Chapter 408: Darkness of the Empire

The loss of Ascalor is not only felt by the Daemos but also by the whole world. The servants of the dark gods are now running rampant due to no one keeping them in place. The anomalies like spatial holes increased rapidly upon Ascalor's absence.

It would need two greater demons jut to fix a spatial hole at the same time that Ascalor would take to fix one. The Daemos are now stretched thin and could not detect the anomalies in just a short amount of time.

The meticulous faceless ones have started making their moves. The injury on Ascalor's body was planned out by the faceless ones. They are now making their moves upon the imperial capital as the new king is to be crowned today.

The faceless ones have meticulously prepared for today and have already switched out 90% of the residents in the imperial capital. They have already taken control of a noble faction and have been masquerading as citizens of the imperial capital.

The faceless ones have taken their time and carefully used a hundred years of their time just to prepare this. They would always move whenever the old monster, which is one of the previous kings, moved away from the capital. They bided their time and slowly switched with the residents.

They first started with the red-light district as the faceless ones used the prostitutes. Whenever a customer entered their rooms, they will kill that person and a faceless one would assume their identity.

The faceless ones would then move to the health sector. They would lip into the night and switch with a sick patient. The faceless ones would then configure their bodies to become healthy over time until the patient could go home.

Once the faceless one posing as a sick patient returns to the home, the faceless one would then switch the family of the victim slowly until the whole family becomes a faceless one. This nefarious plot took the faceless ones a hundred years, but they persevered.

The faceless ones are not like humans who grow impatient upon the sight of just waiting in a line. The faceless ones only have one goal and that is for their god to descend upon the main world. They even sacrificed their own kin just for them to become successful.

As soon as the faceless ones switched up the residents of the imperial capital, they soon propagated outwards using the relatives of the one they transformed into. This is how the faceless ones reached the corners of the central continent.

This holds true for the long-lived races as they are much easier to replace due to their low population. Although a hundred years is far too little time to slowly replace the whole continent which is why they focused their efforts on the imperial capital.

The only ones that the faceless ones could not replace are the nobles with strong powers and the imperial family due to them being heavily guarded. In the eyes of the patient faceless ones, waiting a little more would not make a difference.

During the hundred years of this elaborate, the faceless ones would use what they lack in order to gain access to the 10%. They used the one thing they lack and that is emotion. Some nobles could be easily swayed by greed but what really proved effective is the most powerful emotion. An emotion so ancient that even beings without emotion knew this emotion. This emotion is none other than love.

There are many forms of love and the faceless ones used every form of it. They mostly used Eros as a weapon to get what they want. Some faceless ones became mistresses or concubines while others used the fated meeting scenario.

After trial and error, the faceless ones managed to succeed and now one of them is even getting the hand of the new emperor that will be crowned. The crowning of the new emperor is such a momentous occasion for the empire that each kingdom under it sent envoys and gifts.

The whole atmosphere of the imperial capital is in a festive mood due to this. The faceless ones decorated the streets and their houses, but they do not understand why. They know that a new emperor will be crowned but it is in no need for celebration at least in their perspective.

Even the faceless ones will not celebrate once they successfully bring their god to the mortal plane. They are after all just meat sacks made to do his bidding. But in every creature that is created, there is always a variant. This might only be one but even one could change something.

This variant faceless one first replicated the identity of a child who died in the hospital. The parents do not know that their child is dead as it switched with the child on the night he died. This variant faceless one awakened its own will upon years of being showered by love of a family living in the outskirts of the imperial capital.

This specific faceless one fused with the soul of the child it replaced. It is now effectively both a faceless one and human. Its body is that of a faceless one, but it now has a soul specific to its body. One could say that it is now a new being.

This specific faceless one could now be the only being that could aid in order to ruin the plans of the god of the faceless ones. For Nyarlathotep, the main world is just a steppingstone for his conquest. He has tasted how sweet the souls of mortals are and is not going to stop with just one world.

The Envoy of the Dark Gods have done his job perfectly and injured the Arch Demon that governs over the spatial fluctuations. The plan for the undertaking of the imperial capital is now starting while the guardian of the imperial capital is now undergoing change that is for the worst.