Chapter-12 A Unknown Gift

In response to his question, Luxuria spoke a single sentence, stating, "I'm helping you because it is my duty as the deity cherished by my people, known as the goddess of love, prosperity, and family."

After saying that, she placed her right hand near Karna's eyes. A blinding light glowed from it and made Karna slowly close his eyes, falling unconscious again.

They both then put Karna back in the same position, over the shoulder of the guard, and then disappeared.

Just minutes after their disappearance, the two guards again started to walk toward the direction of the hall without any care, just like before.

After some time had passed, the two goddesses reappeared in the same location as before, staring at the two guards' receding backs that were now some distance away.

"Mother"

"Hmm?"

"Why didn't you tell him about that?"

Luxuria, hearing Chasity's words, sighed. "Desperation is a horrifying thing, Chasity. It can turn even the purest of souls into darkly corrupted ones."

"But he had the right to know."

"Yes, I know that. but... sigh, I just couldn't... I just couldn't allow myself to break the spirit of someone like him completely. I have first-hand experience of how dangerous the result can be." Chasity, upon seeing Luxuria's saddened expression, felt bad and then spoke, trying to change the topic.

"Oh! Mother, how did you know that Hephaestus would have another heavenly system in his workshop? I clearly remember that Mother Rebecca told us that only eight were created.

Luxuria, who clearly understood what she was trying to do, smiled kindly toward her and then answered her.

"Hephaestus is a god of blacksmithing, and just like any artist, he likes to keep trophies of his artwork for himself." "I wasn't 100% sure, but I knew he would have definitely created another one of the heavenly system orbs to keep it for himself as a trophy of him creating such masterpieces."

"Hehe." "He must be going crazy trying to find it by now."

*****

In the workshop of Hephaestus.

The workshop of Hephaestus was a large circular hall, and in its centre was a large, majestic round structure that had a golden-red colour and covered one-third of the space of the hall. The golden-red structure had a total of six forges surrounding it.

The hall was filled with many minerals, ores, and materials. Some of them were just lying on the ground, while others were neatly organized on the large wooden tables present in the hall.

The surrounding curved walls had this red-coloured heat shielding done on them; they also had many types of weapons hung on them, like spears, swords, longswords, hammers, and many other weapons.

On the edges of the hall, 36 armours of different sizes and colours were placed.

A specific magic circle was created under each of the 36 armour sets to keep them neatly standing on the edges of the hall, where the floor intersected with the curved walls.

Because of the variations in size, all the armour sets did not have an equal distance between them. The largest of the 36 armour pieces was enormous, standing close to 30 feet tall. It had a black aura emanating from its joints and was coloured both black and red.

Other than this particular armour, all 35 were less than 10 feet in size.

But even though the size of the other 35 sets of armour was smaller than that of the giant-sized armour, their aura was in no way less than that of the giant-sized armour.

The floor was covered with smithing tools such as anvils, chisels, hammers, tongs, and many other tools used for forging.

Right now, the whole workshop floor was in a chaotic and messy state, just like Hephaestus had told Luxuria. But he was not tying it up like he said; on the contrary, he was creating more mess. He had the desperate expression of someone who had lost something precious; He continued to look for another 20 minutes, and then he stopped. His breathing was messy.

"Where is it?"

"Why?! Why can't I find it? " I definitely remember living it here." His voice was agitated as he spoke.

"It can't be that someone stole it." "No, that's not possible; no one can enter my shop without my permission, or the security spell would have activated."

'I distinctly recall that I, too, forbade visitors from entering the workplace,' he said with an inside thought.

"What if someone really stole it?" "What if they are able to use it?" Hephaestus said. but the next moment he shook his head and spoke. "No, that's impossible; even the goddess Rebecca was not able to get that thing to work."

"Someone with my set of skills was only able to study its outermost structure and a tiny fraction of its inner Mana-logistic patterns, even when I had it with me for a whole two years."

"But still, if somehow anyone is able to study it like I did, then they would definitely be able to tell that the eight heavenly system I have build is nothing but a mere restricted replicas of the original one."

"No, no, no, what I am thinking is just the second-worst thing that could happen; the worst would be if Goddess Rebecca were to find out that I lost that thing."

"She clearly told me to destroy it after creating those eight systems. But because of my greed for more knowledge, I thought that I could study it for two or three more months and then destroy it."

"If she were to find out that I had kept it, she would destroy me. No! I can't let that happen."

Remembering the expressionless face of the goddess Rebecca when she said all of this to him, his body turned cold.

"What should I do?"

'I can't let her find out about this. I just have to lie and say that I have destroyed it like she told me too.'

"Yes, I should just tell her that I have destroyed it." He kept on repeating that for a while.

*****

Meanwhile, in the Divine Hall on the second platform

The two armoured guards had brought Karna to the hall and then laid him on the magic circle. Both of them then looked toward each other through the narrow opening of their helmets and then nodded before starting to chant a spell.

As soon as they recited a spell, the teleportation circle began to shine with white light, and the next moment, the unconsciously lying body of Karna vanished from the magic circle after turning into particles of light.