60 The Empresss New Clothes (2/2)
”What we're currently doing is probably foolish and you're right to have doubts.”
”...But?”
”Heading back would definitely give us some short-term benefits. Your body is evolving on its own now so in theory, you should reach the max rank a few years from now. As Cynthia suggested, we could expand this to your whole family to start with, and you'll undoubtedly become a very prominent figure. However, you'll hit a wall someday. If I get stuck at my current rank. I won't be of any use if you ever face much more powerful opponents. Same for you, your soul reached rank four which is great, but we all know our enemy is much more powerful than that. With the method you taught me, it would take forever for you to gain another rank up. It might take a few years, even a few decades but we'll only be able to delay the inevitable. A slow burn leading to certain defeat. That's what awaits you if we head back.”
”I would say it's a beacon of hope surrounded by whirlpools of despair. The probability of failure is very high and whether positive or negative, we'll know the end result fairly soon.”
”So, you describe it as a high risk, high reward situation?”
”Pretty much, of course, if everything gets too dire, we can still abandon ship and run back to the surface.”
She grinned and replied: ”It's a plan that fits you, that's for sure. But you're right, I don't want to spend the next few decades in fear while pretending to lead a peaceful life. Enough meandering, we should help the others.”
Catherine stood up and moved toward the closet. With the corpses gone, they could finally check the inside without worries. The female corpse they had found was fairly tall, about the same size as Catherine, so Joshua left the room and closed the door, assuming she would try on some clothing.
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Catherine began browsing to the closet as she let Joshua's words sink. She had a bit of trouble to follow all his talk about grandeur, but she instinctively could tell he was right. Backing out was not an option, all they could do was move forward, one step at the time.
Opening the door, she first saw her own reflexion, as a mirror built-in the inner side of the door, which was pretty handy. Turning her gaze to the clothing, she saw that both male and female apparel were unlike anything she was familiar with. Since the place was technologically very advanced, she half expected to see a casual clothing style similar to Joshua's world, which she had grown familiar too by consulting Luna. However, the clothes she found appeared to be pretty formal. Similar to the man they had captured, the male attire consisted mostly of suits while the female ones were rather extravagant dresses. Being a noble, Catherine did possess a few fancy dresses for grand occasions but the ones in front of her were borderline ridiculous. Did people really wear those in their everyday lives? It looked very silly in her mind and yet part of her was actually looking forward to trying it out. She was a woman, after all, trying out nice clothes did tickle her fancy. She picked a dress and saw that a pair of gloves, shoes and a bizarre hat came along with it as a set. She quickly put the dress in front of her and looked at her reflexion in the mirror. Satisfied by the look, she smiled and proceeded to undress and try it on the full attire.
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After leaving the room, Joshua observed the hallway. There was one more room on this floor he hadn't checked out, leading to a study. He saw that Cynthia was already inside, reading a book. Thanks to the system, she was able to instantly translate the content, and share it with everyone. It turned out to be a novel so she stopped after a few pages, however, Joshua told her to continue. The added value of a novel was low, but languages evolve over time, there might be new words or grammatical rules that have changed compared to the texts they found in the lab. They needed as much information as possible, so Joshua told her to read everything she could find. Cynthia took a glance at the bookshelf that was in the room. It was pretty packed but with Luna's speedreading, she could get through them in a few hours. She nodded toward Joshua and resumed her reading.