Sophia Demiurge

Note: I am stockpiling chapters so the release will be delayed, also school has restarted so I am writing outlines like mad so that even if I don't write chapters, the story will not be left behind.

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The eyes of Noir widened in shock as his heartbeat started to rise, scenario and some other things that Roselle might have sacrificed for the sake of Sophia's helping hand emerged from the depths of his brain, but of of course, as an experienced assassin and spy that was designated and was never replaced from his young age as the captain of the spy network of his nation, he is ever so calm outside as if he have already expected such summons.

"I shall go immediately."

The spy nodded and melded back into the darkness, Noir frowned upon the messenger's disappearance, he didn't have a very good feeling about this summons from his brother, and as a natural coward, he wanted not to come if not for the fact that disregarding the order of the King will not turn out well for him. 

_I hope it's nothing serious._

That is the only thing the prince of Gjallarhorn can hope for as he skipped back to the royal palace.

However, the moment Noir entered the throne room, he was met with a darkness not even seen by the Queendom of Death, Kamatayan, no light was lit up and seemingly no torch that will be lit up from this moment on will ever illuminate the darkness emitted inside the supposed to be brightly lit room.

_... Fuck..._

The prince cannot help but curse inwardly, this scene is very familiar to him and to his brother King Roselle as the two of them are quite fond of darkness, for one, Noir's whole skill set is centered on utilizing darkness while Roselle looks cool with her eyes looking like balls of plasma as it illuminates the moonless night, in short Roselle loves darkness because it makes him look more handsome and as stupid and shallow the reason might be, it is still a fact in Gjallarhorn that if their monarch's eyes dazzled in the middle of the night, thunderbolts will soon struck an unfortunate soul.

Noir's breath started to be ragged and his once calm heart rate started to hasten once more, his adam's apple moved as Roselle, who have eyes that look like balls of terrifying electricity moved his face to stare at this brother of his, after which, as if animated by a mind of their own, the door to the throne room was closed, causing only the "glow" in the eyes of the King to be the source of illumination.

After this long bout of silence, Roselle finally spoke.

"The moment the Kingdom discovered  the covert infiltration of the forces of Valentine into the Capital City Heimdall, the prince of Gjallarhorn colluded with the devil to throw a wrench on the helping hand being given by Queen Sophia I towards Gjallarhorn, not only that, he also desires to cuckold his own King and brother, not knowing that the woman he is lusting for, the queen has long been dead and was replaced by Hebi Tsukaiza herself."

"Such crimes are confirmed by the combined efforts of the King of Gjallarhorn and the Queen of Kamatayan and were branded as sedition, punishable by death."

The moment the King said all of those words in one breath, the whole throne room started to shake as if it was experiencing a violent storm, and it was, bolts of lightning banged with walls, pillars, and the throne itself, these, alongside all the words spouted by his King brother made Noir buckle down to his knees, finally, he was snapped out of the hypnotism he has unknowingly entered and finally learned of all the flaws his circle of thought has all this while, he was not acting because he wanted to, he was not acting for something right and was being controlled, after all, who in their right mind will want to be hostile against a hero with a mother in law that is also hero, it is pure stupidity. Noir immediately opened his mouth as he tried to explain his side, however, his brother did not bother to talk to him further, Roselle raised his finger that was emitting blue lightning of high voltages and pointed it at Noir.

"Explain yourself to the God of Death."

_______

The once so harmonious brothers of the Royal Family of Gjallarhorn were immediately strewn in a struggle as the two bluebloods that mastered darkness pitted themselves against each other, however, in the distant (not really) land of the Duchy of Urduja, the one lady that seats in the throne of power is not least bit affected about such a fight, or the whole thing about Hebi at all. Urduja is currently sitting on her throne, looking at her armrest, she seems to be rather sleepy and has an annoyed expression as she keeps staring at the palm-sized spider casually sitting on it, even though it is a spider, its face and numerous eyes shifted around.

"So you woke me up because your master cannot be disturbed at the moment thinking that I know one shit about biology?"

The spider, one of Arachne's children flinched as it backed down bit by bit, after all, this was the only communication tool she had right now, so it would have been a bummer if she lost it because she accidentally angered an otherwise very calm person.

"I- I mean, if you are old enough, you should have a period that you were burned out of fighting and want to cultivate your knowledge right? Well, maybe you have..."

Before Arachne's child can continue, Urduja interrupts her.

"The only thing I know about biology is that people will die if you throw suns at them, so your life-risking voyage towards my bed is fruitless."

Arachne was depressed, she was already in the last stages of her first attempt to breathe back life into the queen of pink bats and was just about to ask her master to help her, but right now, Sophia was about to be embroiled in a fight with Hebi, so she cannot just disturb her and can just seek alternatives, but the few people he knew that will fulfill her standards will go against her affiliation, so she just has to ask Urduja, which also failed.

"I should not expect that the person who barged in a god-protected territory to be so smart... I'm sorry."

Dejected, Arachne mumbled, causing veins to appear on the forehead of Urduja, she grabbed the spider in her armrest and then squeezed its whole body, threatening to squash it to death, Urduja then asked.

"What was that?"

Arachne's child started to flail hard as the voice of its mother was heard screaming as if she was being chopped one by one, well being squashed with one hand is not any better.

"ARRRGH! SORRY OKAY!? SORRY!!"

Arachne did not listen to the pleads of the pitiful lady in the shape of a spider, of course as her "personality" cannot permit her to hurt ladies, especially of Arachne's caliber of beauty and strength, Urduja let the spider off, the spider immediately leaped back to the armrest, limping.

"Phew..."

As the spider sighed, Urduja stared at it for another while before she finally asked.

"Why are you not helping Sophia?"

The child of Arachne that was checking on itself suddenly looked at the woman in front of it, Arachne's voice then resounded.

"Well, master purposely did not seek my services, you see she seems to be in her way to retrieve something important for Kamatayan as well as fishing out benefits for the future, so she is delaying things."

Urduja nodded in this, but she still found the matter rather amusing, you see, in the hero of the sun's first years as a hero, she was righteous and uptight and would never do such wretched things like covertly buying time to exaggerate her helping hand, but Sophia, a person technically not even a year old is doing something like that as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Though it was too early to judge things, Urduja was sure as hell that Sophia was going places.

Urduja sighed as she decided to just give up falling back to sleep, she once again asked.

"Do you have spiders over there?"

At that question, the spider nodded rather casually.

"How's Eleanor doing?"

Urduja has nothing better to do, after all, the king chose an outsider to help him fend away another outsider, so she coped up in her place, it's not like she's having sex every hour every minute with her wives, so she decided to ask her daughter's status.

The spider immediately answered.

"Wait a minute... Oh no..."

Urduja was suddenly alarmed, her casual position suddenly turned upright.

"What happened!?"

.

.

.

"Someone made your daughter angry..."

Urduja fell silent for a full minute, and her expression once again gradually returned to normal.

"'Oh no' is a very ample reaction... I hope for the peaceful passing of that person's spirit."

______

The three subordinates of Urduja heeded the order of their captain with no bars and said despite the unfair punishment they would receive after the mission, all of them, except Flou for reasons his counterparts are not aware of went in different directions, intending to delude the spies and subordinates of Sophia protecting the palace and their long coveted crown chambers. Having such a thought, Vice Captain Liyab silently walked towards the main door.

_Why is the operation at night? I would be instantly discovered if I ever flashed through the streets..._

In his heart, he grumbled, as someone who is an expert in using fire, he was considered the most eye-catching and thus the most useless spy in Valentine, though he is by no means weak, this always will make him have some sort of animosity towards his master, though such animosity will be drowned by all the things that Hebi did for him, so he persevered no matter how shameful such title is.

As he was shuttling rather casually, all of his movement suddenly went to an abrupt halt, Liyab stopped in front of a woman who had a shapely body and somewhat emotionless eyes, normally, Liyab would have ignored the existence of such a person (well, a few scans of the perfect slopes of her body before retracting his gaze), however, the fact that someone appeared in front of him while he is doing his best to be successful on his infiltration of the palace only means one thing.

_She's watching me from the start!_

Liyab immediately put up his huard and backed a few steps away, getting ready to intercept any attack from the lady, of course, he did not intend to abandon his mission unless otherwise he was left with no choice. To his surprise, however, the lady did not attack but just bowed a little.

"Greetings, I am Eleanor."

Liyab immediately became confused, it was as if the lady in front of him was not someone he met in the streets but rather, a mixer and she had shown interest to her thus personally revealing her name, but of course as the experienced soldier that he is, he did not dare relax.

"How... how did you find me?"

Such questions are what baffles him the most, after all, even though Liyab is not proficient in concealment, that doesn't mean that he did not train to his limits so that he can reach the peak of what his limited self can achieve, finding him for other normal people is still impossible.

"I did not find you, I waited for you to be here, it is a very common strategy for spies to do a blanket search in a palace by dividing their forces, so I left different clones in different places and placed my main body in the main gate of the palace, how fortunate I am that someone choose to the easiest route. By the way, what's your name?"

Liyab was once again shocked as he heard the explanation, the question as to why there and how their operation was unveiled so easily by an unknown powerful lady that named herself Eleanor, he also did not dare to answer the latest question of the lady, afraid that it would trigger the abilities of the mysterious woman.

_In any case, it seems like the whole palace is already alerted of our arrival..._

Seeing that he had no time to write a letter nor ask the million-dollar question of how the Lady called Eleanor learned of the exact time of their operation, Liyab decisively decided to cause as much commotion as possible to alert his counterparts that they had been discovered, and of course, the thing he thought of is to escape, after all, they have to regroup and reassess the situation to be able to create a contingency plan, this is a flaw they have in this expedition because they are the contingency plan. After all, Hebi is on her way to save Flou from his predicament.

Upon seeing that the man did not have any intention to answer, Eleanor smiled as her expressionless eyes continued to stare at the man in front of her right in the eye as if she was piercing through his soul, this caused Liyab to break into cold sweat as the intentions of escaping in his heart burned brighter than what does he want to admit.

"Are you shy because a lady's asking you? Well that's fine, but you have to answer this question"

The sitting Eleanor coiled her hips together and then continued.

"How did you kill Khearshebelle Gjallarhorn? As I can see it, because there is Hebi's existence, no matter how strong the queen is, it will be impossible to survive, but I am just curious about how she screamed, how does she loo-!?"

Liyab does not let Eleanor finish her sentence and ignited a random tree 50 meters away from the road directed to the main gate of the palace, and even though Liyab intends to not escape from a revenge attempt, Eleanor is already on the edge of a thin line between her outstanding rationality and the boiling rage she is feeling, the moment Liyab 'flashed' away to the tree, a giant hammer with sand as a base and spiked with rocks appeared above his head, the shadow created by the hammer was obscured by the extinguished flames as it swung down the devil of fire.

"Gwa!?"

A scream of pain and shock was heard in the mouth of Liyab, if not for his devil constitution, his broken spine and ribs that punctured his lungs would have one hit ko'd him, nonetheless, he coughed a mouthful of blood and upon coughing them, he noticed something strange, the blood that spewed out was accompanied by clumps of brownish red solid grain-like substance, it piled into the front of him to build a small anthill-like lump, as Liyab shuddered in horror, he heard a voice.

"That is what I don't like with people, you were so emotionless and so ruthless when you killed my friend, treating it as a matter of course, not even thinking of the circumstances, but when those consequences came knocking on your door, you started to look like you were innocent children being unfairly treated by the avenger in front of you."

Eleanor shook her head as she slowly walked towards the stupefied Liyab. Liyab looked in horror as the once charming lady in his eyes became a demon who had planted sand inside his lungs and perhaps in all his external extremities.

At this moment, Liyab will be the first witness of the famous quote in the future

"The strongest shall be respected, the tyrant will be feared but the kindest should never be angered."