I nearly fell from the sky and on top of her, but I managed to get a grip of myself to maintain my position and my concealment. There was a moment of fear within me as I worried that now that Althea had displayed the powers of a God, that she might be able to easily sense me, but it appeared that she's far too tired; her attention focused solely on the young man she was talking to, and the goblin she just saved.
There were so many things happening that made no sense to me—at least when thinking about the fact that this was definitely Althea. Those things went from her young appearance, to her new Godly powers, and the nonsensical action of saving a goblin—something that she would've killed with a flip of her finger before without even thinking about it.
But slowly, as I thought about them, things were making sense.
If the Holy Gods betrayed her, then there was a chance that something in her told her that she should actually look into the Tenebreius people and see for herself if they were better than the Holy Gods. Or nothing might've changed in her personality, and she would rather use the power of these people to fight against the Holy Gods and their servants in a zealous war that was no different than the last one.
Going from one extreme to the other.
However, after these last few days, she hadn't displayed any feelings of hatred or rage towards anyone in particular. At most annoyance, but nothing so irrational as to go on a killing spree without thinking about it.
I carefully lowered myself to see her better; to sense her better. She appeared no different than before. It was as if that Darkness and Hellfire Power within her was just a part of her, like the Holy Power was before.
This likely meant that she was not being controlled, and from the personality she's displayed, she wasn't Salrak either.
That too, I couldn't understand how she could possibly have that God's powers, even if those powers weren't quite as powerful to threaten a world… yet.
I heard the little goblin talking. Goblins were usually quite… verbose. But they weren't quite smart either. As such, they liked to use as many words as possible to sound smart, even if what they were saying was nothing more than nonsense; and this one was no different.
However, I quickly recognized who this one was after he introduced his many, many names. He was the ambassador of Arretia in this country, which would explain why he is so carefree about this whole situation and why he would tell Althea that he would take care of everything.
Hopefully, this one was a competent one, and will be able to levy his position to get Althea out of any trouble. The same hope I was directing at Althea, who was looking rather haggard after using so much power on this day; so much that she didn't even bother going after the young man that ran away.
She still had the foresight to get this ambassador's information before sluggishly making her way back to the apartment, where she dropped face-first to the small mattress and fell asleep. I think she even passed out mid fall, as she didn't move from her position through the whole night.
And so, I watched once more, wondering what my old friend would do after finally revealing her new powers.
* * *
Nothing, is what she did. For a couple of days, all she did was stay in her room, contemplating the outside world, or looking at either her phone or computer. Her friend, the Fire Deviant girl, would come a couple of times and bring her snacks, before going into practicing her fire a while, but Althea appeared to still be recuperating from what happened.
On the second night, she stood up and looked outside to the city's lights. It reminded me of the way I would also do the same in my office building, only that Althea had the opportunity to do so with her window opened.
I flew closer to her, to have a better look. Right now, she appeared to have mostly recovered as she looked just as healthy as she looked most days.
Suddenly, she stretched her hand outside and I was forced to move away. There was concern within me that she had finally detected me, but she wasn't looking at me. Only at her hand.
From there, I saw her use that Darkness and Hellfire, and I took the opportunity to sense it. It was pure, like the Holy Power was, and it was stable, just as Holy Power was when Althea commanded it.
Once more, I wondered how it was that she got Salrak's powers, but I just didn't see an explanation that would suffice, as there was no way that in her final moments she would have the power to absorb the God's power, much less steal it. There was a chance that it was Him who gave it to her, but I don't see why He would do that to His mortal enemy.
After a moment, she dismissed the power, and I once again took a closer look at her. She appeared calm. Not at all distressed about the fact that her Holy Power had been replaced by something that she would've regarded as evil in the past.
Her phone rang and she moved away from the window to answer it. I wondered if it was that Deviant girl that liked to hang around with her, but Althea's tone suddenly got serious.
I felt tempted to go inside the room and see what happened, but I had refused to intrude inside her home so far—not that I needed to, as everything inside could be easily seen from this window.
It appeared to be serious, as she suddenly changed into her uniform and left the room in a hurry. I followed along and saw a car already waiting for her down on the streets. There was some hesitation on her part to go inside, but after confirming that it was indeed for her, she settled inside; a grim look on her face.
Perhaps something happened to one of her friends, so I decided to closely follow the car.
I didn't know where any of her friends lived; I never bothered to check, so it could've been any one of them, but it wasn't anywhere close to where she was currently living, so her trip still took a while to reach her destination. It was already somewhat late in the night, so luckily for her, there were hardly any traffic jams to stop her.
"Well… this is quite… unexpected…" I whispered from the air.
It was an expensive gated community designated mostly for Arretians—Tenebreians almost all of them. I flew over Althea as she hurriedly walked to one house in particular. The one that had the biggest mess around and inside it.
"A demon's!?" I exclaimed, nearly giving myself away if it wasn't for the fact that I was flying too high up for anyone to actually hear me.
I didn't know that she had made a demon acquaintance during these couple of weeks. There were suspicions that the person with the 'Bo'guth' name on her phone was a demon… but I just couldn't believe that Althea would have a demon as her contact so I had dismissed it as just someone that happened to have such a name. It was hard to know just from the way that she used her phone, as she hardly ever texted anyone.
I flew closer to the house, this time being extra careful, as the demoness in this place was stronger than both the demon and Althea if she didn't use her Darkness and Hellfire Power, so there was a chance she might notice my presence.
The demoness lunged at Althea, a scythe in hand, ready to kill her, but the demon caught her and the demoness suddenly burst into tears.
I looked around the house from a safe distance. There weren't any corpses nor signs of blood, so I didn't think that someone had died in the place; and the police outside the community didn't carry anyone outside either. However, I did manage to notice that there was still some Holy magic lingering in the air, which meant that this family was attacked by the Followers of Leyfall.
I tried my best to get as close to them while keeping my presence as hidden as possible. Because of that, I wasn't able to enter the room and be with them, so I stood outside and away from them.
The couple of demons recounted what happened to them in a rather hasty way. We learned that their daughter—a Barrier Demon—had been kidnapped by those Followers of Leyfall. The demon had called Althea because he couldn't think of anyone that would know those kinds of people better than her.
Yet again, another proof that she's the same Althea from the past, as not even she appeared to be flustered about the way they were talking to her; if anything, she appeared to be rather ashamed of being reminded of her past.
Without hesitation, Althea agreed to help them, and I nearly stumbled on my spot. That same Althea that decimated cities of demons, goblins, skeletons, ogres and whatever else they shared their spaces with, was right now agreeing to help them as if they were believers of the Holy Gods.
If I didn't know with my own senses that this woman had the same kind of Godly powers that she did in the past, I would say that this wasn't Althea.
Right after agreeing to help them, she called that young man that she let go the other night, threatening him in a subtle way to give her the information about their base.
Once she got what she wanted, the group didn't waste time and went into a deeper room of the house. I couldn't go with them as such a place was prone to let them know of my presence, so I waited outside.
I had the temptation to clear up the Holy magic in the air, but doing so would likely make them suspicious, so I just stayed put for the few minutes that they took to come back out.
"Is—is that General Kafun's armor?" I whispered, my eyes wide as I looked at the armor that Althea was wearing.
There was no doubt that it was the Darkest Knight's armor. The details, the shape, the power that it still contained, and even the reforged bits and pieces were the same as the ones that the great demoness had when she was killed.
What was even more amazing was that Althea was wearing it, and looking at it as if it wasn't a horrible thing to be wearing, just like the large sword on her back, which looked almost as if someone had recreated a blackened Holy Blade.
It was going to be time soon enough to make contact with her. All the things that she's been doing over the past couple of weeks and couple of days were far beyond what I'd expect the real Althea to do, and I couldn't risk another failure like that of Arretia if I left her on her own devices.
I had to know what her intentions were and what her mental state was. But right now, I wanted to see what she was planning to do with the couple of demons.
With hurried movements, they got on a large black truck, where they didn't take long to leave the place and back on the mostly empty streets of this clear night.
I flew along with them, keeping my distance as I usually did, but being a little bit more careful, since both the demons and Althea were wearing much more powerful gear than what they had before.
Nearly an hour later, they stopped at what appeared to be a warehouse that was repurposed to be a site of praying. There were plenty of sites like these, mostly created by people of this world to enrich themselves with their beliefs while maybe giving a reason to others to live and enjoy life—as long as they paid for it, that is.
This one, however, while it might be of the same kind, it was hiding something else under it. I could feel a lot of magic being used underground, and I think that with Althea's talents, she should be able to sense the same thing.
Althea did something I had only heard her do once, which is that she tried to seduce the guards by the gate. Such a clumsy display of feminine charm wouldn't really attract anyone under these circumstances, but with her kind of beauty, if she were to spit on their faces, they would fall head-over-heels for her.
I chuckled as I remembered how angry she was when she did that to seduce a powerful duke of her empire, only to then go in there to give him a terrible trashing. It somehow worked, as for some reason the man turned completely loyal to her; but I wasn't sure if it was out of fear or if the man had grown a desire to get her to beat him up.
Regardless, it appeared that it somewhat worked once more, but it was also thanks to the demoness who managed to stealthily get in there and knock them out. Once that couple of obstacles were cleared, they broke into the large building.
I didn't go in there with them, as like I said, they could detect something amiss with my presence, so I just watched from the few windows that the building had.
It seemed like Althea's senses weren't quite as sharp as before, as she failed to immediately notice the large door in the floor by the stage she was standing on. But still, she found it in a short amount of time. The demoness then harshly opened it, which would've been a rather clumsy mistake if it wasn't because the building was empty and there was nobody standing beyond the door.
Once they went inside, I finally followed into the large warehouse and kept my distance as I tried to carefully follow them inside the tunnels.
I couldn't get close to either Althea or the demoness, so I stuck to the demon who took another route that led to the same place.
He appeared rather composed but… I could tell the fear and anxiety that he felt as he desperately looked everywhere, even tried to sneak a peek inside one of the training rooms which could've given him away with his large horns, so I quickly obscured his large figure with the same kind of magic I had on myself, before he realized the mistake and dropped to the ground once more.
They met up again, and went further inside. There was a trap waiting for them, but I wasn't going to stop it, as I wanted to see how Althea was going to deal with it.
They sprung it and were quickly forced into combat. The demons chose to stay behind and give Althea the opportunity to save their daughter, as she was the one that could properly sense her, so she jumped up ahead, and was forced to fight a few stronger Followers of Leyfall.
Again, she had no qualms with using her Darkness and Hellfire Power, and I finally saw, after more than five years, how merciless she was when fighting as she killed a woman without hesitation. She then moved on to do the same to the other two, but as she was doing so, the leader of this group escaped via a hidden door.
I was tempted to follow the man to see where it led, but I chose to stay here and see what Althea did.
A skeleton talked to her, and immediately recognized her, and once more, she didn't deny him as she went back and joined the fight with the demons, who so far had only held their position without killing anyone. It was Althea who had no problem with burning and splitting in half anyone that didn't surrender—which was something that she rarely offered in the past to an enemy.
The family didn't pay attention to what Althea did as their focus was solely on getting back to their daughter. But, the barrier that the child set up was far too strong for anyone here to break it. I even wondered if I could easily break it down without killing the child in the process, so the only thing they could do was wait for her to run out of mana and hope that the magic backlash wasn't too strong.
Then, as if to prove me wrong, Althea channeled her new powers, easily taking hold of the Dark magic and freeing the girl without causing her any damage.
The touching reunion was cut short by the skeleton, who insisted on freeing the other few people in this base, and so Althea did, where she found that all of them were Tenebreius people.
But once more, to my amazement, she didn't look at them with disgust, fear, or hate, and simply helped them, even despite the outward hatred they were displaying for her.
At the end, she made a call, and the police showed up. But I knew that killing all those people wasn't going to be good for her, so she was taken to the Prosecutor's Bunker, where they were likely going to have her answer for what she did here.
But… that would mean that I wouldn't be able to easily talk to her, so I guess it was time for me to drop my concealment and use my position to my advantage.
I had to talk to her.