After chatting with Vivian for a while, Hel finally cut off the connection.
Her suspicions about the matter only grew stronger.
Roland needed a pure, holy-attribute transcendent to suppress the divine-blood lineage inside Zephyra. But Irina didn't entrust Zephyra to Vivian. So was it the Archbishop who interfered? Or was there some other reason that forced them to leave the Night Empire's capital? And yet, their final destination ended up being the same as mine. Is this just a coincidence, or is there some hidden scheme behind it?
For a moment, Hel couldn't figure it out.
In the end, she decided it was better to stay away from trouble.
From the very beginning, she had known that Zephyra and her father were an enormous source of trouble—the kind of trouble that even someone "higher up" might not be able to handle, let alone a small fry like Hel.
If the previous Divine Welcome Society plan had drawn the attention of the three great empires and the beastmen toward the Sacrifice Kingdom, then Zephyra in the future would very likely cause turmoil across the entire continent.
After nearly two full eras, a divine offspring has appeared in the world again. A protagonist-like existence like that… Fate, that old schemer, has probably already noticed her.
At that thought, Hel suddenly froze.
So the arrival of the Witch of Misfortune is related to Zephyra? But why did she go to the Alchemy Academy instead of Skoll Academy? Could it be because her luck was so bad that she went to the wrong school? Still… would a Saint-tier powerhouse really be so clueless as to mess up her own target? Is there really such a dense Saint in this world?
Hel shook her head and dismissed those messy thoughts.
The more she thought about it, the deeper and murkier the waters of the Scholars' Nation seemed. A special envoy from the Holy See had arrived, and even Fate's subordinates were here.
Perhaps in the near future, this place would become the focal point of the entire continent.
This made Hel's "rat instincts" itch—she even felt an urge to leave the country altogether.
But to avoid arousing suspicion by leaving too suddenly, and also for the sake of the authority on the Healing Witch, Hel thought it over and ultimately abandoned the idea.
To avoid trouble, Hel spent the following days mostly holed up in her dormitory. Whenever something needed to be done, she had Anna or Witt handle it for her.
On another front, Tina's shop acquisitions and factory site selection were progressing at full speed.
With Hel's funding and Witt's connections, Tina's transactions went extremely smoothly. The factory outside the city was even constructed personally by Witt using magic.
Earth-attribute magic's control over terrain meant that an industrial park that would normally take at least a year to build was completed in just one week.
The machinery inside the factory was designed by Hel herself.
Although these alchemical machines only used a small portion of goblin engineering techniques, they were still decades ahead of the machines currently on the market in Savant City.
However, these machines were meant to employ the workers who were about to lose their jobs.
Trying to compete head-on with factory owners backed by the entire rising noble class using only these machines was clearly not enough.
So inside her undead space, Hel used the complete goblin engineering system to build an entirely new factory.
The workers, of course, were the undead within that space.
These "heaven-sent workhorses" could operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no rest.
No matter how ruthlessly other factory owners exploited their workers, they could never lower their costs to the point where Hel's expenses were almost equal to raw material prices.
Unless the other side resorted to underhanded tactics like sabotaging her shops, Hel couldn't think of any way they could stop her from attacking the entire industry.
And if they did come to cause trouble at her factories or shops, Hel would gladly show them what it meant when her sword was anything but dull.
Every shop was guarded by a Tier-5 golem, and the factory had four golems stationed at its four corners.
Unless the upper echelons of the Mechanical Academy personally took action, those newly risen nobles would just be walking in to get slaughtered.
As for Hel's clone, Lyco, there wasn't much progress.
Recently, the tasks assigned to her were just the refinement of simple alchemical items.
These tools had all kinds of functions—even for setting up nodes, there were thousands of possible uses.
So trying to reverse-engineer John's planned formation from these items alone was clearly unrealistic.
Hel couldn't even be sure whether the items she refined would be used in the formation at all.
To better understand the forbidden spell John intended to cast, Hel spent 25 trait-energy points to upgrade her Life Magic trait to pink.
But based on the forbidden spells provided by the pink trait, she couldn't connect the items in her hands to any plague-curing forbidden magic.
This meant either:
The forbidden spell John prepared wasn't life-attribute at all, or....
The alchemical items Hel refined weren't meant for the forbidden spell.
Because of this, Hel gave up on planting any hidden tricks in those items.
That didn't mean she had given up entirely.
If the items made by a student like her weren't used for the forbidden spell, then surely the items made by stronger alchemists wouldn't all be decoys, right?
So over the past few days, Hel had Niv monitor the veteran alchemists as well.
But after repeated comparisons, Hel became even more confused about the forbidden spell they were preparing.
Looks like I'll need to keep observing if I want to truly understand this spell.
Hel crumpled up the intelligence Niv had given her and casually tossed it into the undead space to use as fertilizer.
At that moment, Niv came to find her.
"Master, there's movement in Chui-de City, meow."
Hearing the catgirl's report, Hel immediately perked up.
She rubbed her face to wake herself up a bit more, then looked at Niv.
"Have King Chui-de and that special envoy arrived?"
"Yes. Just now, they flew into the royal palace from the sky above Chui-de City. The palace's surveillance network is currently monitoring them. Does Master want to transfer Morrigan over there?"
"Not yet. Let's first see how they bring the Healing Witch out, and what kind of arrangements are in place where she's being held. That information might be useful later when we steal the Flower Witch."
"Understood, Master."
Niv nodded and was about to return to monitoring them, but Hel stopped her and asked:
"By the way, how are the traps in the Chui-de Royal Palace coming along?"