"What an idiot," Mia smirked before looking down at her shadow for some reason, but by the time we arrived at our room, I had figured it out since there was only one person who was proficient in shadow magic that I knew I couldn't detect.

"You're supposed to be training my daughter," I groaned, but upon seeing how nice the modern room was, I couldn't help but shake away these negative thoughts and just jump onto the bed, slowly sinking into it.

Mia also climbed onto the bed, letting Charna out from her shadow, which she came up from gasping for air.

"Holy shit… I've never swum through such a dense shadow," Charna huffed, and upon seeing Mia reach out her hand towards me, she just let out a long sigh and dived into another shadow just across the room.

"Hand," Mia smiled, and I quickly took it before she brought me in for a long and loving kiss. "Good girl…"

…

It wasn't long before the emperor's son had returned, and he wasn't definitely about the same physical age as my daughter, but probably many more years older than her in reality… although she does have the mental edge.

"So, what'd you bring Charna for?" I asked Mia as we both walked down the hall, following a maid who we knew wouldn't say anything.

There were a few shadows watching us, but with the help of a bit of Mia's magic, we could dim our voices to a point where only we could hear each other.

In fact, the maid in front of us wouldn't even be able to report anything, even if she wanted to.

"Don't worry. She's not here to stir up too much trouble. She's just here to retrieve a few items for me that this stingy emperor wouldn't be able to give me under no circumstances," She smiled, causing a shiver to shoot down my spine.

"A-And what might these items be?" I nervously asked since whenever she wanted to get her hands on some items for her research, she would go to such great lengths that even destroying an entire city wasn't out of the question.

"Don't worry… it's just a few mech cores… I've been wanting to study those things for a while, but the only ones I could get my hands on were trash that I could barely even activate with pools of mana… I need something better. Something that will really help propel my research into the layer of gods,"

"Wait, so then what do you need these mech cores for then?"

"I'm sure you're well aware of the divine fragment given to our daughter by Celestine," She said and I quickly nodded. "Well, if you break a mech core, then it will release a shit ton of energy, but the normal ones are not enough. I need imperial grade and imperial made ones that will release enough energy that it will be the equivalent of ten thousand magi-bombs… and I need multiple of them,"

"Huh? Are you… going to try and destroy it? I mean, I don't think that's possible even with that much power,"

"It's worth a shot, though… and enough talking about me. How about those rockets that are coming along?" Mia smirked, causing my eyes to squint as none of the other Tolf leaders, including her, shouldn't have known about this secret project of mine.

The idea came up when I was brainstorming as to why we lost connection with all other settlements across our solar system and since I had so much power and influence, I was sure I could easily replicate the rockets that we used to send people all over space… but that's where I reached a massive problem.

"It's… not working out as I expected. We were easily able to replicate the previous rockets used back in the day, maybe a few centuries ago, but their frames just crumbled under the pressure of space. For some reason, the vacuum of space has become more… vaccumy? But I have also anticipated that it isn't the vacuum which is holding us back, but extraterrestrial beings,"

"You seriously think aliens are the ones who destroyed everything we worked towards?"

"No, not really… I don't even think it's aliens… it's probably the gods. They're real, and they really want to fuck us up… or we're just a side project. I get the feeling the planes we were previously on was the main objective and observatory of the gods, while we're just a one-off world, living and surviving like every other potential alien across the universe,"

"So then, what are you going to do?" Mia chuckled as she saw my determined face, unable to resist the urge to give me a massive hug that nearly crushed my ribs.

"Well, I first have to create something much more powerful than the rockets we used previously. It has to be invisible but not only to the naked eye but in terms of life force… meaning we'll need to create a new AI to man the ship. No lifeforms will be sent up there as they will detect us immediately… but that's just more of a hypothesis than anything else," I finished explaining after Mia finally let go of me.

Mia just stared into my eyes, causing me to speak up once again.

"W-What is it? W-Were you even listening?" I asked and to no surprise, she replied with a response that nearly made me let out the loudest groan of pain in existence.

"You're so cute… and yeah, I had no clue what the fuck you were talking about, so good luck," She smiled just as we reached the throne room, taking down the mask from around our voices just before the two twin doors swung open.

On the throne was the emperor, and right beside him was his son, who looked to be in his early teens, a harsh glare directed right at us.

He could be quite the match for my daughter… but I need to see these skills of his first.

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