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‘You have to understand,’ said Garovel. ‘The planet’s core is thousands of degrees Celsius and larger than most continents. Even if you somehow managed to drill into it, that’s not gonna do very much. At most, you might cause an earthquake, but it’d still be so far underground that it wouldn’t affect anyone on the surface. You certainly wouldn’t cause the entire planet to explode or collapse or anything so cataclysmic. That is, unless you spent weeks or months down there, carving out a large enough chunk of the core to actually have an impact.’

Hector scratched his head. “And someone tried to do that?”

‘Yeah. Abolish conducted an expedition. I don’t know how they intended to make it through the extreme temperatures. We’re talking four or five times hotter than a fucking volcano here. It seems utterly impossible to me. If they had some kind of technology to protect against that, then I’ve never heard of it. And a servant’s body is NOT going to regenerate in temperatures like that. Your flesh will burn or melt much more quickly than it will grow back.’

“Huh.”

‘But the Vanguard intercepted them anyway, so it didn’t even matter in the end.’

“How would the Vanguard even know what Abolish was doing...?”

Garovel opened his mouth to answer but stopped himself. And after a moment, he gave a skeletal smirk. ‘Oh, that’s right. You wouldn’t know, would you?’

“Know what?”

‘Hmm.’

“Garovel...?”

‘Eh. I don’t feel like telling you.’

Hector’s brow lowered. “What? Why not?”

The reaper’s smirk only grew. ‘Because it’ll make for a nice surprise one day.’

“But... aww, c’mon. W-what if we die before I get a chance to find out?”

‘Gee. I guess we better not die, then.’

“Bullshit... I bet you don’t even know the answer.”

‘Could be. Who knows? Oh wait, I do. Eheh.’

“Dammit, what the hell?! You’ve never done this before! I don’t like surprises!”

‘That’s too bad. Because I do.’

“Agh!”