Chapter 2 ( Part 2 )

"Pardon my lack of knowledge. He seems a bit…small." If there is one thing that challenged the perfection of this immense ball of cuteness, it is that it is very scrawny. His wrinkled hands were like twigs. His tiny feet that burst red like a suddenly bloomed lotus were perhaps the most beautiful things god invented. Sadly, they were connected to very straight pole like legs that didn't have an ounce of meat on them. It was hard to imagine that such a soft thing is actually so bony and small.

Anita pat the newborn's butt to wake him up. She had been prompting him for an hour like this, but he was too sleepy to eat his fill.

"He was born like this."

"The Hell King was born like this?"

"You keep calling him by that name."

"Ha ha…I jest. It is just the nickname of someone who lived in his cell. So people attached it to him. I won't call him that anymore…"

"What does it have to do with him? Aniket must like it if he let people call him that for so many years. Just continue."

"Ha ha ha ha." As if. "So why was Sir T.K born like this?" Raeva hastened to distract her.

Anita smiled and explained with interest, "He was an Aerog twin. He didn't receive any nutrients from his mother. Only his sister. To be born this big is already a miracle."

"What's an Aerog twin?"

"Why don't you google it?"

"Google?"

Anita took a moment to compose her thoughts. She, Aniket and Nathaniel were born five hundred years ago. It was hard to communicate with people of this era sometimes.

"Never mind. I don't think Aerog twins are born in this era. You won't get any information."

Anita said, "They are a very rare pair of twins that are monozygotic but born with different genders. That means they are born of one egg and are raised in a single placenta, but are assigned different genders. This is basically an error caused during the cellular stage. When the womb realises this error, it no longer feeds the foetus with the wrong gender. However, the main foetus actually shares its nourishment with the Aerog twin. Basically, the twin raises him like a mother in a metaphorical womb within a womb situation. Generally speaking, Aerog twins are all male and the main foetus is female. So it leaves a lot to the imagination and thus is the reason why Aerog twins were very popular in our time."

"I see…so the good sire was a twin." There are two of these monsters.

"Might I be so bold and ask…"

"Go on."

"When you say your time, do you mean the twenty-first century, my lady?"

Anita knew that the thief was a specialist in art and antiques. She nodded. "Late twenty-first century, early twenty-second. Aniket was born in the twenty-second century. On the dot of midnight at the turn of the century."

"And what of the twin, my Lady?"

Anita put her finger to her lips. Aniket was not actually a baby, he was not awake either. Even so, his subconsciousness reacted and clenched her breast tightly. A newborn baby doesn't know how to exert its strength. Aniket had no such problem. He may only have the strength of a newborn, but he managed to bruise Anita's breast.

She hissed and soothed the baby for a long time before he reluctantly followed her instructions and chewed her breast. He had no teeth, but he could injure her breast very easily. He very nearly did that so many times, but just like a baby realises its mother's discomfort by instinct, he too stopped at the final moment. He would continue to let himself be urged into taking some nourishment.

After so much commotion, Raeva understood that the Hell King's twin sister was a sore subject. It could agitate him at a subconscious level. In ten years, he was in World Prison, this was the first insight into T.K Raeva ever got. Gosh, this information will sell for tens of millions on the black market!

Now that the Hell King is out of prison, he couldn't begin to imagine the number of organisations ready to hunt him. Raeva had not even contemplated on this subject yet.

To hide his thoughts, he quickly changed the subject. "Was he also born a bit blue?"

Anita raised the lights just a little to see what the time servant was talking about. She quickly put them down a moment later. Twenty years is a very long time. The pod attacked Aniket the moment he entered the driveway. His entrance will make its relative time chaotic.

This is an unpleasant moment for anyone who returned from their mission after freezing time on the pod. However, since all members in the pod go on missions together, the effect is dispersed. It is almost the same as entering a dirty and cold house after leaving on vacation for a few months. A bit unpleasant, but not insurmountable.

The problem starts when only one or two of the pod members leave the pod while the other members are frozen along with the pod. At this time the unpleasantness increases. Timekeepers undergo a phenomenon called shedding. They enter something called an egg maker. This is where Raeva saw Aniket being folded into foetal position and covered with the soft shell.

Timekeepers are basically coerced by the pod to undergo this treatment. It corrects their relative age on a subconscious level. Their body itself doesn't change much.

Any attack on the subconscious is fought hard by the mind. Only for this reason is a timekeeper folded into a form with a smaller age in order to lower his defences.

This time Aniket had gone beyond the maximum amount of time for freezing the pod. He was attacked even before entering the pod. He went into a deep trance to protect himself.

Timekeepers are trained since young not to fight the pod's correction. However, age means wisdom to the subconscious. It is easy to give up memories, but hard to give up wisdom.

Besides, the pod Surya they belong to was a pod of timekeepers before space was folded and timekeepers built a separate realm for themselves. Pod Surya was frozen in time for five centuries before Anita and Nathaniel woke up. They familiarised themselves with the current systems, but Aniket only woke up a decade after they did. He didn't have enough training and couldn't lower himself to the pod.

The fight was fierce because Aniket feared the pod will kill him. Instead, he was folded back into a state of newborn where he no longer had any defence against the pod. Meanwhile, the pod urged Nate and Anita to create a room pregnancy. A state where the female's body believes it is pregnant. Since all timekeepers are adopted, a room pregnancy is vital for producing breastmilk via hormones. Giving breastmilk helps mother and child bond, therefore all timekeepers practice sex with the intention of creating room pregnancy.

Nate and Anita were not the same, but they were able to create room pregnancy on the same day the pod asked them to. The reason for the pod's insistence was because Aniket's newborn form was very fragile. Not to mention, Aniket was a healthy man before, but twenty years in prison left him with many latent injuries and nutrition issues. Folding the scars and hidden injuries into a very small and scrawny newborn child was very dangerous. Any kind of artificial feeding would increase the danger ten fold. In order not to kill him, the pod let Anita lactate using hormones and only then freed the infant from the soft shell.

The subconscious comfort brought by breastfeeding would further wind the time back for the pod heir. However, Aniket's fight was dark and persistent.