Well, what do you think this is?

Don't know, but it looks to be a trap, judging by how there is a skeleton there crushed into that wall.

Hey, what's that book over there?

Hmm. *close shut* I'm... just gonna take this for... research purposes.

Give me that! *opens* Seriously? Research purposes?

Well, it's obvious what happened now. That skeleton is definitely male, that sword definitely belonged to one of the heroes of old. To be more specific, there were records that there was a hero who was a pervert...

So this is how he died?

Probably.

-archaeologists in one of the ruins

Water. In literature, water can have multiple meanings. It is simply fascinating how much literary meaning water can have in stories and poetry. A character that almost drowned can have significant meaning that resonates with one of the themes that rests within a book such as the concept of redemption or reincarnation.

However, outside of literature water can simply be water. Or a weapon. Water to drown entire armies while someone watches the destruction atop a hill.

A dam that was built and broken to lay waste to Cecilia's enemies as no man could stop the relentless flood.

"Go run down the few survivors. No prisoners. These are simply foreign mercenaries. No need for mercy." (Cecilia)

"Yes, your highness."

Cecilia took another glance at the raging waters as they continued on their path of destruction. On that path of destruction was the city that Descal and Cecilia ordered evacuated. A city in which there were most likely numerous soldiers intent on digging up the gold that Descal had planted. In order to anger the general, Cecilia deliberately chose gold as the bait. Descal wanted silver, but gold would make the enemy general angrier.

In simply two battles, Descal was able to decimate the rebel army's finances (due to them wasting it on the foreign mercenaries which were drowning at this moment) and manpower (burned to a crisp from the fires and more will drown when the river reaches the city). There were now only remnants of her uncle's army. It would be soon time to march to the capital to put an end to this rebellion.

Her people and soldiers were fascinated with the man called Descal. He had won the support of the commoners due to his background as a nobody who rose to a powerful position. In addition, he always made sure to send periodical check-ups on the villagers to see if they were safe from bandits during this time of upheaval. Of course, it was Cecilia who recommended this to Descal, and it was Cecilia who made sure success stories spread far and wide throughout the kingdom.

The nobles... with Descal's achievements in battle and how he would probably end a war that should have lasted for at least a couple years in a couple months... it was enough to earn him the respect and support throughout the military nobles. The others... Cecilia had a plan to deal with them. Descal was doing better at the social parties, but he still had trouble gaining information through simple conversations.

However, the important thing was that Descal was quickly rising in fame, making it easier for Cecilia to appoint him a particularly important position of power. It would also solve his issues with fate because judging from the stories and myths that surrounded this specific position, it seemed that fate was intimately tied to this position. It would also bind him to the country, and Cecilia was positive that Descal would be someone very important in creating a country that her victims could be proud of. It also helped that Descal was pretty open about what he thought and some parts of his past. Why? Cecilia had a suspicion that Descal knew that Cecilia could help him out with his problem. After all, Descal did say that his eyes could see fate to an extent.

Anyways, the problem now was simply finishing this war. Giving Descal his position and securing it came later. Now, it was time to regroup with Descal and plan out the siege for the capital.

It took a couple of days before Cecilia could go back to the sunken city. Workers were hard at work trying to clean up the dead bodies that were floating everywhere. The gold was given to the people so they could rebuild what was taken from them. If anything, the people were quite happy with the outcome. They were given adequate time to move out, they were paid for their losses, and the redirected river would bring them more prosperity as the river would now give them transportation access to a couple of other cities.

Sheela had gone missing, the enemy armies were destroyed, and Cecilia should be pleased. Cecilia was pleased minus one thing.

"Where in the world is Descal?"

"Your Highness. We still have men out there searching; however, numerous reports state that Sheela led Descal out into the woods. Once that happened, the rest of Descal's men moved out, and as Descal stated, most of the enemy soldiers began to try and dig out the gold until the flood hit, the potassium hidden in the walls exploded, resulting in a complete wipeout of most of the forces in the city. Neither Sheela and Descal has reappeared." (Felix)

"Any ideas where he could be?"

"He is an incredibly powerful man. Given time, he will surely return."

"That is quite the statement."

"Your Highness. He is insanely powerful. If he wasn't on our side, I fear that we would be on the losing side instead."

"Well, how long do you believe we should wait?"

"3 days. Descal was always fond of the number three. He would most likely appear in 3 days. If not, we should press the advantage and keep moving."

"Your recommendation has been noted. You are dismissed."

Cecilia leaned back in her chair and breathed a sigh of relief to be alone for the first time since the end of the battle. After the battle, it was being surrounded by escorts, going out to perform clean-up operations, more meetings with reinforcement officers, and more meetings with the residents of the city now under a river. Now, she was finally alone with a cup of tea that she began sipping, five stacks of paperwork, a weird shadow with red eyes... wait, what?

Cecilia spat out her tea and began coughing while glaring at the shadow.

"Sorry. You weren't alone until just now so I couldn't reveal myself." (Descal)

"What happened?" (Cecilia)

"Bitch was adamantium level while I was stuck with Mythril level. She cracked my core so I had no choice but to reveal my true form."

"Anybody saw?"

"I killed every living thing in a 400-meter radius. Couldn't risk a possibility of a dyrad seeing me. If your soldiers report this weird...desert in the middle of the forest, it was me."

"Why aren't you in your damn body?"

"The core is cracked. The core's regenerating, but until it is back to normal, my body has lost its regeneration function."

"You can't stay like that. Go away and come back until the core is all better. Which is when?"

"I could go away, but I don't feel comfortable staying away for about two days doing that... While I was in this form, I decided to test out the string that is binding me to this world... You know that promise I made to you?"

"What promise... oh that one. Yeah?"

"That promise is the only thing binding me to this world. You already have a pretty strong fate, and the fact that I made a promise with someone like you was enough to ground me into a "role" in the world."

"So.. what does that have to do with you not being able to go away."

"Since I am bound to you, well... my binds get stronger when I am near you. I used a lot of my power so the string is pretty weak right now. I don't want to risk it."

"Well, then hide like you have been doing so far."

"Can't. I was never really skillful at holding back my powers... I am sorta losing my grip... You really don't want me to release my fear aura here."

"No, we do not. So then what do we do?"

"No need to panic. I can always manually repair my homonculus body and bind myself to it again. However, I need your help. Go to my tent. I am going to try to match my steps with your shadow to blend in."

With that Descal closed his eyes as he crouched down into Cecilia's shadow blending in quite well. Deciding not to question Descal's choice for stealth, Cecilia left her tent and went to Descal's tent which was right by hers. She dismissed the guards and told them to stop anyone from getting 10 meters from the tent. Nobody is to disturb her even if it is a high priority. If it is a high priority that cannot be delayed, Felix is to deal with it.

"Alright, what now?"

"We need to sneak out into the forest a little bit. Go through that flap right there and dive into the bushes. You see that out-of-place water trail? Follow it."

Cecilia followed the trail into a small cave that Cecilia had to crawl into. It widened into a massive cavern lit by dancing magic lights, and the smell of blood permeated the room. She saw a crumpled pile of what looks to be a corpse and... Sheela who looked to be asleep.

"Alright. You see that...er... meat pile right there? Yeah, that's my body. So, I have three options right now. I can possess Sheela for a body, but there are issues that will come up. I also have the option of doing organ harvesting. It'll be gross and disgusting, but with some magic, I can use Sheela's organs and tissues to manually fix that body right there. Sheela herself is still alive so everything would be still fresh. However, I can't do it by myself so I called you here. Third, I go and possess an animal or monster for a little bit, but an incompatible body would quickly start deteriorating with aura leaking everywhere so you are going to have to explain to people why there is a... let's say bird... that is smoking, on fire, and spreading fear sitting right next to you."

"Hmmm... Can we do a possession? I can make up a story about Sheela becoming my prisoner while you stay next to me in Sheela's body while the core heals."

"Err... I am not very proficient at taking over bodies of the opposite sex."

"Excuse me?"

"Never really like taking over a female before because complications tended to rise. For one, I have never been able to fully quash the resistance. With males, it is pretty easy with a show of force and forcing submissions, but female minds tend to be more... feisty? It's probably a compatibility issue with sex. Not only that, Sheela is also an adamantium. It won't be easy. So, you will need to explain why Sheela acts like she is possessed because her mind will break through occasionally resulting in minor seizures as I fight for control. Also, I don't have lots of practice with taking over females because it feels weird being in a body that has boobs and vagina when I had a male body when I was human. Also, if I do need a female body for whatever reason, I found possessing succubuses a lot easier."

"Then, I could keep you under some sort of sedatives for 3 days. There will be no problems with the possession then."

"That could work... Although how are you going to feed the body and provide the bathroom times? You can't keep Sheela under sedatives all day for 3 straight days. I don't want Sheela to die while I am possessing her. That would result in some nasty consequences."

"Descal... I am very proficient at keeping people alive."

"Right... Can we just do the organ harvesting? It will be a lot easier, and you won't have to deal with a very pissed off, unpossessed Sheela at the end."

"Does the organ harvesting require me to cut up that body and place organs into you?"

"Yeah. You see, I need to be inside the body when I begin integrating the muscles, organs, and tissues into my body or else I run the risk of rejection within the body. Once I am inside, I will have greater control over the repairs, but then I won't be able to leave the body to move the organs over. It's complicated, and I am going to need an assistant."

"Haaa. You really don't want to do the possession do you?"

"No. I really don't want to."

"There will be more political benefits though..."

"Fuck politics."

"Fine. I owe you a lot so I won't force you with something like this."

"Thank you. Now, I am going to go inside the body. The first thing I am going to repair is going to be my chest cavity and my voice box so I can speak to you. Here is this list. I need you to cut these organs and bones from Sheela and put them in me in exactly this order."

"Okay."

"That's it? Do you actually know what all of these tissues and organs are?"

"Yes."

"Seriously?"

"Descal. I also tortured people. I was there in the torture chambers when I needed some answers."

"Oh, yeah... So... I think you can dissect pretty well right?"

"Yes. Can we just start now?"

"Sure."

Cecilia walked over to the table and began tying down Sheela with practiced hands. Once Sheela was tied down, Cecilia found the cart with all the necessary tools and moved it closer to the operative table.

"Descal? Do you have any change of clothes? Blood is going to get everywhere."

"Over there."

"Ready when you are."

"Alright. Start transferring stuff when I start twitching the body in a weird way."

"That is very descriptive."

"Trust me. The twitching will be weird. It won't be that hard."

--------------------------------------

"Can you do it any faster?" (Descal)

"Gah. Oh.. crap... Gods damn it. It. Is. Not. Easy doing this. Do you want me to screw this up even more?"

"Oh wait. Get me some more blood. I'm running low."

Cecilia picked up a bucket from the end of the table that was being slowly filled by blood that was leaking from the corpse and began slowly pouring it into Descal's open chest cavity.

"Ok. That should be good."

Cecilia watched with fascination as the blood began moving by itself to the necessary destination before she went back to work at cutting out Sheela's liver.

"You know. Shouldn't you be going back soon? Won't people get worried?"

"Felix should be able to take care of it. When I allocated my duties to Felix, it was my way of saying to Felix that I will be gone for some time. I also am carrying an alarm ward with me right now so he will know if I am in danger."

"Oh... Some signal you worked out?"

"Indeed. Also, the fact that I was last seen at your tent is probably a dead giveaway that I was going to look for you."

"Clever."

"Got it. Sorry. I screwed up with one of the cuts so the artery is a bit ugly at the end there."

"Just put it in my body. I'll see if I can't deal with it."

Once Cecilia placed the liver inside Descal's body, the veins and artery began slithering towards the liver as they began connecting to their designated spots.

"What the... How the fuck did you fuck it up this bad Cecilia?"

"I tried. You also distracted me."

"*Sigh* Just... gah... fuck it. I should have some induced pluripotent stem cells left."

"How do you know where everything goes? Even I don't know half the stuff you are doing."

"I am very old. I am immortal. I get bored. Cutting up people was a phase I went through."

"... Right. The insanity part."

"Yeah... Also the killing heroes part. Some of the strategies for killing the hero required mutilating the companions."

"I always sort of find it fascinating. From the surviving stories of the past, it looks as if you are the only villain that was able to consistently kill heroes. Any stories before you, they always have stories about the heroes rising above every challenge, every villain, and victorious at the end. However, as soon as it comes to you, it is all dark and gloomy with heroes dying left and right. If it wasn't for what that last hero did like what you told me, you would have won. You practically single handily destroyed the age of heroes."

"Yeah. I'm guessing that the countries never appointed any heroes again right?"

"Nope. First, we lost the magic of identifying heroes. Nobody knows how to find them anymore. Not anybody can be one you know. They have to be loved by fate like you said. Second, if a hero dies, it has severe political repercussions. The heroes lost their reputations of being invincible now. Third, there is a ritual for appointing heroes. Now the rituals vary, but many of the ritual methods have been lost."

"But some remain right?"

Cecilia felt that if Descal had any eyes right now, he would be looking straight at her. He knew.

"The royal family of the Ruhan Kingdom is in possession of a certain ritual. However, it is not really a hero ritual. Very similar, but not quite. It's something else."

"I'm surprised that some of the mega empires haven't done any hero summoning or some shit like that."

"Well, there are rumors that the necromancer of the second Calamity War was, in fact, a summoned "hero", but one that went rogue."

"Oh..."

"Yeah. The age of heroes is completely over. No country wants to risk it or even has access to appointing or summoning one. By the way, how did you kill heroes?"

"Fate is annoying, but not invincible. I'll tell you a story of how I killed one. You see, this one was a human hero, and he was a disgusting piece of shit. He had a harem, you see."

"Why is having a harem disgusting?"

"Well, I didn't consider him a piece of shit when I killed him, but after my time on Earth, I consider people with harems pieces of shit."

"I won't question why."

Cecilia guessed it was some sort of jealousy.

"Well, on with the story, this hero was perverted, but he never had the balls to actually fuck one of the girls that loved him."

"What? Why?"

"I don't know. He was a spineless bastard. But it was because he was a spineless bastard that my little trap worked. Because he never laid a hand on any of the girls, there was some sort of friction going on as the girls tried their best to get into his pants. I realized that I could put this to use, so one day, I set up a certain event where I possessed an incubus and made his entire harem think that he was gay. They all ran away heartbroken after slapping him a million times. I have no idea how he survived."

"Okay?"

"So, this hero became mentally distraught so I told him that if he had a certain book that he could convince everyone that he was not gay. But then he started crying about how one of the girls found his collection and burned it."

"It was you that burned it."

"Well, I had a hand, but it wasn't..."

*Splat*

"Did you drop something?" (Descal)

"Errr... Don't get mad. It looks fine."

"What did you drop?"

"The spleen."

"For fuck's sake, it's all contaminated now right?"

"Yeah, it's covered in dirt."

"Do we have any extra bone marrow? I'm going to need to make some more stem cells."

"Well, one of your femurs wasn't broken so I could break Sheela's femur."

"Yeah do that. Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, the book. So I told him the location of a certain book in a building somewhere. So, he went there, and there it was. Now, I made sure that this book was filled with pictures of all his fetishes and what his dream girl would look like. So, he became like completely engrossed in the book and just read it there on the spot. There were even tissues for him there."

"So what. The book had a curse so he f*pped to death?"

"No. Curses don't work on heroes. Fate makes sure of that."

"So, then what?"

"Picking up the book activates a trap. However, this trap is so freaking easy to escape. Even a baby can escape it. However, the hero was so focused on the book that he didn't even notice it. The hero knew that if he brought the book back, the girls would probably burn it on the spot so he read it there. None of his companions could save him because they were all in their rooms crying their eyes out, and the hero's instincts couldn't be activated by fate because well the trap was that easy to avoid. In fact, it was so stupid of a death that fate registered the death as a suicide. Fate can't protect heroes from suicide if the hero is alone. So yeah, trap activates, the hero was alone, fate couldn't stop it, the hero is now dead."

"Wow."

"Yeah. Heroes all have a certain way you have to kill them with. Any other way, fate can interfere. You set up an ambush. It fails because fate loves using the hero's instincts or sixth sense to alert them to every single fuckin life-threatening attack. You overpower the hero and about to kill him or her. Some fuckin way, the hero's companions arrive just in time and saves them or some sort of freak accidents comes up allowing the hero to escape. Thankfully, all hero's have some weaknesses if you are patient enough to spy on them. It also helped that I could easily spot heroes as well."

"It doesn't sound that hard killing heroes when you put it that way..."

"That's because I had an unfair advantage. Villains are usually bound to fate as well so fate could always... whats the word... manipulate them in certain ways? I was outside fate's control, and I was really strong. I was practically omnipotent in a way. Heroes couldn't kill me. They couldn't seal me as well. Usually, I could stop a hero's "special" move with a hand so..."

"Were you the strongest in your time?"

"No. Fate was. I wanted to kill Fate, but it endured. Maybe, it's not a bad thing. In its way, it does protect this world. It is a jerk, but it tries its best."

"You talk as if Fate was alive."

"It's not alive in your definition. It is sentient if you look at it from certain perspectives. It is everything you want it to be."

"Alright. I just have the eyes left. It's the last organ."

"Mmmhmm. Thank you. How does my face look now? It fits the white hair?"

"You know. You go from purple hair to blood-red hair to now white hair. This is going to be fun to explain."

"Well, it is better than the rumor that I am your long-lost relative or something like that."

"Which is still circulating. If anything, people are going to get more suspicious now."

"Lovely. Help me with the corpse. Sheela had like an unhealthy obsession with killing you. I don't want to deal with an undead. What did you do to her anyway?"

"Killed her entire family?"

"I know that much. I have my eyes you know. But why?"

"They weren't guilty of anything. They were innocent. However, they were conveniently placed in a way that I could take down a lot of my enemies if I dragged them into the fight. It seems that the assassins missed one."

"Yeah. You really should be glad that the hero rituals are lost. Sheela was definitely someone who could have been one."

After placing everything in a giant pile in the center, Descal began placing explosives all over the room. With a flick of his wrist, the fuse was set aflame.