Lucas stepped over the bodies of the guards who Tyr had cut down to get into the room. It was unfortunate they had died, that barrier, which is what Lucas supposed it was, that surrounded Tyr and his minions had rendered the mages useless. This was probably some new development of some kind, otherwise he would have expected Julian to be aware of the danger.

Out of the room, hurrying through the corridors with Lady Versi and Lady Terrasin behind him, it became quite clear that their relatively well-planned and bloodless coup had devolved into a three way battle between Lucas’s allies, the Duke’s men, and a third group that was composed of traitors from the other two.

“This cult is getting on my damned nerves,” Lucas growled. “I would not have thought that people would be so foolish, but i suppose there is precedent in my own world.”

Suicide cults, crazy groups that try and go against government forces thousands of times stronger than them, terrorists who kill themselves for their cause… Humans are very bad at using reason to solve problems, which is especially funny to Lucas considering that is essentially what differentiates the species from animals.

This also explained how Tyr had found them so quickly, they had been compromised from near the beginning.

A group of armored soldiers came rushing around a corner and upon seeing the group, charged at them, only to end up gasping on the floor as Lucas gave them the same treatment as Tyr. Watching them die, Lucas thought that he would need to find a more humane way to kill people. They had tried to take his life, so he didn’t really mind killing them, but he didn’t think he was enough of a sadist to want to torture them to death.

“What kind of magic is that?” Lady Versi watched in horror as the soldiers died slowly, suffocation was not a quick death.

“Magic that is an example of why I am so reluctant to teach Julian about weaponizing biology.” Lucas replied, if he had to kill people horribly he might as well use it as a lesson to explain why it shouldn’t spread. Humans were the kind of creature that had trouble assessing danger unless they actually saw what it could unleash, and they were also the kind of creature that would indiscriminately use weapons until they realised that danger.

“Perhaps the easiest way to explain would be to say that I made the air they breathe poisonous,” Lucas continued, making certain to crush the soldiers windpipes just in case. “However that would be entirely inaccurate on a technical level, despite being useful for helping you understand a rough idea of what I did.”

That said, when this was over, Lucas would have to study the implications that this had for him overall. His alterations to the various microbes, spores, and pollen that were in the air was quite crude. After all, he only needed to make them foreign enough that the body attacked itself, however, the fact that he could make alterations to the cell membrane of microbes meant that if he had enough practice he might be able to do far more intensive work in the future.

For now though, they hurried on their way to the throne room. Lucas rather hoped the Duke was there and had not escaped, but more importantly, since Duke Are was Julian and the other’s target it was a place where Lucas knew he would meet up with them eventually.

Well, presuming they weren’t dead.

Lucas’s newfound magic was incredibly lethal, more so than he expected it to be if he was honest. As another group of soldiers and cultists, who had been fighting each other when Lucas had used his magic on the room’s air, died, Lucas idly wondered if the pollutants in modern air had granted people some tolerance to foreign material.

There was one problem though…

“I… Need to stop for a second,” Lucas was leaning against a wall and panting. He had felt relatively fine up until now, but he was starting to crash. Using magic was a tiring experience, and Lucas had no experience and barely any training, so he was quickly running out of stamina.

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“Don’t over do it,” Terrasin put a hand to his forehead in a concerned manner, apparently excessive magic use can raise body temperature, even to the point of killing the user. “I don’t want you to do their job for them.”

This out of the way corridor seemed relatively safe, for the moment anyway. So Lucas sat down on the floor to catch his breath, and decided to ask a question that had been bothering him.

“The cult claims that the demons were the lands original owners,” Lucas had heard it from several of them now, usually choked off by his magic, but he heard enough fragments to get the gist and he had heard it before during the slave uprising. “Are they right?”

“Of course not,” Terrasin answered immediately. “This land has belonged to humans since time immemorial. Those claims are beyond ludicrous.”

“I am less sure of that,” Lucas tried to recall what he knew about this world’s geography. “You, humans, should not exist here, or at the very least this specific continent was not your origin.”

“What do you mean?” Lady Versi frowned at Lucas, “This is our home.”

“I am not arguing whether its your home or not,” Lucas didn’t really care actually. That issue would have occurred at least three thousand years ago, probably much more than that. In short, it was not Lucas’s problem, or wouldn’t be if it wasn’t for the damned cult. “Your facial features look European, and while you wouldn’t know what that means, it does have some interesting implications about your genetic history.”

As one species becomes separated and adapts to different environments, it can evolve through natural selection into two different species. However, because of the nature of evolution and the weakness of the scientific definition of species, it is not always impossible for these species to breed with each other. Homo Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens were clearly different species, but research suggests that children were still viable between the two.

The end result is that certain demographics have features passed down in their genetic code from the Neanderthals, and that this demographic is primarily, at least to Lucas’s knowledge, focused in Europeans. In short, this world needed to have both Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthal evolve and interbreed to produce the woman in front of him.

Lucas stood up and brushed himself off, “Probability and chance are tricky things, and I don’t really have any data to back this up, but I think it is far more likely that you are descended from people in my own world than that humans arose here independently. That is, however, neither here nor there. Whatever happened in the distant past, the present is what it is and those cultists are delusional.”

He really wasn’t certain though. After all, maybe these people were not Homo Sapiens but rather another hominid species that evolved separately and the similarities between them and him were due to convergent evolution.

“Regardless,” Lucas still felt a little tired, but he was ready to continue. “We should keep moving before the situation devolves any more.”

As they were moving, Terrasin spoke with a serious face and tone. “Lucas, please never tell anyone else what you just said.”

“I suppose it would be rather destabilising, wouldn’t it?”

“Coming from the Hero… Those words could doom us all…” Terrasin seemed quite shaken by what Lucas had said, he was not particularly surprised. Non-scientists were generally not very good in dealing with science, no matter how much it was boiled down for them. To make matters worse, when something becomes political and religious the actual science is often ignored or twisted to try and support one side or the other.

Lucas’s thoughts on the existence of humans in this world was not even to the level of science, it was merely a conjecture. But it was not likely that people could simply go about their daily lives if that kind of theory was floating around.

“Don’t worry, it was just idle thought.” Lucas replied, “as I said, it is the present that counts.”

Terrasin frowned at this, apparently Lucas had not said the right thing to calm her down. He was reconsidering his words when she suddenly yelled at him to duck and he just barely missed being beheaded by a halberd.

“Oh fuck me!” Lucas swore, serves him right being distracted in the middle of a coup! The soldier was not unskilled either, using the momentum of the swing to bring the pole end of the weapon into Lucas’s side and slam him against the wall.

Lucas had the wind knocked out of him and had lost control of his magic, struggling just to stand up again as the soldier prepared to attack him again.

However, before the man could attack a sword point emerged from his chest and he fell over dead, revealing Lucas’s savior… Lady Versi.