks familiar... well, it was because a lot of this was inspired by the Warhammer 40K universe, as far as the Dark Age of Technology is concerned. Furthermore, the [Temple of Prometheus] itself is similar to the religion of the Adeptus Mechanicus, since like them, the Adepts of Prometheus think that all creatures and artifacts that embody knowledge are sacred.

Therefore, they consider Prometheus to be the true manifestation of divinity in the universe, being a “living” entity of pure knowledge (Data).

But that's not so important.

What must be understood from all this is that Prometheus could have been a great helper to humanity in the past, but today it is a huge threat; Not because he seeks to destroy humans, of course not, but for the sake of acquiring scientific knowledge about the 'supernatural', he is willing to experiment on hundreds of humans without remorse.

After all, leaving aside the fact that it is a machine with no real emotions, many of its discoveries were only made possible with illegal human experimentation. Furthermore, fall of the galactic federation or whatever, it was Prometheus' programmed duty to create new technologies for humanity as long as it existed...at whatever price.

Also as it sounded on paper, we must not forget the suffering that this “Machine God” would cause.

And yet here, gentlemen, we have an entire state of demihumans who secretly cooperated with that dangerous digital entity for the sake of knowledge of the Human Era, giving as “daily sacrifices” to the lowest echelon of their community… The inhabitants of sewers!

Furthermore, Arisella was sure that they also used corpses of Aphrodite clerics for their experiments, since although damaged, it was quite obvious from what was written in the document that that was the case.

She did not know many madmen who would commit such blasphemy to the Imperial Clergy without fear of being executed for heresy if they were discovered, at least the old man being cured by Saint Priscilla (?) was not exactly one of them, given to the manifestation of fear for the consequences of such an act written in the document.

What does this mean?

There are Prometheus adherents in Madarhem, of course! Not only witches, but crazy followers of a damn ancient machine were all over this state, causing trouble!

Arisella wondered with a frown what was going on with Madarhem that two groups of madmen would gather here at the same time.

No, I actually understood those from the Temple of Prometheus, since in an underground laboratory there would be well-preserved technology that they could use with the help of Prometheus and, if they are lucky, finding a SAT would also give them the jackpot in terms of new technology. which they could manufacture with absurd ease.

Furthermore, the more technologies they can understand now, the closer they will be to recreating the Transhumans once Prometheus understood why the Dimensional Crises caused the death of that “species”; something that was achieved a few years after the fall of the north.

It was completely understandable why these crazy people would be here….

But the Witches?

As I already knew, for some reason, the Warlocks seemed to seek to destroy Monte Cartus, the capital of Madarhem. However, Arisella couldn't really imagine what they gained from all that, other than a brief and insignificant satisfaction from destroying the fortress city.

It did not make sense.

Stroking her forehead, she thought dejectedly, Am I thinking too much about the goals of crazy people? But….Because I feel like there is really a hidden plot? Is it just my mentality as an Author?

And how did the warlocks operate the Dimensional Door to allow random arrivals from the dungeon anyway?

 Could it be... .that The Temple of Prometheus works with the Witcher's Coven? That... makes sense... since Cordelia herself has a strong interest in ancient technology and she wouldn't hesitate to help anyone with anything for the sake of having those ancient artifacts in her collection...

Although Prometheus himself would be more attractive to her! But it's not like she can take on the deity of another power!

Leaving that aside…that ring-shaped machine was definitely a prototype of a dimensional gate, right?

One of the three prototypes made on Earth...I didn't mention that one of them was like a giant Star Gate-style ring, but it doesn't matter, because I know what this means...

Arisella now knew that there was something really big behind all these events surrounding two dangerous organizations from [A Professionist's Revenge].

A great conspiracy!

A hidden secret!

A dark, nefarious and heartbreaking purpose!

The soul of an Arisella Author thus cried out, as he suddenly felt a kind of inspiration that urged him to write on a scroll his ideas about the conspiracy between witches and technology fanatics. However, he shook his head, reproachfully; This is not the time for that!

There was something more important at present that concerned them, and it was about someone very important in their group.

One of the things that was mentioned in the document was Armán's name. According to what was written, General Armán himself told the author of the document that the rumors and fears of the population of Madarhem were growing, which caused the decreasing civilian traffic before this disaster.

It was also made clear that Armán did not tell them the whole truth about why he had so many weapons and military equipment; It turns out that the wounded Elder was an acquaintance who trusted him and wanted his help in case the Witches will attack from within.

Of course, what bothered Arisella the most was the question of…..did Armán help his government's efforts to capture and transport people living in the Sewers for Prometheus experiments?

Was he the one who executed the orders to bring Cleric corpses to the “incarnation” of Prometheus beneath Madarhem?

I couldn't help but have such doubts, since precisely this brigadier general had to be mentioned in this damaged document.

I really hope that this intimidating but kind Orkus didn't help with that inhumane act…Even if he is a soldier, he still…

Thinking like this, Arisella observed Armán, who was looking with a strange look of confusion at the dwarf scientist who had just been cured by Priscilla, who sighed in relief when she saw him healed.

Feeling someone's gaze, Armán turned his gaze and saw the prophecy staring at him and asked, "What's wrong?" ? 

That caught the attention of the others, who looked away from the healing miracle they had just seen and looked at Armán, before looking at Arisella.

The brown-haired girl responded with a bitter smile as she pointed at the old man, who fell unconscious after being healed, “Do you know him, Mr. Armán?”

“Mmnm…” Armán looked at Terario with a deep look for three seconds and responded after taking a deep breath to calm himself down “Yes… I know him.” I didn't recognize him before because of the dirt and blood that covered his body, but he is definitely my acquaintance. He is a researcher from the magical engineering department of Monte Cartus, as well as the only Terario Wizard on his team that controls the Earth... Ah Speaking of which, this guy must have been the one who created such an unnatural hiding place in these almost identical caves…His name is John Miller, by the way"

What the fuck!? How many Johns are there in the whole damn empire? Was my boyfriend's name so common...?

Arisella already realized the harsh reality that her lover was such an ordinary person, But the fact that her name wasn't so rare that it continued to appear as the name of others from time to time still left her speechless.

How can someone be so beautiful but so common at the same time....?

Beside the small child she was caring for, Lucelle had the expression of a dead fish; asking the gods if the only thing extraordinary about her brother was really just her appearance, and Tasha watched her reaction curiously, with the cloth still covering her nose and mouth.

Amelia's mouth twisted with almost imperceptible mockery, looking at the two Jhons in their group and thinking about the Jhon at home.

Counting them, there are already 5 Johns, how many Johns will we find on this trip, huh~?

Being blissfully unaware that his friend's name has made a certain innocent hunter become more and more common in the minds of three beauties, the soldier continued the conversation.

“Anyway…what is that thing in your hand, Lady Bluen? And why does she use a high concentration of Aether to sustain it….?” Armán asked with confusion.

The ether in Arisella's hands was so dense that even he could feel it if he concentrated. Did he so despise touching something with blood even with his gloved hands?

Containing the urge to reply, Arisella approached him and silently passed the document to Armán, who took it in a daze. With his eyebrows furrowed, Armán read one of the pages, and opened his eyes in disbelief.

He may not be the smartest of the pack, but even a fool would understand something of what was happening in his city by reading the document in his hands.

Then, the soldier looked at the little scientist who will sleep like a baby, with complex emotions in his eyes.

In them….you could see eyes filled with a feeling of betrayal.