Netori: Stealing The Hero's Party!

Chapter 1004: Concern - Someplace Somewhere

The thrumming of heavy machinery pounded like a heartbeat. Constant and obtrusive. Ringing in the ears like a hammer pounding hot iron. Its din rang like a song of metal, of cogs and pistons through the smog and the scorching heat. Yet most no longer heard the song, as it had become a part of their thought, their speech, and everything.

The machine must run no matter what happens. No matter who lives, no matter who dies. Even repairs were done by shifting the work to a replica engine. The valley could not afford to lose its command over the machine and the one attached to it. Pouring red-hot iron like magma flowing down a drain, the lab assistant fed the creature through pipes and pistons.

Every day they fed it tons of melted metal with strength-dampening material encased within an alloy of much higher melting point. As the metals would reach the beast’s belly, they would burn even more and turn to the monster’s strength, but as the heat rose and the alloy burned away, the ’medicine’ suppressed the creature’s strength.

Sapping what heat and power the feeding generated, the valley was powered by the body of the very same monster, and such has been the case for a millennium—all thanks to the medicine and the creative minds behind the gargantuan apparatus.

But now, they paid it no heed. Left to be maintained and worked on by their lessers. Repairs and maintenance were never their calling; instead, what called to them were greater and greater heights like no human before them had reached. As the thrumming of the heavy machinery pounded with their heartbeats, the two stood at the far corner of the crude and rocky room, picking and prodding at a spherical casing set up right over their work desk.

”What are we doing, Xavier?” Iris drummed her pen at the back of her notebook, staring at the hollow sphere with a measly amount of luminescent energy.

”Hmm?” Lifting his nose from between a set of papers, Xavier’s eyebrows narrowed. ”Working on the device. It’s the same thing we’ve worked on for our whole lives. Have you started forgetting memories, Iris? It could be a side effect of our prolonged lifespan.”

Dropping his study papers, Xavier moved closer to Iris and fished her hand towards his chest. Closing it in his hands, he closed his eyes and focused on her pulse. At once, Iris pulled away, making him open his eyes with a look of surprise on his face.

”I’m fine, Xavier. You don’t have to treat me like a doll.”

”Iris, we’re both human; we should’ve been dead a decade from the barrier’s erection. Of course, I’m worried if something changes. What if you forgot everything?”

”You worry too much, husband...” Eyeing the pile of paper dropped by Xavier, Iris gestured for him to pick them up again.

Despite still being worried about Iris, Xavier did as he was instructed. As he stood tall again after picking up the papers, his wife spoke to him, revealing what she meant.

”We started working on this thing, how long ago?” Tapping her finger against the sphere, Iris’s cold silver eyes grew duller. ”Five hundred years? Maybe more? We abandoned everything to secure a future without gods, without fear. We thought we could rule ourselves with the king keeping everyone in line while we worked in the shadows.”

Xavier’s thoughts slowed for a moment as he heard Iris retelling their tale. Uncertainty and unrest were as clear as day, and yet he simply listened as his wife briefly smiled and kept going.

”I just want to break through this stalemate. We can create the greatest weapon this world has ever known and conquer this damn planet. We can subdue those who won’t listen to reason, those poor idiots who don’t know any better; we can save them, but we need the weapon to make them comply first.”

”They will comply, sweetheart.” Placing a hand on her shoulder, Xavier kept a slight distance from Iris. She was known to lash out at warmth, but as she looked at him sideways, smiling, that wasn’t the case for now. ”We will find a way to harness Bellona’s powers. Her body will submit its strength to our godkiller, and then the king might be the face of it all, but it would be thanks to us that this world will know true harmony.”

Resting her hand on top of his, she drew a deep breath and sighed.

”We both know what to do; we just can’t do it because of his idea of how things need to be.” Silence hung heavy between the two; their knowing eyes spoke enough. Shackled by the reasons of the king, all they could do was wait and collect Bellona’s powers over time, instead of sapping it all to create the weapon to end all gods.

In their minds, the two knew what must be done and what would benefit the world outside their lab. Even though for over five hundred years, they’d confined themselves in the colossal cave where the elder god’s body was held. The king told them little of the outside world, even hid the finer details, and yet they complied with his orders, for without him, the security that they had to conduct their experiment would no longer be there.

Being killed before their research was completed–what a sorry fate that would be. And so they returned to their work every day, slowly trapping a portion of the power created by Bellona’s body after the feeding. The rest was directed to the anti-magic cannons and fueled the creation of specialized invisibility equipment. Numerous other curiosities blueprinted by the husband and wife were also in constant production, but for the most part the subdued body of an elder god was being used like a battery to fuel the valley’s energy.

”Such a waste of a good resource.” With a final curse, Iris returned to her work.

Xavier, however, couldn’t help but soak in his wife’s reservations a while longer. They could surely take over the world with the goddess’s power, but he would not do it without the king’s protection or by sapping Bellona of her strength all at once.

’I can’t say the same for her.’ He thought, knowing full well that if things grew desperate and she had a chance, Iris would burn everything to finish the creation of what would become the end of all gods.

Yet all he could do was hope that things don’t grow that far, but with the heroes approaching and only a quarter of the world left between them and the end of the world, who knows what might happen? Perhaps it would be he who changes his mind, instead of her.