The cathedral was as crowded during the day as during the night.
It was odd only because Damien knew what this place really was. To others, nuns and clergymen residing in the cathedrals they spent their daily lives worshipping in.
They were obviously all trained.
Their auras were hidden behind several layers of magic, but Damien saw through them all. Not a single person working in the cathedral right now was below the level of Divinity.
Luckily, Damien didn't need to deal with them.
He could directly teleport into the facility from the sky where he was.
It was far more difficult of a task than passing through the air, but his capabilities had increased since he first landed in the Heavenly World.
His teleportation wasn't nearly as restricted, so in that one move, he was able to reach his desired destination.
Blue light streamed up from the floor below and illuminated most of the facility.
The ceiling was much higher than one would expect it to be with the amount of provided light, but about half the area was covered in darkness, and that was where Damien was.
'Okay, then–'
Damien immediately halted his thoughts.
'They're confident, aren't they?'
It took him a second to realize their presence.
All around him, hanging from the ceiling suspended by chains several feet thick, were almost a hundred tubes large enough to carry a human, filled with an aquamarine liquid that moved around inside like it was alive.
'Those are…'
The ones hanging were just liquid, but the same structures existed on the ground as well.
And those were not filled with liquid only.
Inside each of them was a homunculus, cocooned in its own wings.
'Hmm…I'm definitely curious about the production method, but I can't kill someone here yet.'
Damien closed his eyes and created thousands of strands of awareness, using the same process to disguise them.
They spread out, moving all throughout the facility as Damien could see it and finding any hidden entrances to other rooms.
'Wow. I knew it had to be big to be a research facility, but still…'
The part Damien sensed from the surface was only the beginning.
Through winding tunnels of pristine white were several dozens of rooms of similar sizes. Some of them were eerily empty, while others were filled with people in suits that encased their whole bodies, working on unknown projects.
They were obviously important areas, but what interested Damien more were the dozens of locked compartments that lined each one.
His awareness couldn't penetrate them at all, which could only mean they held something nobody was meant to see.
'I don't see any important personnel here…'
The people here were even weaker than the guards in the cathedral.
Let alone a God, there wasn't even a single Divinity in this place:
'Maybe they're also brainwashed bystanders.'
Damien focused his awareness on a single individual, using it to enter their mind.
'Grey.'
It was a sea without color.
As expected, those working in these facilities were just arms and legs being controlled by another.
'It makes sense from their perspective. They've already been cautious to the maximum, but in the situation where they're found regardless, none of their people will be implicated.'
Gaining information or even trying to understand what was being done at these facilities was almost impossible unless one had a power like Damien's.
'It still concerns me that there's nobody here, but I'll have to act first and think later.'
He wasn't here for homunculi.
But he was here for someone who might've already become one.
'Rein Winchester.'
Void Palace's 6th Sword.
He was one of their youngest, yet, he was also one of the strongest.
From the conversations had by those officials in the homunculus' memories, Rein had been transported to this facility roughly 10 years ago. Not a single word from him had been heard since then.
Damien didn't have much hope for the man, but he had to check the information despite that.
Because on the off chance that Rein was alive, Damien abandoning him would've been the worst possible choice.
'I'm not exactly sure about how they make homunculi, but they'll likely use soul torture to get all the information about Void Palace that they'd possibly need out of his mouth before they convert him.'
That would be the worst-case scenario.
On this expedition, Damien would either save a Sword or learn that the enemy knew all of his weaknesses.
The stakes were quite high.
'I should start searching.'
Damien's eyes narrowed.
He didn't know a good way to enter the sealed compartments through normal means, but he already had a solution.
He could use the same method he used in the Ancient Battlefield.
By phasing into the surrounding earth and keeping himself in an immaterial state, he could travel without boundaries.
The Ancient Battlefield was a piece of the Heavenly World that broke off. If he could do it there, he had more than enough power to do it here.
With his newfound mana capacity, it wasn't as much of a trying task as he thought it would be: he was able to enter the earth, move through it, and find a way to phase back into the sealed compartments without much difficulty.
But he didn't find anything worth his attention.
They were mainly filled with corpses. There was no racial specificity to them, nor was there anything to indicate a pattern.
They were corpses of anything and everything that could be killed, of any gender, of any age.
The compartments were filled to the brim with them. It wasn't like the Divine Order had no way to get rid of these corpses, which could only mean…
'...there's something more being done than just the creation of homunculi. There's a greater goal at play.'
Damien so desperately wanted to find out what was going on, but, again, he wasn't able to.
'It fucking sucks, but there's nothing I can do. When I have the fate of my entire homeland on my shoulders, I have to be more cautious than ever.'
He had to suppress his personality for now.
He was not Damien Void, the wanderer.
He was Damien Void, the Young Lord of Void Palace.
That was the man who, after searching through 23 sealed compartments, finally entered one that was free of corpses.
It was a compartment in complete darkness like the rest, the smell just as musty and rancid as a room filled with dead bodies.
But there was only one body present here.
A barely living one, skin and bones that clearly had not been given any sort of humane treatment in ages.
That body was shackled to the wall by its wrists and ankles, and while it was easy to mistake it for a corpse…
'...he's still breathing.'
An aura of life.
Along with another aura that barely existed anymore.
The air of Divinity that came from this man's barely surviving soul.
It was Divinity with a trace of something Damien not only recognized, but became very familiar with over the past 10 years.
This was the man Damien had been looking for.
This was Rein Winchester.
Or at least, what was left of him.
