Vuthe was angry. Again. And she was tired of being angry. Again. Recent events had her mood on a constant low, much more than it had been even in the last years of the war, and she started to seriously question their decision to return.

Actually, if she was honest with herself, she didn’t question it too seriously. If they hadn’t they would all be dead by now, killed by the hands of her draconic grandfather. Still, a part of her, a part she usually straight up ignored, was contemplating if it wasn’t easier to just conquer a place for them, shut themselves off and just relax for a century or two, just so that she wouldn’t be angry quite so often.

The man’s killer had been a young girl, barely even twenty yet, and obviously in very bad shape. She looked malnourished, although not enough to be life threatening, and from her aura it was clear what kind of life she had led.

Perhaps Altis had chosen her specifically for this, considering that he should know of at least the early times of her life in Satien. Doesn’t matter now, with an effort of will she cleared her mind.

She had delivered the girl to the infirmary in New Thelvadore, given short but very explicit orders to make sure she survived and got a good meal and enough to drink, before she had returned to the site of the complex she had extracted the girl out of.

Strangely, she couldn’t teleport inside unless she used her divine power, which was already alarming. Instead of returning to the exact same spot immediately she decided to do a bit of scouting, and immediately understood why Vixus had such issues with their spare bodies.

For whatever reason the shadows didn’t immediately listen to her. Her. Granddaughter of the Primordial Shadow. Goddess of the Shadow Armory. It was the first time she had ever experienced anything like this.

It wasn’t that she didn’t know of methods to make certain elements resistant against influence, such things were part of normal defences, but in most cases a sufficiently powerful mage could easily override that resistance.

And she was, without boasting, the strongest Shadow Mage she knew outside of her draconic Grandfather.

Yet for some reason she couldn’t, not even with all her strength, make the shadows listen to her commands. Not unless she used her divine authority. It wasn’t too bothersome, despite her long dormancy she had accrued more divine power than most other divine beings, enough to last for years to come.

There were two issues, however.

The first one was relatively simple, and that was the fact that such a thing was even possible in the first place. It wasn’t a problem for her personally, at least not in terms of being able to carry on the investigation, but to know that this subgroup was capable of things like this was a major red flag. Before she saw them as a possible threat, with this new discovery that estimation had jumped straight up to a major threat.

The second reason had to do with how divine power worked. It was fickle, much more fickle than even magic. Normally, if she used her divine power in conjunction with a prayer she could decide how obvious she wanted to be about it. However, using it on its own was much different. She had no idea why, she had never been able to find that out, but that was how it was.

It wasn’t that her magic would suddenly leave beacons for everyone to see, but it would leave remnants that could be uncovered potentially. So doing that could potentially reveal her presence to anyone watching. And by now she no longer considered whomever ran this lab as incompetent enough to do so without worry.

They had shown that they were by far not as helpless as she had first thought.

Before doing anything reckless she started with a cursory overview which she could do from afar. The complex itself looked pretty normal, boring even. Just another complex somewhere in the woods.

The last part was probably what most people would consider suspicious. However, in truth, it isn’t actually that suspicious at all. Humans build their buildings everywhere and there could be any of a myriad reason why it was here. To anyone outsider it was just one more strange thing they would potentially see on a track and immediately forget about.

Not to mention that it was most likely registered as something completely benign.

No, the really suspicious part was the lack of activity. Or rather, the lack of activity paired with surprisingly tight security.

It wasn’t the next Fort Knox by any means, but the presence of guards at all, to this extent, while nothing seemed to be happening could raise eyebrows.

Outside of that, however, there was nothing that was off about the complex at first glance. It seemed to be some kind of office setup with some minor production capabilities at the opposite end of it, nothing noteworthy by any means. Even knowing that it was most likely a ruse, Vuthe couldn’t find anything too damning. And outside of her current task she wouldn’t even have minded the tight security overly much.

Upon closer inspection she saw that the security was decently equipped, at least that was her guess, the gear looked reasonably new and well cared for, although it wasn’t unreasonable. No full automatic rifles on full display, not heavy weaponry, no armoured vehicles or anything like that, just some normal security staff.

The only exception was the rune array, although calling it a rune array would be an insult to all rune arrays. Earth didn’t do runes the same way Satien did, mostly any array would focus on mainly one goal which was achieved by combining a few basic runes ad infinitum to achieve the desired effect. It was a very mechanical and mass-produced mentality, which probably worked if you wanted to protect large numbers of places or objects.

Satien’s style of runesmithing was a lot more organic. In most cases each rune array used each rune only a couple of times, and was much more focused on combining different runes to reach a much more specialised or varied effect, depending on use.

While the rune array around this complex wasn’t impressively complex, it was quite powerful for the standards Vuthe had seen so far. She would guess that it was much more in line with the current military standard.

Cursory inspection complete she decided to risk it and infiltrate it. At this point she was the only capable of the feat in any case, so there was no point in delaying. Especially if what the dead man had said about them panicking and possibly accelerating their schedule.

Once she invoked her divine authority, vanishing into the shadows was no longer an issue. She tried, as best as she could, to remove the trail, using as little as possible. But, with divine power, it was impossible to remove every trace. Hopefully by the time they noticed it was no longer an issue. Although, knowing her luck, that thought was a bit optimistic.

The inside of the complex was… a lot more plain than she had expected. Truth be told she wasn’t sure what she even expected, but it certainly wasn’t this. But maybe that was just bias from her time in Satien, most “Research” facilities over there had their own very unique flair, so seeing the rather plain approach of earth surprised her a bit.

It was, however, very well planned, in her opinion. From the floorplan she had seen, and this was one of the few circumstances in which she was glad for german bureaucracy and emergency laws requiring a full building plan at each major staircase, it was strictly divided into specific areas.

Each floor and room was more or less the same, the only difference being whatever equipment they held, typical modern office construction.

It took her quite some time, and even more considering her attempt at removing her traces, to look through each room inside the building. Nothing seemed out of place, apart from one small detail: The entire place was filled with people, much more than this place was likely designed to hold.

Getting around was a bit annoying, there were lots of light leaving only small places of shade or darkness, but outside of one hallway that was a complete nightmare, she managed.

It helped that earth had no concept of aura, so none of these people had any kind of defence against one of her strongest tools, and she was more than capable enough that she could direct their attention away from any suspicious movement she made with just a very small application of her aura, making sure to keep it as plain as possible. It was a bit challenging, considering that her constant use of divine power naturally dragged the divine feeling in it to the forefront, but she had done this enough to know how to handle it properly.

Eventually she reached the last section she had yet to search, the one that occupied the Head Researchers Lab, or at least that was the idea she got from the dead man's words and the general style and feel of the area.

A moment later that thought was confirmed by the nameplate on the door.

Inside was only one man, pretty nondescript, apart from one singular little detail:

She could not feel him with any sense outside of sight.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

When she realised that, all the alarm bells in her mind went off. To her knowledge that could only mean two things: Either he had a higher proficiency and strength in his aura than herself or he was not a living being.

Considering her own proficiency with aura and the general lack of awareness he showed towards her presence the first one seemed unlikely. The problem was that she had no idea what to do about the second option. Every living being had a soul, and therefore an aura. He didn’t look like an undead of any kind she could see, nor did he have any magical items on him, or any magical effects she could see that would change his appearance in any way. In fact there was no magic coming from him.

So, was he a robot then? Highly unlikely, he looked much too lifelike for anything earth could produce. Amnellium maybe? They had shown to be able to traverse the realms as evidenced by Archangel. But what would he do here, then?

Leaving that mystery alone for a moment she carried on her search, but found nothing of worth. Just to make sure she took the time to wander the complex once more, the guild had hammered thoroughness into her for this kind of work.

On the second attempt she did find something. Or rather she noticed that a part of the building didn’t exist to her senses. Honestly she only noticed because she was studying the floor plans once more and found a door that shouldn’t exist. That in itself was not suspicious, they could have just added another door after the previous construction, but when she inspected the door she noticed that it didn’t exist to any of her senses but sight, similar to the man in the Lab.

The strangest thing was that, while everything behind that door was non-existant to her senses, the moment she crept through the shadows through the door slot, the shadows behind the door became usable to her once more.

The door led to a stairway that led downwards and was only dimly lit. It was dark enough for her purposes, and she made her way down slowly.

The hallway itself was the same as above, what was atypical was the room it led to. And the moment she saw the sign on the door her attention perked up once more.

The sign was simple, it read “Archive”, and it was old, easily a few decades if not a century. It even had an old time lock with a keyhole one could look through.

Inside she found three humans, all looking like they were as old as her, shrivelled bodies shaking as they worked. It was impossible to tell if they were male or female, all wore the same loose bordeaux robes, and all were working on a stack of books in front of them.

The rest of the quite sizable room was filled with even more books. Whatever effect had suppressed her senses didn’t work here and she could feel the sheer insane amount of magical diagrams in those books.

A few of them were quite harmless, most of them dangerous, and a quite sizable portion went into topics that were best hidden away from any mortals.

And the three humans all worked on books with those contents.

A calm purpose settled over Vuthe. Up until now the possibilities of humans having forbidden texts was a theoretical one, she had just proven it. And the worst thing was, a few of them were books she knew.

Realm travel wasn’t entirely unknown, however it was a rare enough thing, especially in low magic worlds like earth, that it was for all practical purposes a non-issue.

But, there was a precedent, even ignoring her own situation. Ralos de Vector. He must have brought them here. But why? And why were they here, then? How was the Church involved?

Realistically he couldn’t have known that the humans here would even help. Nor did she find a book that was related to realm travel or portals, at least with a quick skim using her magical senses. That would arguably be the most important topic if he wanted them to bring an army to deal with Thelvadore. And on top of all that, the government had him. How could the Church have gotten their hands on the books? Was the government hiding something?

Perhaps, but if they did they also hid it from the Magisters. In their meeting she couldn’t detect any of that in their aura. Sure, she hadn’t gone deep diving, but still, considering that entire exchange, Relos as well as any possible knowledge he held or brought, was connected to her, the chances of them thinking about it while they met was quite high if they did know.

Or maybe she was too sure of her own abilities? They had just handily demonstrated that they were able to suppress her abilities to read auras, as well as her magical senses. Could they have something to spoof auras maybe?

The more she went down this train of thought the more unlikely it felt to her. So, what options were there?

Then she stopped herself. In the meeting she had left for this complex the Representatives of the Paranormal Council were critiquing the tight ties of the Church and the Government.

The Church had already demonstrated their abilities with this complex. In addition it was a very old organisation, so getting their roots into something as young as Germany would be easy enough, if they planned ahead. While most humans would not have the foresight to plan ahead so far, there were longer lived races that very well could have done just that. Or maybe she just over-thought it all and the answer was a more simple one, like sudden chance or a quick grab.

It was definitely something to look into once she had dealt with the Church.

And deal with it she would. That was her task as a Goddess. These people had forbidden knowledge, and not just a little bit. They had a section in an archive dedicated to it.

But before she could do that she needed to find all the places that housed such knowledge. There was no way in the Altis’ name that this was the only one. The chances for that would be so low as to be laughable.

Considering how old the Church was, as an organisation, and the likelihood that they had staches like these spread across the world, it would take a long time. She could, maybe, use her divine authority to destroy a portion of them. The issue was, depending on how widespread they were, that not even her saved up divine power would be enough. She was powerful, yes, but she wasn’t all powerful. And very rarely did a divine being get to the point where they could affect an entire planet like that.

The Celestials could, she was sure of that, but she wasn’t one of them and she sure as hell would not invite any of them here. The only one she would consider would be Altis, and considering how she even learned of these, she was sure he would not bother with it personally. It was much more likely that he would simply call for someone else, maybe even Ga’zeith or Sha’gath de Thal, and she wanted neither the God of Shadows nor the Goddess of Light to be the one to act here. Neither of them knew the words subtlety or restraint.

For the moment she decided to investigate further. This wasn’t the only site Vixus had lost bodies at, so realistically there should be a few more around Essen at least. Even if not all of them had any forbidden text, that didn’t mean she could ignore it.

Making her way out of the complex she started to plan how to deal with all this. Suddenly their issues with some surveillance network outage seemed laughable, yet she wasn’t so naive as to outright ignore it.

This would take some time to deal with. With a sigh she returned to New Thelvadore. She wanted to check on the girl before she returned to the meeting. They would have their work cut out for them.

Arriving in the growing town she immediately felt that something was off. There wasn’t an emergency per say, but something had happened.

Locating a nearby soldier she approached him quickly. “What is going on?”

The man, a rather young looking Goatkin that seemed quite nervous to be this close to her, saluted sharply, although he was shaking a bit.

“M-Ma’am, uhm, your Majesty, ma’am! We, uh, just had a bit of a… situation? Some scouts found a large group of monsters heading towards the nearest city, ma’am! From what I hear they are dealt with, but the group was much larger than we are used to. Uhm… Some… uh some people are… nervous.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Nervous? Because of a few monsters?”, she asked, a bit confused. Each and every one of her people should be able to deal with any monster Earth could throw at them personally while unarmed.

“Yes, ma’am! From what I heard they were quite… big. And… a lot of them. Like… a lot, a lot…”, the man stammered.

Realising she had to find someone else who knew a bit more she nodded and smiled at him. “Thank you, soldier. Keep up the good work.”

“Yes, ma’am, uh, your Majesty, ma’am!”, he saluted sharply once more before retreating hastily. She found it adorable how nervous he was, but quickly pushed those thoughts from her mind.

She didn’t have to venture far before she found Castaphiel, surrounded by soldiers, his gruff voice very noticeable as he was coordinating them.

Once she walked closer he immediately turned to her, “Vuthe, thank the ten that you are here. We have a bit of an issue. Well, maybe not us, but the humans will have one in any case. Our scouts found a big group of some very nasty monsters heading towards the nearest city. Reports say that there were some on the level of Citan Drakes, maybe even Basilisks. Nothing we can’t deal with, at least with the soldiers, but there are a lot of them out there and the humans will likely be crushed by them.”

She blinked, replayed that bit of information in her head once more, then blinked again. This didn’t make any sense. Even if there could be some stronger monsters in some areas, something on that level should be an outlier, if at all possible.

Before she could formulate a reply a portal opened next to her and Tizanta stepped out, “Ah, Vuth, good. It appears that we are not allowed any free time. The Para Council just got word that there were large monster sightings. Although”, she said, letting her gaze move over the assembled troops, Castaphiel, and Vuthe, “I guess you already noticed something.”

Taking a deep breath, Vuthe closed her eyes. Of course, the forbidden knowledge wasn’t the only thing they would have to tackle.

“Let me guess”, Vuthe said, finally opening her eyes again, “Considering the Surveillance Networks are down, the sightings were indeed sightings and not some notification of a radar or something?”

Tizanta nodded with a wry smile, “Got it in one. There are already some skirmishes in some places. If you ask me, this just is much too convenient to be coincidence.”

Sighing again, much too often as of late she noted to herself, “I agree”, she said, then switched to Amnellal, “And do you want to know something even better? I just found that the Church has Forbidden Text locked away in some basement.”

This time it was Tizanta’s turn to sigh, “I swear, if things continue like this we will never recover.”

A loud explosion rang in the distance, loud enough to be audible even in New Thelvadore. And from the direction the sound came from it was quite close to Essen.

“Any words on what we are and are not supposed to do?”, Vuthe asked. Truth be told she was in the mood to go out there and kill some beasties. If only to get rid of her pent up frustrations. A good fight was exactly what she needed right now.

Tizanta shrugged, “I mean… Honest guess on their chances to keep this one hidden? Highly unlikely. But I don’t think we should be the one to break the news about this whole magic thing. Not that we have any obligation for it either.”

It was true, but a part of Vuthe didn’t like the idea of letting innocents die. Shaking her head she tried to organise her thoughts. “Okay”, she said, switching back to the common Satien tongue, “Let’s fortify our position first. Make sure we are safe. If they come running to us for help I am not going to just outright deny it, but we need to make sure our people are safe before any of that.”

Castaphiel and his soldiers saluted, then immediately went back to planning their strategies, as quick and efficient as always.

With one more sigh Vuthe shook her head and started making her way over to her Palace. She honestly wasn’t worried for her people. They should be more than capable of handling this situation, Altis’ knew they had faced much more dangerous threats. But she was worried for her family. She just hoped that Scythe would be able to keep them safe.