There was quite a lot more I could investigate here, but all that involved delving deeply into the world's systems or digging through countless automated logs.
For now, I wanted to concentrate on things I could make meaning from quickly, as I could easily spend hours here without figuring out much. I didn't have that much time before needing to head back as the sun was banished from the skies. The only possibility of doing that was beyond the closed door I had left up until then.
Crossing that next threshold, what I saw was another stunning sight.
The room was the same white as before, but this time it was filled with much different sorts of things.
There were several tables against the walls with their own orbs embedded in them, along with unusual objects strewn across them. Some looked like they could've been brought in from outside, like parts of weapons or mana crystals, but others were just plain unidentifiable. Grey sludge that had clearly dried up and would have to be scraped clean, or pieces of wood partially covered in what appeared to be some sort of flaky dust. There were also things that vaguely looked familiar, but was so badly corroded that it was difficult to figure out its original shape.
If I had to guess, they were things that were laying in this room for so long that if they could degrade, they would have already.
And those sorts of things were just scattered around on the tables without any obvious rhyme or reason.
It was pretty unfortunate, but the things on the tables seemed to simply be useless junk, eroded by time to the point that most of it couldn't even be scrapped to make something useful.
Turning my eye past all those things, there was something large that stood out as being completely different from the rest.
It was a large capsule, like those medical pods or cloning vats seen in all sorts of sci-fi movies. It stood tall against the remaining wall, large enough to fit even a titan inside. However, all I could spot was a little fluffball, glowing faintly as if it was drained of all its energy.
But upon closer inspection, the object inside of this oversized pod looked a bit different from a normal fluffball. Its haze was drifting upwards, like a flame flickering in slow motion. A fluffball was more uniform in shape than that, its hazy aura looking more like densely packed fur pointing equally in all directions.
And of course a fluffball looked even softer than a cloud. Though in reality though, they were only a bit softer than a fuzzy pom pom.
Any attempt to [scan] it was interfered with the pod itself, giving me information about that rather than what it contained. It kinda figured. This wasn't the sort of situation [scan] was made for, an oversight I should rectify in the future.
On the side of the pod was a crystal ball placed into an indent.
Touching this, a holographic screen appeared in front of me.
[Subject enlightenment value: 43%]
I blinked at what I had seen, my eyes slowly moving to the floating ball in the pod before moving back to the screen. There were a few items I could select. The first one I pressed was the log, being that I really didn't know what I was looking at.
[Log 3889.11.3: Subject enlightenment value fallen from 44% to 43%.]
My eyes ran through the automated logs. Every single entry was reporting the same thing: the subject's enlightenment value falling.
I still had little idea what this enlightenment value was, but the fact that my own was nearly 100%, yet that this one's was just over 40% didn't look good. And the numbers, it seems like it ticked down a percent every few decades.
Or rather, looking closely at the logs, it seemed like the value has been dropping at a varying rate. Some times it'll drop one percent a year for several years in a row, and others it'll take decades to drop just one percent.
But the first entry in the automatic logs really picked at my interest.
[Log 3569.7.21: New subject placed into containment.]
(This date!)
I checked back to make sure, but looking at the logs on the terminal in the previous room, I was able to confirm that the date on this log was one day after the one where the person with the same name as me changed some detail to the vampire species.
And comparing the dates on the other terminal's logs, it was just over three hundred years before I accidentally changed the idol data.
I couldn't say for sure that was what I had done when I saved that transcribed data matched with that log, but the evidence pointed too strongly to avert my eyes from that theory.
The second log entry was quite disturbing, considering everything that came after was almost the exact same thing.
[Log 3570.12.25: Subject enlightenment value fallen from 99.98% to 99%.]
After that first log three centuries before, all the entries were the enlightenment value falling, with the only variance being the time in between the log entries.
(If this is a person, if this is that Saint Scarlet that everyone talked about...she's been stuck here for over three hundred years?!)
If my cheeks could drain of colour, they certainly would've.
While I didn't know who this Saint Scarlet was, if rather than dying and being reborn, she was captured and imprisoned here all this time...
(Oh god. Who would've...?)
But as I stepped back, almost losing my balance from the horror at my discovery making me so lightheaded, something below the embedded crystal ball came into view. It was a metallic canister, slotted into a port.
(That's...!)
I've seen it before, or rather something just like it. It had been years ago, but there was no way I would forget such a thing so easily. It was the canister that was part of the device that stole Orphne's soul!
The urge to crush the thing in my bare hands was great, but rational thought told me that simply breaking it without doing something regarding the soul trapped inside of this capsule wasn't a good idea.
Besides, I had time. There was no indication that anyone had come to this room in centuries. At the very least, if anyone had, they would've disturbed the stuff on that table, if for no other reason than to clean it up or check to see if there was any valuables in the pile.
No. It was better do slowly check and find a way to save this person.
Even if I was wrong and it was someone else, I couldn't think that anyone deserved to be imprisoned for three centuries and be subject to whatever it was that it was doing to this soul.
Then, there was the fact that those assassins all those years ago called this canister a holy artifact. That alone strongly implicated the church worshipped by the light races. The question was, were they the ones responsible for everything, or was there someone even higher up?
And of course, if there was someone higher up, I could only think of one group it could be.
Now, since this was all speculation, it would be far too imprudent to conclude that those weird toga wearing people were the cause of everything.
After all, if they were the ones behind everything, why were they doing something so roundabout?
From everything I could tell, it seemed like in the early days, they covered their tracks well enough that nobody suspected a thing. None of the old stories that the fairies passed down suggested that anyone even suspected this proxy war being anything but genuine.
On the other hand, considering that this world seemed to be abandoned, things also suggested that the people who created this world no longer cared about it, and in fact probably didn't even expect it to have survived this long without any intervention.
No, if anything, it didn't feel like those maybe gods were behind it. While I vaguely remembered some muscled giant standing guard in that land of the dead, it was possible that they weren't that strong and needed someone else to do their dirty work.
It was possible. And thanks to Sarah, I knew for sure that they were trying to kill me.
Or at least tried.
(What's really going on here?)
Were they really behind those assassins? Were those assassins attacking for some unrelated reason that coincidentally came after me? They did seem to specify that I was the target, and used a weapon that was practically designed as the ultimate vampire discriminator.
I didn't think I slipped up anywhere bad enough for them to come after me. Not know that a vampire existed to be chased after, nor where I was.
Though that bastard's victims did know that I was a vampire and where I roughly was, there wasn't much of a chance of them to be the ones who sold me out. Not especially since they came to get my help afterwards, and that didn't even account for that near devotion level of loyalty they all seemed to have, to greater or lesser degrees.
But either way, this was a clear reminder that I did need to worry about future attacks. Maybe if I could get this person to talk, I could find out clues as to if those god-like beings really were involved in some way, and if they would still be some sort of threat or not.
At the moment tough, this person was nothing more than a bodyless soul, held in this world with nothing more than this capsule. While I could bring the person into my body using my custom [soul siphon] skill, I really didn't want to share my body with someone I didn't know. Even if it really was Saint Scarlet and she was everything everyone said she was.
Tapping around through the terminal's interface, I quickly found a solution to my problem.
[Resuscitate subject? {Yes/No}]
Of course, I hit yes.
[Please insert mana to resuscitate. Mana: 0/1000]
It seemed like it wanted me to put in my own mana, rather than automatically draw it from the world itself or something. The amount was tiny though, considering that it was going to be used to revive a person. Even Alicia or Fate could fill this thing up, and I hadn't taught them how to use magic yet.
Below the crystal orb, the socket the little canister was inserted into lit up. Guessing as to the reason, I put my hand on the canister and inserted my own mana into it.
Very soon, the lights turned green, and the terminal showed that the amount required was fulfilled.
As the mana circulated through the equipment and entered the capsule. before suffusing the lonely soul, the terminal updated its information.
[Resuscitation in progress. Warning. Enlightenment levels of mana source and subject differs greatly. Subject enlightenment level interference detected.]
(That's...not good, right?)
Frankly speaking, I had no idea. This person's enlightenment level was originally even higher than my own, so if it went up, it was probably a good thing? But then again, it was causing a forced and drastic change, so maybe it was bad?
I really didn't know. I had no idea what this enlightenment level even was, nor how it effected the soul in the first place.
There simply was a lack of information, and the terminals in this place simply presumed that you already knew what you were dealing with, so there didn't seem to be any place where I could find out. Though there was a few more crystal balls to check out, I didn't have much confidence that they'd tell me more on the subject.
But putting all that aside, right before my eyes, the worn out soul was glowing much brighter now, and as more mana was drawn into the capsule., the fluffball grew larger and larger, ever more distinct and solid. Soon, its shape started to change from a simple orb with a hazy outer coating to a rounded block, and from that five appendages grew out of it.
It didn't take long before the general shape was recognizable of that of a person's. A woman's.
My eyes were glued as I continued to watch this marvel, of a lonely soul gaining its own, brand new body.
A reincarnation!
It made me wonder if this was how it looked like when I was reincarnated into this world.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, there wasn't anyone to witness my rebirth, so I couldn't say.
But as I stared and watched, soon, my eyes opened up even wider. My mouth even gaped a little as the fine details emerged, and right here, suspended inside of the capsule., was a fully grown woman.
Of course she was in the nude, but that wasn't what had grabbed my attention.
But before I could properly process what I had seen, the seal for the capsule broke and the glass rose up and out of the way. The woman, still floating, tipped forward as gravity overtook her body.
"Wah!"
Before she could be hurt, I caught the unconscious body and held her against me.
(...Seriously?!)
I quickly used [scan] to confirm that she was properly revived, and while I did confirm that her HP and MP were properly filled out, though it was appropriately low for a level one that she had been reborn as, what surprised me was the confirmation of the name: Scarlet.
Very rapidly, all doubt that this woman really was the same Scarlet as the one in the stories was evaporating.
But from everything I had heard, this person was someone who had earned the title of saint, even despite interference from the light races' church. And while I did have some suspicions when it came to the details and real motivations around what I had heard happen, overall I had judged her to be quite the positive force in the world.
While I could understand that there were those who wanted her gone, that didn't explain having her soul imprisoned for centuries. Or even why anyone would go as far as imprisoning her in the first place.
Death was more than enough under any circumstance. This sort of soul imprisonment was far too excessive and difficult in comparison without a single obvious benefit.
(Unless if the enlightenment value had something to do with it.)
That capsule. recorded the loss of enlightenment value.
I wasn't sure, really. But for the meantime, I needed to confront reality properly, rather than divert my attention from what was in front of me.
And that was...me.
Or to be exact, someone who looked quite a lot like me. And that was on top of having the same name.
This woman, Saint Scarlet, had the exact same deathly pale skin, long silky silver hair, even and rounded face with fair features, slender but noticeably toned limbs, and of course, that bountiful chest. Though there were differences, even at a glance. Her facial features were a bit sharper than my own, and her chest was comparatively a little less filled with dreams.
If I was told I had a long lost sister, I would believe that she was her.
But of course, she wasn't my sister. If I had to say something, maybe she was closer to my third daughter? Her body was made mainly using my mana. It was a result I hadn't even considered.
Or rather, I wasn't even thinking about such things when I poured my mana into the device. I hadn't considered the fact that the type of mana would make a difference.
As to whether it was fortunate or unfortunate, I had no idea. Not until she woke up at least.
But she was properly breathing, and there didn't seem to be any issues with her stats, aside from being level one. Despite having the body of an adult, she was so fragile.
I brushed a stray strand of hair off of her cheek as I held her against my body, cradling her like a child.
Once more, I used [scan] and skimmed through her data. There really wasn't anything there. Everything suggested that she was a freshly born vampire, aside from the size of her core files. She did retain her memories at least, though only when looking at the size of her core files. Whether she could properly recall her past or not was a different story. There was also the fact that I was able to confirm that she had lost her administrative privileges as well.
Aside from that, I was able to confirm that I couldn't find her enlightenment value anywhere through the use of [scan]. It was unfortunate, but it seemed like it was something that wasn't overseen through the system.
That fact made this place that much mysterious.
Though a quick glance at the capsule's terminal told me what I wanted to know. There was a new message on the holographic display.
[Subject enlightenment value risen from 43% to 76%. Subject resuscitated and released.]
(TO think it made such a big difference.)
This might have been closer related to the fact that her enlightenment value was being restored, rather than boosted, though.
Not like I had any way to know or understand.
"Mmm..."
"Oh? Are you awake?"
Hearing a faint moan, I looked down at the newly reborn woman's face.
Her eyes slowly fluttered open, unfocused. But her clear ruby eyes started to glitter as she grew aware of her surroundings.
"I...I..."
"It's okay. Take it slowly."
Nodding lightly, she turned her head, looking around slowly. But as if she had quickly grown bored of it, her eyes turned back onto me.
"Who...are you? What happened?"
"Ah, me? Well, that's not so important right now. More importantly, do you remember what happened to you?"
"I..."
She looked down for a few moments, but soon she started to tremble.
"I...I...it was so empty...and lonely...I...I..."
Tears tarted to cascade down her cheeks as she hugged herself, her body shaking as if she was suffering from hypothermia.
"Shhh. Shhh. It's okay. It's okay. It's my fault. Don't think about the scary things. I'm here for you."
I wrapped my arms around her and drew her body into my own, sharing my warmth the best I could.
It took a few minutes, but her breathing slowed and her trembling eventually stopped.
"I..."
"Sorry. I shouldn't have done that. It was wrong of me to have made you remember something so scary so soon."
"It's...fine."
She looked up at me, and while her expression was pretty weak, I thought I could see a faint smile there. But right after, she looked down at her hands.
"Why...does my body...feel different?"
"Ah, well, that's my fault. Sorry."
I took out a little mirror from my pocket dimension and showed the newly reborn vampire her face.
"I used my own mana to make your new body, so it hardly looks like your old one."
Though I could only guess what her old body looked like, most likely it strongly resembled Claret. For that matter, I could see bits and pieces of Claret in this girl's new body. But my own features dominated her more strongly, and you had to look closely to see the parts that resembled Claret.
"Your mana...to make my body?"
"Yea, I guess in a weird way, that'll make you my daughter? Heh."
But against my expectation, there was a warm and gentle smile that rose up when I made my joke.
"Then...can I call you mother?"
She looked up at me, pleading me with eyes that resembled my own.
"Huh?!"
My voice cracked a bit.
"It...was my dream. For the longest time, I wanted a family. I wanted to know what it was like to have parents. Can't I?"
"Well, that's..."
"..."
She looked down, her hands gripping each other tightly in her lap.
"W, well, why do you want a parent so much? You can have kids of your own instead if you just wanted a family."
But she shook her head.
"I tried. I tried to copy what the mortals did, but nothing worked. Nobody's ever even heard of a vampire baby before."
"Huh? But...there's plenty of babies born from vampires. I'm a mother of twins myself!"
I had no idea what this girl was talking about. Being a mother, putting aside how good of one I was. And then there was all those women that had dhampire babies as well. Not only did we have pure-blooded vampire babies in the Commonwealth, but half-blooded ones as well.
Though I did have to admit that it was weird that I had emerged fully as an adult in the middle of nowhere while the others were born from wombs like normal.
"What?! Then...then what I did, really worked?"
"What...worked?"
I tilted my head to the side.
"I changed it. Changed us. So we could have babies."
"You...?!"
(So that's what I had seen in the logs!)
If that was true, she was the progenitor of a brand new form of vampires, ones that could have children like the other races!
And that explained why the dhampires were such a rarity that nobody had heard of them before a few years ago, on top of how their details were buggy.
"Well, we now know that what you did before worked. So if you want a family, you can just make one yourself. I can help you find a guy, or if you don't want that, we can find an alternative instead."
But despite my words, she shook her head.
"I did that, because I had no choice. No matter how much I wanted parents, you couldn't do that after you were born. But now, I was born anew from you! Can't I call you mother? I'll be good!"
"Well..."
It was tough fighting against those puppy dog eyes. I did manage to confirm that her memories seemed to be intact, so while biologically it wasn't wrong to call her my daughter, mentally there was still quite the resistance.
(To think I'd be faced with the cliche reincarnation quandary from the parents' perspective.)
Of course, since I didn't carry her in my own womb, there wasn't any sort of history between us either, so when confronted with such a question, all I could do was turn my head away in the end.
"I...see. I suppose it was too much to ask. I...I'm sorry for asking."
While she gripped her hands tightly again, the newly reborn girl eventually got to her own feet and stepped away. She slowly turned and her soft footsteps moved towards the door.
The guilt made it impossible for me to even look at her.
"I seems...I really am all al...al...lone...aaaaaAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"
Suddenly, she started screaming. When I looked over, she had crouched down, holding her head with both hands as her entire body shook, tears pooling at her feet. Soon, the shaking became so great that she fell to her side, unable to maintain her balance.
Her screams grew even louder, breaking only to take in broken breaths.
Her body was spasming uncontrollably, as her shaking overtook any form of motor control.
I couldn't take the sight as my brain started to register what was happening.
Immediately, I rushed over and pulled her into my chest, doing my best to share my warmth with her.
"It's okay. It's okay. Shhh. It's okay. You're not alone. I'm here. I'll be here for you, so you aren't alone anymore."
Slowly, ever so slowly, her shaking subsided and her screams were reduced to weeping sobs.
"It's okay. I'll be here for you. You can call me mother all you like."
After seeing what I had seen, there was no way I could refuse her request. If I was to throw her out to fend for herself, the guilt would kill me far before she could get better.
Ninetailed_Furball
Hi everybody! It's your usual furball! (·ω·)∩
How did everyone enjoy this chapter? A few more lorebombs ahoy! ＼(^o^)／
So, this one was another big thing I've been holding close to my chest for two years. It feels great to finally get it out. Saint Scarlet, and the current Scarlet really are two different people! (*^▽^*)
Well, also there's a lot of things connected to her that's finally been revealed.
What did everyone think? I know some people managed to predict a lot of it, but how does everyone feel about the way things turned out?
Also, Alicia and Fate now have a new rival! In the absolutely most unusual way! (°◇°)
Well, anyways, aside from that.
So, in celebration of the conclusion of the Second Tempest Contest, I released a last minute entry! A quick little series that barely fits within the contest's requirements!
Star-crossed Pilots
The idea was something I've been juggling around for a year or so. There just isn't much sci-fi series here or on NU, so I wanted to contribute to the genre, though doing two series while working a normal job was pretty much impossible for me. But after a few false starts, I did manage to get something I like, and I started to run with that. Though in the end, the latter half of the story ended up being done in the last two weeks!
Well, have a look! It's not a serious entry in the sense that it was to win any prize. I don't need such a thing, and would rather someone else win the prize to motivate them to improve their writing! I think the counts have already been done so it's not even possible in the first place. But have a look and tell me what you think!
And while you're at it, check out the other entries in the contest! I bet you'll find one or two you'll like! (=^·^=)
Well, that aside, half the reason why I released this is as an apology for all the chapters I've missed this year, despite even lowering the release rate. I hope this short series makes up for a bit of that. m(_ _)m
Anyways, I do like the story and characters, and even have the second arc planned out. But I don't have the time to get that done anytime soon. (￣m￣)
If you guys like the series enough, tell me! Hopefully I'll be able to make time to release another arc in the future!
Anyways, hope everyone's doing well!
Sounds like there's a lot of shortages still going on, this time unrelated to the ongoing silicone shortage. Unfortunately, all the domestic terrorism that's going on in China on top of all the power outages they've been suffering causing so many factories to pause production or even shut down isn't making things better. (=_=)
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