Myths Reawakened

Chancellery.

Wayne walked in as if he were the chancellor, snapping his fingers to catch the attention of a staffer carrying a stack of documents. “Hey, you. I’m talking to you. Where’s the Führer’s office?”

“Go straight and then right. It’ll be the first office you see.”

“Those documents...”

“I’m delivering them to the Führer.”

“Oh, and you are...?”

“Rudolf, Vice Chancellor of Prussia.”

Wayne’s eyes twitched. The random passerby he grabbed turned out to be a big fish. Once he learned who Rudolf was, the man looked completely different to him. A moment ago, Rudolf had seemed like an ordinary staff member, but now he suddenly radiated the quiet authority of someone in power.

Wayne clapped him on the shoulder, taking the documents from him. “All right, there’s nothing else for you to do here. Return to your work. I’ll hand these to the Führer.”

“Much appreciated.” Rudolf turned and walked away in a daze, as if he were a regular man.

Wayne sighed and didn’t expose the man’s acting. He carried the documents to the Führer’s office, shaking his head. “I knew it. I should’ve confirmed it myself last time... Well, back then I was in no position to do that.”

Rat-a-tat!

He knocked, then ignored the guards flanking the door and walked in.

Behind the massive desk, the mustached Führer, Hidler, stood with his hands clasped behind his back, a pencil in one hand. He stared blankly at the map of the Chosen Land on the wall. Franc’s territory had been divided by crisscrossing lines, fractured beyond recognition. Windsor and the Rus Federation were circled, with lines converging on them from different directions—they marked the marching routes for the blitzkrieg.

“My Führer, these are the documents you requested,” Wayne said, stepping forward.

“Just leave them on the desk...” Hidler turned around, fixing his eyes on Wayne for a long moment. “You... Christian, why haven’t you been assimilated by the information of Mechanical Augmentation?”

Wayne paused. Christian was the identity he had used in Prussia last time. The cover had paid off substantially, and he had used it to rescue Hestia and Fred along the way.

“So you’ve known all along, Führer.” Wayne narrowed his eyes slightly, glancing at the map. “Since you’re being so forthcoming, let me return the honesty. Would you mind telling me what the endgame of the evil plan is? You could have kept winning. Why would you throw it all away and choose to lose?”

“How have I lost?”

“...”

Fair.

The Chosen Land was a single continent, so Prussia might not be defeated by fighting on two frontlines. If Prussia stopped pretending and unleashed the full power of Mechanical Augmentation, she would be able to sweep the entire world.

Hidler’s temperament couldn’t be further from bright, but his confidence was genuine. He set down the pencil and said, “Mechanical Augmentation will be the last one laughing. No one will stop it. My plan has never been evil—you’ve just misunderstood the future.”

His expression turned contemptuous. “You’re powerful, powerful enough to level the chancellery, but your grasp of the world is woefully insufficient. You don’t understand the purpose of the war, nor do you know the truth of death. You have no power to change the future.”

Wayne frowned deeply. The purpose of war and the truth of death weren’t referring to the mortal war and mortal deaths occurring in the Chosen Land. Thinking back to what the three goddesses had mentioned but not explained in full, he said tentatively, “Mechanical Augmentation originates from a god, doesn’t it? Is Prussia the god’s vassal land?”

Hidler nodded. “So you do know about the prophecy.”

What prophecy?

Wayne raised an eyebrow, fishing for more information. “The prophecy has many interpretations. Your comprehension is the opposite of mine. The war will end since no war rages forever, and death will return to serenity in the end.”

“Hahaha, your interpretation is far too naive.” Hidler’s face lit up with fervor. “The wheel of war rolls ever forward. Once set in motion, it will not stop. Everything is predetermined, and everyone will become fuel. The prophecy points to a Judgment Day. Everyone, including the gods, will face judgment and fall in this era.”

His monologue was so disjointed that Wayne couldn’t parse it. He only knew that the goddesses knew the prophecy, which pointed him in one direction.

The old era was when the War of Faiths happened, when six gods had been born: the Heavenly Father, Nature, Sun, Moonlight, Darkness, and Death.

Once the new era began, new gods would enter the world to reawaken the myths, igniting another war.

The Heavenly Father, the strongest of them all, withdrew into the Astral Plane, leaving behind a successor and tasking the reincarnated angels to find the Anointed One. The five goddesses couldn’t do the same, so each plotted for their future in preparation for the second mythological era.

Among them, Nature believed that She could only rely on Herself to reach godhood, so She took Death’s divine power to accelerate Her evolution in response to the yet-unknown threats. The other goddesses either banded together or prepared in secret. Some had even splurged without restraint to win allies, going down the path to the bitter end, despite being fully aware that it was a trap.

Wayne could figure out the overall picture, but not the details.

“War will end.” He shook his head at Hidler. “The moment I stepped into this office, the wheel of war was fated to stop turning.”

“No, you don’t understand war, nor do you understand the human heart.” Hidler sat in his chair calmly. “I cannot resist you, so I’m destined to die the moment you enter the office. However, war will continue. You can stop Prussia’s war machine from advancing, but can you stop it from retreating?”

What do you mean? Wayne was baffled. Prussia’s defeat would end the war. Why would he stop the war machine from pulling back?

“You truly don’t know anything...” Hidler smiled. “If it could be stopped, the gods would’ve done so, but they hadn’t. Your operation today is both a success and a failure. Once you see the real war in the future, you’ll understand—understand that what you did today is meaningless.”

“What a shame that I won’t get to witness the real war...”

His expression turned rueful, but then just as quickly, his whole face shone with fanatical devotion. While he laughed, his body twisted and warped, blackening and hardening.

Mechanical Augmentation!

What emerged was a warhead. It grew in size and crushed the chair with a crack. The TNT equivalent was obviously high, so was its nuclear level.

Correction: the Führer’s temperament was quite bright. Some would even say it was radioactive.

Wayne heard the mechanical groans all around the chancellery. If they detonated at once, the combined force would be enough to send the entire city of Berlo to Heaven.

“Tsk, self-detonating again? These fanatics have no manners...”

Boom!!!

The explosion shook heaven and earth, the thunderous roar splitting the sky as an orange fireball erupted upward. The shockwave rattled the entire world. But the blinding heat and light didn’t spread—an unseen force was holding it within the chancellery.

The air seemed to solidify, sealed off by an ink-black darkness. Light itself appeared imprisoned inside a black coffin. Even the infinite power couldn’t break free, not even by an inch.

Around the chancellery, passersby stared curiously at the black coffin rising from the ground. It wasn’t until the sound of urgent footsteps echoed down the street that they scurried off in fright.

When the black light faded, the chancellery had become ruins. Apart from the pools of molten rock, everything had been erased.

Wayne walked out with his face still in a foamy state. He glanced back at what remained of the chancellery. He had achieved what he set out to do. Without the mustached Führer as the spiritual leader, Prussia would suffer defeat after defeat, never able to recover her unstoppable momentum.

“Windsor, Franc, and the Rus Federation won’t stop their counterattack, so the war has not ended, and I cannot stop that... Is that what he meant?”

Wayne pondered with a blank face. Those nations wouldn’t be the only ones advancing. The countries that Prussia had conquered, even Prussia’s close ally, Enoria, would scramble to take a stand and declare war on Prussia. The one-sided war would be over soon. It seemed that... things would end there.

“So what exactly is wrong?”

Wayne shook his head and walked into an alley, facing his nine teammates. He cursed under his breath when he saw that the three goddesses had already left.

It seemed that they had known what would happen and hadn’t warned him. They were just watching as he walked into a wall.

Then again, he couldn’t blame them. The goddesses were busy, so they were already doing him a great favor by coming along.

(￣～￣;)

He wasn’t that close to Kaleb and Siluk, so there was nothing he could do to them. Ines, though, was a different story. Tonight, he would do it standing up, and he wouldn’t stop until She cried Herself hoarse.

“Let’s go. There’s nothing left for us here.”

Wayne drew Shadow Nightmare with a wave. The operation had fizzled out anticlimactically because his allies were riddlers who said nothing despite knowing the truth.

***

Londan.

Julian Estate.

Forest set the secretary in his arms down, picking up a glass of red wine thoughtfully. “So he’s gone to Prussia to eliminate Mechanical Augmentation. If memory serves, that was the reason he went to Hell...”

“What is that? Mercy? Savior complex? The divinity that the Anointed One should possess?”

“Not bad, I suppose. At least he isn’t quite as incorrigible as I thought he was...”

Forest took a sip of wine and tilted his head back. “I saw some good traits in him—I suppose they could be considered virtues. It isn’t easy. His flaws made his virtues difficult to spot.”

“In this case, though, I am inferior to him. I’ve been prideful for so long that I look down on humanity and do not care about the mortal realm...”

“No, I do care about Londan. I’m becoming more and more human.”

“Father, will you ever come back?”