Before dying, Tsukiko only wished for the seed she had po successfully bear fruit iure and kill or at least annoy Lacius. She is simply unwilling to take this loss calmly.

  A few years after creating and stabilizing the situation iemple, Tsukiko has dug into the history of mankind in the Crystal Cube world.

  Initially, she wished to look for any trace of Cedric to create a more ving sacred text for the temple. But instead of histarding Cedric, she dug out the secret regarding Lacius and Gratian.

  She also finds out the mad woman who has previously caused massive destru is actually one of Gratian's wives who has escaped the sughter Lacius has done.

  Wheuatioweeemple and the kingdom already seems irreparable. She secretly iigated traces of Gratian's lineages and believed they shouldn't have beeirely killed.

  After spending time iigating, Tsukiko indeed found several people who were suspected to be his desdants hidden throughout the human cities. Currently, most of them are having a hard time and barely live each day in poverty.

  Although among those people some of them might not truly be Gratian's desdants, but she doesn't care about it.

  After secretly sending people to check their dition and ihose still young and without any guardian into the temple's orphasukiko serusted aide to tell them of the 'truth' and hope they'll be able tain what's rightfully theirs.

  She also implemented whatever brainwashing teique she has learned into those children to believe they're the desdants of Gratian and must slowly but secretly take their revenge against the current king.

  Still, Tsukiko knew her brainwashing ability wasn't all that good. So, when she heard many of the priests and priestesses managing the orphanage in other city's temples had been killed. She felt a mixed feeling of sadness and also schadenfreude.

  The hatred of killing the kind sisters that mahe orphanages should have increased those children's hatred against the kingdom.

  Actually, Yuma and An's opinion on Tsukiko has indeed hit the mark. Since being the high priestess of the creation god temple dedicated to Cedric, she has been having more and more screw looses. The kind that 't be screwed ba pce.

  But Cedric doesn't know about all that. Right now, he simply felt sad while gd that the battle had ended.

  After making sure the human kingdom has stabilized Lacius is too busy handling the aftermath of that battle. Cedrit to learn the anatomy of elves and dwarves while occasionally spending some time researg the trainihod of the human race every time he gained inspiration.

  If someoold Cedric he would turn into someone who loved learning while he was still oh, he would've spit at those guys until they drowned in saliva.

  But now that he already gained a godhood, Cedric found that learning new knowledge has never felt easier. Every knowledge that entered his brain gave Cedric a sense of pleasure that might rival having intercourse.

  Actually, he doesn't know how it feels to have intercourse with someone. After all, he has been single during his life oh.

  When he arrived at that thought, Cedric suddenly paused. "Maybe I should go and date someohe ime I visit Earth. But things will get quite awkward in terms of the age difference. After all, I am already a hundred years old single guy. Although my appearance remained as a handsome twenty year old guy, I am already old enough to be their grandfather or eve-grandfather."

  While Cedric is spending his time researg aing distracted over some useless things. Lacius has finally finished handling the aftermath of the battle. At least for now.

  After the battle, there are simply too many problems that only be slowly resolved by time.

  For example, with the death of Tsukiko and more thaher level 1 blessed. The amount of high level batants in the human race has been decreased by close to half.

  The battle betweeemple knight and his soldier also caused quite a lot of casualties irength of human races.

  That means the human resources to guard the humaory from demons and other beasts have decreased.

  It's estimated that in the few years, the amount of demons will begin to increase. Furthermore, the Sacred Kingdom will not be able to expand the amount of vilges.

  While preparing for future headache-indug problems, Lacius slowly went towards his secret boratory while being followed by Hars.

  After several sleepless days of hard work, he finally has time to enter his secret boratory and begin another round of researbsp;

  The two old men walked through several corridors and arrived inside a secret room.

  Upoering the boratory, several huge tubes made of gss be seen. Those are special reinforced gss tubes that have been imported from a mert group from another city. Otom of the tube, the word 'produced by Kame & Liana Mert Group' be seen.

  An opaque liquid solution filled the tube to the brims, while inside every tube, there was the corpse of a strong blessed that had died during the battle ihe temple.

  There are twenty such tubes ihe boratory, with fifteen of them being filled with human corpses, including Tsukiko's. While the remaining are filled with the corpses of magical beasts.

  After standing in front of a ft marble table with many tools strewn around it, Lacius said. "Hars, refill the solutions to keep those corpses fresh, and help me retrieve a prisoner with earth element blessing from the dungeon."

  "Alright." Hars slowly refilled the tubes taining Tsukiko and other's corpses with another opaque liquid.

  Once he is done, he exits the boratory to retrieve a living blessed for Lacius.

  Meanwhile, Lacius sat in front of the table and pulled a book with a copy of An's trainihod written on it.

  While slowly turning the page of that book, Lacius begins to get lost in thought.

  'Slowly surrendering more authority to the temple this past few years is truly a correct step. Those young ook the bait and 'forced' me to attack the temple. Giving me enough excuse tet Tsukiko.'

  'Although the creatod seems to focus more on Yuma among the people from another world. Giving the god a satisfying excuse when attag Tsukiko indeed made my pn go smoother. Although the god might have the ability to listen to my thoughts ahrough my deception, the success of my attack means they gave me a silent admission, which is eveer.'

  Lacius focused his attention on the book inscribed with An's trainihod in his hand. 'I must say, An is indeed a genius for thinking of such a method. Based on my experiment, I am already extremely close to creating a trainihod suitable for myself.

  'What a pity, I've cluded this method only be used to push someone up to my level, and 't allow me to reach a higher level and regain my youth like Yuma and Tsukiko. Otherwise, I wouldn't o bet on angering the creator and targeting Tsukiko.'

  Then, Lacius slightly moved his sight toward the tube taining Tsukiko's corpse. 'Sigh, Tsukiko is simply to and 't be captured alive. Just experimenting with her corpse will be much less effit than experimenting on a living person.'

  'If I'd known, I would've taken a different approad tried to befriend Tsukiko instead. Although I won't be able to do a destructive experiment ohat way. At least the research subject is still alive. I guess I am still too greedy.'

  'heless, I am finally oep closer to my goal of eternal life.' Lacius woke up from his trance when he sensed Hars slowly walking toward his position while grabbing an unscious blessed.

  Hars easily grabbed that blessed and pced him on the marble table in front of Lacius.

  Lacius nodded, "Good job, Hars."

  "That's thanks to Yhness's potions. Otherwise, I would've been just a frail old man on the verge of death." Hars said while pg several restraining devices on the blessed he just brought.

  Lacius just nodded and started mixing several herbs to create a potion.

  Since he got stuck at the peak of Level 1, Lacius has been ceaselessly searg for a way to tinue advang and began to dabble on many things.

  One of the things he dabbled and focused on is regarding mixing magical materials gained from magical pnts and magical beasts to achieve a greater e. Which he called Alchemy, based on some stories he had heard from Tsukiko and Yuma a long time ago.

  Although the two of them keep on saying whatever they're talking about is just fi in their world. But Lacius kheir world was ohout blessed power, or as they often call it, magic.

  Yet, the Crystal Cube world is a world where magid magical creatures exist.

  As a king who has access to a lot of magical resources, Lacius felt it was a shame not to take them into use.

  This is how he successfully proved the existence of alchemy by tirelessly mixing different magical pnts, magical beasts, and even magical ores that occasionally be found.

  After innumerable failures, Lacius slowly learned from his failure and finally crafted several potions.

  Although the rate of failure is pretty high, he often only gains a defective product after wasting preaterials. It doesn't matter to him, as long as he could see the hope of achieving his dream.

  From Tsukiko and Yuma's starding alchemy. Lacius couldn't care less about turning stoo gold or finding the philosopher's stone. But, the ce for crafting the elixir of immortality hit him right in his weakness.

  ***

  Ihe secret boratory.

  After several failures, Lacius meically crafted a potion and quickly focused when he found it hadn't exploded and turned into smoke after reag certain phases. 'It finally succeeded.'

  He poured that potion into the mouth of the restrained blessed and waited patiently.

  After drinking that potion, the blessed's eyelids twitched and he slowly woke up.

  Kanon opened his eyes and looked around. After surveying his surroundings, he found out there were only two old men calmly standing around him.

  Although he isn't sure how he ended up in his current situation. Seeing the ones around him were just two old men, Kanon tried to circute the energy inside him and activated his blessed ability to escape the pce.

  Such a weak defense is definitely a miracle granted by the god of creation for him. He finally escape the pace's dungeons that are filled to the brim with strong guards.

  But soon, Kanon's expression ged.

  Wheried to move his energy and activate his blessed power. He found the energy in his body had turned uive.

  The energy that has always followed his will has turagnant.

  While trying his best to calm down, Kanon tried to move his limbs but found they had turremely weak and were restrained by metal shackles.

  "Whah is hafenin?" He asked the two old men around him but found out his tongue had turned numb and uo move like normal.

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