I Am the Strongest Femboy, So Stop Protecting Me!-Chapter 32: A Complicated History.

"How do you know that?" Virginia’s voice was low, sharp, the edge of it like a blade pressed against a neck. Brimming with tension that stretched way too thin to not cut.

Aris himself had summoned his sword. The same sword he hadn’t needed to dismantle that entire Aberrant dungeon, the same sword he hadn’t called upon in years, he had instinctively called on, just from a few words uttered out a random man’s mouth.

Amari was standing, her mana surging and ready for a battle. Virginia was the only one who looked fairly relaxed. Well, relaxed was a broad term, she still looked ready to kill, but she hadn’t reacted in any way other than the question, still comfortably seated in her chair as she stared at Silas.

"What? It’s common knowledge."

"No its not." Virginia snapped at him, standing up on her seat now.

What Silas said wasn’t technically wrong.

The prophecy of Delft was fairly known among high ranking awakened, anyone who had the right connections was going to end up hearing about it one way or another.

There was just one small problem.

The number of people.

The public version of the prophecy only mentioned four people.

Silas had clearly said five.

This was classified knowledge. Classified knowledge someone like Silas, who had zero affiliation to any guild or family, wasn’t supposed to have.

The same could be said for Aris, who had lost his family at a young age, along with all the information and privilege they had. But he could still be excused, being an Ashborne.

And Amari, who was only a Stormborne, a family which wasn’t high enough on the ladder of legacy to know such things. She had the excuse of being a veteran S rank.

The only person who was normally supposed to know this was Virginia.

The same Virginia who looked the most calm about this situation, looking mildly irritated at having to wait.

A moment of tense silence.

Then, abruptly, Silas let out a long, tired sigh.

"My father was an apostate of that cult."

Aris blinked.

Amari let out a sigh of relief, plopping back into her seat.

Virginia looked like she had just gotten shot.

"What do you mean?"

Silas took in a long breath, taking a moment to start speaking.

"My dad, that madman. Used to be an apostate of the cult until he got killed in the purge. He used to recite this prophecy to me and my siblings. I just..." He hesitated, somehow looking more troubled about the father than the prophecy itself. "It just came out when i heard about it after so-"

"Ma’at’s Scale." Virginia didn’t let him finish.

The words landed quietly, the same way a quiet prayer to a lost god would land. Without performance, without warning, just the words and the quiet after they were said settling into the room.

The air shifted.

It was subtle enough that someone who hadn’t heard Virginia cast the spell would have not known what to look for. A slight pressure, like the atmosphere itself had been forced to make a decision about itself.

The quality of light in the room didn’t shift, the temperature didn’t change, nothing so dramatic as all that. It was more like the room had become... precise. Like every surface had sharpened by a degree that was below visible but above ignorable.

Silas went very still.

Very, very still.

"Is that..."

"A technique? Yes." She stepped around the bed, walking up to stand face to face with him.

"What does it do...?"

"It measures," she said. "Against the scale of Ma’at, a relic of Ra, the patron deity of Halcyon. What is spoken in its presence cannot be anything other than what it is." A pause. "Not a compulsion. I can’t make you say anything. But what you do say-"

"You’ll know," he finished for her.

"I’ll know." Virginia confirmed.

The room was very quiet.

Aris still hadn’t lowered his sword, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up when he realized just how powerful Virginia had gotten in the years they were apart. She had a different kind of strength than him, one that was not useless, one that was crafted carefully to be a good ruler.

Silas nodded, "Ask what you need to ask."

Virginia looked at him. The composed expression, the steady gaze, the woman who had been raised to lead and had never once let that weight show as anything other than authority itself.

"Your father," She said, careful with the words. "What was the name of the cult he was a part of?" 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

"Baphomet’s Order."

The silence settled deeply once more.

Aris lowered his sword, letting out a long exhale as he let the blade disappear back into the depths of soul.

It wasn’t the one he was worried about.

"The same one that was purged twenty years ago?" Virginia didn’t seem to notice Aris.

"Twenty six." He corrected, "My father managed to hold for another decade after the initial incident. Only got murdered a decade ago."

Virginia didn’t probe, letting Silas speak at his own pace.

"He was an exceptional awakened... despite his shortcomings on the mental side. Met my mom after he forged a new identity to hold out against the association, he used to ramble a lot about these things, this prophecy specifically. One day, he went out for a business trip and simply never came back, hadn’t heard anything about him since, it was like the man never existed in the first place."

"What about your family."

Silas didn’t answer, instead, just looked at Virginia with a certain vulnerable plea in his eyes, one that requested mercy on his family.

"That’s enough." Aris interrupted them.

Virginia turned to look at him, then hesitating, reluctantly dismissed her technique.

"The Order of Baphomet, formally recorded as one of the most influential doomsday cults," Amari said from her corner, reading from her notebook. "Believed that the prophecy of Delft was not a prophecy at all. Instead, they preached that it was an instruction."

Everyone looked at her.

She looked up. Met each of their eyes in turn with the calm expression of someone who had read everything available and found this particular piece of information a long time ago.

"They were purged with the help of the noble families. Because the association believed that they were trying to manufacture the conditions rather than wait for them."

"Simply put," Virginia spoke this time, continuing in Amari’s stead. "They were actively trying to bring upon the end of the world."