Updated.

Nothing big, just small minors changes.

Added a few lines of dialogue and took care of some mistakes.

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The history of religion in the 21th century is quite boring up to the demon invasions.

In countries all around the world with high and widespread scientific knowledge the amount of believers slowly sank. In the first five years of the demons invasion the amount of believers rose sharply. We can see this obviously from the publicly increased membership from different churches and religions all around the world. At the same time politicians and public servants used an increased amount of religious metaphors and symbols in their speeches, as we can see in Terry Woodlands research. In many states something like a ministry for religion was created over night and even got an average of 5% of the annual budget. The subject religion was brought back to school, even though there never was a curriculum. Even street interviews show an increase in religion and even superstition.

[…]

In these years the parliament in the UK not only decreed the still active Demon Defence Act, but also many laws against sex before marriage, women disobeying men, blasphemy, homosexuals, Atheists, witches,[…] and other not religious people.

[…]

So many laws were quite literally taken out of the bible, the witchhammer and many other religiously aligned works.

So these first five years really seem like the final and everlasting rise of religion.

The turning point slowly came when fewer and fewer of our angelic saviours came to help us.

-Jeremy Luther, Cambridge University Press, 2035, A Overview over religion in Britain in the 21th Century, chapter 5. p.124-133

---Time: 2054.03.02, 13:24---

---Location: Europe, England, London, HQ, ADCF, Underground Laboratories---

---Population estimated: 12.233.000---

I wake up.

There is a cold feeling on my back, I’m fixated, and a white bright light is blinding me.

Must be the Underground labs.

I feel like I’m an interesting subject for a mad scientist who will come back any time now and start operating on me.

After a few minutes I hear the typical sound of a door sliding open and close again.

Hm, maybe the mad scientist is back?

A terrible screeching sound of metal against concrete follows.

The sound finally stops and I hear somebody sitting down.

Next the metal table, or whatever else it is I’m lying on, moves a bit up and I can see my surroundings.

Doctor Stein looks me in the eyes.

Well, I guess mad scientist wasn’t too far off.

“How long have I been unconscious?”

He looks at a piece of paper in his hands.

“46 days.”

Silence.

“What exactly happened.”

“A good question. We are not sure, but the report was quite interesting. The S-Rank Squad just reported that they saw…something…interesting, well and your disobedience of course. Be happy they didn’t execute you on the spot especially after what they saw. You should thank your Squadmates from stopping them.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“Don’t you remember anything Ragnar?”

Silence.

“There was sudden eruption of power for a short time.”

“So our new theory was right.”

“Your new theory would be?”

Stein sighed heavily.

“You slowly transform into a Demon Lord yourself.”

Silence.

“Is that why I’m strapped down here?”

Stein chuckles shortly before he answers.

“Well, that is one of 3 reasons. Another is your disobedience and the third is to spare us troubles after we tell you the possible solution to your current problem.”

Silence again. I’m waiting for Doctor Stein to continue.

“Promise me you will not snap at the new treatment we want to try?”

That sounds serious. There is only one reason I would snap and that is Alice.

I remain silent, not giving him an answer.

Seconds stretch to minutes.

After 10 minutes, what felt like an eternity, Stein continues.

“We want to link you with a new Controller.”

Silence. It takes a full 10 seconds before it sinks in.

I yank my head up, the metal fixation starts to screech under the sudden pressure.

“What!?”

“We want to-“

“Forget it!”

“You will die without a n-“

“I know.”

“Not in 10 years, like we told you.”

“I realized you lied to me. So how much do I really have left? 6 months? 2 years?”

“Now? Maybe 18 months. The way you are fighting, behaving and decline some of our experimental treatment you seem to strive for death.”

Silence again.

“Do you want to know why we want to link you again?”

No answer; I know he will just continue.

“Back when the DCF recruited you, and all the others for project Titan, they looked for GMP whose entire being was opposed to destruction and chaos. They searched for individuals whose personality would mark them as friendly, even unable to hurt a fly, so to say, and were possessed by a desire for order. Order in their daily lives, in their routines, their desks, shelves everywhere.

A rare trait for children of this age. We recruited 100 children from all over the world to be GMP. Most of them died on the way as you know and only 10 pairs made it to the linking ritual.

And of those 10 all died, except for you.

The old theory was: to control and supress a huge desire for destruction and chaos you need an equally huge desire for peace and order. But after the linking ceremony it was obvious for everyone that this wouldn’t work.

These desires were just too opposing and erased each other. Try to mix water and fire, it has the same result. So the partner with the weaker willpower just disappeared in a bloody mess and the other turned into a mindless, drooling….thing.

The hope was that we would be able to increase the boost of a normal Complete up to 4 instead of the 2, and maybe that of the S-Rank Squads or higher up to 12.

I can assure you we tested a few other variants with the old theory, but they weren’t successful either.

The old theory was subsequently replaced by a new theory: To control insanity you need insanity.

Fight fire with fire, as the saying goes.

Inside the scientific community some say this would create psychopathic killers, insane monsters or at least humans without a bit of sympathy.

How would these beings react towards normal humans?

There still is big concern regarding this question.

Well anyway, Armour and Controller should no longer treat their power as an unwelcome outside force to be cautious about, instead they should treat it like a part of themselves.

The whole new theory suggested a new approach to create Controllers and Armours. So far we have implanted demonic genes in the Armour and angelic genes in the Controllers, two opposing forces. We thought they would complement each other, but that doesn’t seem to be the fact. In fact they seem to cancel out most of the power, due to the mental bond which is created during the linking ceremony. We estimate that roughly half of the power is just not accessible in this condition.

With the new theory we no longer insert demonic genes in the Armour and angelic genes in the Controller. No, now the pair either has demonic genes or angelic genes implanted. This should make it possible to access the full power potential.

If it is successful the DCF will be divided in two Orders, the angelic and the demonic one.

So project Fire started, as it is called.

At the moment from 500 demonic Neophytes there are 337 left, quite the success compared to Titan.

To put it short your new Controller will be from this group.

She is already singled out for the linking ritual with you.

Don’t worry, her partner died during the training. We wouldn’t want to force her to leave her old partner.”

“But you can’t just link an Armour with another Controller if his current Controller is still alive.”

“We know that as well, but your case is a bit different. Your Controller is not really alive, a part of her soul is still in your soul, but it is asleep and fading away slowly. So she is already death. We will need to erase the rest of her mind before we can link you with another Controller.”

Silence. I won’t let that happen. I would kill myself before that happens. The next battle will be my last, before they try anything funny.

“Knowing you, we already anticipated that you are not going to cooperate. I can guess what you are planning, but that will not happen. In your current state you will no longer take part in any military operations. You are too severely wounded. Take a look, it is actually surprising that you survived at all.”

The metal restrains on my head disappear and I look down at me.

From my left shoulder to my belly button there is a huge scare.

I had pushed the pain to the back of my mind, but it was actually quite intense.

The pain makes me feel happy. Quite a fucked up mind I have.

It was over 1 month since I received this wound and it was still this painful.

Large stitches were visible along the whole left side of my body. It looks like the mad Scientist from earlier tried with utmost effort to hold the two parts of my body together.

A look at Doctor Stein reveals the perpetrator of this idea. He looks quite happy with the result.

I try to open and close my left hand but nothing happens. Well, my fingers twitch a bit and that’s it. I doubt I would even be able to lift my left arm.

Swinging around my gigantic claymore doesn’t seem to an option any longer.

I guess I need to learn how to fight with just one arm, while the other is swinging around.

Maybe I can use my left arm like a club?

No, no, no that is a really dumb idea. Sometime I wonder how the hell my brain comes up with these ideas.

“So how did you treat me? We both know normal medical treatment doesn’t do shit against demonic wounds.”

“Hm, let’s call it a new experimental treatment.”

“Blood?”

“Yes,b-“

“ARE YOU INSANE?”

I look at him in disbelief and anger. While blood might heal you, in the long run it would increase your bloodlust even more than Hellsteelblades. And that was the reason I so far avoided drinking blood. The only exception to this rule is the blood of your linked partner.

“We didn’t have much of a choice. You were dying on us, even though we fed you with hundreds of Hellsteelblades from the battle.

We still have high expectations in you. I mean which second-year Highschool student can stand his ground against a medium class Demon Lord?”

“I couldn’t kill him though, so it is meaningless.”

“No, you bought enough time for the S-Rank Squad to arrive and hill him in a coordinated counterattack. You know that only SSS-Rank Squad Members can kill a medium class Demon Lord all alone, right?”

Silence.

My thoughts returned to the way of creating Armour and Controller.

A question burned inside me.

“Say Doctor Stein: So far we have always combined angelic and demonic forces to keep each other in check. Wouldn’t the Completes with pure demonic genes just give in to their bloodlust and desires, especially in the long run? Wouldn’t I just succumb to my bloodlust the moment the last bit of Alice’s mind is wiped from mine?

And wouldn’t the Completes with pure angelic genes not turn arrogant and start to refuse to fight?

I mean isn’t the whole point of having pairs with mixed genes to stabilize the failures and shortcomings of both sides?”

I look into his eyes and wait for his answer.

His face has a troubled expression.

“That we don’t know. We have no data on this and we will probably only be able to tell after a few years. Maybe even after 10 or more. It’s not like we will stop creating the pairs according to our old theory.”

A long silence again.

“Ragnar, you are going to leave the HQ-branch until the linking ceremony. We are opening up another Academy, our capacities of the existing ones are slowly getting close to the maximum. You will teach the first and second-years of the Middle school. You will oversee the P.E. and the Basic Demonology courses. Basic and easy stuff you excel in.”

I was surprised.

They are sending me far away? How careless can they be? There will definitely be chance there for me to….

Professor Stein smiles at me.

Argh, he already knows, so how are they going to prevent me from joining battle?

The answer presents itself when the door opens.

Doctor Orahara comes in pushing a trolley forward.

Directly behind her is a girl and a guy around my age.

The girl is maybe around 1,46m, has white hair, blue eyes with specks of silver in them and marble white skin.

The guy is roughly 1,73m tall, has black hair, yellow eyes and his skin has a dark reddish colour.

I have never seen such strong genetic traits.