Elara suddenly began acting up, waving her hands around as she tried to speak.
"Did you remember something?" Cipher asked, turning to her.
She nodded her head violently before shaking it. She then began showing her hands. She raised her right hand. "Love, light." Then she raised her left hand. "Death, dark."
"Are you saying the Love Goddess is the same as the Goddess of Light?" Cipher asked.
Elara just stared at him. She then brought her hands together, clasping them in prayer just like Elaine had done. "Sister," she said.
"They’re sisters?" he asked.
She shook her head violently. "Little Elaine," she said, gesturing with her clasped hands. She then unclasped them. "Little Elaine," she said, gesturing at her right hand. "Elara," she said, gesturing to the other hand.
[She’s trying to say they split. No wonder they give off such similar energy,] the Heavenly Demon said.
"They split?" he asked, but Elara just stared at him.
"Little Elaine, sad. Help," she said. She then looked at Elaine and began patting her head gently.
At that moment, Elaine opened her eyes.
"What did she say?" Cipher asked.
Elaine shook her head. "She didn’t respond."
"Didn’t respond?" he echoed her words.
She nodded. "Yeah, sometimes she does that. She stops responding anymore."
Cipher nodded. If she did that other times, then maybe she wasn’t avoiding the question. Did that mean the goddess had other responsibilities she attended to besides just answering prayers? He turned to Elara. "Elara, you were saying something about splitting."
Elaine turned to look at her. "Splitting?"
Elara shook her head violently.
Cipher got up. "Never mind. Since the goddess isn’t responding anymore, I’ll take my leave," he said.
He wondered if Elara was hiding something from her sister. Then why was she telling him? When she said "Elaine is sad," did she mean Elaine or the Love Goddess?
"~Where did you get the splitting part?" Cipher asked.
[When she says little Elaine, maybe she means before they were born. They were the same person before they split into twins, making Elaine and Elara. Isn’t that how it works?] The Heavenly demon explained.
Cipher held his chin in thought, it somewhat made sense.
"~But Elara was the elder sister, shouldn’t it have been little Elara first?" He asked.
[Hmm, maybe]
"~Earlier you said they gave off similar energy..."
[That’s right, if it was any other person, they would have a hard time telling them apart by pure energy] The heavenly demon explained.
Cipher sighed, he had come for answers but now he was even more lost.
...
Cipher walked through the door and was back at Iris’s lab, where she was still welding something. Only now it had grown much more solid, and he could make out a humanoid shape.
"What are you making?" he asked.
She took off her protective glasses and turned to look at him. "After the recent incident, I figured I should upgrade my security. You never know when someone’s going to attack."
Cipher smiled nervously. She was strengthening her "security" even more? That thing that had left Luna’s corpse almost unrecognizable was getting an upgrade.
"Isn’t your security already good as is?" he asked. "Besides, you’re the most valuable asset in the association. The amount of people protecting you is quite high - me included - so there’s nothing to worry about."
"Out of those protecting me, how many do you suppose are after me?" she asked.
Cipher sighed. To be honest, he just didn’t trust those clankers and wanted to talk her out of it. He remembered seeing some of them roaming around the apocalypse, terrorizing people. Maybe they weren’t from Iris, but still. Well, seeing as he couldn’t convince her to stop making them, he decided to move on to the main topic. As for the robots, he’d keep an eye on them.
"If you’re really that worried about security, then I might have a solution for you," he said.
"Really? Did you find something good?" she asked.
"Yeah," Cipher said, raising his hand. "Try feeling my magic."
"Magic? Is it a new mana manipulation method?" she asked as she took off a glove from one hand and extended it, pressing her hand against Cipher’s.
"What do you think?" Cipher asked with a smile.
Iris’s eyes widened. She had just felt her magic instantly scatter when she tried to gather it to activate mana manipulation. She gripped his hand tighter, her eyes practically glowing. "This is amazing! Where did you learn this?"
Cipher pulled his hand away. "Interesting, isn’t it?"
"This is beyond interesting. If we can recreate this externally, we can make anti-magic technology. This is something every engineer out there has been working toward." She reached for Cipher’s hand again, wanting to feel it once more, practically drooling with excitement.
"I don’t mind giving you the skill, but I want to secure supply for the association," Cipher said.
"What do you take me for? I’ve been in the association even longer than you. Do you think I don’t know where my roots are?" she asked.
"Well, alright then. From now on, the Magic Engineering and R&D branches will be working together," he said. "Let’s get along." He extended his hand toward her.
She shook it firmly. "Of course," she said, her eyes letting out a golden glow.
[Successfully reverse engineered Mana Disruption (A-Rank)]
"I want this working in under a week. Can you make it?" he asked.
"Can I make it?" she asked.
Suddenly, Cipher felt all his mana freeze solid. He couldn’t access it anymore - and he wasn’t even in contact with Iris anymore. He looked at his hand in surprise.
"You’re underestimating me. I could make it in an hour if you gave me the resources," she said.
Cipher looked at his hand. Although the mana was frozen, he could feel his qi flowing just fine. He decided not to reveal it. After all, in front of a genius like Iris, she could easily reverse engineer that too and find a workaround. It was best to keep a few cards up his sleeve.
"I knew I could count on you. What resources do you need? Just name them and I’ll go find them myself."
Iris released the anti-magic field, and Cipher could finally feel his mana again.
"I need magic stones and magi-steel. Lots of them," she said. "Although I can use it like this, this is just a crude effect I made by layering barrier magic onto mana disruption, creating a field resistant to mana. Someone with high amounts of mana can just overwhelm the barrier. For it to actually work, we need a more refined solution - a better version could be one that utilizes resonance dampening through crystalline matrices and harmonic frequency nullification to absorb and redistribute mana at a sub..."
Cipher raised his hand. "Calm down. I don’t understand anything you’re saying. Just write down what you want and I’ll go get it for you."