Divinity: Against the Godly System

Chapter 518: Thief

"Found out what?" Ryder asked, curious.

"There was something that Chaos couldn’t afford to have known. He worked hard to keep that a secret. It was years of hard work, but the Lord of Time found out. He was going to tell other gods. Seeing no choice, Chaos killed a God," Janus answered.

"From the way you’re talking, I think you won’t tell me what that thing was. But I have a feeling that Chaos is your friend. You know so much about him and even the fact that he killed the Lord of Time. Is he a good guy?" Ryder asked.

"What do you think? Is Chaos good according to you?’ Janus asked in return.

"I don’t know him personally, so I can only go by what you told me. But he did have a rough childhood, so I feel bad for him. And he did help me by killing the Lord of Time, so I should thank him, but I don’t think he did right by killing his friend. If he killed his friend to keep a secret, I don’t think I can appreciate him," Ryder answered.

"It’s as if Shu finding out about you and my powers. I don’t want anyone to know about it, but if Shu finds out, I won’t just kill him. That’s not how this works. You need to be truly cruel to kill your friend to keep your secret. Maybe that’s why he was able to control the Crawlers? As you said, someone needs to have true darkness to do that. And now I know he had that," Ryder answered, smiling.

"Ironic..." Janus simply said one word before he stopped.

"Ironic what? What do you mean?" Ryder inquired.

Despite Ryder’s question, Janus didn’t answer this time. He directly disappeared, not responding.

"Are you there?" Ryder asked again but received no response.

"Sigh, fine. Don’t bother."

....

Days passed slowly as Ryder spent most of his time in Divinity. His Coronation was supposed to be done right away, but the High Dukes delayed it since they wanted to make this event big.

It was decided that it was going to be a grand ceremony where many prominent guests would be invited. It was also a bit of showoff to arrange this so grand after a war to show everyone that the war didn’t affect them even a little.

Many invitations were sent. A few leaders of the Undead Region received the invitation. The Hobbit Clan also received one. Human Realm also had a few great names that were invited to the Coronation of Ryder.

The news of the Demon Realm getting a new king was everywhere. It was a really big deal since Demon Realm was one of the major powers here. All other major powers were given invitations. One of them was even sent to the Death Domain.

However, since Death Domain was their enemy, they didn’t give as much privilege to the Death Domain.

The other leaders were allowed to bring three more people with them. But the Death Domain Prince was only allowed to bring one person with him. It was done so he doesn’t bring all Death Generals with him. Bringing your enemy home and giving him the permission to bring all of his guns was what the Demon Realm didn’t want to do.

If there was only one Death General here with the Prince, they could easily make sure that nothing went wrong.

It was decided that the Crowning Ceremony was going to be held after a week to give everyone enough time to prepare and get here.

There was an atmosphere of Celebration in the entire Demon Realm, but Ryder was a bit bored. Because of his Coronation Preparation, he couldn’t leave the Palace. He was getting bored sitting inside and giving all the permissions, making the decisions.

At Least, he had leveled up a lot, so he didn’t feel the need to go hunt. But he did realize that he could have used this one week to go to Human Realm and establish his Guild with Shu. But the High Dukes wanted the Coronation to be big, and they didn’t listen to him on that matter.

The only freedom Ryder had was in the real world, where he was handling the matters of his company. He was working with Shu to get permission for his company to conduct their human trials.

Ryder was new in this business. He didn’t know who to contact. Shu was the only one who could help him by telling him about the proper authority and helping him contact them.

With Shu’s help, a meeting was arranged between Ryder and the board that handled such permissions.

Ryder was supposed to go to them for a meeting with his staff and get permission.

"You sure you don’t want me to come?" Shu asked Ryder, who was leaving the house for the meeting, fully dressed.

"It’s fine. You don’t need to come. You already helped me with this meeting. As for the rest, I should be able to handle it. You already have lots to do," Ryder told Shu before he left the mansion.

Entering his sports car, he drove away.

Ryder went to the office from where he picked up Aleson, who had prepared all the documents to explain what their trials were going to be about.

"You prepared everything, right?" Ryder asked Aleson as he picked that guy up.

"Yeah. I even prepared the presentation and all the documents according to what you told me," Aleson replied confidently.

"That’s better."

....

The sky was getting dark as clouds covered it, hiding the light of the sun. Despite being afternoon, it seemed like evening when it had started getting dark.

Cold winds were flying, signaling the arrival of rain.

"It’s been quite some time since I saw rain. It looks like this day will be pretty fun," Ryder told Aleson as he stepped out of the car.

"You like rain, sir?" Aleson asked Ryder.

"Who wouldn’t? I honestly enjoy the rain a lot. I have some really good memories attached to rain," Ryder laughed, replying.

"Some people say the arrival of dark clouds signals that things are going to go bad. I hope it’s not like that today," Aleson muttered, gazing towards the sky.

They entered the government building in front of them where the meeting was supposed to take place. They were brought to the meeting room on the sixth floor.

Knock!

"Come on in."

Hearing the confirmation, Ryder and Aleson stepped inside the meeting room.

"Ryder, Divine Corporation. This is Aleson; he works for me."

"Mr. Ryder, we heard about you. We were waiting. Please take a seat."

Ryder and Aleson sat before five men who were here to review their applications.

Aleson started explaining about their research and what kind of experiments they were intending to do. He also talked about the safety measures they were willing to take and everything else they had achieved.

As Aleson was about to finish explaining, Ryder noticed a surprised frown on the faces of these five men as they looked at each other.

"What happened? Is there something wrong with our explanation or the documents?" Ryder asked, wondering why they were frowning.

"Ah, Mr. Ryder. We heard that you were an associate of Mr. Maxwell. That’s why we had already decided to give you the permission for this experiment as long as your proposal was even partially satisfactory, but after hearing about it, I’m afraid we can’t allow you to do it. We can’t give you the permission," The man in the center answered.

"Why is that? Did we do something wrong?" Ryder asked. Since they were willing to give permission before, this meant that this meeting changed their mind. He didn’t think their proposal was wrong. There wasn’t any risk to it either. What could it be then? He didn’t understand.

"Ah, I don’t know how to say it, but you can’t do this research at all since this is stolen by you," the board member replied, sighing.

"What the heck? Are you calling me a thief? How dare you!"

Shocked, Ryder stood up. Even though they were right, he did steal this research from the alternate timeline, but it was something of Aleson. That person was here as well. Even then, they couldn’t know about this alternate timeline stuff. For them to call Aleson’s hard work as stolen, did they go crazy?

"Mr. Ryder, please calm down. We are only telling what logic tells us. Why don’t you explain something to us? If you were in our place and someone came to you with a research that was exactly the same as another company which came more than a week ago with the same thing, what would you think? Would you not call the second person a thief?" The man asked Ryder in return.

"You’re saying someone else came to you with the same research? Who?" Ryder inquired, understanding their hidden meaning.

"It’s not a small company either, actually. It’s one of the biggest names in medical research. On the other hand, your company is new in the field. So anyone would believe that this research belongs to them and not you," the man answered.

"I asked the name. Which company?!"