“It’s all over.” Alicia walks straight towards the figure lying on the ground, crouching miserably.

The Doctor’s lab coat could barely hide the severe burn marks on his body he had sustained through Alicia’s final attack.

His neck felt parched and his body became unable to move. But without any care for himself, he kept on looking around.

“Where is it…. My ultimate creation. Eabhloid. Answer me.” The Doctor shouts in anger.

“You won’t find it, it's gone. I obliterated its existence.” Alicia revealed the facts she found to be obvious.

“There’s no way… Eabhloid. He is unbeatable. Even death cannot undo him.” The truth was slowly seeping in on the Doctor’s face as he too could not confirm Eabhloid’s presence in the vicinity.

“Well for now it would seem that I have trounced your creation in a fight to the death. Maybe you messed up with your calculation aren’t all evil geniuses supposed to say that after their perpetual defeat.” It was Alicia's attempt to sound funny.

“My creation… No. I don’t believe it.” The Doctor whispers to himself.

“Your dream might have been the optimal way of running things. Burt maybe what you had made was never supposed to be born.” Alicia said wondering how she got this idea at the same time.

“It’s not right. Its birth was the most marvelous thing this world could have. There’s no possible way.”

“It’s actually very simple, but if you still did not get it I will spell it out for you. When I transfused my magic and took control of the magic leaking from the Codra vein and unleashing it all on Eabhloid...”

“But shouldn’t Eabhloid skill should have undone that magic and erased that possibility.” The Doctor in his weakened state was still curious and interrupted Alicia.

“That’s right and it did. The only problem was that while it undid that possibility every time the Codra vein’s unlimited magic overwhelmed it. Every time its body rewound back to the previous state, the time gap between the skill to activate and take effect kept on decreasing to the point it become infinitely small causing it to loop its own body and start to disintegrate because it no longer will be able to maintain its form in such an unpredictable state. Its own power to alter reality became its downfall.”

“And you did that all on your own making one of the forces of nature your toy.” The Doctor had an unbelievable look on his face.

“Amazing right. I am a magical genius; you do get it. Well, defeating that creature did empty the whole World vein below this land. And I also had Regis’s help to take down the spatial interference so I cannot take all the credit.” Alicia counted all the facts.

“I wanted to create the most perfect organisms that don’t need to eat, sleep or reproduce to live. No reason to fight for survival.” The Doctor sounded desperate.

“If there is no fight for survival then they are not really alive.” Alicia’s life in the labyrinth when she was born and the experiences she had gained from there were deeply engraved in her heart.

“⸺You have proven yourself right.” The Doctor was practical despite his defeat.

“So why is it so hard for you to believe in humanity’s potential and outgrow themselves? Have you never given a thought to it, that a creation of human can never surpass the human race itself?”

“That girl was also once a human.” The Doctor glanced at that peaceful silhouette of his other creation resting in a pod. “It’s the question of possibility. For her, it’s not possible to be saved or not saved. That’s because she had been dead all along.”

The Doctor had always felt sympathetic and had a strange connection to the girl despite the fact that he forgot who she was.

“And I will keep on repeating that I can because it’s a promise and her wish too because she asked me.” Alicia tries to sound cheerful.

“…that would make it a rather difficult wish to fulfill.” The Doctor for the first time felt relieved. Like a heavy burden had been removed from his shoulder.

“No worries. Remember I told you it’s because I am a magical genius.”

Alicia smiles and the Doctor sees a confident girl but a shadow behind her reminds him of his impending judgment.

“Do you really think the present lifeforms have so much value in them to be preserved when there are so many evils that exist in this world?”

“Honestly I don’t care. That is not something for me to decide alone. The world doesn’t exist just for your or mine sake now does it? Those kinds of work are more suited for a hero and I have no interest in becoming one.” Alicia presents her thoughts.

“So are you implying that we exist for this world’s sake!?”

“That is something for you to decide.” Alicia was certain in her speech and it ended up moving the Doctor.

“My choice… I have already made that. But I wonder will you have the freedom to choose your own path.” The Doctor glances at Alicia. Till now he only saw her as a threat but up close she was just a girl and looked somewhat normal and out of place wearing that mask at the same time.

Her red eyes under that mask had been overflowing with hatred and she did not realize that herself. And he also might have been the only one who could see the strings of undeniable destiny tucked into her body.

The Doctor decides not to answer but his face becomes unemotional and his lips straightened. He was finally ready and so did the mood of the place changed back from casual talk back to serious.

“Is that what you have decided? So this will be the last time we see each other.” Alicia spoke with an empty expression.

“I see that you have no pity even while passing judgment on me.”

“Why so? I think you did your best and there’s no remorse or regret left in you.” Alicia’s words seemed only consolatory in nature to the Doctor.

“My best… but it was still not enough. I doubt it will ever be….”

Before the Doctor could complete his words, he saw Alicia murmuring something, and then his eyes blinked with a dawning realization and a …reason.

But also, in front Alicia’s right hand shaped into a gun, her index finger pointing at the Doctor’s head.

While Alicia spoke quietly as if trying to convince herself, her right hand shone. In that instant, there was a flash of red light penetrating through the Doctor’s skull and everything turned silent as he slumped to the ground.

That’s the kind of judgment Alicia made remembering her promise of destroying the Doctor and that she had never forgiven him for what he did.

But could she have been more merciful?

Or was the Doctor right in asking that would she ever have the freedom to choose that path?

***

DOCTOR ORION

⸺Why would I try to destroy humanity?

⸺Why I held so much hatred for it?

⸺Why do I reject it?

And most of all…

⸺Why did I do all of this?

At first, I had started all of this with the final goal to put it all to an end.

When I was a young boy, I had a great interest in studying the biology of all living beings ad especially the history of humanity.

That’s when I also realized the cruelty of living in an unequal society.

Malice. Avarice. Slaughter. Depravity. Loss. Frustration. Corruption. Injustice and… War.

As long as the current humanity behaves like this the world will be defiled by human greed.

I gave it serious thought and first decided to be optimistic about it. The good way, that’s what people would have called it. Changing the structure of society from within and peacefully.

Everywhere I studied and looked I saw images depicting war and I was always overcome with severe panic attacks. Then I decided to overcome my fears and in order to do that I got involved in war in order to end them.

In my journey, I came across several battlefields and saw the horrific event perpetuated by humanity with my own eyes.

And while saving them in battles with my medical knowledge, people started calling me a savior. Soon I came to be known as the greatest healer of the Empire.

I continued my research to discover ways to end conflicts and wars primarily caused due to lack of resources by one group trying to snatch from others who had it in abundance.

No food, incurable epidemics, bad crops. But no matter what problems I overcame, war never stopped raging in the Empire.

I always wondered if this is the way how human beings were made. Kindness was nowhere to be found and people easily get bored and their wild nature erupts.

Healing all those soldiers wounded in the war meant that I was enabling them to kill more people on the battlefield. That’s how I saw it, but I continued serving on the front lines trying to reach out to people with similar views, and even if they were few I remained optimistic.

I was always in search of the power that will carry through this world forward... and everyone’s dreams and hopes. But war, disasters, and monsters everywhere I went I found more people dead from inside than alive.

It was at the same time that I fell in love with one of my female colleagues, the love of my life and after getting married I withdrew from the war. Indulging myself completely in research to find an all-cure and to reach out to as many people as possible together with my wife and in this endeavor, several people joined me.

As we further progressed another happy news came in life that my wife was going to have a child. But things do not always proceed how I always wanted them to.

The Empire stopped funding our research as they found it heavily indulgent with a goal that the army had no interest in addressing. All my colleagues then shifted to researching on bioweapons that could help the growing army. That obviously wouldn’t have been enough to stop me.

But the day I broke down was when my wife gave birth to a child. It was supposed to be a healthy child with the care and love, but at the time of birth, she suffered from a very rare illness.

Not something of a physical ailment but a spiritual one. Despite having a healthy body our daughter’s soul realm was unstable and her vast life energy finally broke her heart when her small body could handle it no longer.

Unable to give up at this final loss I reached a conclusion.

Finally, a grand experiment came to my mind. An experiment to conquer death… to take real-life subjects and evolve their soul realm to the highest level. To a point that this new life form could reject death.

Fantasies that should have defied comprehension would finally exist in reality. And the first subject was my dead daughter whose body I had preserved in my laboratory.

I was desperate… But maybe it was my passion that had brought me closer to despair when I realized the betrayal of mankind.

‘After saving so many lives it’s not fair that god had taken away my own light.’

In the end, I finally found the answer, what this world required wasn’t medicine or gods… but true salvation from their fear.

I kept researching for all these years mindlessly to see my daughter awake. A happy family. Such a simple dream, and yet it had to be so complex.

As if my soul then ruled by madness then whispered to me as the neurons in my head feel agitated and after conducting the first operation I realized that the chances of succeeding were zero.

I needed more experiment subjects but before I could make up my mind my wife discovered what I have done and she asked me to surrender to the Empire and end this mindless pursuit.

My great plan of salvation of all humanity and conquering death was meaningless to her.

My own previous colleagues turned against me by filing a report against me for performing dangerous and heretical experiments.

My wife who could not handle the loss of her baby also died from weakness not long while I was on the run.

All of them are so irrational and ignorant to be unable to see that there wouldn’t be a future if humanity stayed on the same path.

But after countless times running for ten years I covertly continued my research and then one day this boy appeared out of nowhere who understood my work and shared with me the secrets of the cosmos which no one had been aware of.

Whether he was a messenger of a god or one in disguise himself in person. He had given me the rest of the knowledge and resources to advance my research by leaps and bounds.

Every lifespan draws to an end eventually…. I always had the determination to help people but the more involved I became hiding the fact that humans were fragile and die so easily held me back. Wars will never come to end with their growing desires.

But now that I had given up my conscience and all consequences of life it became much easier. It did not soothe the pain entirely.

As a researcher, I too once felt the emotions that everyone else felt in youth aiming for the impossible.

That which I wished and sought… from the bottom of my heart. Was it always that same dream?

Why haven’t I gone insane by now?

Trampling over so many futures.

I wondered why haven’t I died. With the only feeling that this time fate would be in my favor, I continued moving from one test subject to another learning as much as I could.

But when it really turned into an obsession, I realized I was weak too.

Is that the very reason… that…

I committed a grievous crime myself. And it’s a sin that can never be forgiven even by the most magnanimous.

And so unable to go insane and unable to die. I didn’t have any else choice I could think of and to pay for that sin. To make something meaningful. I committed more sins along the way.

Even though I might have once wished for a great punishment but I could think of no greater punishment than to continue with my life and work. To continue what I have been doing.

No matter how disgusting I become. How evil I turn or become emotionless…I will keep doing this till I reach the final end… and the birth of a new beginning.

That’s right I committed a crime… and a too stupid one at that.

And now I have paid the price with my own life killed by a mysteriously powerful girl whom I could never understand. Proving all my life’s hard work wrong.

But why did she wield such strength and immense authority…

A burning heat ray was put through my brain to kill me instantly and without any pain.

It would take around four seconds for my brain to cease function after being shot in the head penetrating my cranium but those meager seconds were enough time for me to figure it out.

'I see now that she is different she is the one favored by the Divine System.'

Turning into a white light figure after taking that mask off she was on her way to save a life.

⸺Ahhh! I finally remember, all I wanted was for her to open her eyes for once, but later I stopped caring. It was me whose eyes were closed.

But I won’t regret. Nor will I grieve. Because I still think my actions were necessary.

I will now fall along with my ideal.

But she can go on the path now that she feels right.

Longing… impurity… joy… pain… I have cast all of them away. Pick them up and carry them with you. All that you will gather from here on will become who you are.

Even if I walked on the path of destruction, creating an abomination but there was something that was saved. My mistake had a meaning after all.

If only I had a heart that I could give her…

***

A simple reminder you can now completely read the side novel Girl from Nowhere, first arc is completed now and you can binge read it as always. I am sure you will find it a great story and adventure of Caige rising above all her weaknesses and challenging the people around her.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Link to novel - Girl From Nowhere - Click here