CH 366

Manasvir Empire’s capital, Macnadix City’s imperial city area, the royal banquet in the imperial palace hall was still proceeding. Though it hadn’t been long since the banquet began, the Emperor Manas the Eighteenth, the host, had quietly left, and with him went a large number of the Manasvir Empire’s royal family members. However, that did not affect the banquet in the slightest. Despite the Emperor not being there, as long as the lights stayed on, the banquet would go on.

After Bella left, Kriss didn’t have much of an appetite. Many boys, who were out on the prowl, kept trying to strike up a conversation with her. Kriss had no idea if it were because she had spent a lot of time with Bella that she was more interested in girls now. She had no interest whatsoever to speak of in the boys.

“Princess Kriss, I am Grand Duke of Needham Duchy’s…”

“Princess Kriss, my humble self is lord of Cody Duchy’s…”

“Ahem… Thank you for your kindness, but… my companion is here, so if I may excuse myself.”

Amid the dense crowd, Kriss saw Assassin Noreya’s looming figure and quickly broke away from the guys who came over to accost her, and quickly left as if she were running away. By the time those guys came back to their senses, they had long lost the sight of Princess Kriss’s figure.

“You’re so popular, Kriss. All the boys are surrounding you…”

“That’s enough, Noreya, stop teasing me. If you were to show your true face, then your charm would not be any lesser than mine. Oh right, where is Bella? She couldn’t have gone to bully some pretty girls, could she?”

“Kriss, you really understand her well… Come with me, I’ll bring you to her.”

Assassin Noreya took Kriss towards where Bella went. In just a short few steps, both of them seemed to stop simultaneously as they both stared with wary eyes at the back of a pillar somewhere in the palace corridor. There was a demon lurking there, intending to launch a sneak attack on them. However, they were not like the others and were able to spot the lurker instantly.

With a flash, Noreya instantly appeared behind the lurker behind the pillar in an instant, piercing all of its vital points with precise backstabs. By the time Kriss made it to the back of the pillar, all she could see was a humanoid demonic being lying on the ground. She carefully identified it as a mutant demon.

Mutated demons had different abilities as many parts of their bodies were structurally different from humans, such as certain vital positions; their hearts were also in different spots compared to humans. This mutated demon was unlucky this time to have encountered an ultimate assassin like Noreya, who had exterminated countless non-human existences. After a round of indiscriminate backstabs, all its vital points were pierced by Assassin Noreya’s deadly dagger, killing it on the spot.

A strange, grey bell fell right beside the mutated demon’s corpse with some small but strange etchings of demons on its surface. The faces of the little demons had evil smiles on their faces, as it looked like this guy was going to use this bell to attack his victims. As the ultimate assassin, Noreya was more knowledgeable about secret weapons. She quickly identified the origin of the strange bell.

This was the demonic artifact, “Sorrow’s Voice,” used by the legendary incubus Commander Sorrow to charm people’s hearts. It emitted a strange noise that could confuse women of any race. The legendary Incubus Sorrow used the bell’s strange sound to tempt beautiful young women into giving them their power. Even many goddesses had fallen prey to it.

In the end, it was a fearless warrior who put on women’s clothing and tricked Sorrow into thinking he was a real girl. As a result, while hunting this “cross-dressing warrior,” things finally went south for Sorrow, and he was killed by this “cross-dressing warrior” in his trap. The one here was just a replica of “Sorrow’s Voice,” as it required the target to be relatively close to activate the ability.

If this were the original, then the ending might have to be rewritten. Due to the pitiful nature of the replica, the demon had to lie in wait behind the pillar for Kriss and Noreya to come close. In the end, Assassin Noreya could kill the demon after realizing its intentions.

Many “prey” had already been hit from behind the pillar. There were five or six beautiful women leaning on the palace wall, fully naked. They probably had been charmed by the strange ring of this “Sorrow’s Voice.” Though they were not tied up, they were facing each other, rubbing each other’s fair and dainty bodies with blushing cheeks.

The demon was waiting for them to play with each other until they grew limp before transferring them to another place. The ones who fell into its ploy were mostly the girls from Olsylvia Academy who came to participate in the royal banquet. The victims of this demon were apparent. Besides the Olsylvia Academy girls who “took the bait” for whatever reasons, no other girls were touched. The mastermind’s intentions seemed to be directed at girls. The rest of the women were not their primary targets for the time being.

“How could there be such evil demons in the palace? Are the imperial guards in this place just for the show?! Noreya, let’s hurry and go support Bella. There’s a possibility she might be in danger.”

“Kriss, I think it’s better if we find a way to save them first. A lot of the boys in the banquet hall are already drunk. If they come out and see them like this, they might end up doing something barbaric."

“As for Bella, I left an assassin mark on her for tracking purposes. You don’t have to worry about us being unable to find her. What’s more, she’s way more professional in such matters compared to these demons. She won’t get caught so easily.”

Assassin Noreya calmly dissuaded Kriss, who wanted to go to Bella right away. Compared to that, their priority shifted to move the Olsylvia Academy girls who had been caught. Kriss and Noreya worked together to “pack up” the girls with a cloth before moving them to the carriage they came in to be shipped back to the Rose Society stronghold in the eastern district’s Christian Hotel.

In a certain secret hall of Manasvir Empire’s capital, Macnadix City’s royal palace. At the same time when Kriss and Noreya dealt with the mutated demon tacitly, Bella relied on the cover of her stealth suit to avoid the blood spirits under the leadership of the fake Emperor and the fake royal family, as she arrived at a certain forbidden palace located in the imperial city.

This forbidden palace must have had a long history. It was surrounded by a large number of other palaces and pavilions with this mysterious location in the center. Without anyone acting as a guide, it would be pretty difficult to find this place. Compared to the other splendidly decorated places in the royal palace, this place looked particularly otherworldly. The terrifying and bizarre architecture looked very out of place compared to its surroundings.

The stone used to construct the palace was made of black demon stone, a kind of stone with a similar appearance as obsidian. Obsidian was low in production and better used elsewhere. Using it solely as the construction material for the palace was a little too extravagant.

The land in front of the palace was a layer of black soil that felt soft when stepped on as if you were standing on a semi-swampland. Just a few steps on it, and Bella could tell that this was all netherworld soil. It came with a hidden effect of absorbing the life force of the living. If not for Bella’s special and non-human physique, she would probably have been sucked dry by the soil and turned into a corpse.

Both sides of the road leading up to the palace were decorated by many mutated spider lilies. Compared to a normal spider lily, these mutated ones looked freaky. The flowers were big and were in the shape of the crying faces of people of all ages and genders. When Bella passed them by, she could even hear the faint cries. These mutated flowers were parasites that forced their host to swallow down its seeds before they were buried alive to grow new plants.

Bella was a little hesitant about whether she should send a magical contact message to Kriss and Noreya, telling them not to come for now and just wait for her to return. It was easy for someone to get traumatized by this place. Noreya might be fine. After all, she was an assassin. She was used to all sorts of terrifying assassin techniques, so why would she care? But Kriss might not be the same.

There seemed to be a strange lingering sound of a bell in this place. Bella could hear it before she even reached the palace. This sound was made by the original “Sorrow’s Voice” and was highly alluring to women. Since Bella was a gender-bent girl, she didn’t have a problem with the ringing. Her throat just felt a little dry, but she did not expose a shameful side of herself like the other girls.

“Strange, why do I feel thirsty all of a sudden? Seriously… It must be because of that bell. I swear I’ll take that bell apart.”

Dissatisfied, Bella followed the fake Emperor Manas the Eighteenth and the other fake royalty towards the palace gates. The types of demons wandering about the palace were unclear, but Bella didn’t like these types of demons. They were mutated humanoid demons, and though there were no strange protrusions on their lower bodies, the large tailbone behind their bodies was likely a replacement. The mutant demons were basically ugly. If this were earth, then this scene would probably be the equivalent of a bunch of demons from R-18 ero-games showing up to the wrong studio.

There was a row of human-shaped iron containers outside the gates, similar to the “Iron Maiden” torture devices used in Western Europe’s feudal era in the Middle Ages. Its use was likely the same, and just the sight of it gave Bella the shivers. Besides the “Iron Maiden,” there were also things like “Spanish Donkeys” with dense raised bumps, as well as some spiked cane whips or whatnot. The most perverse part was that there were tools for both men and women. Bella could feel the aura of a “veteran” gushing right at her face as she almost kneeled down to salute it. The gentleman living in this palace might not be an ordinary one, but the top dog in the world of gentlemen.

Bella finally caught sight of what was squirming inside the sack the fake Emperor Manas the Eighteenth was carrying on his shoulder. They were beautiful human girls with both their hands and legs tied behind their backs with chains. They were the noble young ladies who had attended the royal banquet and were basically some of the young mistresses of the Manasvir Empire’s capital, Macnadix City’s noble families. Every once in a while, the fake Emperor would hold banquets like this to gradually put the noble young masters and mistresses of the imperial city under his control.

If they were the young mistresses, he would just toss them into the palace, confine them there, and then replace them with very realistic puppet dolls. For the men, some were replaced by puppets, but most had their own bodies controlled with strange tools. For more than a decade, the nobles in the Manasvir Empire’s capital, Macnadix City, were almost all turned into puppets.

The noble ladies had their eyes blindfolded with black cloth and had black cloth balls gagging their mouths. They clearly had no idea what was going on. After receiving a special invitation from the royal family at the banquet, they thought they would be invited to something special but never expected it to be a trap. As soon as they stepped into the room at the back of the banquet hall, they were caught by demons and stuffed into a sack after being stripped clean.

Under the simulation of the strange ring of “Sorrow’s Voice,” the captured noble young ladies were aroused and turned beet red. Their saliva would still flow down occasionally despite being cloth gagged in their mouths. The ground was also covered in strange wet stains on their way here. Even Bella, an outsider, felt a little bad for them. If you were not going to do them, then why provoke them like that? Wasn’t this torture?

Bella ignored the noble ladies for the time being. She saw a man and woman pair outside the palace gates that seemed to be the masters behind this palace. The man was a handsome blonde dressed in a golden dragon robe and stood over two meters tall. Even though he was very handsome and belonged to the type where women would fall head over heels at the sight of him, Bella wasn’t interested and simply ignored him. There was a hateful scent on the man that seemed to come from the Creator of this dimension. Last time, Bella had also detected a similar scent from the Divine Creator.

The woman, on the other hand, was a little unexpected for Bella. Even though she wore a black cloak that covered her entire face, she could still smell the scent of the God Race on her. She was undoubtedly the Goddess of this dimension. Bella had tasted the scent of a Goddess before on the second-generation Death Goddess Rowling, who was also one of the Twelve Gods, so she could recognize the scent of the God Race well.

The Goddess had a strange floral scent on her that Bella could vaguely recall from somewhere, but time was running out, and she couldn’t figure out where. Since she was one of the Twelve Gods, and as a Demon King, it was Bella’s duty to ascertain the state of her arch-enemy in a traditional sense now.

The blonde Dimensional Creator was now using a surrogate doll and didn’t show much of his power as a Creator. WWith his full attention on the Goddess beside him, he did not notice the stealthily approaching Bella. Bella snuck relatively close to the two and managed to eavesdrop on their conversation.

“Fa… Father… Isn’t doing it this way a bad idea? They also…”

“Do not mind it. Why should you, as a Goddess, care about the lives of humans? If not for them, the defenses of your God Race would not have been broken through so quickly by the Twelve Demon Kings. The humans are solely responsible for the demise of the God World…”