"Hi" Regular Speech
'Hi' Thought
"(Hi)" Speaking through a mechanically synthesised voice
"[Hi]" Communication through technology
[Hi] Aurora talking
*"Hi"* Speech imbued with power
*Hi* Emphasis or Sound Effect
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The Goddess of Wisdom didn't know how she should feel about this town. Even though she has finally reached a town of considerable size.
Well in this nation's standards. Almost...around 50 thousand people? Even then, it's still just her wild guess. She can barely read anything on these small nations which appear and disappear in a hundred years or so. Depending on the whims of bigger nations.
Border changes and such means nothing to a God. However, this is not about the nation but this town. From her casual observation, she understood that this town was built here because of a Nuclear Power plant not far from here.
In other words, it was built here to support the workers which were brought from Russia. Because, simply put, the people in this place speak Russian even though it's not the main language and the secondary doesn't even exist…
'Quite the weird place this is…' She thought as she observed people speaking not far from her. The Goddess made herself invisible as her appearance would cause quite a bit of stir in such a small community…
Now that she is here, she needs to find a way to communicate with this guy. She could just use Serafall Leviathan which, according to some sources from the Underworld, has some connection to him.
But, that is quite boring for her because she has not done anything similar to this for centuries. And she especially wanted to use this opportunity to learn more about him herself, instead of just using other people's sources.
Eventually, after thinking for a bit, she decided to look for the highest concentration of magic in this small country. Even that, however, is quite difficult, because the magic saturation was already extremely high in this place.
If this is to continue for several hundred years, then, there is a possibility of people being born with unique magics or even the birth of a deity…
'I should ask him how he does this. Did he install some sort of magic generator all over the nation? What for? Is the barrier related in some way?' With a frown, she looked around. She has so many questions she wants to get answers to!
Eventually, her eyes ended up on a large advertisement. Her beautiful blue eyes quickly widened because she saw the poster morph…
Into letters!
'What on…'
[Welcome Goddess, to my little backyard!]
[I hope you like the stay here]
[I know you are looking for me. So, here's a hint. Find a town that was named after a woman who befriended a wolf]
After she read that, the letter disappeared and she saw the whole thing return to being a normal advertisement, which shows discounts in the local supermarket.
"..."
"..."
"..."
A few moments later, she started laughing. It lasted for a few minutes.
Before calming down. She cleaned off some tears from her eyes.
"This is new! This is so new! When was the last time I played according to a human's rules!? Very well! Let's play this game!" She chuckled to herself. There was a bright smile on her face.
She can already guess the rules for this. Because, for obvious reasons, the humans around her were suddenly all gone…
This shows the insane control he has over this population. This means she has to use her wits to read up on some of the history of this nation. Myths and such. She knows that Baltic tribes were quite isolationist and they developed separately, not related to the slavs who are surrounding the majority of East Europe.
"Well let's start with a map…"
~~~~~~Marcus~~~~~~
Well, let's see how good Athena is with this. My hometown changed its own town name quite a bit ago and it's not that well-known. Mainly because of the difficult pronunciation… from 'Wolfgirl town' to 'Highgirl town'... Very original… honestly… My naming sense is much better… probably…
Well, the 'high' part is from 'highlands'… it's probably a better naming sense than that small village calling itself 'Switzerland' for no apparent reason…
This should give me a day or maybe two… well… this will give me some understanding of how good the Goddess of Wisdom is with obscure cultures in Europe.
As funny as it is, there are several Wolf myths in my birth country. So it will be interesting to see how quickly she will cross-reference this…and find the town I am living in.
"So. You only now decided to tell me that THE ATHENA is in the country!?" Serafall snapped me out of my thoughts as she looked at me with her big blue eyes.
"What of it? ARTEMIS is in this TOWN right now and she is cleaning the 'dust' off the armours in the living room…" I said with an eye roll.
"Yes. The difference is that Artemis is an autonomous element from the Greek Pantheon while Athena is permanently sitting in the council. One is only attending the meetings from time to time, the other one is always there. This means that she is here on a mission…" She explained the Olympian politics for a bit before explaining what the Warfare Goddess is doing here.
"I already knew that this would happen when I pulled Artemis into my net and took her for myself. Your concern and you pointing it out is quite pointless…" I said with a sigh before looking at my house in front of me.
For a second, I looked around. One of the pleasures of living in such a barely populated place is that there is barely any traffic. The downside is that the road is quite shitty… According to grampa, when he was still alive, the idiots in the government decided to lay it down in the middle of freezing winter when it was around -27 Celsius.
Their excuse is that it was paid for so they have to do it…
Honestly, I could just run for the Mayor role just to fix the roads so that I could drive my custom cars without any discomfort…
"Right… silly me… and she is in the town? I thought she was at the base?" She asked curiously, now thinking about the Maid Goddess that was in town.
"Right… She is in The Base. It seems I am classifying that place as if it is part of my town."
Serafall snorted for a second.
"Isn't it built around 80 kilometres away from here? That's like the distance to the capital… I am pretty sure not even New York has that kind of range…" She said with an amused tone.
"I guess so. I mean, I enter my garage all the time so it just doesn't feel like I have left the town." I said with a shrug.
"I am pretty sure you are the only person in the world who has a railway network in their basement." She said with an eye roll.
"So, technically that means that the Base is still in the town? Same with the processing facility and the rest?" I asked her, this was quite curious, is it still part of my town or not?
"...No… I don't think so, and I am responsible for diplomacy, not the technicalities…" She said with another eye roll.
"Well, whatever… now stand back for a bit…" I motioned for her to stand back as I pulled out one of the new gadgets I had prepared.
Since my request was quite abrupt, she was confused but still followed my request.
I walked over and put a squire metallic item on the fence, which separates the neighbours from my home, then I walked over to the other side where another fence was separating the road from my home. In other words, I just put something on both sides of the driveway end.
To take extra precautions, I put another one of these so that no one could see from the road's side.
"So...um...what are those and why are you making me stand on the side like this?" She somewhat awkwardly asked me.
I smirked for a bit before walking to her side. Then I used my psionic interface which activated the items. For a second, white walls appeared before it just disappeared.
"What… are those...are they something like holographic walls?"
"Indeed. A picture is taken from the inside before it's shown on the outside. Meaning that no one will know what I am going to do inside of this… though the batteries only last 2 hours." I said with a sigh thinking about the batteries.
"Hmm? Not perpetual energy? How come?" She was somewhat shocked that it was not eternal…
"Because these are gadgets for the Hunt girls," I said with a shrug.
"Ohhh...OHH… I am kind of jealous that they are going to be like spies and stuff! With gadgets which you are going to create!" For a second she went into an overexcited nerd mode. Like some gamer who finally saw her game coming out which she has been waiting for, for years.
"Indeed. I could make you join some of their missions. Prepare some skin-tight suits and gadgets." I said with a sagely nod.
She just giggled, before testing the holographic wall. She lifted her hand and it just disappeared… It looked like it was cut off.
"That's… cool in a creepy way… you could install these things in horror houses!" Serafall said that as she took a step forward completely and half of her body just disappeared… At that moment, the hologram slightly wiggled. Showing that it's not that stable.
"Most likely in the future. When we are going to open an amusement park or something like that, it will be largely in use over there. However, this can't be a hard light hologram because those use quite a bit of power. Any of the known battery technologies could not even hold it for an hour before it runs out of juice." I explained to her as I entered into another side of the holographic wall.
"I see… so you would only use current known technologies for these?" She asked for confirmation as she walked after me.
"Indeed. They are even built to self-destruct. Well, more like the hologram technology will melt if it's picked up by any other than the hunt girls."
"Hoh~~~ so, meticulous! I like that! It sounds like you are a secret boss who has an army of spies!" She said with a knowing look continuing on about the role of someone who likes the secret agent stuff…
"Kinda? I just don't want the holograms to fall to other countries without me actually selling it myself." I said with a shrug. Honestly, I am not giving away tech without getting something out of it.
"Hmm… not that you need money… you can print that yourself… honestly, there is very little that anyone can offer to you… which means that the technological gap is going to only increase…" She said that as she concluded the result of my future actions herself.
"Most likely. I will leave these debates to the people who care. For now, I have more important things to do." I said as I walked towards the garage doors and pulled out my keys. Unlocking the doors moments later, I opened them and I saw the dusty BMW which was not touched for years now.
For a second, I sighed in disappointment to myself for leaving it like that for so long. That's why I was going to fix it myself!
Pocketing my backpack and the school jacket into the storage ring, I rolled up my sleeves and went forward. Opening the car's doors and moving towards the hand brakes I released them and then went back to the front of the car.
After the brakes were released, I quite easily pulled the car out of the garage and towards the end of the driveway. That moment, a section of the driveway not far from the garage started to lower. I quickly walked to the back of the car and started to pull it into the workshop downstairs. Once there, I pulled the hand brakes once again.
"Aurora, start the scanning of the car, I will be back in a sec…" I ordered Aurora as I went up and started collecting my gadgets. By that point, the driveway was closed so no one would have seen the entrance to the underground...not that there was anyone. Still, one should never take such unnecessary chances.
When I entered the garage, I left another gadget in the middle of it. This one, however, is slightly different from the rest because it has a connection to the energy network via a cable.
Once it was in place, I walked out of the garage and activated it via my Psionic interface. A moment later, hard light holograms manifested and I could see the image of the totalled car.
Then I closed the doors and walked behind the garage where the stairs were located. The hatch is automatic and it only responds to a selected few people.
Before long, I was back in the workshop. Looking around for a bit, I realised that some time has passed since I last worked here.
"Aurora, is the scan complete?"
[Yes. Do you wish to see the result?] The female voice asked me.
"Is it just me but is Quinella sounding strange?" Serafall asked me from the side as she was sitting in the couch area.
"That's because it's Aurora, and not Quinella. My assistant took the Confiscator and flew to Vampire country." I said with a shrug.
"You let an A.I. do all that?" Serafall, for second, was baffled. I looked weirdly at her for a bit…
"...Right… You don't know. I doubt you check the main logs anyway. But, Quinella Became a full-fledged human being yesterday. Well, not any regular human being, but what she classifies as the 'perfect' human." I said with a shrug. A hologram appeared in front of me. I saw the scan of the car.
Honestly, this brings me back to the days when I used to do this back in my previous life. Buying a complete wreck and then fixing it and then pumping it up with technology of my design…
Should I just do that as well? Transformer protocol? Space motion technomancy? Perpetual energy core? Remould the frame with the Sacred Gear alloy… So many choices...
"Hmm, let's see how far I can take this before Athena finds me…" I grinned silly seeing that the car's engine is 50% completely broken and needed a complete change, 30% of it needs repairs and only 20% are in an okay-ish state. In other words, it is better to just change the engine completely instead of fixing it.
But, doing that is just utterly boring! I looked at Serafall, wanting to tell her how dead this dead car was, but she was spacing out silly…
'Right...I guess the Quinella coming to life part shook her quite hard.'
Shrugging to myself… I was about to start ripping the engine off. Then I realised that doing things in school uniform is quite uncomfortable…
"I should change first… and get something to eat before starting with this," I said to myself before walking towards the back of the workshop where the kitchen is, and the living space...
~~~~~~Barracks~~~~~~
Carmilla had no idea how to feel being just left out of things. After her disastrous seduction attempt, she was left to her devices. In the heart of someone else's territory. Well, she used that time to get some understanding with what she is dealing with.
And, damn, she was utterly blown away! The silver-haired vampire queen has grasped some of the scale of things that Marcus does…
One of the earliest projects of his was the creation of perpetual energy! This alone is nuts! She might not be big on science or whatever. But endless energy solves a lot of problems and opens a lot of doors!
Even a single one of these Diamond Core Hearts could be enough to solve the world's issues of energy! But this guy has over thirty of those and it's increasing!
As she mentioned before, this thing was one of the earliest inventions. Because of the endless energy, Marcus easily solved the issue of transmutation. Those assembly lines use an enormous amount of energy. By regular standards. But Marcus has perpetual energy and Aurora which controls the flow of energy to maximise the effect and lower the amount of energy it takes.
With endless energy and the most powerful alchemy she has ever seen it's no wonder that he so rapidly built up his power base!
Just by checking the technology and technomancy, the possibilities were endless…
The Vampire Queen was wondering if those maids even properly realised just how much power those Entertainment Domes use? Or even grasp the amount of energy that is flowing towards the testing room?
The amount of zeros she saw was utterly baffling! the session where Marcus fought superman alone could power the entire planet and more for a year…
That is how much the room had to take because the moon was destroyed and the amount of force being thrown around was monumental…
"Having fun? Only Le Fay read those… honestly, it baffles me how little everyone cares about our Master's capabilities."
Carmilla stiffed for a bit hearing an arrogant female tone, her eyes went to the side and she looked at the new arrival.
Unlike the last time… This time her vampire senses were telling her that this girl was the real deal, and made from flesh and blood… And a lot of power...
"Quinella."
"The one and the same. We meet in person this time." The silver-haired assistant walked over into the room the Vampire Queen was given, which she had to share with the unlucky Elmenhilde Karnstein.
The girl just followed her Queen and now she ended up in this situation…
The pair of vampire eyes were on the assistant who just walked into the room. She was dressed in an S.P.B.A. uniform. However, it was not blue and silver. But instead, she was dressed in white and gold. Showing the colours of Solomon which her Master has inherited. This time, however, her clothes were not so sexualised, no mini skirt, instead she looked like a proper female officer with a knee-length skirt.
The simple reason for this is that Marcus is not coming with her.
"So, that project is done then?" Carmilla asked with a somewhat nervous tone. If this project is complete then that means that Marcus Goldman can make perfectly engineered life. Another sci-fi trope is no longer sci-fi...but, reality
"Indeed." The silver head assistant nodded at the question, that moment the holographic window which was in front of the Vampire Queen switched to showing something different; it was the Biological Assistant Quinella project with the status being complete.
The Vampire beauty looked at the window for a bit. She remembers checking this not long ago...and now it was done and the project result itself was in front of her radiating more power than she ever had…
While the younger vampire girl just looked at the pair interacting. She already understood what was going on. Just like her Queen, she read through the stuff she was able to. Aurora suggested to learn about their 'Protector'.
And learn they did. Simply put, they won't be getting out of this protection scheme. The Vampires were permanently added to the fold. While Carmilla wanted it to be temporary because she understood Marcus' character to some extent, or she thought she did with her reading on him. The man is interested in his research, inventions and the Queen to some extent. So she used that. But, she was wrong because her entire faction is going to be permanently added.
Simply put… she forgot that her kin can be observed and their powers studied…
"So… are we returning to Vampire countries?" Carmilla asked as she closed the window, the last time they spoke, the Assistant of their Master said that they will be working 'together', what this means Carmilla still has not figured out yet.
The Vampire Queen can't see Quinella taking some advice from her. Unless Marcus told the Silver-haired assistant to listen to her.
"We are. I have permission to use the Confiscator. The Airship has 4 assembly lines. It will help establish a proper base. Before it can spread out through the countries." The Military uniform dressed
"I assume...you are going to 'modernise' the countries?" The older Vampire asked as she got up on her feet ready to walk.
"Indeed. This is more or less to see how we can adjust my Creator's inventions for public use. As by my and the Blonde devil's one prediction, our Master will end up taking over the country himself. Either through his dislike for nagging, as no doubt this country and the rest of the world will nag for his technology once the shops are open, or he will grow an interest to experiment with government types." Quinella said with a not caring shrug.
"So...we are going to test on my people?" Camilla asked with raised eyebrows.
"Don't look too bothered by this. We won't be drugging them or anything like that. We are going to use the point system as permanent currency. With Assembly Lines, we can run the countries...forever. The problem is how to get those points and things like that. We can iron the details out when we are in person there and the system is up and running."
After hearing the clarification Carmilla relaxed. This sounds not that dangerous. This is more like a test out of new things. On a country size scale… if her memory serves her right, there was no such thing before.
Well, there were some small scale tests but this is different altogether. Switching money out to something else and using alchemy as the bedrock for everything. This means natural resources are meaningless. They can even recycle waste, organic waste, plastic and other things… they have a lot of bones in their castles...
However, such massive change to society as a whole, simply put, it would become a borderline utopia. Yet, it comes with its own set of bad things…
Well, Vampires in general don't need many things if they can make their cattle tamer…
Still… though, she wants to see how this will change, as a several hundred-year-old being she is interested in new things like this.
"Still, though… I don't see him ruling. I can't see someone like him sitting in parliament and discussing...politics… maybe if it was 18 century France when Absolute Monarchy existed but that is me stretching things already." Carmilla pointed out something she can't see happen; she only spent a small amount of time with the man. But, she already has a clear image of his personality.
"I know. I did multiple simulations of this. And the only thing I came up with our Master is Totalitarian Technocracy." Quinella casually said with a shrug.
"... Excuse me… but what is... Technocracy?" The Vampire Queen asked.
"Imagine a massive science club running a country. More or less everything will be on research and science study. Because of Assembly lines. The majority of industries will cease to exist. The concept of farmlands, fishing, and things like that will be pointless. Instead, the studying of vegetation will take over. This will increase the amount of forest there is in the country.
While this sounds amazing, and even beautiful, we will give back much of the land back to nature. We should not forget a lot of things like decadence will increase. As well as things like the Entertainment Dome will make people obsessed with fantasy worlds instead of real life.
That's why it will be totalitarian… the more we give, the more we expect…"
As Quinella was explaining to her, the Vampire Queen started to see the image of this… dysfunctional... Utopia? With many things losing their needs, new things will develop…
Well, now that she can see how this is going to happen, she can at least say that she can see him...ruling… Well ruling is not the word. More like tyrannically telling people what to do… and if they are not following his orders well... the points are going to be stripped…
'Yes, sounds about right…'
~~~~~~Athena~~~~~~
The first thing the Goddess of Wisdom did was to see the map of the country. Learning the language was quite easy. Well for a Goddess that is. Because the people here have quite the absurd and very difficult language. She'd only picked it up from a few people who spoke it.
Once she got it down, she started reading the maps. Eventually, she stumbled upon a Town that has some connection to the word 'girl'.
However, she won't be rushing there just because the word matches. After all, it could be a girl's name the city is named after and she needs to look for it.
So, for that, she decided to go to the best place to learn and that is the library.
Thankfully finding it is not that difficult...however… She was in a town dominated by the Russian majority… a lot of literature was in Russian and is about Russia… not something she has an interest in at this specific moment.
However, she was able to find some history and myth related books to the place she is right now.
Her powers work like a sixth sense. An intuition of where to look for what. That's how she easily finds stuff in her humongous library.
She should get new books for her library. Especially since she just glossed over quite a bit of minor cultures. And focused on big ones. Now, because of that, she is wasting time with this little game.
However, on a different side of things, she is enjoying playing little games like that.
Walking around for a bit, she eventually stumbled on the books she was looking for.
With several books in hand, she went over and found a place to sit. Before long, she started reading.
If anyone saw her read. Then they would think that she is just skimming through pages. Because she was flipping one after another every second or two…
If that didn't freak one out, then the pages moving on their own would.
Reading one then a second and finally a third book, she was done.
She walked back and placed the books in their place before leaving the library…
'There are few myths about the wolves in this place. The most famous one is the Grand Duke having a dream about a metal howling wolf. After the dream, the man consulted with the shaman or the druid of their loose religion on nature and decided to build the true capital there. Well, I quite honestly forgot that these people still had Paganism even in the late 14 century…'
Thinking for a bit, she realised that this might be a problem; these towns were built way before the Biblical God faction influenced them. Meaning some of the stuff was most likely passed down verbally…
Because... honestly, she did not find anything about a girl meeting a wolf in any sense… there were more stories about man-eater wolves than befriending one.
This might be because she was in quite a new city compared to the rest. Built in the early 1950 while others were built in 1400 or even earlier…
Meaning that she needs to get deeper into the country instead of mingling in this borderline border town...
Sighting with annoyance she realised that she is going to be a tourist here. Her senses are useless in this country because of the high amount of magic in the air. None of her powers are good for tracking. Unlike Artemis.
So… this means she will be using a bus… to get deeper into the country.
'That man… this is embarrassing! He knew this! so, he set it up on purpose! Most likely set this up based on his experience of capturing Artemis!' The brown-haired goddess frowned even more before deciding to suck it up and do it. As she was in a not-so-friendly territory where she could not throw her temper tantrums.
And so she ended up looking for the bus station. The main one, where buses go between cities. Honestly, it was so small she spent hours walking around in the town looking for it.
The other issue with this was that there are very few buses and she will spend hours waiting for one…
By this point, she just wanted to bang her head into a wall!
~~~~~~Marcus~~~~~~
"Oh girls, you're finally here!" My gaze went to the side as I saw my maid trio walk over. Should I call them the hunter trio? Hmm…
Anyway! They finally arrived at my garage!
"Yes. We were quite perplexed that you did not go to The Base after your school activities…" Artemis said while sighing.
"Yeah, I decided to do some things about my car, and wait until she arrives at this town," I explained to them as I motioned with my finger at the screen.
Artemis' eyes, alongside the other two's, opened wide when they saw Athena herself sitting in the waiting room...in a bus station…
"You know what I find funny? She could easily get a phone and use the GPS to the next city or just use the roads… but I guess just running from city to city can be exhausting…" I said with a shrug. Honestly, deities are weird. They are powerful but they have their sense of comfort? They don't act upon certain things…
"Master… phones don't have GPS… The ones in the newest cars are barely functioning either …" Serafall said from the side as she was looking at Athena on the screen. She had a complex look on her face.
"Only your phones have it. I think you are giving too much credit to the current human technological level." The black-haired devil said with a sigh.
"Right… damn… I forgot to check up on the stuff they have at the moment!" I said with realisation. I haven't checked what regular people did for the past couple of years!
"Don't worry… you didn't miss anything of note. Only a few good anime came out. Apart from that…" She shrugged at me while saying that.
I nodded at her as I looked at the screen. I should name this show 'The Woes of the Goddess of Wisdom in Unknown Lands!'
My gaze then went on to the trio of the arrivals. The most pale of them was Artemis as she realised that the Goddess of Wisdom was in my lands.
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