52 Looking into the Future

Urvostra, the Capital and largest city of the Urvostrion County. Compared to towns such as Dawn and Hadrow, Urvostra is on a completely different scale. Although large buildings like skyscrapers can't be seen, the general size of buildings surpasses that of the other cities in the Urvostrion County. Two of them, in particular, stand out among the rest, the Urvostrion Family Manor and St Heleste Cathedral. But for a few of the new arrivals in the city, only the cathedral is of any importance.

Arriving in Urvostra is Astur, Elizabeth, and Kretea, along with several members of the Warband who can easily blend into a Human city. Their goal, infiltrating the Crypt of St Heleste. Ignoring Astur's personal reasons for doing this, everyone else is completely onboard with the idea as they all have animosity with the Church and would gladly do things just to mildly inconvenience them.

Blending in with the bustling crowd, Astur's group is searching around the premise of the cathedral. Although they don't expect to get much, if anything, from this preliminary action, on the off chance that some useful information pops up it's better for them to not neglect it. But as was expected, after an hour and a half of searching the area around the cathedral, they didn't find anything useful like a secret entrance.

Meeting up in the square in front of the cathedral, they conclude that the only way to the entrance would be from the inside of the cathedral. But everyone is reluctant over Astur's suggestion for their next course of action, attempting to search the inside of the cathedral.

"I thought our purpose was to cause some trouble here, so why are you all so reluctant to actually go inside?" Astur asks.

"It's not that we don't want to go inside and cause some trouble, it's just that the Church would know the moment we step into the cathedral," Kretea says.

Seeing the look of confusion on Astur's face, Kretea continues, "It isn't well known, but the Church has devices setup that alerts them whenever someone that isn't Human or Beastfolk step into their cathedrals. This means as soon as we walk in, we would have to immediately begin the search for the crypt."

"Moreover, let alone its location, we don't even know how to open the crypt. These kinds of things usually have a special lock to protect them," Elizabeth says.

"Ahh, that alarm could be a problem. But opening the crypt isn't a problem in the slightest, isn't that what brute force is for?" Astur asks.

"But isn't stuff like lockpicking and sneaking around what thieves do?" Elizabeth asks.

"Perhaps, but I ain't no thief. If violence can solve a problem then it isn't a problem. A mere door is easily solved by violence, thus it's not a problem for us. But I will concede getting in unnoticed will be difficult. Actually, being unnoticed isn't the main problem, it's locating the crypt and getting inside before people come to stop us that's the problem. So why don't we find someone to look in for us. If only I knew beforehand about this alarm, I could have brought some people to deal with this easily," Astur says.

"In my defence, I had assumed you already knew about the alarm beforehand," Kretea says.

"Same here. Although most Humans and Beastfolk aren't aware, it isn't exactly a secret amongst Demons," Elizabeth says, to which the Warband members nod along.

"I'll look for some of the Irregulars, they'll probably do it for us. But in the worst-case scenario, we can just blow up the entire cathedral. You know what, why wait? I can just blow the place up right now," Astur says, walking up to St Heleste Cathedral.

But of course, Astur doesn't get to blow up the cathedral, having been pulled back by the combined efforts of Elizabeth and Kretea, who takes her to their temporary base, AKA their hotel room. Compared to Astur who cares little about the consequences, everyone else knows that if she actually blows up the cathedral, things will get far too out of hand for them to handle.

Before Astur get impatient and tries to blow up the place again, everyone immediately goes out to search for some Irregulars, or players as Astur knows them, to look around the inside of the cathedral for anyplace that seems well guarded and leads underground. But before everyone else can leave, Astur makes sure to tell them to bring the Irregulars back to her before giving them any missions.

With nothing to do while she waits, Astur brings out a bottle of wine and a cigarette as she checks on the System, specifically the countdown in the corner of the interface. 68 hours until it reaches 0, from then on the game known as Eternal Universe Online is scheduled to be fully open to the public. Currently, the beta has a total of a few hundred thousand people scattered around the starting planets, but the beta will soon end and with it are millions of players joining the game.

It was actually this timing for the beta's end that Astur entertained the thought of blowing up the cathedral. She isn't a fool and Astur knows the potential consequences of such a high profile action, but doing such a thing would put her in the limelight just as a mass influx of players arrive, giving her an even greater chance to attract players to her faction if she players her cards right. But even if she doesn't take a high profile action like blowing the cathedral to smithereens, she still wants it to spread that she is the one taking action against the Church, both as a publicity stunt and to show her opposition to the Church.

Letting out a puff of smoke with a heavy sigh, Astur says, "Things are going to get pretty messy soon."

"That kind of came out of nowhere, but what makes you say that?" Elizabeth asks as she and Kretea look at Astur with a questioning gaze.

"The state of this planet is going to get reach critical mass soon. The Hinterlands and the Prosperous Lands will likely break into full-on war. There's also the matter of us against the Church. And perhaps the most destabilising factor is that we will soon see a mass influx of those Irregulars, far more than that are currently around," Astur says.

"And how can you tell?" Kretea asks.

"Just think of it as a prophecy from a Goddess," Astur says, letting out another puff of smoke.

"Alright, lets leave it at that then," Kretea says, not entirely believing her.

In actuality, Astur is mostly telling the truth here. While the matters pertaining to the players is information she has longs been aware of, and the matter between her faction and the Church isn't really a secret, the matter of the war is different. Although tensions have been high many times in the past between the seven nations, problems would usually be mediated by the Church or even settle on their own as the people in charge change over time. But currently, Astur has access to one of her Divine Authorities.

[Authority - Seer of Fate (Active/Passive)]: Can view the fate of a person and see their Source. Can passively see visions of the future and the past, visions are relative to Astur's current location. These passive visions are random and uncontrolled, Astur can only know if they are of the future or the past, all other information pertaining to the details of the vision needs to be deciphered by herself.

While she never actively used it much in the past when she lived on Earth, Astur is no stranger to the passive portion of this ability. As soon as the seal on it was temporarily lifted due to the alcohol and cigarette, she saw the flames of war that would likely happen in the near future. This alone doesn't actually bother Astur much, but the problem for her is that she was right in the middle of the conflict, and the location of the battlefield was very familiar to her, the plains just beyond the Sea of Trees.

Shaking her head, Astur sighs, "I for one, am not looking forward to the future. We need to hurry and finish our business here."