Elenor left the training hall and headed back to the greenhouse section. Moving straight across the room, she entered it. Five meters past the door, two more doors greeted her. She calmly scanned her surroundings, waited a moment, listened carefully, and when she confirmed there was no issue, she advanced and examined both doors.
'An elevator and stairs… So the laboratory is downstairs—but what's upstairs?'
She looked upward, thought for a moment, then made a guess.
'Probably an observation tower. Grandpa likes watching space and the surroundings. There's no need to go there for now—the door is already locked.'
She stepped up to the elevator and pressed the panel with her thumb. A green light lit up, the doors split down the middle, and slid open to the sides. Elenor entered the elevator and read the text on the touch panel to her left.
[Upper Floor: Observation Tower]
[Ground Floor: Living Area]
[Lower Floor: Laboratory]
She tapped the lower floor with her index finger. The doors slowly closed, and the elevator began moving with a slight vibration. When she arrived, she didn't lower her guard—shotgun raised, she remained on alert.
'In dangerous times, I should always stay ready. Once I settle in, I really should stash weapons in several areas. If I get into trouble, if outsiders enter the lab, or if a rift suddenly opens and monsters pour in, I can't afford to be unarmed…'
She felt the cold metal of the tactical belt around her waist and the weight of the weapons attached to it. Touching the front of the belt with her left hand, she thought:
'Looks like this will be my daily accessory. I don't want to walk around without a handgun.'
That line of thought took only three seconds. The elevator doors opened. She stepped out cautiously. The sound of her heeled boots echoed through the empty corridor. She waited a few seconds, listening, slowed her breathing as much as possible, and kept the shotgun's barrel sweeping left and right, ready to fire. After a full minute, she finally relaxed.
'Corridor is clear.'
Elenor proceeded to explore the laboratory area methodically. There were sections for biology, chemistry, machinery, a weapons workshop, rune studies, and a repair workshop directly beneath the garage. After checking each one carefully, she finally felt at ease.
'That just leaves the house. The environment seems clean, but before going there, I should reinforce the security systems.'
She entered the control center inside the laboratory and activated the panel.
[Security Level 3: Active >>> Level 5 Maximum Security Activated]
[…]
[Laboratory entering high-security mode…]
[Garage doors sealing…]
[Cargo doors sealing…]
[Observation tower sealing…]
[Generators active. Operational status: 100%]
[Weapon systems: Active]
[Security drones: Ready]
[Laboratory shields activating at full power…]
[Full authorization granted to Elenor Altarez for all laboratory systems.]
[Monster repellent: Active]
After reading the confirmation messages, Elenor let out a relieved breath. Then she decided to check the security cameras.
"Heh. Grandpa never disappoints," she muttered with a mocking smile.
"He's installed cameras watching every single centimeter inside. I can even see the living quarters… Wait."
She enlarged the camera feeds of the living area and examined them carefully. What she saw made her eyebrow twitch violently as shock rapidly turned into anger.
"What the hell happened to the kitchen!? No—let me rephrase—what the hell happened to the entire house!? Is that Grandpa's underwear sitting on top of the couch!? How many weeks have those dishes been sitting in the sink!? Why do the beds look like they just came out of a war zone!? Why are those swords lying around in the middle of the living room!? The bathroom—mud everywhere! At least the bedrooms look somewhat humane, but still… WHAT IS THIS HOUSE!?"
Instead of calming down, Elenor grew even more agitated. She rubbed her temples hard with her fingertips, and as she thought about her grandfather and Uncle Omar, her ruby-red eyes narrowed with a dangerous glint. A smile—demonic and fueled by pure rage—spread across her face. She could feel the veins bulging on her forehead, her palms clenched so tightly her nails dug into her skin.
She took several deep, controlled breaths, trying to restrain herself. Then, with a graceful motion, she tapped her smartwatch and initiated a call. The connection took only four seconds. The moment Soren accepted, chaos burst from the speaker—monster roars, heavy gunfire, and the deafening thunder of exploding magic filled the room.
Through all that noise, Soren's warm, elderly voice rang out:
"My honey bun! Did you make it safely to my laboratory?"
Elenor's reply was ice-cold.
"Yes."
At that moment, Omar's energetic shout—clearly coming from the middle of battle—rang out:
"HAHAHAHA! I TOLD YOU SHE'D MAKE IT! WATCH THE LEFT FLANK! MINOTAURS INCOMING!"
Gunfire, explosions, and the dying screams of monsters overlapped as Soren's murmured incantation echoed through the chaos:
"Flame Tempest!"
A massive, ear-splitting roar followed, but Elenor didn't care in the slightest. She trusted her grandfather's and Omar's strength completely. The real battlefield wasn't outside—it was inside the house.
"HAHAHAHA! OF COURSE SHE DID! THAT'S MY GRANDDAUGHTER!"
Soren roared, then tried to lower his tone.
"Elenor, about the cargo I sent—"
"Soran Altarez! Omar Demir!"
Elenor's voice, paired with the dangerously gleaming eyes reflected in the laboratory lights, made the temperature in the room seem to drop several degrees. The veins on her forehead stood out clearly now. She was using her most authoritative, most queen-like tone—as if she weren't addressing two legendary warriors, but two children caught misbehaving.
"Would you care to explain why the house I'm supposed to live in looks like it hasn't seen a broom in months? Your underwear is lying around everywhere! There are swords casually left in the living room! The kitchen is coated in filth, leftover food, and grease! The bedrooms look worse than a battlefield, the bathroom is a breeding ground for bacteria, and the laundry room is piled with mountains of dirty clothes! Am I your maid!? If Aunt Amanda were here and saw the state of the place she was supposed to live in, she'd turn both of you into target practice!"
Elenor was not shouting, yet the coldness in her voice was as clear and sharp as the edge of a blade. With a faint, unsettling smile forming on her lips, she continued:
"Would you tell me, my dear grandfather… while there isn't a single speck of dust in that enormous laboratory of yours, why is only the living area in this state? Huh?"
Amid the chaos and explosion sounds pouring from the watch, there came the unmistakable sound of both heroes swallowing at the same time:
"Oh no!" ×2
Omar immediately tried to take control of the situation.
"I GOT IT! I'LL PERSONALLY PROVIDE SUPPORT ON THE RIGHT FLANK! OLD MAN, THIS PLACE IS YOURS!"
"HEY! OMAR, DON'T YOU DARE RUN AWAY! DAMN IT! COME BACK!"
Soren shouted helplessly.
Elenor cut him off in an authoritative tone:
"Answer me, Grandfather."
Soren seemed to choke for a moment. He was paying a heavy price for having forgotten, even briefly, Elenor's obsession with discipline, hygiene, and order. The level of disorder in the living area was, for Elenor, right on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Soren stammered in a trembling, guilty voice:
"Ah… well, this situation… actually, everything has a perfectly logical explanation, my honey bun…"
Suddenly, a bloodcurdling, feral roar erupted from the watch. Immediately after, Soren's voice echoed with a panic and urgency Elenor had never heard before:
"DAMN IT! Elenor, listen to me carefully! Use the device in the cargo I sent you. Right now! This is more important to me than anything else!"
Elenor frowned, the anger inside her giving way to a sudden sense of unease.
"What's going on?"
Soren tried to answer, but his voice roughened, dissolving into digital static.
"I'll expla—… Bzzz… Bzzz… Bzzz…"
Elenor touched her watch in shock, trying to restore the signal.
"What's happening? Did the signal drop? But why?"
At that moment, an invisible force swept through the laboratory; a massive electromagnetic wave shook everything. Systems instantly went berserk—lights flickered, screens turned on and off at random. Red alarm sirens began screaming in every corner of the lab. Elenor struck the main panel in disbelief.
"I asked what's going on!"
[!!!!!!System Error!!!!!!]
[!!!!!!System Error!!!!!!]
[!!!!!!System Error!!!!!!]
[!!!!!!System Error!!!!!!]
Elenor's fingers flew across the keyboard as she entered code after code to resolve the failure, but suddenly a sharp tingling followed by intense pain surged through her left wrist.
"AGHHH! WHAT IS HAPPENING?!"
She felt a searing pain and prickling sensation in her left wrist, as if a red-hot iron were pressed against her skin. When she looked down, she froze in horror: smoke was rising from her smart watch, sparks of electricity leaping from within it. The screen had turned blood red.
"This is not good at all!"
In sheer panic, Elenor grabbed the strap of the watch, yanked it off with force, and hurled it into the trash bin before jumping back. Seconds later, the watch exploded with a deafening bang. Gritting her teeth in pain, she clutched her burned left wrist; her brows were tightly furrowed, but she had no time to stop. She immediately grabbed a fire extinguisher and put out the flames caused by the blast.
"Why did this happen now?"
Ignoring the throbbing pain in her wrist, she returned to the panel. She tried dozens of different access routes and emergency codes, but the screen returned the same cold message every time.
"System not responding… I'll have to do a complete reboot."
For a full seven minutes, her fingers worked at machine-like speed. Finally, she managed to reset the system. She let herself fall into the chair, exhaled deeply, rubbed her pounding head, and then looked at the screen.
[Reboot time: 7 hours…]
Elenor sighed.
"Looks like I won't be able to do anything for seven hours… What just happened? Why did the systems go insane? Why did my watch explode? That was my favorite watch!"
She muttered with a mix of irritation and sadness. She was very different from other girls; she saw jewelry and adornments as pointless and could never understand why people pierced their bodies. To her, the only truly valuable accessory was a functional one—her watch.
"Whatever. I won't find out before seven hours anyway. At least there's still power, and the security locks are intact. Though, if the system doesn't recover, that means I'll be trapped here for a long time."
She ran a hand through her hair in frustration. In the past two hours, her entire life had been turned upside down. Her thoughts were still with her grandfather and Uncle Omar.
'Please…' she thought silently,
'All of you, be okay.'
She stood up and reached for the shotgun resting on the table. As the sharp pain in her left wrist flared again, she grimaced.
"I'll need to apply a burn ointment to this as soon as possible."
After giving the trash bin one last look to make sure it wouldn't ignite again, she left the laboratory. When she reached the upper floor—the living area—she took a deep breath and looked around at the silence.
"It seems this will be my new home for quite a long time…"
Slipping the shotgun over her shoulder, Elenor walked to the center of the greenhouse. She stared at the house and let out a long sigh, raking her fingers through her hair as if she were about to lose her mind.
"Uncle Omar… Grandfather…" she muttered through clenched teeth.
"I hope you survive. Because I want to kill you with my own hands!"
She took several deep breaths to rein herself in, closing her eyes and trying to slow her pulse.
"…I hate this obsession with order."
In truth, it wasn't something she could control; whenever she saw an excessively messy place, every mental fuse in her head blew, and she went berserk.
"Let's set that aside for now. It's been a very long morning. First, I need to unload the car. Luckily, I saw a transport platform in the garage—I can move everything inside in one go."
Stretching, she turned and headed back toward the garage. Passing through the automatic door and entering the corridor, she paused in front of the infirmary. Even looking at the door made her feel the ache in her wrist again.
"First, I should get some cream for this burn."
She stepped inside and stopped in front of the medicine cabinet, quickly scanning the shelves.
"Where is it… Ah, here it is."
She took the ointment, opened the lid, and generously applied it to her reddened wrist. As she gently rubbed it in, she felt a mild tingling sensation; the burn mark faded from the surface of her skin as if it had never existed. Elenor chuckled softly.
"Everything my grandfather makes is truly amazing."
She glanced at her now unmarked wrist and sighed wistfully before leaving the infirmary. Continuing toward the garage, she stopped once more in front of the cargo section. As she looked at the door with curiosity, her grandfather's last words echoed in her mind.
"What exactly did Grandfather mean? Why would that small cargo be so important?"
Unable to resist her curiosity, she entered the cargo room. Inside, she carefully examined the two cargo packages.
"The small one is the one Grandfather mentioned… Then what is this big one?"
She circled the larger container first. Unable to figure out what it was, she placed her hand on the panel. As soon as the panel finished scanning Elenor's biometric data, a cheerful recorded voice echoed through the room:
[HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MY DEAR GRANDDAUGHTER!]
Elenor's eyebrow began twitching wildly again. Rolling her eyes, she muttered:
"Please… please don't let it be something ridiculous."
The cargo lid did not open with a loud crash, but slid aside in a silence befitting advanced technology. Elenor stood there with her arms crossed beneath her chest, watching with wary, curious eyes. Yet when the gift inside was fully revealed, the distant expression she always wore shattered; her eyes widened in shock, her lips parting in disbelief.
"Grandfather…" she whispered, her voice trembling.
"For the first time, you've actually made something I'll truly love."
Before her stood a sporty beast that looked as though it had leapt straight out of the future, its silver body gleaming brilliantly. Three meters long and one and a half meters wide, its frame was adorned with finely placed blue neon lights. The sharp, thin headlight at the front, shaped like a precise "V," gave it a predatory gaze. With four elegant exhausts, custom-made thick tires, and those strange, layered plates mounted on either side of the front wheel, the vehicle was nothing short of a technological marvel.
Elenor fell in love with the machine at first sight. Her greatest passion was not locking herself away in laboratories and inventing things like her grandfather, but riding a motorcycle with the wind against her face. The sense of freedom and exhilaration she felt while on a bike was something she would never trade for anything else. Make no mistake—Elenor had done everything she ever wanted throughout her life, and her grandfather had always supported her. The only subject they ever truly disagreed on was the classic grandfather reflex: the "boyfriend" issue. But Elenor had never been particularly interested in matters like love or marriage anyway. She had long since decided to stand on her own feet and, if necessary, carry on the Altarez legacy by adopting a child.
"Hello there, beautiful…"
Trying to suppress the excitement bubbling inside her, Elenor stepped closer to the motorcycle and gently ran her hand over its smooth silver surface. She had already completely forgotten about the new car she had left outside. As she examined it carefully, her gaze caught on the strange technological plates mounted beside the front wheel.
"Strange… What are these for? Just decoration? No—Grandfather would never put something useless on it. There has to be a trick to it."
Before long, she abandoned technical analysis and continued to fuss over the bike as if she were speaking to a living being.
"Ah, I'm sorry, baby… It really hurts that I won't be able to use you for a long time."
Still, curiosity got the better of her; at the very least, she wanted to hear the engine roar. She grabbed the handlebars and pressed the ignition button. The digital display flared to life in a brilliant blue glow:
[DNA verified…]
[Fingerprint verified…]
[Key not detected… Please try again with the key…]