CHAPTER 34: PRAYER

Luke knelt before the portrait he had painted. He stared intently at the portrait and so to Nyx’s eyes.

"This is not a temple, my lady, great Goddess. Forgive me, I wanted to show my respect to you in this way instead of building a temple," Luke said suddenly.

Then he smiled and said, "I owe you an apology. I knew you protected my lineage, that we lived on your lands and you protected our empire, that you enabled thousands of heroes to flourish on these lands, but I was ungrateful."

"Instead of worrying about things I shouldn’t have worried about, I should have ignored the things I should have seen. I made a big mistake...no I have made choices," he added.

"Perhaps I will not be the person you or your daughters, three Fates and your son, Destiny, imagine me to be. Perhaps I will disappoint you greatly, but I want you to know that my faith in you... will never be broken. Even when I was ungrateful, I continued to worship you, and this is an unshakable truth."

Then he said, "My vision grew dark, and I made a choice. That choice was a mistake. I won’t say it won’t happen again. I am not Empress Andromeda; I will make mistakes, but... if you think you can forgive me every time, I won’t look back."

Luke’s smile grew with every passing second. His heart was overflowing with a strange purity. He realised that this was the feeling Pope Leonardo Marcelo had described to him earlier...way earlier in his life. Praying was more comforting than necessary.

"Thank you. The gift you gave me saved me from so much more. It ensured that the woman I cherish is safe by my side. It allowed my cherished servants, Kevin and Callum, to smile comfortably. It ensured that the elves you guided and the 41 humans left behind have warm homes, food, and water." Luke said this with a broad smile on his face, then bowed his head and added one final sentence:

"I hope you can forgive me."

When he had finished asking for forgiveness, expressing his regret, and praying, he stood up and prepared to leave the library.

Just as he was about to reach the library door, he suddenly heard a voice behind him... or at least, he thought it came from behind him.

"You haven’t done anything unforgivable, even if you were to turn the world into hell. Live, young man. Live in such a way that you can proudly tell everyone that you are Hiera... I have never been angry with you."

Luke looked in the direction he thought the voice had come from—Nyx’s portrait—and realised he had heard the same voice that even the Pope of the church had struggled to hear.

It was a voice of medium thickness for a woman’s voice, incredibly authoritative yet equally gentle, and it felt almost like music.

Luke smiled, putting his astonishment aside.

"As you command, my lady."

After that, Luke returned to his work. He was now giving more orders to the fairies. Naturally, everyone who saw this was surprised. Even though the fairies respected the Hieras, it didn’t make much sense to anyone that they would listen to their words.

Of course, no one knew the truth.

Luke had ordered that the watch continue until the winter months were completely over, just in case. When Callum asked him why, Luke simply said that he had a bad feeling about it.

Luke wasn’t trying to save the world or anything like that. It would be accurate to say that he didn’t care at all, but at least this region... he had to protect this region that had been granted to him by the Chaos-Born.

That was precisely why he needed to work a little harder and take everything even more seriously, even though his seriousness had already been at the highest level.

He had now reached a point where he had to break through even this calibre.

Luke had managed to lift his head from his work on the fourth of January and, after his daily prayer session, had come to the lake with Zoey.

Zoey sat down in the gazebo Luke had quickly set up, with a fire surrounded by stones in the middle, while Luke began sketching plans to build a bridge across the enormous lake.

After nearly an hour of sketching, Luke directly asked for help from Mateo Del Mar, the king of the Mermen and Mermaids.

This assistance was regarding the exact depth of the lake.

After nearly half an hour of measurement, Luke had determined that the depth was exactly nine hundred metres.

This was an enormous depth. It was truly an enormous depth. Especially for a lake, it was an unprecedented depth.

Even though it caused the sketch to change slightly, Luke quickly created a bridge sketch by purchasing sea stones that would not collapse and could withstand heavy weights from the shop panel, added it to the shop panel, and purchased it.

One of the things Luke had just unlocked was exactly this: blank sketches.

Luke could save the blueprints he had drawn and created into the system he had in his possession for exactly five hundred gold pieces and manage to obtain them ready-made. In other words, Luke had managed to obtain the areas where he could place a ready-made bridge for nearly a thousand gold pieces by calculating them precisely.

This was cheaper than purchasing all the materials and performing the process.

After mounting the sea stones at the bottom of the lake with the help of Mermen and Mermaids, Luke activated the bridge blueprint.

After carefully adjusting the blueprint’s position, he carried out the process.

The bridge, made of extremely valuable white and black wood and planks, suddenly appeared, spanning a full seven hundred metres in length.

Luke smiled and was pleased to have completed another task.

"You smile every time you create something, and seeing your smile is a pleasure, but my dear, what exactly is this bridge for?" Zoey shouted from the pavilion where she was sitting.