"I'm coming in."
Although he actively ignored his wife, Lucius truly didn't want her to see the horrifying scene in front of him.
"Don't come in!"
However, it was too late, she had already entered the tent.
Seeing the mutilated and skinless body of Archid was too much of a shock to her. She froze on the spot with her eyes glued to the hellish sight.
"Elizabeth?"
Lucius called out to her, and as expected, she didn't reply.
He could see her body shaking in horror, and her legs were becoming weaker and weaker.
Her consciousness began to fade away into darkness, unable to process such sight. She fainted on the spot.
Lucius quickly catched her falling body, and the blood that covered his suit touched Elizabeth dress. Her light blue dress was now covered in red patches of blood.
'Sigh, why and when did she even come here?'
****
Around 2 hours later, Elizabeth opened her jade green eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling.
She was currently inside of Lucius' tent, which was closer to the crash site, laying on top of a soft mattress. Her head was being supported by 2 fluffy pillows.
"Hnnghh...."
She moaned as she stretched her stiff body, and began propping herself up to a sitting position. While doing so, she began to think about what had happened.
'Was that just a nightmare?'
"That wasn't a nightmare."
Someone answered her thought.
"Kyaa!"
"No need to be that surprised, it's just me."
"L-Lucius...."
Lucius was sitting on a chair right beside the mattress, and the chair was facing the mattress.
He was wearing his daily attire, a white buttoned up shirt, long black dress pants, and black leather shoes.
"Umm, what were you doing?"
"Oh nothing, I was just watching you sleep."
Lucius answered in a bored manner.
This answer made Elizabeth blush a little, but it wasn't what she had asked about.
"N-no, not that."
"Sigh, you want to ask me about earlier, right?"
He had a defeated expression, yet he was also smiling a little bit.
Elizabeth looked towards her attire. Her light blue dress was stained with blood. Seeing this, she began to remember what she had seen.
"Actually, nevermind. I don't want to know. I don't want to pry further."
"Oh? You got smarter, hehe. I thought you would act like you usually would and scream at me."
"...."
"You know, I kind of missed seeing this meek attitude from you. I think the last time was during the early days of me making you my hostage."
"Sniffle, sniffle...."
'Oh shit, she's crying.'
Lucius quickly stood up from his chair, and since he didn't know what to say to calm her down, he decided to just hug her.
Feeling his hug, Elizabeth dug her face to his shirt, wetting it with her tears and snot.
"Sniffle, sniffle...."
Lucius felt a strong desire to stroke her head, and he surrendered to it.
'Why does she have to look so beautiful while crying?'
While stroking her head, he felt a very warm and tingling good sensation inside of him. Moreover, he felt as if his insanity was getting restrained more and more.
"Elizabeth?"
"Y-yes? Sniffle, sniffle...."
"Should we actually start acting like a real married couple?"
"W-wha?!"
Elizabeth's long and pointy elf ears suddenly turned red. Almost as red as her hair.
As expected, Elizabeth was very surprised. She had actually given up on romance with Lucius, so this came as a real shocker to her.
"But first, you should follow me outside. I have something to show you."
Lucius held her hand, and led her outside the tent. What awaited her was a bizarre and awe-inducing sight.
"Woah...."
She could see that there were strange metallic tubes of varying sizes. The smallest ones were half the size of an average human, and the largest ones were almost three times larger than an average human.
There were approximately around 500 of these metallic tubes laid out in a large open area, and more of them were being carried out of the ship by Lucius' men.
The strange sight made Elizabeth fall into deep thought.
'That giant meteorite must not be normal. It looks so long and round. And what are these strange objects? Are they statues? The craftmanship of these statues are so fine and detailed. Everything looks so smooth and symmetrical. Were they made by a master artisan from the ancient times?'
Truth be told, the ship's unloading had started way before Lucius' torture session. And since Elizabeth had visited Archid's camp before Lucius', she hadn't seen the crash site up close until now.
While she was still gawking at the finely-crafted and strange metallic tubular statues, Lucius asked her a question.
"Elizabeth, do you practice a religion by chance? I'm curious."
She answered the question while her eyes were still glued to the scene.
"W-well, although I'm not that religious, I do pray to the One True God. But everyone does it as well."
"Ah, the One True God religion. I thought you'd pray to the World Tree like the other elves."
"My mother died while she gave birth to me, so I wasn't taught about it by her. Dad practices the One True God religion, so it was the only faith that was taught to me."
"And you're not that religious, correct?"
"Yes, but what does it have to do with this?"
She asked that while pointing to the people unloading the tubes.
Hearing this, Lucius made a smirk and asked her another question.
"Would you believe me if I told you that your whole religion is a lie?"
"Eh? Why would it be a lie?"
"Well, technically every religion is built upon lies. Simply put, there is no God, gods, or any type of deity."
As if hearing something extremely absurd, Elizabeth made a huge frown.
"You do know that the Church would not be happy if they heard your blasphemous words, right?"
"Bahahahaha, the Church? What are they going to do? Pray to their phony god to smite me by lightning? Or will they try to kill me themselves with a holy war as an excuse? Either way, they don't have the power to kill me."
"But...."
"But what? Haha, if you truly want to become my wife, then you should first learn how the world works. And no, what you've learned at that academy won't help you. It's all just a collection of primitive and misunderstood knowledge."
"The academy was wrong?"
"Probably not all wrong, I can't say for sure. But I have read some of their study books from our mansion's library, and it's ridiculous. The world is made from mana? Are you kidding me? How are you people supposed to progress as a civilization if you're not even trying to pry into what's actually true."
"What? How is the world not made of mana? What did they teach you in your world?"
"I would like to tell you everything, but it would take a long long time for me to explain. I'd rather do it slowly but surely."
After saying that, Lucius began leading Elizabeth by hand to one of the tubes.
"See this? What do you think this is?"
"A finely crafted statue from the ancient times? But it doesn't really look like a statue, so I'm not so sure."
The tube in front of them was a little bit bigger than an average human.
Lucius then reached out his right hand towards the tube. Then, his right hand turned into a shiny black color.
It seemed that Lucius had left a portion of his nanobots inside of his body.
He attached his blackened hand to the tube, and the tube began to open.
As soon as it opened, a clear liquid flowed out of it. The liquid's temperature was a few degrees above absolute zero. It was rapidly heating up and evaporating into a white smokey gas.
It seemed that it the liquid was once frozen solid, but it immediately turned into liquid when the tube was opened.
This extremely fast process of solid turning into liquid and then into gas was like magic to Elizabeth's eyes.
The white smokey effect was caused by the gas cooling down the surround air, thus creating an artificial cloud.
"This thing right here is a cryogenic chamber, it's function is to keep whatever organic matter inside alive for extremely long periods of time."
Inside of the cryogenic chamber was a male human who looked frozen solid. The man was restrained on both his wrists and ankles to keep him in place. Fortunately, the man was wearing underwear, so he wasn't naked.
Hearing his explanation while looking at the frozen man, Elizabeth was extremely confused.
'What does he mean by that? And why is there a man inside of the statue? I-I don't understand.'
"It's not over yet, just wait for a few moments."
After just a few seconds, another process had started.
This time, a dozen thick needles emerged from the inner walls of the cryogenic chamber. The needles penetrated the frozen man's skin on multiple parts of his body. The needles then began injecting something into the man, and his body began twitching.
While the needles were injecting the mysterious substance into the man, the inner walls of the cryogenic chamber became warmer and warmer.
Eventually, the inner walls and the area surrounding were as warm as a sauna. This also affected the needles, as they were now injecting a very warm version of the mysterious substance.
The previously frozen man, began shaking as if he was cold.
And then....
He opened his eyes.
"KYAAAA!!!"
Seeing the man who she thought had frozen to death opening his eyes was a scary sight to her. She remembered hearing tales of demons reviving corpses in the distant past.
"Calm down."
Lucius held her hand tightly to keep her emotions in check.
Not too long after the man opened his eyes, the needles stopped pumping the mysterious substance, and retracted themselves back into the inner walls of the chamber.
Then the wrist and ankle restraints keeping the man in place released by themselves, causing the man to suddenly slip out of the chamber.
With his reflexes, the man prevented himself from faceplanting into the ground.
After steadying himself, the man looked around in bewilderment. He immediately noticed a unique pair of people looking at him.
"Hello? Where am I? Have we arrived yet?"
The man was speaking in English.