Chapter 51

Chapter 51 - Secrets Hidden From View

After we were done having fun, the three clones all laid down on the living room sofa in a relaxed manner. Although it seemed that they had caused chaos and destroyed the area before, it was not something that magic could not fix. 

So the place was already back to normal after the fighting stopped and everyone had the meal prepared by the Mage. In that time, Mage had been able to get a full several course meal ready through using golems to cook for her so they were all able to eat satisfyingly till they were all full. 

"Whew, it sure feels good to free load on Mage even if she says no. Such a tsundere!"

"You know how to cook so do it yourself! And I am not a tsundere?!"

"You guys, stop fighting! Let's talk about something more productive."

Hearing the Alchemist on the side mediating, the two clones sighed and decided to give the Alchemist face this time. 

"Let's start with me first since I started the conversation." But before she could continue, she was already interrupted by the Mage who scoffed at her.

"We already know what you are doing. You are on duty to watch over little Felicia and the Hero party so of course you would have nothing going on! Until they cause some mayhem on the beast folk territory, you can't expect anything to happen. Even if the situation there is quietly building up."

"Yeah! Why do you get to be the one to look after our daughter!? I am so jealous! And I have to be in charge of watching that trash Demon King 'father' of ours instead. Can we switch please?"

Hearing her request, the Alchemist obviously denied the trade to which the Martial Artists simply sighed and laid her head on the table. 

"Then, how is it over there?" Alchemist had asked. Since she had spoken about her own duty, it was only natural that the others would reciprocate. Standing up from her laying position, she coughed to clear her throat before explaining her side. 

"Well, they have not been doing so well. Good for us, but I found something rather interesting. Within the bottom of the ocean is a forbidden zone with a massive vortex that can easily suck in any who approach too close. Within the vortex, there is a special phenomenon where even magic communication and space magic is blocked out. I had told the main body about it and she was quite interested as well."

Hearing about such a thing, there was also a glow in the mage's eyes. Unfortunately, her own mission had to take precedence over temporary curiosity. No matter, with their age she would eventually make the time to head there and explore the location. 

"The main body also told me to give you a heads up. The place is forbidden from access for now, especially for you since your role in next mission is quite important."

Clicking her tongue in dissatisfaction because of getting barred from exploring, she still proceeded to explain about her own mission afterwords. 

"My mission should be complete soon. I just happened to tame a new little cutie and I am waiting to release it upon those darn long eared idiots. It will be exciting to see the place ravaged and the World Tree devastated!"

Hearing her say that, the other two jumped in surprise and quickly held the clone down to which she frown and showed dissatisfaction. 

"Hey, why are you holding me down? Unhand me! I need to show how excited I am and tell you about all the new stuff I had prepared for the occasion!"

After subduing her directly, the two clones closely interrogated her in order to learn exactly what she was planning and how she would act in her upcoming mission. 

This would have to trace back to quite a while ago. Back when Alice had left the Demon King Castle and after absorbing everything from the hidden library, she had made her clones and had them eventually gain personalities of their own. 

Researching on her own would be rather boring after all. And so they all research all kinds of things. Eventually, she found some information that she saw as rather intriguing. Specifically, she found that the records in the library was actually incomplete and that the parts that she could not find were all related to the origin of every race in the world. 

As a rather important subject, she sought to come to the bottom of things and found that there existed a sort of source mana within demons. By researching her body and those of various animals and plants, she was able to trace this sort of source energy within it all and found it rather interesting. 

But that subject matter was not of her highest concern. So she delegated the mission to one of her clones which ended up being the Mage. After some tests, she found that by tracing religion and religion based spell casters, that they were able to attract that source of their origin through their so called faith. 

Intrigued, she took the time to use space magic to scan and analyze the textbooks and eventually read the minds of the various religious leaders for any secrets that they had not written.

Although she did that mostly as a precaution, the amount of information that she had absorbed was rather significant. Filtering out the daily life and political actions, the most important thing that she read from the pope's mind was a certain secret passed down from word of mouth from pope to pope. 

To be specific, this is one of the forbidden knowledges that is only told to the highest chosen among ArchBishops and Popes as well as rarely Saints and Saintesses. 

"Remember this, Clive. In the depths of the cathedral is a passage leading out to the east. At the end, continue marching 10 miles and you will approach a small village. In that village is a small chapel used as the ultimate secret hiding space built from generations of popes that held the highest level of security in the whole world. You can enter by showing your faith as well as showing this."

Pulling out a small medallion, he reached out to place it into the newly crowned popes's hands. Looking at it, it looked like a silver circular badge with an ornate golden cross in the center that had a white smaller cross in the interior of it. In the four blank spaces there were four symbols of a fang, claw, horn and scale.

Looking at the various parts, it only took the pope a few seconds to realize the symbols on the medallion. It was the four parts of the legendary Sacred Dragon of Light who was said to be the mortal incarnation of their divine being. It is also said that the blood of this beast ran in the Hero bloodline, but that was never confirmed.

"This is..."

"It is the badge needed to open the chapel's hidden defenses and access the hidden inheritance of the Church of Light."

Afterwards, the old pope no longer said anything about it and simply told him to enter only when under extreme danger where the church's foundation was at stake. 

Till this day this pope had not entered into the area and everyone else who also knew about the matter were either dead or also have not entered the chapel at all. 

Because of this, the Mage clone had developed her curiosity on this foundation of the human church and decided to investigate, but she was surprised to encounter that the place was a whole lot more secure than she thought. No matter how hard she tried, the place could not be pried through with normal means. 

She then told the main body about the discovery who then checked out the location herself had found that it was indeed the case. 

Although such a situation was exceedingly rare, it was of not too much concern as through various methods like divination she was able to tell what exactly was in it by seeing the past and future of the area around the safe. 

Inside was indeed a safe that guarded the final inheritance of the Church of Light. But that was mainly just weapons and resources to regrow the church in the case that they needed to either abandon the name or start over anew. 

Within the safe were several legendary weapons that were mentioned inside the forbidden library that were thought to have been lost to time. But now we knew exactly where they had been hiding it. 

Finding this info was neat, but nothing stored there really stood out. In the future that she could see, she was unable to find her own influence so if there were any hidden secrets that had been kept hidden from the very beginning she could not find it. 

But even if that was the case, by keeping a clone watching the area she could make sure that if it ever was opened she could also sneak in to watch herself. 

Still, learning of such a matter really made her think. If the human church had a secret stash like this, then the others most certainly do as well. So she tasked Mage with the sole mission of exploring the various races of the world for their inheritances in case she could find any clues about the world. 

After easily obtaining the records from the various human kingdoms and even the Aloph Empire, she eventually turned her sights to all the other demihuman races of the world. 

Before, the focus of her studies had always been the Dwarves, but due to circumstances there was a problem with searching for their inheritance. 

The original Dwarven Empire had long collapsed. 

One of the many downsides to having a Demon King rise to start wars every so often, is that there is often collateral damage from many forces in the midst of war. One of these was the fall of the Dwarves who had once held the pedestal of the second ranked race in the world. 

Back in the age of the Elves after the Dragons had all fled from the continent, the Dwarves began to thrive in the various now uninhabited mountains that many dragons had once called their home. 

Obtaining some inheritance and amassing massive amounts of resources, they eventually created their Rune based technology which had led to their rise to a level nearing that of the Elves at the time. 

Unfortunately, perhaps due to arrogance, they had gotten involved in the Hero and Demon King conflict and fell upon the losing side and had their main city collapsed and their race blood bathed. 

It was only generations later that they could recover and try to retake their territory, but now it lay in monster infected territory and with the cut from resources as well as a break in Runic Technology made it so that they could not retake their territory. 

As the generations passed, only trace records of their existence remained in either legends and folktales or in ancient libraries like that of the one in the Demon King castle. 

Thus, Mage was forced to carpet search the entire mountain range and forest in search of these ancient ruins. 

In a long an arduous process, she eventually learned to simply keep the task in the back burner as she found other topics of interest capture her attention.

After some time, one day she was called by one of the other clones to take over her role for a bit. 

"Hey Mage, I need to check up on Felicia and so I can't manage the Forest of Elves. Can you watch over the place for me? The place has quite the magic inheritance so regular clones would not be able to keep watch over the place." Hearing this request from the Alchemist, she showed a rather disgusted and bored expression on her face. Sighing, she eventually gave out her trump card that she knew would grab the Mage's attention. 

"I heard from the Elves that the Mother Tree that they worship is the branch of a greater World Tree type of existence. Maybe you could find clues of the Elven inheritance through that connection?"

Upon hearing this, a light bulb appeared atop of the Mage's head as a bad feeling crept up the Alchemist's spine. Eventually ignoring it due to her needing to pass the duty over, she convinced herself that nothing would go crazy as she was still Alice in the end. Right?