Chương 64: Conversation

What do you want it to say? Liesel climbed up the stairs leading to the Divination altar. It would be guarded by the imperial soldiers, who answered only to the Crusaders Wing, not to any city official or the local authorities. It was grand in design even here, but it lacked the weight that those guards' presence breathed into the real one. It was a fake replica after all.

The Heart, no matter how powerful it was, could not replicate the true ingenuity of that device, its unmatched divination that even a divine construct may never rival. Regardless, she was beginning to glimpse the purpose the corridors served. To draw out her buried thoughts, and for her to relive those memories alone, without the influence of anything outside. There was no threat here, except for her own mind. Why do this? There was an aspect of cruelty to it, of course. She didn't find this place pleasant.

She didn't find anything pleasant, for that matter. Most of her thoughts focused solely on the path forward, except for the extraordinary circumstances that drew out the buried ones. The Core wanted her to be here, but why? It had repaired almost all the harm the wasteland had done to her body. Almost. Until her Soul Form was fixed, nothing else really mattered. It wants me to be stronger... and give something to the child, most likely.

"You should find someone who can take off the veil of righteousness covering the child's eyes. That is the best way to ensure her survival," Liesel uttered. A stone slab was at the center of the device, covered in a layer of ice, and mist surrounded it. Every section of the machine's surface would freeze a hand upon contact. It was the coldest thing in the Inceptius, only a degree or two above where reality ceased to function. Only the stone slab was at a temperature where Ascendants could interact with it.

She placed her hand over it. A shiver ran through her body, not just from the cold. Her heart thumped in anticipation. What would it say? It's a lie. She reminded herself, and yet there was anticipation, unbothered by and immune to her rationalization. What would it say? Was she still the same talent, or would it now call her something lesser? A normal Crusader perhaps? Or a foot soldier? The Machine whirred and hissed and exuded frost from every open crevice between its wires and bolts, just as the real one did.

After almost ten minutes, there were thousands upon thousands of lines of information, too small for Liesel's eyes to even recognize. No one knew how it worked. What method allowed an inorganic construct to divine the future and accurately project the fate of an Ascendant? Finally, a black box manifested in the center of the screen above the thousands of lines of information. [Calculating Data... 1%] The percentage slowly climbed, and the bar underneath filled.

The stretch of time was just enough to rein in Liesel's anticipation. She was left with a simple question: What did she want this to say? After all, the entire realm was constructed for her to experience. The thousands of rows of benches were empty, and they would remain so. What it determined was immaterial in a sense, for it would not decree anything. Only what she wanted it to be may have any control over her destiny. She had seen the violence of the Empire.

It stretched a step too far for the self-proclaimed righteous empire, driven by the desire to protect its people, the only shelter of humanity in the dark ages. Steering the entire spirit race to extinction was one of its many sins, but perhaps the most depraved one. It was an indulgence of power in its debased form. Spirits' healing magic was a miracle, not hindered by the patients' capacity to accept it. It was the reason why Liesel was still breathing today.

Without Auram's willingness to offer a human taste of that forbidden magic, she'd be long gone. Whoever the spirits aligned with, that faction would be borderline immortal, equipped with endless bodies to be thrown into the furnace of endless war. However, that was not the reason spirits were driven to extinction, nor was it in search of a miraculous medicine or any such nonsense. At its core, it was a vain project carried out in broad daylight for decades as a show of the imperial force.

None could stop it, not without incurring the Wrath of the Empire. At its most violent outburst during that period, the Empire destroyed entire clusters of realms, significantly hurting the Larcal's critical stronghold, which had dared to oppose the imperial decree. And at the end of that project, all that was left were spirit lamps and jewels that some Senators still wore. Nothing more. That period had solidified that, except for the Ascendant Demons, no race could withstand the Laks Empire's might.

Even when the Spirit quite literally did give Larcal's endless bodies to burn in the furnace, it achieved nothing. The atrocities of that period didn't boil Liesel's blood. She was raised to enact those atrocities for the empire, after all. Her mind subconsciously suppressed every emotion that should've surfaced. Yet, standing here, waiting for the outcome, she did feel an odious revulsion towards herself. The anticipation had morphed into dread. She didn't want to see the result.

Whatever trick the realm had up its sleeve, it had worked. And just when she thought it would be satisfied, a loud call from a familiar voice dragged her further into the chasm.

"Liesel!" Auram shouted. She rushed too close to her face. Liesel took half a step back, creating a little gap between them.

"Are you an illusion?"

"What?" Auram frowned.

"What is this place?"

"Inceptius," Liesel said reflexively, because she knew how Auram would react. Auram's pupils dilated. She flapped her wings. Spirit's dust cloaked her entire body, the air around Auram twisted, but the spirit couldn't teleport away. She also realized it.

"L-Liesel, why can't I leave?" There was a terror in Auram's voice that no illusion could replicate. And it was just from mentioning the place Liesel had grown up in. One that Liesel could never associate with danger.

"It is an illusion," Liesel added.

"You are safe." Auram nodded.

"Still, I cannot teleport... why?"

"You are in the Primordial Core, the center of the realms," Liesel said.

"It may be capable of trapping you here."

"That's impossible," Auram said. She tried again, and the world around her stretched, as if it was unravelling. It kept twisting, but like a rubber band snapping back into place, Auram was thrust to the side, still here, heaving for breath.

"I have never failed to teleport before."

"It might be for your safety. An hour here is a day outside," Liesel said. She didn't think the core would hurt the spirit, and she hoped she was not wrong.

"Perhaps the time makes it impossible for you to teleport away."

"Oh," Auram blinked.

"Hey Custodian, can you change the flow of time in the Library to match this place?" Auram frowned, nodding.

"He says it would be a waste of energy. I should stay here. It's a safe place."

"So it has been said," Liesel nodded.

"Yeah... you said it was Inceptius?"

"A replica of it."

"And this device?" Auram gestured at the Divination machine.

"The most advanced technology of the Empire. It divines the future potential of all Crusader Prospects." Auram nodded. She seemed much more relaxed after the Custodian's assurance. Despite all her anger at him, a part of Auram seemed to believe the Custodian would protect her should the need arise. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. Liesel involuntarily supposed she'd replace that role once the Custodian was gone. He was dying, after all.

She quickly realized the fault in that naturally occurring line of thought. Why would I? Because you owe it to her. A voice inside her insisted, You are her only hope. There shouldn't be a need for a protector of the spirit. That was also a faulty line of thought.

'Should' didn't matter. Was there? Yes. Auram would be in danger without someone to keep her safe. Without a library to shelter her most of the time. And after the Custodian, there was no one Auram could rely on but Liesel. Liesel strangled that thought quickly. It's not a worry for decades. Don't waste your energy on it now.

"It's kind of imposing..." Auram said, "What are you doing? Don't tell me you want to know what your future potential looks like."

"That is precisely the function of the device."

"Is it accurate?" Auram asked.

"It has seldom failed. I am one of its failed predictions. Perhaps only in centuries."

"Right..." Auram nodded.

"You did say you were supposed to be a Crusader something. I remember." Liesel shifted her eye to the screen. The calculation had slowed even further. It was a deliberate choice of the realm, wasn't it?

"Crusader General," Liesel said, "I should already be a Commander with a legion of white Crusaders underneath my banner, according to the predictions."

"You don't look like someone who'd want to be on that kind of post. It's not a nice kind of job."

"I know." Liesel nodded.

"Then why are you checking it? Why is this here in the first place? What's going on here, Lis?"

"I am trying to figure that out," Liesel said.

"For now, it seems to be giving me an opportunity to visit and experience sites from my past. The day before yesterday, I was in my mother's bedroom after the funeral."

"That sounds unpleasant."

"It certainly was." Liesel nodded.

"Then, this is also a place of great importance to you," Auram's voice was unsure. She would probably not want a human to hold this place in any favourable regard.

"Is this also an unpleasant place?"

"Yes and no. This is the place that birthed the me that you see. If someone had said to the child me, who was standing here, that I'd spend days suppressing the Withering of my Soul Form with just my will, I'd have felt they were mocking me, but too afraid to even look. I was quite weak-willed as a young girl. I had no father and a bedridden mother, afflicted with an incurable curse. To see what my future held through a machine that could not be wrong was the first hope in my life.

It gave me the strength to keep moving. No matter how vile the role it offered may appear to you. For me, it was the first time I felt like I could be a person with dignity. It was wrong, of course, but by then I was molded into the person that I am."

"No, no," Auram shook her head.

"You were a child. I completely understand what it looks like from your perspective."

"I know, you will," Liesel said.

"Even after all the tragedies you must've witnessed, you are still able to see humans as not just beasts of nightmare and trust them more than I can." Auram regarded Liesel carefully.

"You sound odd."

"Before you came, I was wondering about the sins of the Empire as I stood here and waited to see what my potential looks like. How vile and treacherous we truly are. It seems the Core wanted you to be here to witness the result alongside me."

"I don't really care what the result says. I know you, Lis, and I know you will never hurt me and see me as beneath you. That is all I care about."

"Do you know what I want this result to be?" Liesel asked. The question itself was a betrayal of her self-control. She shouldn't care about the spirit's opinion. The spirit paused. She shook her head.

"I want you to say what you think I want it to be. There must be an answer you lean towards."

"Uh, I mean, I don't understand what it looks like to have an answer to your question."

"You know what I am asking."

"I... won't." Auram shook her head.

"I am not sure it's polite to answer your question honestly. I know you will not harm me or anyone undeserving if you can help it. No matter what you are offered, no matter the price, that is all I know. But people are complicated." Liesel couldn't help but chuckle.

"You say that, and yet you refuse to be honest with me. I came to the core after killing a man who, in all honesty, was innocent and powerless."

"You had even fewer options than him. You were weak, and I can never fault you for trying to survive, when that is all I have ever done in my life," Auram just pressed her lips. Liesel exhaled. Her throat felt a little heavy.

"I know the history of the Empire, bare naked of the shades it hides its records in. I know the purpose the White Crusaders truly serve, and what role I'd have played as the Crusader General. The countless innocent lives we'd have uprooted and crushed in our march of justice and peace that will never arrive for anyone. And knowing all that, loathing the core of the Empire, I still, somewhere in my fragile ego, want to hold that title.

To be dignified and immortalized in the annals of history as the lone Crusader General, in whose vein the Emperor's Blood never flowed. It is vain, and I should hate myself for desiring such a loathsome title. I don't," Liesel watched the spirit.

"Do you still think I'd never harm you, Auram? When you see the person beneath all the lies I wear, do you still believe it?"

"Despite our shared history, I trust you, Liesel, because when you first saw me, there was guilt in your eyes. Even this admittance is just an extension of that. Our fate unfolded before you were born, and if you were alive, you could've done nothing. No one could've, except for the divines above at a great cost. You have no reason to feel anything, but you do. And you are still too young to have accepted the whole of your reality.

No matter how kind and moral and considerate you are, you were raised in a society that glorified its worst element. You don't want the glorious wars that burn uncountable lives for nothing. You just want to achieve something and be acknowledged for it. There is nothing wrong with it""You will forgive a human who wants to be the leader of the organization that upheld the Empire?" Liesel said. Her mind refused to dwell on Auram's words. There was something to latch on to there, but she refused.

A cold, rational part of her mind wanted to end this conversation here. She was certainly not in the ideal state of mind to be having it right now. But Liesel felt it was a good time to let herself be a little more honest, and a little less the ideal human in the design of her academy.

"I don't care that you are human," the spirit said.

"I know the Ascendant races like to emphasize their superiority through culture, latent differences, or history. But, stripped of all their shades, they are all the same. Our fate was set in stone, regardless of which Ascendant race established the Empire. It was our station in that world before, our likeness to the divine's magic, that wrought our finality."

"You cannot write atrocities of the Empire off as just fate. It was a sin committed in blood, and its monsters live still." Liesel said. Not that anyone in their right mind could ever hope to have that justice. Why ask a powerless spirit to desire the impossible?

"It was not fate, Liesel, only the natural outcome of our realities. Humans just happened to be lucky enough to have the right leader at the right moment in history, the right realms, and a subservient and desperate enough population. But our world is designed to birth that monster. If not humans, then the demons. We were too weak and yet special, possessing precious magic, designed to be the first to cast into oblivion. Not because we were ever dangerous; that was proven over and over, until all my people faded.

But because we were the weakest, and we were not given the same powers from the divine as all the Ascendant races. We were lesser and yet human enough to be made an example of, no matter which race becomes the dominant one." Liesel could see Auram's argument, and there might be merit to it. But the idea that the fate of an entire race was written in stone was casting off the sins that her people had committed. But Liesel was a human, and what right did a human have to tell a spirit about virtues and justice?

She could only try to understand Auram's perspective.

"At the end of the day, I live, and I hide. I will keep hiding. Someday the Empire will move on; they will give the few spirits hidden still the right to walk their land and breathe the free air."

"Is that all you want?" Liesel asked.

"Yes."

"I understand you a little less today than I did the last time I saw you."

"Because you are strong, Liesel. You don't despair. You accept death as a fact, and you would rather die than be anything less than you are. I am weak, and I will always be weak. I live because I accepted shelter from a deplorable carcass whose cruelty and depravity are no different from, or lesser than, the Empire, and whose heart is as cold as your emperor. I have witnessed hundreds of thousands of humans be fed to demons for no sin of their own.

They were humans, but they were like me far more than the thing that grants me the privilege of life. You would not have accepted that life, because it would trample on your dignity. But I do, because I want to live. And like you, I hypocritically despise the Custodian and wish to be treated as equal by him. What right do I have to accuse you of anything when you are the nicest human I have ever met?"

"I will accept my defeat, I suppose," Liesel uttered. She didn't have an argument that didn't accuse Auram in some ways, and that was not something she could ever do. She didn't feel any less complicated, if not more so within. It was like everything she was unraveling one thread at a time. That was perhaps the most succinct description of what the realm was doing to her.

"And Isa is far kinder than me, or even Fiya," Liesel whispered as if it were a last jab to feel better.

"Isa treats me well," Auram said, grinning, "But they treat me carefully, like I am a fragile thing who would vanish from anything more than the softest voice they can muster. Not like a person, an equal as you do. Even now, you dignify me with a conversation that I never thought I would have." Liesel bobbed her head. She settled her eyes back to the screen. It was almost done.

"What do you want to see?" Auram asked after a moment of silence.

"I gave you the answer, and if you feel horrified by it, that is fine," Liesel said.

"It is but a mental exercise."

"You can become a Crusader General now," Auram said, "With all the new powers you got, and the possibility of developing your Soul-Form, it might not be far-fetched."

"Is that what you want?"

"I trust you," Auram said.

"And if you want to be a Crusader General, then I'd rather believe that you can change the army for the better than be corrupted by their malice."

"You are naive," Liesel uttered.

"No one is beyond malice, and I certainly am far from it." The bar filled. [Appraisal Complete Potential: Crusader General] There were a hundred other metrics and written symbols that Liesel could read. They meant nothing. The result itself, too, meant nothing. It was only showing what she wanted to see. She looked at Auram.

"It is a lie," Liesel said again.

"Do you wish it was true?"

"Barring my desire, my ability to participate in the military role necessary to rise through the ranks and carry that mantle no longer exists," Liesel said.

"But it does feel nice to read, even though it is a lie, that my potential is still the same."

"What are you going to do with this potential that you take pride in?" Liesel shook her head.

"Once I have escaped this place and started the regrowth of my soul, I might have the luxury to worry about something like that." Yet there was a simmering thought in Liesel's mind. She refused to let it manifest, for the Empire's tendril may even stretch inside her mind.