The acid rain in the Maya district intensified, corroding the rusty scaffolding in the slums. Aaryan stood beside the factory's high-heat exhaust vents, looking at the grey streets. Her unease grew stronger with the fluctuations in the ether concentration.
Since the conflict erupted in Chapter 18, the fragile racial balance had been shattered completely. Although the Holy Blood Council's 'purge operation' had temporarily ceased in public, a more covert and chilling form of plunder was underway. Aaryan had discovered that her demonic co-workers in the factory were mysteriously disappearing.
"Three more." Balthazar approached heavily, the runes on his dark red greatsword gleaming with rage. 'Kuri, the juice vendor outside the arena, and those two "Bonebreakers" who were just hauling junk — they're all gone.'
Aaryan's pupils contracted sharply. He whirled around towards the dark corner — the hiding place of the half-blood child he had once saved. The child had timid yet clear eyes and had once offered him a mouldy ether cake shyly. Now, only a broken wind-up doll lay there, alone in the mud.
'This isn't just simple hatred.' Aaryan crouched down, picked up the doll and ran his fingers along its torn threads. 'The Demon race's bloodline contains a high concentration of dark ether.' Lord Malakor once said that the Demon race are 'contaminated consumables'. However, if these consumables are collected, they become the best ether batteries."
He realised that the missing people hadn't been killed, but rather 'harvested'. In this city's logic, discrimination from the upper echelons was never prejudice, but rather a tool of exploitation used to ensure perpetual rule. Just as Aaryan was preparing to delve deeper into the investigation, the factory alarm suddenly pierced the oppressive atmosphere.
'There! That malevolent shadow!' screamed a scavenger, half-covered in machinery and pointing his nail gun at Aaryan, his hand trembling. Behind him stood a group of lower-class human refugees who had been driven mad by the deprivation of their ether quotas.
This deep-seated discrimination, incited by the factory manager, had instantly transformed into frenzied infighting. Workers who had previously toiled together now blamed the alien race beside them for the factory's economic decline.
'These demons stole the energy, causing the factory to shut down!'
Seize them and hand them over to the Holy Blood Council!'
Stones and rusty wrenches rained down on Aaryan and Balthazar. Aaryan suppressed the purple-gold divine light threatening to erupt within him. He knew that displaying his royal powers would only ensure the success of the 'inter-racial strife' plan orchestrated by the higher-ups.
'Get out of the way!' Balthazar roared, sweeping his greatsword across the battlefield. The resulting gust of wind repelled the first wave of fleeing civilians without causing any fatalities. 'You fools! Can't you see who the real butcher is?'
However, the frenzied crowd had long since lost their reason — chaos had reached its peak.
Two Inquisition members clad in grey cloaks and wielding 'Etheric Suppression Nets' silently appeared on the factory overpass. They watched the infighting among the lower-class civilians below coldly.
The icy blue light in their hands was rapidly charging.
'Target captured: Aaryan,' one of them whispered, his voice seeming to come from the abyss. 'Lord Malakor said he wanted him to experience the feeling of being abandoned by the whole world.'
A high-frequency, vibrating, etheric laser instantly shattered the platform beneath Aaryan's feet. As he plummeted, he saw his left hand, covered in obsidian scales, tremble uncontrollably once more. In this cursed, rusty land, the real battle has only just begun.
After escaping the scuffle at the factory, Aaryan and Balthazar made their way through the maze-like sewers of the Maya district. Aside from the pungent odours of rust and musty wastewater, a faint scent of gardenias lingered in the air.
'That smell again,' said Aaryan, stopping and looking uneasy. 'This fragrance doesn't belong in this stinking era, but in the erased year of 1969.'
'It represents remembrance and rebirth,' an aged, hollow voice echoed from the darkness. The wise Cyrus, carrying an ethereal lamp emitting an icy blue glow, slowly emerged. He informed Aaryan that the missing workers had not simply been murdered, but had been sent to a secret facility called 'Echo Prison'.
This facility was an experimental ground of the Holy Blood Council and was personally overseen by Lord Malakor. There, the 'Dark Ether' within the Demon Race would be forcibly stripped away to power the 'Dark Energy' driving the Maya District's core — the Great Clock Tower.
'If they aren't rescued before the next "Purification Day", the flesh and blood of those workers will be used as sacrifices to open the Gate of Cause and Effect in 1969,' Cyrus's voice echoed in the tunnel, heavy with destiny.
Gripping the wind-up toy in his hand, Aaryan's nails dug deep into his palm. Not only did he have to rescue the child, he also had to stop this bloody conspiracy spanning time and space. When Aaryan infiltrated the outer perimeter of the 'Echo Prison', the scene he witnessed was far more suffocating than he had imagined.
It was a massive industrial altar where hundreds of missing Demon Race workers were suspended upside down from glowing etheric conduits. Their eyes were vacant and the magical markings on their skin were being peeled away inch by inch by some kind of precision machinery. The pain each person endured was transformed into strings of cold, fluctuating data that echoed in the dark hall.
'This... this is a slaughterhouse.' One of the demon warriors accompanying them trembled with rage, the dark flames on his left arm almost bursting forth.
Suddenly, Lord Malakor's chillingly benevolent voice blared from the prison's loudspeakers. 'My children, do not be afraid. Your sacrifice is for the eternal order of the Maya District. In this land, discrimination is based not on prejudice, but on your value as 'expendable resources'."
This extreme institutionalised malice ignited a thunderous roar within Aaryan's royal bloodline. He tried to rush forward and destroy the conduit, but several high-frequency, ethereal, vibrating suppression nets suddenly rose from the ground.
A large contingent of Holy Blood Council executives clad in power armour appeared. 'Ash' Cillian, coldly surveying the struggling souls, said, 'Aaryan, do you think you're a saviour? In 1969, your ancestors tried to do the same, only to engulf the entire city in flames.'
The oppressive atmosphere reached its peak. As Cillian's hand fell, the mechanical guards launched their attack and the brainwashed Celestial Demon civilians outside the prison surrounded them. They had been told that these 'monsters' were responsible for the city's energy shortage and that only by annihilating them completely would the Holy Spirit bestow blessings.
'Kill these monsters!'
'For the Supreme Ancestor!'
Amidst the curses, stones flew towards Aaryan once more. He looked at the civilians he had manipulated, then at the child wasting away on the catheter, and a wave of loneliness washed over him, as if he had been abandoned by the entire world. This was a trap set by Malakor: when the protagonist tried to save the civilians, they pushed him to the guillotine.
At that moment, the 'Seed of Harmony' within Aaryan trembled violently in the darkness, as if about to erupt into a black mandala that would destroy everything.
Just as Aaryan was about to be completely corrupted, he heard a faint heartbeat emanating from the depths of the prison — the resonance of Dahlia.
The other half of the 'Twin Clockwork Heart' emitted an extremely faint yet pure purple-gold glow.
At that moment, a piece of the truth finally fell into place...
Cillian's 'Ash' longsword dragged across the ground, leaving a trail of blinding sparks. Aaryan stood at the centre of the high-frequency suppression network, his amethyst-gold divine light flickering violently under the icy-blue light barrier's suppression.
'Still haven't noticed, Aaryan?' Cillian's mocking voice came through his full-coverage metal visor. 'These "victims" of yours have already had their loyalty to the Holy Blood Council etched into their genes, and your salvation is the greatest blasphemy to them.'
Suddenly, the burly man closest to Aaryan — 'Bonebreaker' Ger, who had been repeatedly rescued by Aaryan and had secretly cursed the Council alongside him — let out a hoarse, maniacal laugh.
His previously cloudy eyes were now filled with blood-red ether, and he abruptly snapped the seemingly sturdy conduit. But he didn't flee; instead, he lunged at the demonic warriors trying to rescue him like a madman.
"Flesh and blood are the sacrifice… Glory to the Great Clock Tower!" Ger's voice was distorted, like rusty gears grinding together.
Aaryan's pupils contracted sharply. He realised that the tubes connected to his fellow workers weren't stripping away the ether, but rather infusing them with a 'causality virus' mixed with the decaying aura of 1969. This was transforming each member of the Demon Clan into a self-destructing biological weapon.
'The reversal has begun.' The phantom of Lord Malakor on the distant platform raised his hand slightly.
The logic of the prison hall collapsed instantly. The workers, who should have been the victims, transformed into the most frenzied of hunters. They pounced on Aaryan, tearing at the barriers around him with their teeth and nails. Even the civilians who had been watching changed. The anger in their eyes vanished, replaced by an empty, brainwashed piety.
"This isn't discrimination, Aaryan. This is unity." Cillian appeared, his longsword aimed straight for Aaryan's heart. 'The Maya District doesn't need diversity; it only needs living parts that can reliably supply power.'
As Aaryan teetered on the brink of life and death, the part of his mind belonging to the 'royal divine consciousness' was enraged, but he didn't choose to go on a killing spree. Instead, he made a move that surprised everyone.
He withdrew all his purple-gold divine light, removed his obsidian scale armour and opened his arms, allowing his frenzied colleagues to surround him and letting Cillian's sword pierce his shoulder.
"If you want 'cause and effect', then look at true cause and effect."
Aaryan's blood dripped onto the cold laboratory table, gathering in mid-air like mercury and forming a miniature, rotating star map – the spacetime coordinates he had imprinted when he infiltrated the mech's core in Chapter 18.
At this moment, the royal aura dormant within his bloodline did not erupt as a weapon, but activated as a 'nexus'. The lights throughout Echo Prison went out instantly. They were replaced by the red glow of embers from the 1969 fire.
Rather than exploding, the infected workers became quantumly entangled with their still-intact 'parallel selves' from 1969, drawn by this ancient bloodline. The previously frenzied Gel stopped moving, and the blood red in his eyes faded to be replaced by a bewilderment that transcended millennia.
'This is impossible!' Cillian exclaimed. He realised that his ethereal armour was rapidly ageing and peeling away as if it had undergone decades of weathering in mere seconds.
Pale-faced, Aaryan rose from the pool of blood. He had seen through Malakor's plan: the Council wanted to turn the Demon Race into batteries. However, he had used this connection to extract reserves from the Council's core energy reservoir and distribute them evenly to the dying workers.
'Now, who are the parts?' Aaryan's voice was low, yet it resonated in everyone's consciousness. The Echo Prison's power system had been completely paralysed, and intermittent alarms sounded through the rain. Although Aaryan had temporarily halted the 'Flesh and Blood Battery' process, he knew this was only a small part of Lord Malakor's grand plan.
'They're moving all the high-ranking aliens to the temple atop the clock tower.' The surviving demon warrior wiped the blood from his face and helped the heavily wounded Balthazar into the shadows.
The child that Aaryan had once saved was now clutching at his clothes tightly and still holding the broken wind-up doll. Pointing to the towering building in the city centre, perpetually shrouded in thunderstorms, the child whispered, 'Big brother, sister's there... I heard her; she's crying.'
'Sister?' Was Dahlia imprisoned there too?
Aaryan gazed at the cold symbol of power, feeling the amount of purple-gold ether within him dwindle, and knowing that a conventional assault was impossible — the Council had already imposed a city-wide lockdown.
'We need an inside man.' Cyrus's aged figure appeared at the end of the rainy alley. He unfolded a yellowed design drawing. 'The clock tower's sewage system overlaps with the ancient riverbed from 1969. That's the only blind spot.'
'We need to infiltrate, penetrate and confront the ultimate nightmare that has been manipulating time and space from behind the scenes.'