In this kingdom, the name Sigurd had once belonged to a foolish king.
With a name like that, perhaps he was bound to accomplish little from the start. And indeed, he had failed to manifest the Power of God at all.
And so, Sigurd was sent to Etherium. On the day he was put in a carriage to depart from the castle, he found the resolve to keep his sister from being sent there, no matter what. Right before leaving, he embraced his sister, who had the same black hair and eyes as he did.
He didn’t care what painful things he would have to endure. But he couldn’t have his sister go through the same.
“You must come home, Brother.”
He nodded firmly in response. He had to come back. The people had assassinated his mother and father. He was the only family Brunhild had left. There was no one to protect their fallen clan. He alone could protect his sister, as had always been the case.
He had to manifest the Power of God, whatever it took, and then return.
He actively participated in the experiments. Even when his body reacted strongly to the drugs, he would grit his teeth through the pain. The cruel experiments altered his appearance. His throat was burned by a drug like boiling water, turning his voice hoarse. The repeated experiments affected his bone structure, too. Frighteningly often, he would look in the mirror and wonder if the person staring back was really him.
But despite all that, he achieved no results.
Sigurd wasn’t even able to create a single arrow of light.
Nearly three years had passed since the experiments began.
His sister would soon be eight years old. Once she reached that age, she would be made to come to this facility as well—the thing he’d wanted to avoid most. But he was powerless.
That was when the incident happened.
As Sigurd was resting his injured body in a small basement room, there came a roar from above.
“He’s become deranged.” “There’s a fire!”
Sigurd happened to hear adults yelling as they rushed up the stairs.
Was there a fire upstairs? That meant it would be bad to stay in the basement.
Sigurd headed up the stairs—and met no resistance. Normally, the children weren’t allowed to go upstairs. If someone found them, the mercenaries would return them to their rooms. But nobody stopped Sigurd this time. Everyone was in such a frenzy that they couldn’t pay attention to the children. As the adults headed for the stairs, they were babbling things like, “Weapons! We need weapons!” and “Someone stop him!”
Some of the adults were carrying swords. This seemed quite serious. Sigurd chased after them.
When he reached the great hall of the workshop, he found a boy. Many mercenaries and scholars were surrounding him. There were fallen soldiers, too, and fires going up all over the place.
“Ngh… Ugh…” The boy held his head and groaned.
Sigurd recognized him. He recalled he was an orphan.
The scholars at Etherium had been carrying out experiments on orphans. No—what they did was so violent, one would hesitate to call them experiments. The scholars thought the Power of God would reside in those who were innocent, so they attempted to make the children even purer. To the scholars, purifying someone’s mind meant destroying it. They were convinced doing so would eliminate worldly thoughts. They used many methods to break the orphans’ minds, one of which was to throw them into the dark for a few months. Sigurd remembered this very orphan had been shut away in the darkness.
Once the process of eradicating a child’s mind was complete, they would then be exposed to a lump of the Power of God that was underground. Apparently, if you were lucky, it would imbue you with the Power of God. But when they gazed upon the uncanny light of the Power, most humans would go mad before gaining anything at all. The orphans used as test subjects had all broken, without exception. Once the orphans were rendered useless, the scholars would dispose of them immediately.
The First Queen had feared these sorts of repulsive experiments and the misuse of power, so she had only told the location of the Power of God to a few people in the royal family. But then tragedy struck.
The cause was the decline of the royal family with the passage of centuries. The current royal family had realized they could attempt to restore themselves with the Power of God that had been sealed away. But since they lacked sufficient knowledge of this power, they had no choice but to rely on Etherium. Consequently, they wound up sharing the location of the Power of God with the people of the laboratory. It was ironic, really—the noble aspirations of the First Queen had been subverted by none other than her descendants.
This black-haired boy, suffering and at the mercy of the adults, was supposed to have been one of those throwaway orphans.
He was clutching his head in his hands, as if withstanding great agony. “Urk… Hng… I can’t see…anything…”
He seemed somehow confused.
In addition to scholars, there were also mercenaries surrounding the boy. Their job was to suppress the children when they became deranged. Three of the mercenaries approached the boy and tried to hold him down.
No—were they really trying to hold him down? It looked to Sigurd like they were trying to kill him; the mercenaries were mercilessly swinging their swords and spears at the boy.
Thinking the boy was about to be slain, Sigurd looked away. He didn’t want to witness such a tragedy.
But his fear never came to pass.
The swords and spears made contact with the boy. But they didn’t pierce his flesh. The boy’s body was like steel.
He waved his right arm, as if brushing off the adults.
The room lit up in a flash of white. A beat later, the mercenaries were burning up. Having become balls of fire, they rolled on the ground.