2 April 2018

  Russia, in a small city near a desert somewhere. . .

  "Is it that building over there, Lily-san?"

  "Yes. . ."

  Light and Lily have reached their destination. They are standing atop a tall 10-story building. They are currently looking at a building on the other side of the road, a 6-story building that looks normal and ordinary, just like all the other buildings in the city.

  "Okay, what should be our best course of action? Discreet or loud?"

  "I prefer discreet."

  "Got it! I can easily absorb any sound, so we can infiltrate quietly."

  "I can just stop time, Lunehart-san."

  "Oh, right. . . Well then, what are we waiting for now?"

  Light stands up, and he's already preparing to jump across by transforming both of his legs.

  "W-WAIT!!"

  Lily immediately pulls one of his arms back, stopping him in place.

  "W-What? You startled me. . ."

  "I-I'm sorry! I. . . Let me do this first!"

  As Lily holds Light's left arm, both of her hands shine in light blue.

  . . . . .

  "H-Huh?"

  "What's wrong?"

  "I. . . tried to heal you. Your wounds, I mean. But you aren't affected by my Faith power. How can this be?"

  "Ah! Remember about the 'buff' I told you last night? The same one that allowed me to move even under the restriction of time? That buff even applies to any kind of healing-type Faith power. I cannot be healed using any Faith power. I can only recover naturally."

  "I see. . . That is both a blessing and a curse, huh?"

  "I don't particularly see it as a curse myself. All it means is that I must not be careless during my duty. That's all!"

  "You're. . . quite the optimistic guy, huh?"

  "Trust me when I say this, but I am a completely different guy from who I was two years ago."

  "Is that so?"

  "Ah, we're getting distracted! Let's go, Lily-san!"

  "Ah, right! Time stop!"

  And then, without any hand or body movements or any chanting, the clouds above the sky stop moving, the cars on the road stop in motion, the breeze of wind can no longer be felt by the skin, sounds are no longer heard, and the entire world becomes completely silent. Lily has put time in the entire world to a complete halt yet again.

  "Let's go, Lunehart-san!"

  "Alright!"

  Light jumps across towards the building on the other side of the road in one leap, while Lily moves faster than light as she flies in the air with her sword wings on her back. They both land on the entrance.

  Light blackens his hand and touches the glass sliding door. He absorbs and creates a big hole that can fit both of them to go through. After they walk past it, Lily reverses time on the glass door to revert its state to a time before Light absorbed it.

  "Wow, with both our powers combined, we can create a perfect crime just fine!" said Light.

  "W-Why is that your first thought?"

  "Um, n-nothing. . . Let's proceed."

  "Actually, Lunehart-san! Let's go our separate ways from here. . ."

  "Huh? Why? I promised I'm gonna help you!"

  "Oh no! It's not like that! I'm gonna have to report back to them. So, please hide yourself somewhere in the building."

  ". . . I have a bad feeling about this. Are you sure?"

  ". . . Y-Yeah. . ."

  "You don't sound sure."

  "It's okay! I'll give you a sign when I need you."

  "What kinda sign?"

  "Here!"

  Lily opens her palm, and she creates a small blue clock smaller than the size of her palm. She gives her clock to Light.

  "Hold on to this! If this thing disappears from your hand, that will be your sign!"

  "Alright. . ."

  "I'll go on ahead!"

  Lily walks towards a certain direction into the building and disappears from Light's sight.

  "(Hmm, what should I do now. . .)"

  Light thinks to himself for a few seconds.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  "(Ah! I'll investigate this building on my own! Time is stopped anyway!)"

  And then Light proceeds to wander around the entire building as he waits for Lily's signal.

  .

  .

  .

  Lily is currently underground on floor B3. She is walking into a certain room inside a certain hallway. The room inside is a grey room with a size of 7x7 square meters. There's a glass wall dividing about 3/4th portion of the entire room. The glass is thick enough that no bullets are able to even crack it.

  Behind the glass wall of the 1/4th portion of the room, there's an oval glass tube filled fully with green liquid on the inside. Inside the oval tube and the green liquid, there's a person, a girl. The girl is wearing a green hospital gown. The girl's entire body has so many infusion wires injected into it. The girl's eyes are closed. She shows no motion, nor does she look alive, even though she is.

  Lily walks towards the glass window. She puts one of her hands against the glass wall, and her facial expression turns bittersweet.

  "I'm home, Mi-chan. . ."

  ". . . ."

  "Mi-chan. . ."

  Lily sheds tears as she puts her forehead against the glass window.

  "I'm sorry. . . I failed last night. . . But, Mi-chan. . . I promise I'll get you out of here! I've got help! He's someone who's strong enough for this. . . I think. I've seen his strength. I don't doubt that. . . It's just. . . Our enemy is. . ."

  ". . . ."

  Lily tries to light up the entire glass wall with her Faith power to accelerate its state to a distant future, but to no avail. Her blue light did not reach the glass wall at all. This isn't because Lily's Faith power is incapable of doing so, but because there's an outside interference happening right now.

  "You've been busy, Queen of Time."

  *!!!!!*

  As soon as Lily heard a man's voice coming from behind, she immediately knew whose voice it belonged to. In this world, there are only two people in her life that has been able to move freely even when time is stopped. Light was the second one, but the first was this man behind her.

  Lily slowly turns around to face the man in her nightmare.

  "What do you want, God's Word?"

  God's Word is a nickname given to the 1st Strongest Believer in the world. A man whose Faith power is unmatched by anything else that he has been declared the Strongest Believer to ever be born, even across all of human history.

  This man is Martin Wedhessle. He's 29 years old. He has a pair of light blue eyes, pale blue hair that is slightly curly at the ends of all his hair strands. His hair almost reaches his shoulders. He's 183cm tall and weighs over 77kg. He has slightly visible muscles all over his body. He wears a pale brown shirt over a white V-Neck T-Shirt, a pair of pale blue jeans, and a pair of dark brown loafers. He has slightly visible facial hair just under his chin.

  "As I've said, you've been quite busy with something else instead of doing what you're being told to do!"

  "Why are you here?"

  "*sigh* Acting like this is the first time. . . What kinda games are you trying to play?"

  ". . . ."

  "As a matter of fact, where were you last night? I didn't see you doing your mission. You've arrived at the location, but then you disappeared from the face of the earth. Where on earth did you go? Have you developed some kinda trick to fool my vision?"

  *?!*

  "(What? He didn't know where I was? Him? The guy whose Faith power can grant him any kind of abilities as he sees fit? But that time stop last night should've been detected by him, yet he said I disappeared from his vision? Is this. . . because of that guy? Lunehart-san? I don't understand what's going on, but this means he doesn't know anything about him.)"

  "I had an interference! His bodyguards showed up last night, and he escaped in the heat of the moment."

  ". . . . Is that so?"

  ". . . ."

  "By the way, these time stops are so annoying."

  *!!*

  And after his casual sentence, time has returned to flow normally as it is supposed to be. Lily's hold over time was broken by a simple sentence spoken by him.

  "What an unfair Faith power to have. It always makes me puke, realizing how unbalanced this world truly is."

  "Enough about that! Report your mission first!"

  "Ah! Experiment #496! Welcome back!!"

  Another man's voice came from behind Lily. This time, the voice was a lot wearier and weaker. Lily turns around and sees a man wearing a lab coat standing behind the glass wall next to the oval tube.

  "Where have you been, Experiment #496? We lost you last night, and you've been missing until now!"

  ". . . ."

  "No replies, eh? Well, no matter! Show us your killing proof, and we'll put those things aside. They're not really important."

  ". . . ."

  "What's wrong, Experiment #496? Did you accidentally wipe that runaway investor off the face of this planet without any traces left? That's fine! We'll double-check with Martin-san over there for confirmation!"

  ". . . ."

  ". . . . ."

  ". . . Are you saying you failed Experiment #496?"

  ". . . ."

  "*sigh* no, No, NO!! NOOO!!!! DO YOU REALIZE WHAT THE CONSEQUENCE WILL BE IF YOU FAIL EXPERIMENT #496??"

  Lily's expression quickly turns fearful. She starts sweating, and her eyes look like she's almost crying.

  .

  .

  .

  Meanwhile, a few minutes ago, before Martin showed up. . .

  Light is currently inside a room somewhere on floor B2. He stumbles upon this important-looking room after entering every room he encounters one by one. The room itself has very minimal lighting. He casually walks inside as time is currently stopped by Lily.

  There is a scientist in the room sitting on a chair against a work desk. He seems to be looking for a file from the way he freezes in motion, scouring through hundreds of papers.

  "Hmm, what do we have here?"

  Light looks over towards the files that the scientist is holding.

  *!*

  There's a particular file he held in his right hand, and he separated that file from all the other papers as he was frozen in motion that way.

  Light picks up the file and reads the title on the cover.

  "Creation Project?"

  He opens the first page and reads through it quickly.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  CREATION PROJECT

  EXPERIMENT #1

  On the first day of the experiment. I, Professor Takaoji Hikaru, am directing this experiment as the lead scientist. Without further ado, we will now be conducting our first experiment of creating our own life, a human life, an Artificial Human Life.

  First, we're starting up and getting the equipment needed to be ready and fully functional. Next, we're preparing all the ingredients needed. Finally, we can start the experiment.

  We put a certain amount of sperm, which came directly from the lead scientist himself, me, as our first experiment, into a man-made womb that was created and invented by this facility. And now, we wait 9 months while we keep monitoring the condition of the sperm and the egg inside the womb as time goes by.

  9 months later, result: FAILURE

  A baby was horribly deformed from the incubation. The test subject died immediately.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  "A-Artificial human? They are experimenting on how to give birth to a human being without the process of conception? What on earth is this?"

  Light flips over to the second file. It is mostly the same experiment that was also a failure. He flips the pages over and over until he just decides to flip them quicker.

  Starting from the 248th file, Light notices that there is now a photo of a baby on the page itself, meaning the experiment was a success for the first time. He reads the entry, but it says the baby didn't grow old enough and died quickly before it could even talk. He flips the files quickly again as he notices that the images of the babies are gradually growing older.

  When he reached the 344th file, he noticed a fully grown human child. The child was a male. The baby has properly grown into a child. He reads the entry that the boy didn't develop any kind of Faith power after ten years, so the test subjects were immediately disposed of.

  ". . . They killed a child just because he wasn't a Believer?"

  Light quickly flips over the pages again. He saw so many boys' and girls' images throughout the files. He feels gradually angrier and angrier for every page he flips, realizing how many children were also killed just like that. Until he arrives at the 496th file.