Chapter 122. Aftermath

I woke up to the sight of Nicole in a room packing things up. I lifted myself up from the bed and looked at her as I placed a hand on my aching head. “What’s going on…?”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, turning to look at me. “We’re leaving to meet with the Emperor… It seems things have gotten really… complicated…”

I sat by the side of the bed and looked at her with a frown. “What do you mean?”

“We called the Emperor almost as soon as we were in the clear, but since things were in such a mess, he simply said that we should go meet with him and use the time that it takes to get there to clear our heads and organize things. He’s aware of what happened here and… I’m not sure if he’s annoyed, if he was prepared for something like this, or if he’s just not worried at all…” Nicole replied with a wry smile.

“What about that girl; that new Hero of the Holy Gods,” I asked as I stood up from the bed.

Nicole paused for a moment while shaking her head. “She… got away. According to what Salrak could tell from the news and stuff that He can see before he ran out of batteries, that girl killed one of the people who was trying to stop her, and then went missing. The authorities are trying their best to find where she went, but by now… nobody can tell where she is.”

“Then they also failed…” I said with a whisper as I looked down at myself, wearing only my underwear. “How long was I sleeping?”

“Hm… For about a couple of hours,” Nicole said, placing a finger on her chin as she looked at a clock. “I took the liberty of taking your armor off so you could be more comfy. Though, now that you’re awake, I think you’re going to have to change and get ready to leave.”

I looked over at the things I brought with me. There wasn’t a lot, since we were expecting to leave right away after the mission was done, so I made my way there and picked just a handful of things to put on.

“What about James?” I asked as I put my clothes on.

“He left already. He’s been… quiet. I think he didn’t expect to be kicked in the butt like that by someone that used Holy Magic as well,” she said with a smirk on her face.

“That’s not just Holy Magic,” I followed up and Nicole looked at me with a tilt of her head. “It’s Holy Power, directly handed to her by one of the Holy Gods…”

“Ah, right. It’s just like your Darkness and Hellfire… Yep, I could tell how strong it was. If you ever were to increase that power even more, then I could totally see how Salrak could have a hard time—oh!” she exclaimed and pointed at a small table, “Speaking of Him, the battery ran out of your power, so you should probably turn that on. I bet He knows much more about what is going on outside.”

I nodded and grabbed the battery. Both my mana and my powers were drained, but after resting for a while, I had enough to recharge this artifact. By summoning a bit of darkness and transmitting it to the thing in my hands, I saw a green bar quickly being filled on a screen. Once it was done, the phone quickly turned on, and Salrak’s deep voice came out of the device.

“Good. You’re finally awake,” he quickly said, “I believe Nicole already told you what you needed to know.”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Here’s what I could find about that girl,” Salrak said and I sat by the table, drinking a bit of water that Nicole left for me as I listened to Him. “Her name’s Eletha Dawnlight, also known as ‘The Saint’. She was supposed to be just an orphaned elf that was picked up soon after landing in this world by an extreme revolutionary armed group—focused on guerrilla warfare—called the ‘People’s Liberation Army’. There were rumors about her being special almost from the start, but overall she had been used mostly as a soldier and nothing more.”

Pictures of the girl started showing up on the phone. She was dressed similarly to how soldiers in this world were dressed; with a green uniform that was hard to spot in a forest. In these few pictures, she was shown sitting by a table with a group of other people dressed in similar clothes, with a red and black flag hanging at the back. Though she stood out due to her elven features.

“It wasn’t until just a couple of years ago that the Followers of Leyfall got in contact with her revolutionary group, and somehow convinced her to join them. Soon after, due to her high rank in the armed group and the reverence that the Followers had for her, the revolutionary group was absorbed into the Followers of Leyfall—with her at the lead of her branch.” Salrak continued, showing pictures of her wearing a different armor. One that resembled what she was wearing when we fought.

“Wait,” Nicole said as she stood close to us. “How was it that she ended up in that place of all places? Didn’t you once say that you dropped the beings from your world in their appropriate places? How was she all alone in the middle of a jungle?”

“I… I dropped them in accordance with how and where I picked them up. She had likely been all alone in a forest in our world when I did, which is why she showed up in a similar place as well,” Salrak said with a bit of an apologetic tone.

“Also, why did it take so long for you to find this information? Aren’t you supposed to be a godly AI or whatever?” Nicole asked with narrowed eyes as she leaned closer to the phone.

Salrak sighed. “I exist almost as a virus, shared between all sorts of machines and computers in the world. Individually, I don’t take much resources from each one I’m using, so nobody would notice it, but when put together it compares to many supercomputers of the world, which is what makes up what I am, but it also means that I don’t have infinite resources to work with—besides… the systems of a lot of these places use AI of their own to combat intrusions.”

“Well? You’re a God AI, I’m sure you can hand their asses to them, right?” Nicole asked, standing straight once more and shrugging.

Salrak sighed once more. “They’re not like me. They don’t think. It’s more akin to trying to open a door where the handle changes places depending on where you’re placing your hand, then said handle changing shape when you place your hand on it, and then the mechanisms changing form when you try to turn it. It’s a constant battle of trying to get the better of a thing that adapts to your movements.”

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“Oh… I see… I think…?” Nicole replied.

I shook my head and raised my hand. “None of that matters. What’s important right now is to know how we’re going to deal with her… or the Holy Gods if they’re already here.”

“Right…!” Nicole said with a stiff nod.

“Do you know where Eletha is?” I asked, “Or where she’s likely to be?”

“Hmm… it’s been difficult to find her, just as it has been for the authorities of this place, but if I were to point out her location, it would be in the final base of the Followers of Leyfall… near where you live,” Salrak replied.

“So she’s been working really close to us the whole time…” I said, looking down at the table.

There was a moment of silence; a moment in which I could hear emergency sirens going off in the distance, and see the morning sun coming from the closed curtains of the room.

“There’s something else,” Salrak said, and I turned to look at the phone. “One of the fighters that went to capture Eletha recognized your face and has been sending messages to your country, inquiring about your presence here. So… you should get ready to meet with the leadership of your country once you leave the Emperor’s palace.”

I sighed and stood up from the chair, walking over to the few things that I packed as I placed a hand on them. “Then… I guess we should get moving.”

* * *

The Emperor heavily sighed, placing his eyeglasses on the desk as he rubbed his nose in the middle of his eyes. “So we got a new Hero of the Holy Gods…”

“Yes. I’m certain of that,” I replied with a nod.

“And you’re certain that you heard the voice of The Mother of All?” he asked once more, either not believing the many times I’ve said it or simply not wanting to believe it. “It wasn’t some sort of hallucination or—or machine, or trick?”

With another nod, I replied, “Yes. Her voice was as clear as it was when I heard it in our world. She was even capable of empowering this new Hero in the middle of combat like She did with me.”

He removed his hand from his face and looked seriously at me. “What are the chances that the Holy Gods are here already?”

“I don’t think they are,” Salrak replied, using the speakers of the Emperor’s computer. “If They were here, They wouldn’t need to use any Hero or Champion to fight in Their name. They would simply descend and take whatever They wanted.”

“Also, from what I remember Altheras saying, it seems like They’re still trying to find a way here, and that Eletha girl seems to be Their way here,” I followed up.

“Then there’s still time,” Lodrick replied, standing from his desk to look out of the window behind him, to the cloudy view beyond it. “We must do what must be done. You must get rid of that girl, whatever it takes.”

“She almost killed us though…” Nicole interjected, slightly raising her hand to speak. She was sitting on a couch, and had so far just listened.

“I’ll give you as many Holy Knights as I can spare. Whatever it takes to make sure we don’t have another Final War, or worse,” Lodrick replied without turning to look at us. “I’ll even encourage the nobles to place their resources at your disposal—though, I think you already did a great job with Duchess Flameheart and Duke Galford.”

“But… didn’t you say that you couldn’t just send out Knights to another country…?” Nicole asked.

Lodrick scoffed. “I would uphold that as long as there wasn’t a threat to our world. Right now, we need to do whatever it takes.”

“What about the people that might suffer terrible consequences for doing this?” I asked, remembering the many times I had this conversation in our world.

Lodrick remained silent for a while, but before I urged him to answer me, he turned around with the same serious expression he had before. “I guess… We’ll have to carry those things with us.”

I lowered my face as I considered what he just said. The mission had changed from what I was initially asked to do. We were just supposed to wipe out zealots that might pose a threat to people’s way of living, but this time… Once more… The fate of the world was hanging on a fight with someone we believed to be evil. I didn’t want to go kill that girl only to doom another world for my actions.

Even despite the knowledge of how the Holy Gods truly were, and seeing with my own eyes what the group she’s a part of did, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that what I might do could be the same thing that I did in the past.

‘Go and kill this person—this being—because they’re a danger to our world…’ I wasn’t certain about it.

“What if—” Nicole spoke up, and we turned to look at her. “What if there was another way…?”

“Like what? Imprisoning that girl? She would still be able to communicate with the Goddess—and that’s only if we’re able to capture her. She managed to kill an A+ fighter, and slip away from another A+ and two S ranks. I’m afraid the only option is to end her,” Lodrick replied with a shake of his head.

“But what if we, like, cut her connection to the Goddess, or—or make it so she can’t communicate with Her anymore, or something like that…” Nicole followed up, losing her confidence by the end of what she was saying.

Lodrick remained quiet as he just slightly raised his eyebrows and looked my way. That was something I hadn’t considered, but I didn’t know if it could be done. Even when I was the Hero of the Holy Gods, that wasn’t something that I ever even thought about. So, I in turn, looked over at Lodrick’s computer.

“Can something like that be done?” I asked Salrak.

“Hm…” he replied, followed by a moment of silence. “That is something that I thought about doing myself with you and other Heroes of the past, but eventually found it pointless. Those Seven were always standing right outside the boundaries of the world, so if I were to cut a connection with a Hero, they would simply point Their finger to another person and start all over right away. But in this case… There might not be another person to point a finger to.”

“So it can be done?” I asked, feeling somewhat hopeful of the idea.

“Perhaps. I never tried it beyond just thinking about it,” Salrak said, “And as I am right now, I don’t have the power to experiment.”

“So it’s a complete unknown,” Lodrick said with a shake of his head. “I don’t see a reason to expend any more resources trying to do something like that. You’ve already killed plenty of people, so why fret over another one?—Especially when killing her would keep the Holy Gods away.”

“This one is different,” I said with a frown. “Killing this one might be a repeat of what I did with Salrak in our world, and this time, there’s no one to take us to another world.”

“She’s just one girl. Just because she has a piece of Godly powers doesn’t mean that she’s a God—but she might turn into one if we allow her to live much longer,” Lodrick replied, before turning to look at his computer. “No. We must end her.”

“And if I refuse?” I asked back, glaring at Lodrick.

He in turn, looked back at me. There was no way to intimidate this man, so he answered with neither anger or disappointment. “Then we’ll find someone else to do it. This goes beyond you.”

“Like Asteora?” I asked this time, almost mocking the idea that he could use her.

“Maybe. But I know that she’s got even bigger things to deal with—as your friend might know,” he said, giving a glance over to Nicole.

“Yes… Vajarut and Kralgorix…” she said with a forced smile.

That would explain why I hadn’t seen her for a while now…

“It doesn’t matter if Asteora is able. I’ll find someone to do it,” Lodrick said, shaking his head. “I’ve even heard someone asking questions about your involvement in this last mess. They might just be able to do it for me.”

“You realize you might doom the world if you do this, right?” I asked back, taking a step closer to him.

“And it might be doomed if we do nothing about this new Hero of the Holy Gods. I would rather act than to leave it up to chance,” he answered, looking down on me. “So, what will it be?”

I paused for a moment, a deep frown on my face as I looked back at Lodrick. I couldn’t deny what he was saying, but I just simply couldn’t shake the feeling that I could make the same mistake of the past… And yet, it was still better for me to do it. At least, I can find a way to make sure I don’t have to kill this girl as I go to her.

I looked with determination back at Lodrick. “Then… I’ll do it."