2 CH002

"It's that time again…"

The last three years have been peaceful, and nothing was unusual. Well, nothing too out of the ordinary.

Alpha had truly taken the Shadow Garden thing so seriously that I sometimes pity Cid.

The dude was just having his fun but Alpha was so serious it felt like a job. The pitiful one however was not him, but me.

All that 'Shadow Wisdom' Cid would mention carelessly somehow ended up becoming my problem.

It all began when Alpha was still new and Cid had disappeared to go hunting bandits, leaving her behind. I was doing my research at the abandoned village when Alpha came to me asking about our food.

That was a problem. Cid… was Cid, and I did not require food, so I never really thought about it.

But Alpha was still a child and she did not know what was where and it was up to me to feed her. And I did. A simple bowl of rice with Chicken Creole did not seem like much, right?

But Alpha being Alpha discovered that the techniques I was using were much like the ones Cid talked about when he was passing his 'Shadow Wisdom'.

I should have just used a fire spell or something, but I had to conjure up some sophisticated utensils and a gas cooker that impressed her. The food also turned out to be delicious, and I was degraded to a chef for the lot.

Yeah, I still cook for them to date.

In these three years, Shadow Garden had grown. Cid and Alpha had adopted six others and the 'Seven Shadows' were now complete.

They were still children at this point, well, so was I, but they were very capable. It was no exaggeration to say that Shadow Garden already had the capital to be a formidable force with the seven shadows alone.

There was no longer anything for them to accomplish here and I could understand why they left Cid at around this time in the anime. But Cid did not seem to see this.

He was so caught up in his own fantasies that he was not aware of the developments in Shadow Garden.

Alpha was a workaholic with a complex addiction. All she thought about was Shadow Garden and how it should develop. I mean, they were already recruiting people into Shadow Garden even without Cid's knowledge.

Watching a couple of children bossing around other children should be funny and cute, but the things they accomplished were not cute at all.

Alpha was the leader of Shadow Garden and even though they might acknowledge Cid as the supreme in Shadow Garden, Alpha was the one that dealt with everything.

The other one that seemed to still have her shit figured out despite her age was Eta. She was already working on research and she was the one who invented most of the things that Shadow Garden was using.

I mean, I might have created some things, but I did not have time to baby the whole organization only for them to devote themselves to Cid.

At least, that is what I tell myself as I concentrate on building Alexandria into a worthy base for Shadow Garden.

What? It could not be avoided.

First was the fact that I was the one who built every building in the abandoned town for the kids to use. My Creation Manipulation literary allowed me to build a villa out of nothing.

Second, compared to having kids do the building, with all the heavy lifting and sourcing material, I would rather do it. They were capable of doing all of that by themselves, but I am not Cid. I cannot ignore them before they are old enough.

There was also an advantage to doing the building on my own. Alexandria was a very big place and most of the land was used for agriculture in the canon, and this being a verse based on the anime, I was sure that the members of Shadow Garden would not use the place to its full potential.

I mean, they were still using the ruined castle that was originally there. It would be bad if I had to use such run-down facilities for research.

It's been two years since I started building, and I gotta say, I am one hell of an architect. Well, it also helped that I could access Pinterest pics and designs, but those were just details.

Building the base allowed me to install systems that would have otherwise been impossible.

Cid was too dumb to do most of the things that would have helped Shadow Garden. It was doubtful if he even knew what it took to run such an organization.

Alpha on the other hand was doing a good job, but she was still a child. Most of the decisions she made were based on her intelligence and help from Gamma and Eta.

It also helped that most of the Seven Shadows were royalty or nobles of some kind. They all had prior exposure to ruling and leadership. Well, except Delta for obvious reasons, all of them were pretty smart in this area.

This was what held Shadow Garden together, but it was not enough.

At least, it was not enough for the plans I had.

Shadow Garden was Cid's organization and he was the Supreme Leader, but the guy barely ever used them. It would be a waste if I did not put such capable people to work.

…

*Knock, Knock*

"Come in."

The door opened as Eta lazily made her way toward me. Her droopy eyes showed her exhaustion but I knew that she had just woken up.

"Did you call for me Lord Zak?"

"I told you to call me Zak."

"…"

"Forget it. Look at what I've created."

I handed Eta a deck of cards. They were the standard poker cards and they looked normal.

"Did you call me just to play cards? Your sister is missing you know."

"Why do you care so much about Claire? She'll be fine with Cid around."

"Lord Shadow!"

"What?"

"Call him Lord Shadow."

"Yeah, yeah. Anyway, these cards are not for playing. I used the Shadow Wisdom brother taught us to create this."

"What does it do?"

"Look at this first card. Brother called it Ace. All the cards in the deck are Aces that have yet to enter a suit."

"How can Aces have no suit?"

"That is the beauty of these cards. I have made them so that the suits represent one's rank in Shadow Garden. Hearts represent Trainees and Children, Clubs represent Rookies, Diamonds represent Professionals, and Spades represent Leadership."

"I get it now. But why are they all Aces."

"That is just the starting card. Anyone with a Spade can produce an infinite number of Aces and that will be used as an identifier for the numbers and other Shadow Garden members."

"What are numbers?"

"Don't worry about it. Anyway, for one to officially join Shadow Garden, they need to have a card and that will be used to access the base I prepared in Alexandria."

"How did you manage to get that stubborn dragon to play along with this plan? He barely listens to Alpha let alone you."

"I turned him into a Sacred Gear."

"A what?!"

"Don't worry about it. The dragon will protect the base and anyone that tries to get close to it without the card will be obliterated from a mile away."

"Have Lord Shadow or Alpha approved of this? Alpha got angry at you last time for doing research without permission."

"Why do you think I called you here? You are responsible for telling all these to the others."

"Why would I do that? Alpha is already cutting my budget. I don't want to give her an excuse to cut it even more."

"Hehehe… that's what I wanted to tell you about. The beauty of these cards is that I can program them to have specific effects."

"Don't leave me in suspense!?"

Eta's lethargic look had disappeared and she was sitting at the edge of her stool as she stared at my eyes with yearning eyes. Thank god I was stronger than her or she would have already pounced on me and tried to force me.

"The Ace is for access and tracking. It essentially shows you the information of every member of Shadow Garden and their current status and location. Just run some magic through it and it will recognize your magic signature and you will see what it can do for you."

Eta looked at me with some suspicion, but she still did as instructed.

It was not the first time I had made something beyond her comprehension. By the time she was figuring out the basic number systems that Cid was talking about, I had already created my first television that ran on magic.

"Wow, what is this screen in front of me? Why can't I touch it?"

"That is called a HUD, or a system. Say 'status'."

"Status… Wow! What are these numbers? MP, HP, Physique? Did you create a metric system for measuring strength?"

"You guessed it. It can do much more than that. It can show you a map of up to a hundred-kilometer radius around you, and the map database will update with more members of Shadow Garden exploring the world. It can also tell you the hierarchy of other members nearby and you can view their information if you are ranked higher than them."

"…"

Eta's eyes sparkled with excitement but I somewhat feel like she was excited over something different.

"What is your brain made of? Just let me slice open your head for a close-up look. I promise I'll be quick."

"Do you want me to bring out 'The Lab'."

Hearing those words, Eta instantly sat straight up as a cold sweat formed on her cute nose and forehead. It could not be helped.

The Lab was one of my earlier inventions that slowly reduced the anatomy of a creature layer by layer till it reached a molecular level. I used it earlier on to do some experiments on bandits to study the composition of magic.

Who wouldn't be curious?! In the Alpha Reality, the smallest particle observed was a Higgs particle. And that was because I don't know much about bosons and the like. Maybe there were smaller particles.

But that had nothing to do with me at the moment.

This world's most basic building block was magic. How could I call myself a scientist if I did not try to observe if magic could also be divided further like atoms were?

That was how the Lab was born. The screams of bandits and the howls of wild animals would persist for hours even after total decomposition occurred. That was a phenomenon I called resonance, but I have yet to observe what resonated with what to produce such a sound.

The Lab was the sole existence that even Cid was cautious of. It's just that he had yet to see its weaponized version or his dream would change from being atomic to being subatomic.

"No. Not the lab."

"Yeah, so don't try anything dumb."

"I know. But what about us, the seven shadows?"

"Don't worry, there are special cards that I will give you for leadership positions. They are the honor cards and they will automatically give you all the abilities from the Ace to 10."

"Do they have anything special or …"

"The honor cards are somewhat different. They give you authority over other cards.

There is the King card which will solely belong to Cid and his card has all four suits combined. I will give him his card later when I make sure everything is functioning properly. There are only seven Queen Cards that will be given to the Seven Shadows and they all have different effects depending on who we are dealing with. You can't expect Delta to have the same authority as Alpha, right?"

"That is mean… but makes a lot of sense. The things I can use might be useless to the others and vice versa."

"I will also give them to the seven of you later after you raise your cards to 4."

"Why 4?"

"It's the point you unlock your private inventory feature. Different card numbers come with different effects."

"…"

"And your body would have adjusted to them reducing the risk of rejection."

"Rejection? Do these cards have side effects?"

"No, not side effects, but I used Brother Cid's magic signature as the base. Since everyone in Shadow Garden must have a trace of his magic to heal demon possession so I used his magic as one of the checks. The speed of adjustment will depend on the amount of traces left behind."

"That means that the people we heal will take longer to adjust than those healed by Lord Shadow himself."

"Yeah. It is some kind of privilege to be healed and empowered by Shadow himself."

"Lord Shadow!"

"…"

"Anyway, you should take the cards with you since you will be going to battle later. Combat helps boost the adjustment speed."

"Ah! I almost forgot that Lady Claire is still missing. I came to ask if you have some clues."

"Cid knows where to find her. Just prepare and follow him."

"Aren't you worried?"

"About what? I haven't been home for months now. I'd bet they forgot I was a Kagenou to begin with."

"…"

"Go. I need to get back to my research."

"Okay…."

I watched Eta leave as her lazy look returned the farther she got from me. I wonder where she gets all that energy to disturb my research every now and then if even walking is such a chore.

'Hehehe, these kids are still gullible. When has she ever seen my inventions have imperfections or side effects? Let's just hope they don't force me to use my backup plan.'

"I should get back to making the Version 2.0"