Elowen’s eyes widened. "You..."
Grey blinked. He knew it was a risk asking this, but he was going to have to take a risk one way or another to end this loop. Just playing it safe wouldn’t do anything for him.
In the worst case, Elowen just attacked him or something and he would get his excuse to play out his one man army fantasies again until he died in a blaze of glory.
Something told him that stats alone weren’t going to be able to close the gap between himself and The Relentless guardian. Let alone the fact that there were apparently five more of them, and the Nobles to worry about.
He bet the nuns in this place had even more broken curse abilities than what he had seen in Zone 234 as well.
All things considered, there was just no shot he could solo the Imperial Capital just yet, but he was sniffing at their heels for sure.
As much emphasis and focus as he had put on his new Vampire Lord Mech, his Dark Solveign Mech was also a nice boost to its strength as well.
If he could find a way to make the Star Swallower just as compatible with his mech as the Wolf Spirit, whatever gap existed there would be closed and he would gain another power up just as huge.
"I..." Elowen hesitated.
"My master was a Trolley before he died." Grey said simply. "Even if you don’t like to or don’t want to hear it, one day I will get revenge whether you tell me the story or not."
Elowen hesitated again, and then looked down to the ground. For a moment, Grey thought she was frozen again. But this time, it only took a few seconds for her to start speaking.
"I do not know every bit of the details of what happened, but I do know that it wasn’t just one of the current Duke families involved. The Valdi had a heavier hand, for sure. But the Enphro were likely very happy to see it happen.
"My—the Goddess is very pragmatic in how she does things. If it will ultimately lead to the better, more stable outcome, she will take that path. If it does not, then she will veer things in that direction.
"Since two of the three Dukedoms wanted to see the fall of another, it was better to stand aside than to enrage two other Dukedoms and leave a third that would now hate them both."
Grey nodded inwardly. He had only gotten tidbits, but he had somewhat heard about the fact Terran had been involved with an Imperial Princess somehow. That ultimately ended poorly.
But despite all the power she had, the Goddess had let Terran live. Even if he was exiled, he was still alive, and living a life of tyranny elsewhere.
All Grey knew was that if he had a daughter, and she was even looked at by someone she didn’t want seeing her, he’d gouge their eyeballs out.
The idea that the Goddess could have let something that was presumably even worse than that happen to her own daughter, and then let the criminal walk free?
Grey had already had no respect for the Goddess to begin with between the whole fake god thing and especially the whole celibacy shtick. But whatever small slivers were left were definitely gone at this point.
"Like I said, I don’t know all the details, but the Valdi essentially framed the Trolley with a conspiracy related to the fall of the Giyoto Empire.
"We were meant to help the Giyoto Empire fend off the oncoming army of Dark Kin and the Fog of Chaos, but we arrived late to an unsalvageable situation.
"The Valdi claimed that their teleportation channels were sabotaged by an outside force, and after an investigation, this was found to be true.
"As far as I know, the Valdi were actually innocent in this matter and it was likely the Dark Kin that managed to take part in this. But the Trolley were also exposed not long before for one of Duke Trolley’s wives being a descendant of the vampires.
"Taking advantage of the situation, Valdi chose to use this chance to pin things on the Trolley, and people already had a bad taste in their mouths, so things went very easily. That’s all I know of the actual lead-up events.
"After that, the of-age Trolleys were sentenced to death, and the others were exiled and made impotent. They could never have children of their own and their bloodlines would end with them."
Grey’s eyes narrowed.
Elowen seemed very confident that the Valdi weren’t involved in their teleportation channels faltering. Grey was inclined to believe her... at least a bit.
That was because he couldn’t find it in himself to believe that the fake-Goddess would be so incompetent to allow the erasure of a Duke family.
The addition of the vampire lore bolstered that claim. It was more likely that the fake-Goddess wanted the Trolley gone from the beginning, but because they had handled the vampire situation well, she hadn’t had an opportunity to do it cleanly.
It could even be a situation where the Valdi were simply acting on the Goddess’ orders from the very beginning.
’Wait, if that’s possible... then it’s also possible that the Goddess was part of the teleportation failure in the first place...’
Grey was just speculating, but he knew for a fact there was something fishy going on here.
If the Goddess wasn’t a fucking idiot, as the most powerful existence in the empire, there was no way that she would allow things to happen that she didn’t want to happen.
She had known instantly that her daughter was killed, but also who had done it. She put a blinker above his head before he could even think of running.
Realization overcame Grey.
The Goddess might very well be the true target of revenge of his quest.
And more interesting than that, after what happened to Terran, he was wondering if she was trying to run the same play to get rid of the Valdi now.