Chapter 234: A Daughter’s Counterattack Against Her Father
A small squad of elves went into the Underdark, and the remaining people retreated quickly. Roger and Shana naturally had to leave as well.
They didn’t want to encounter Yavanna, who was rushing over to provide support.
While they could defeat her, it would bring more trouble.
Roger no longer maintained his disguise as Shen Lan. He believed that larger-scale battles would come in the future, and testing the effects of the Devouring Card was enough; he wasn’t in a hurry to grow fat from this war.
The battlefield area had already been set up with spatial anchors that prohibited teleportation. They had ways to break through forcefully, but that would inevitably draw attention and create uncontrollable variables.
So, they simply left on horseback, just as they had arrived.
Roger rode in front, with Shana behind him. They exchanged a few words occasionally, the atmosphere relatively calm.
Because of this, Roger didn’t notice Shana’s flickering gaze. The Little Angel had been calculating the distance between them and the Leaf of Yggdrasil, and finally, she made up her mind.
“Hey!” she called out.
“Yes, Little Auntie, what are your orders?” Roger turned his head without any defense, only to feel a flash of light before him, his body suddenly losing control.
He was like a character in a wuxia novel who had been acupunctured, remaining in the pose of turning his head while riding his horse.
“Damn it, it’s the Virtual God of Law! The loaded ability has been taken over by Shana, who is now controlling my body, leading to this situation!”
Roger was no longer the novice he once was. He had been in this world for nearly seven years, and although he hadn’t experienced many battles, he had experienced enough not to be incompetent. He immediately realized he was being controlled by Shana.
But he couldn’t fathom Shana’s reason for suddenly attacking him. She had been happily conducting research in the empire, and she certainly wouldn’t return to the side of the gods. She had even been angry just now about the Heavenly War Beast and similar tactics.
Shana’s face was pale with anxiety. She observed Roger for a long time and then, with lingering unease, performed a series of checks before finally breathing a sigh of relief, knowing that Roger had no way to call for help from the Empress of Eternal Night.
Only then did she show a proud smile: “Can’t figure it out, can you? It’s precisely when you can’t figure it out that I have to act. That’s when I have the greatest chance of success.”
“You’re not that spiteful, are you?”
“I’m super spiteful, didn’t you know?”
“But you won’t gain anything from this, will you?”
“As long as I’m happy, that’s all that matters.”
Roger was suddenly rendered speechless. If Shana had truly been plotting against him since she began the Virtual God of Law project, then it was truly impossible to guard against.
Who would have thought that after undertaking the massive project of divine energy conversion and making great contributions to the empire, her roundabout plan was to control him until he was defenseless one particular night?
They say there’s a strategy called “saving the country through indirect means,” but Shana’s indirect path was too indirect, so indirect it was practically celestial. She bought an emperor crab just to make soy sauce!
But Shana continued to be happy, stopped both horses, tied them to a tree, and then carried Roger into the depths of the forest.
“Hey, can you at least save some face? You had a spatial portal before, and now you’re changing to the woods?”
“What, are you afraid His Majesty will find out and you’ll lose your life?”
“Don’t talk nonsense, how could I be afraid of her?”
“Then it’s settled.”
Shana began to undress Roger. Roger couldn’t move at all, like a wronged little bride. He could only ask, “Why all of a sudden, now?”
“My heart has been shaken, and I need an outlet for it.”
“Come on, you’re a Six-winged Angel. What’s the big deal with a few war beasts? Haven’t you done this kind of thing before?”
“She is she, and I am I. I don’t have those memories… Isn’t it normal to be emotionally hurt?”
“Actually, there are many excellent service providers on Yggdrasil’s Leaf. You can experience all sorts of romantic encounters…”
Shana looked at him babbling playfully, squinting slightly with a hint of grievance: “A man who doesn’t understand romance, you wouldn’t get it…”
She embraced Roger and kissed him into silence.
I just had a very, very bad premonition.
It wasn’t just because of the Seven Gods’ power and lack of bottom line, but also because of the look in your eyes when you gazed at the stars.
In Shana’s eyes, the man before her was no longer just trying to survive by any means necessary, as he always claimed.
Unknowingly, he had been infected by Little Ao and was taking on responsibilities that had nothing to do with him.
People like that were troublesome. They looked handsome and heroic on the outside, but when a major crisis arrived, they would also be the first to sacrifice themselves.
Moreover, the closer it got to the divine war, the higher the probability that Nalyniel would discover the secret here, making her own safety a major concern.
Thus, something that had become an obsession the moment she first arrived in this world, she impatiently began to act.
As for Roger…
Shana squinted disdainfully: “Hmph, you reacted a few minutes faster than I expected.”
“Who told you to use that face to seduce me?”
Roger looked at the rebellious and contemptuous Shana. On one hand, he felt this posture was humiliating, yet on the other, it felt as if a dream in his heart had been fulfilled.
At the same time, he wanted to struggle a bit more. If the Little Angel was bothered by the fact that she could only take this opportunity by wearing someone else’s face, then he could escape.
“Tsk, are you deliberately trying to gross me out? Unfortunately, this won’t disgust me; it makes me more excited!”
Her finger traced Roger’s chest, and then she resolutely sat down.
With a forceful motion, as if venting her anger, she ended up frowning and letting out a muffled groan.
…
…
Far away in the void, the Life Ritual.
This massive wizard tower, complete with a breeding base, now looked like a small ornament floating next to a colossal, irregularly shaped object twelve kilometers long.
“Divine Spawn.”
This was something discovered by a System Child adventurer. An unknown entity experimented on an ancient divine corpse, and from it, this creature was born.
Whether its creator was devoured or abandoned this uncontrollable experiment, it was cast adrift in the depths of the Astral Plane, drifting endlessly. How many years it had existed before being discovered, no one knew.
The System Child didn’t know how to use it, nor could they kill it. Seeing the high points it could earn, they sold it to the System as scrap.
The System, which appeared omnipotent to outsiders, didn’t know how to handle the Divine Spawn either. It was Lydia who used her private funds to slow it down and continue the experiments.
Only when she was ordered to expand the fleet did she have enough resources to devote to cultivating the Divine Spawn further, allowing its body to grow several times larger, becoming what it was now.
This was the base for the strategic floating fortress she designed. Its massive size was for embedding various weapons and transport modules, as well as for repairing its exterior.
The Empress of Eternal Night’s requirement was to invest without regard for cost; the empire could afford it, but the item had to be sufficiently good-looking in addition to meeting performance standards.
She didn’t want to command a sanity-draining warship to attack another world, even if their empire truly were the villains!
The initial modifications to the Divine Spawn were complete. Lydia notified the Empress of Eternal Night to observe, as it was time for a critical step in the construction of the Divine Spawn battleship –
Injecting the soul!
Of course, this was a poetic way of putting it. The real procedure was to implant General Daor, the former Fourth Prince of the Sea Kingdom, now the Base Coral and a humanoid war machine, into the Divine Spawn, making him the core of this battleship.
After this step, the Divine Spawn would become a truly living, self-repairing strategic fortress with destructive divinity and infectious power.
“Your speed touches me,” the Empress of Eternal Night said excitedly. Invited by Lydia to witness this milestone moment and the launch of the empire’s second strategic floating fortress, which would soon form the core of a new fleet, she was truly happy.
“It is my honor, Your Majesty.”
“When will the second Divine Spawn be ready?”
“That will take much longer. Our materials… are still in cultivation.”
Lydia complained to the Empress of Eternal Night.
For Frankenstein’s mechanical titan warships, the complexity lay in the production and processing. Thus, building one took years.
Her warships, on the other hand, involved biological modifications, which could be much faster but required very high-quality materials.
It needed a sufficiently powerful Divine Spawn and a soul as resilient as Daor’s, with good synchronization.
In a sense, it was indeed like a decisive weapon from Evangelion. Without the soul injection, even Lydia couldn’t fully control a Divine Spawn.
However, existences like Daor were scarce and irreplaceable “pilots.”
Even if this pilot would forever be integrated with the warship and never separated again.
For the planned second Divine Spawn battleship, Lydia had found a suitable Divine Spawn, but she hadn’t found a pilot to control it yet.
Daor’s experience was unrepeatable.
He was a general with absolute fighting will who steadfastly defended Black Shark Fortress.
Then, by chance, he was tainted by divine power. At the moment of certain death, he chose to merge with the Base Coral, voluntarily undertaking this risky endeavor.
Afterward, although he lost his memories, he continuously honed himself and evolved on the battlefield, gradually recalling his self, still willing to continue fighting for the empire and appearing on the most dangerous battlefields.
Although his body lacked humanity, and he was continuously breeding stranger and stranger Biochemical Fish, he later moved from the sea to the Astral Plane battlefield, acting as a swarm core, constantly enduring the trials of war.
Now, becoming the core of the Divine Spawn battleship, he too was willing, with the purest conviction, to bear the Divine Spawn’s resentment towards living beings and to pilot the empire’s new generation of national heavy weaponry!
Such an existence, such an experience, were filled with unrepeatable characteristics. Even Lydia, a master of modding, hadn’t found another soul that could pilot a Divine Spawn like Daor.
“Perhaps, you can find the material you need among the System Children,” the Empress of Eternal Night said thoughtfully, considering Lydia’s current bottleneck.
Lydia secretly made a face.
She certainly could find resilient enough materials among the System Children, but the Empress of Eternal Night protected them like her own children and wouldn’t let her touch them carelessly.
Now, presenting the two conflicting points directly was her way of hoping the Empress would grant a small concession to speed up her project.
Otherwise, if she had to select and train them herself, it would truly take too long.
While they were talking, Daor was already prepared, ready to face the trials of the Divine Spawn in the best condition.
“Your Majesty, Director, I am ready to begin at any time.” Daor’s voice was now elegant, somewhat androgynous.
He possessed a humanoid body with an equally handsome, somewhat androgynous face, standing on a black coral reef.
“Thank you for your hard work, General Daor.”
“It is my honor.”
“Commence the operation!”
“Yes, Your Majesty!”
With simple dialogue, the Empress of Eternal Night perceived him as an incredibly pure soldier with his own pride and convictions.
Lydia began the operation she had rehearsed countless times:
She smashed those black coral reefs, revealing countless red blood vessels and white nerves that formed Daor’s legs.
A large, wriggling, and healing hole was drilled into the brow of the Divine Spawn’s massive corpse. A life-filled green liquid was injected, and then Daor was submerged.
This process was immensely painful, but Daor’s expression only showed a slight clench of his jaw, without any superfluous emotion.
Through repeated evolutions and modifications, he had long become accustomed to such pain.
As long as it was for victory!
This was his new conviction.
Soon, he was deep inside what should have been the Divine Spawn’s brain, though it didn’t actually have a brain.
Resentment and obsession penetrated Daor’s sea of consciousness, urging him to kill all living beings, for they had created his eternal suffering. Undying, he endured seemingly endless pain and loneliness…
“It is divine power that gives birth to these sufferings. I should destroy all beings with divine power. Challenging the strong is truly interesting, isn’t it?”
Daor roared in his heart.
“Synchronization rate rising, fusion progressing smoothly. He has controlled 23% of the Divine Spawn’s power, 35%…”
Lydia watched the backend data fluctuations with surprise. Daor was mastering the Divine Spawn several times faster than she had anticipated.
The Empress of Eternal Night looked at the records, which contained analyses of Daor’s thoughts, and was deeply impressed: “Such intense fighting spirit, truly admirable.”
Approximately three hours later, Daor’s synchronization rate with the Divine Spawn reached 60%. He could now control the Divine Spawn’s polluting abilities. The mages of the Life Ritual began to station themselves inside the Divine Spawn, beginning the final armament of the fortress.
And most importantly, the Empress’s long-awaited exterior modifications; even a giant blob of flesh would eventually become handsome!
Looking at the Divine Spawn battleship, which was beginning to take shape, the Empress of Eternal Night recorded its silhouette and sent it to Roger: “Look, the empire’s new heart.”
Roger did not reply, but the Empress was unfazed. She assumed the elves’ front line had suddenly encountered some issue, and they were busy.
She began to ponder the issue of the second Divine Spawn’s “pilot” with Lydia.
Daor’s performance, and the technical prowess displayed by Lydia, convinced her that even serving the Divine Spawn battleship would not turn a warrior into a slave.
“I permit you to intervene in the selection process, but there must be no misdirection or deception. Only those who willingly continue to challenge the gods after being gravely wounded and beyond recovery can pilot the empire’s fortress,” the Empress of Eternal Night said sternly.
“Your subordinate understands. If it were otherwise, it would be a disservice to Mr. Daor.”
Lydia agreed readily.
As long as the Empress of Eternal Night agreed to this matter, it also presented a new opportunity for those System Children.
