Book 1: Chapter 31: The Dark Sanctuary’s New Members
Book 1: Chapter 31: The Dark Sanctuary’s New Members
In an inn on the Nelson town’s outskirts, Ivy and Susan who had been waiting anxiously, finally saw Bella and the others. After seeing that everyone was accounted for and uninjured, Ivy and Susan finally let out the breath that they had been unconsciously holding for all this time. Although they were a bit curious as to how Bella’s group was able to escape from the SS+ class [Fierce Dragon], but decided against asking as they weren’t too familiar with Bella and the others.
“I’m so happy you’re all unscathed! Have you decided on what you want as a reward yet?”
“We can discuss the reward at a later time, here, take this. You can use this to contact me whenever you want.”
“This is?”
“A communication stone, two people can talk to each other with it. Do you see those numbers there? That is your communication stone’s number, anytime you want to contact someone just hold the communication stone and read their number through in your head, you can talk to the other person after the communication stone lights up.”
The magical stone that Bella gave Ivy was something that she had the Creators Andrea and Bethia design and create for her, an smartphone-like item that perfectly fused magic and technology. Currently though, it only had the telephone function, other features were still being developed.
Of course, it wasn’t just limited to Ivy, Bella planned to give all her friends one of these communication stones. There was a secret function of the device that Bella hadn’t told Ivy, something similar to a GPS system. The communication stone that Bella had was the ‘mother’ stone and the ones that she was giving away were all ‘child’ stones, the ‘mother’ stone was able to get a general idea of where all the ‘child’ stones in a certain area was. The ‘child’ stones did not have this function.
Susan had also received a communication stone, as had everyone else around Bella, except Kriss. Bella planned to make the communication device that she gave Kriss a special one, they were both transmigrators after all. It was a shame that Kriss had not yet admitted that she was a transmigrator, only that she was able to use the powers of a demon king, but she wasn’t even able to explain exactly how she had the abilities to use them.
After handing out the communication stones, the girls decided to split up for now. Kriss, who had returned to human long ago, would accompany Ivy and Susan to escort the girls that they had saved from the mysterious cave back to the Gabriel Empire(Swordsmen). For safety concerns, Bella had also secretly arranged for a few dark suzerains that were skilled in hiding their presences to accompany Kriss’ group from the shadows.
Many of the Dark Sanctuary’s evil beings had already seen Kriss’ demon king form, and with a little work from Bella, Kriss was designated as a high-ranking member of the Dark Sanctuary and would be free to enter and exit at will. Kriss didn’t know this yet, of course.
“Remember our deal, Bella! After finishing up here, come and find me in the Gabriel Empire’s royal palace, my stupid dad keeps arranging for those obnoxious suitors to pester me, I’m about to go crazy!”
“I’m afraid I can’t help with that, hero-sama, you should know that…”
“I don’t care, I just don’t want to see the fake emotions and feelings that those stupid suitors show when they come and visit me. You are the head demon king, are you not, who can help me if you can’t? If all else fails I’ll give you the map to the palace’s defenses and you bring some subordinates and ‘kidnap’ me. Simple!”
“Bella, we’re friends right, you promised me this! If you help me I can help you protect your territory~!”
Bella knew that if she turned down Kriss here, Kriss might be pushed to join the ‘righteous’ side, at least if Bella were to help Kriss, she wouldn’t join the other side. Bella found it pretty hard to turn down Kriss’ request.
Thus, Bella accepted a thin and elegant sword from Kriss, the symbol for the Gabriel Empire’s royal family. Having it would give Bella the ability to enter and exist the empire’s royal palace at will. Apart from this symbol, Kriss had also given Bella a delicate silvery-white key.
“This is the key to my private room, you can come find me directly in my room if you ever enter the palace.”
Kriss’ cheeks were a little flushed as she handed the key to Bella, whose attention was completely drawn by the key and wasn’t able to notice the sky expression of Kriss’ face.
After this, Bella and the remaining beauties returned to the Dark Sanctuary, which had been in a demon king-less state for quite a few days now and probably had a lot of things that needed to be dealt with. Bella remembered that they had seen an unnatural amount of the Dark Sanctuary’s evil beings wandering the Unnamed Forest previously, and guessed that there was probably something big happening that probably needed her and the other demon kings to return.
___
At the center of the 3rd dimension, the 【Light Dimension】, was a place known as the ‘Paradise of Light’ five loli creator gods had their first official meeting since they had come into existence. They had been able to gather here today because of the 6th Creator, 【Extra-dimensional Creator】 Alfreia, whose abilities made this meeting possible.
“Vianne, can we hurry up with the meeting? I’m not very accustomed to the air here, I don’t think I can last too much longer here.”
Mystica leaned casually on her chair, flipping through a yuri-oriented manga. She didn’t seem like she was here for such a serious meeting at all.
If it had been before, Vianne would have kicked this damn atmosphere-ruining 【Dark Creator】 out. But now, Vianne wanted to borrow the manga that Mystica was reading, she knew that if she kicked Mystica out there was no way that she would be able to get her hands on that manga, so Vianne decided to ignore Mystica for a while.
Vianne looked around her, apart from the 【Dark Creator】, Mystica who was reading manga; 【Machine Creator】 Andrea’s eyes were closed, seeming to be listening to music from her cat-ear headphones. Judging from how Andrea looked like she was being intoxicated by the music, Vianne knew that Andrea would most likely not know anything that happens during the meeting.
【Magic Creator】 Bethia was playing with the dolls in her hands, evidently not planning to be part of the discussion. Bethia and Andrea’s rankings were rather low and decided that all they needed to do at this kind of meeting between Creators was to listen and follow the decisions of the higher-ranking Creators. The only one listening to Vianne right now the 6th dimension’s 【Extra-dimensional Creator】, Alfreia, but her IQ wasn’t on the same level as her abilities.
“Mystica, come with me to the room inside for a bit. The three of you can do whatever, but stay here for now. My servants will bring some dessert for you later.” Without any choice, Vianne could only choose to have a one-on-one conversation with Mystica. Even though Mystica was the one who Vianne had wanted to avoid the most, the other Creators present were evidently… not very competent.
Seeing the leaving figures of Vianne and Mystica, the remaining three loli creator gods were quite surprised that the Creator of Light was inviting the Creator of Darkness to her room. The three of them were shocked at how quick the world was changing.
___
Back at the centre of the Unnamed Forest, where the mysterious cave had been completely sealed. After Kriss had escorted the captured girls back with her to the Gabriel Empire, the cave had been destroyed by the dark suzerains that had been following Kriss in secret. The magic formation and pillars inside had been broken and the dark suzerains had also caused a cave in to seal off the entrance of the cave.
“Unholy maiden-sama, this should be the place!”
“That’s strange, the god who had given our pope the dream had said that this was the place. All there is here is a buried cave, there isn’t anything that stands out here either. Is there something we’re not seeing or did we go to the wrong place?”
The 3rd unholy maiden of the Church of Darkness, Natalia Liz, looked at the cave that had basically been leveled to the ground and sunk into thought. She had followed the orders of the dark pope and brought the main force of the Unholy Church to the Gabriel Empire’s Laerte line and with some coordination from the Church of Light’s Salo faction, had managed to cast《Undead Apocalypse》, a big contributor as to why the Laerte line had fallen so soon.
After that, she had acted in accordance with the agreement between the Church of Darkness and the demon’s Mephyr Empire, and withdrew from the Laerte line to look for the cave that the dark pope had received a dream about. But now that she was here, Liz found nothing, she wasn’t sure exactly what had gone wrong.
“Unholy maiden-sama, I believe that we should return and await new orders from the pope. We’ve lost contact with our necromancers on the forest’s outskirts, I fear they might have met an unfortunate fate and we should leave before the same happens to us.”
“It seems that is all we can do in this situation, it seems. We don’t know much about this region and it’s dangers, leaving for now sounds like a plan.” Liz had seen the petrified dinosaur-type monsters by the river earlier, including quite a few S+ class monsters, but didn’t know any monster that had to ability to do so and decided to not risk it.
Petrification magic was one of the ten legendary-tier evil magics, and one of the higher ranking ones too. Currently, amongst the humans, demons, and beastmen, there wasn’t anyone capable of using this kind of magic, at least none that Liz was able to know. Liz wasn’t sure if the caster this time was a human or an even stronger monster.
Liz’s party were still deciding what exactly to do next, and did not see a slimy evil being in the trees behind them. In fact, as the slime was completely transparent due to all light passing right through its body, it would be doubtful that they would be able to see it even if they weren’t busy discussing.
“Hehe, another delectable prey has appeared, just that the number of extras are a bit high. Doesn’t really matter though, even a kingdom of 100,000 won’t be able to stop me.” Skryme stalked the group from the Church of Darkness and was about to launch an attack when one of its avatars swiftly flowed behind it and ‘whispered’ to Skyme.
“Er, pack up and return to the Dark Sanctuary at once! What a shame, letting this girl go is a let down to my title of ‘hunter’. Time is running short, consider yourself lucky girl, because you won’t escape me next time.”
Liz didn’t how that she had ‘dodged a bullet’, when she led her party away from the cave, a few of the stragglers at the rear were enveloped by a transparent and viscous fluid and were eaten alive before they could make a sound. Quickly after, the slimes took the forms of those that they had eaten and returned to the ranks of Liz’s party.
All of this had happened to fast for anyone to notice. This was the reason why the void monarch Skryme was classified as a world destroyer, it could keep replacing the people that it had eaten with its own avatars until they had taken over the entire kingdom, Skryme could replace all of the living beings on the entire Coristel continent within a month if it really wanted to.
Compared to Medusyr’s ability of being able to petrify an entire continent, Skryme’s ability was more dangerous as it was harder to detect and no one on the continent would be able to know or react before they had all been wiped out. It was fortunate that Bella didn’t have a bad nature, for if Bella was evil to the core it wouldn’t even need her to give the command before Skryme started the destruction of this world.
Liz’s party had already been infiltrated by Skryme’s avatars, if Bella ever had the need Skryme could quickly eat and replace the entire Church of Darkness. As for those unholy maidens, they would naturally be unable to escape the fate of being captured alive and being handed to Bella-sama!
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Liz’s party wasn’t the only one that had been searching in this area. Not long after they left, an elite detachment of demons had also arrived at the area where the mysterious cave had once stood. Their leader was, of course, the Mephyr Empire’s 1st princess, Margaret Aknes.
Like Liz, Aknes had also came here on a wild goose chase, as she could only choose to retreat after seeing the remains of the mysterious cave. She and her party had been secretly following the Church of Darkness’ group but had lost their tracks some time ago and it taken a while for Aknes and her elites to finally reach this place.
“This destruction doesn’t seem like it was done by humans, the Church of Darkness probably doesn’t have the ability to destroy this place in such a short time. Never mind then, I might as well hide here for a while, I don’t exactly desire to return to the Mephyr Empire anytime soon.”
___
At the demon king hall located in the central region of the Dark Sanctuary, the returning Bella and company saw all the dark suzerains who had gathered here to await orders outside of the hall. Apart from the several hundred dark suzerains, there were also six titanic evil beings awaiting for orders. Each of the six giant evil beings had a halo that stretched out for 100 metres in every direction as well as over 10,000 evil beings that bore resemblances to them around them.
All of the dark suzerains consciously kept a hundred metres away from the six giants, leaving the hall’s audience chamber to them. However, the six of them were too large to actually enter the audience chamber so they could only wait outside the entrance, so that the only people inside of the audience chamber were two mysterious lolis that Bella had never seen before.
“Nee-samas, all of you are finally back! We’ve been waiting for sooo long!”
“Nee-sama, I want a hug!”
Looking at the two mysterious and spoiled sounding lolis that had jumped into her arms, Bella look baffled, as did the other girls behind her, even the always sharp minded Noesha wasn’t able to guess where these two lolis had came from but had a feeling that they weren’t any normal lolis. These two lolis were ‘true lolis’ that seemed to be quite rare in this alternate world, being only around the height of a grade-schooler, they were shorter than Noesha, Mia, and Angel. What was more precious was that these two were both flat chested, only being around an A-AA in terms of cup size.
The fragrance on these two lolis were very distinct and familiar to Bella, she looked at the 【Demon’s Heart】 and 【Devil’s Wisdom】 across the room and finally realized that these two lolis had the same fragrance as those two things, were the lolis their incarnations?
It took some explaining from the two lolis before Bella was able to confirm that they were, in fact, the human incarnations of 【Demon’s Heart】 and 【Devil’s Wisdom】. The two lolis had the same figure and facial features, so it would be quite easy to mistake them for identical twins if one were to just look at these features. The only difference was, 【Devil’s Wisdom】Britney Lilian’s eyes were orange while 【Demon’s Heart】 Britney Lilith’s were a light pink. The two’s hair colours were the same as that of their irises, they also shared the twintail hairstyle.
These two new lolis were quite the sweet talkers, and quickly integrated themselves into Bella’s party. After some explanation from Lilian, Bella was only now able to know the identities of the six giant dark suzerains outside of the demon king hall and that they were void monarchs who were many times stronger than a normal dark suzerain. Bella also learned that the 6 void monarchs had been created with her very own blood by Lilian and Lilith.
As for how Lilian and Lilith had given the order to start a war in her place, and dragged most of the region surrounding the Alva Duchy into intense fighting, Bella had also been made aware. After the fighting the demons, humans, and beastmen had all had their share of losses, with the largest being the beastmen, having lost at least 200,000 of their warriors. The next in number of losses were the human forces with a conservative estimate of around 100,000. The ones who had least were actually the demons, as most of them had retreated before they had even been able to land.
The fighting was already finished and there would be no point in berating Lilian and Lilith, Bella also didn’t think that what they did was wrong, if it had been herself in the situation Bella would have given the same orders.
Also, Clement had ransacked the entire Laerte line, bringing back 50 plus crates filled to the brim with gold coins, the pay for the Gabriel Empire’s southern army. Bella decided to let it pass this time after seeing all the money that her subordinates had looted.