17.NEVERMORE (X)

Raven Tower—a towering, needle-like structure, the absolute heart of Deliverance, piercing the clouds while buried deep beneath the earth.

It stood here in stern majesty, its appearance unchanged for many years. The scars of battle left behind when Corvus Corax liberated the oppressed workers remained untouched and unrepaired, casting an air of horrifying absurdity.

Quite a few critics had claimed this was unwise. After all, if they wished to commemorate history, they could have done so in other ways. Such arguments had been popular for a time, until every architect and engineer of the Deliverance Construction Guild jointly issued a public statement.

[Raven Tower's structure is utterly unlike anything the public imagines. Therefore, anyone who attempts to view and judge it through mundane eyes is a fool.]

The statement brought the debate to a rather undignified end. The critics reacted in different ways, but for the public, the topic of Raven Tower soon returned to the question that had troubled countless people for countless years.

Namely, what exactly did the inside of Raven Tower look like?

Someone had once interviewed a sergeant. Facing the live camera, he had stiffly said that he could not explain it either, then turned and walked away. Others had chosen to seek another route through the Auxilia. The questions were always the same, but the answers came in every conceivable variety, too many to make sense of.

In time, people stopped asking. They merely speculated, guessed, imagined, slandered, and even smeared.

They did not know that the Raven Guard and the Auxilia did not refuse to speak. They simply could not explain it clearly, because the situation within Raven Tower had long since become unimaginably complex.

Over these ten thousand years, Raven Guard had come and gone, while the mortal attendants who served them had