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It had been three days since Elena ditched classes. After leaving the Academy in the morning, Elena felt an odd excitement rise up in her heart again. These past few days her maids and the Marionette had gone to class as arranged without any problem. Mari looked a lot better now but her mind was still in quite a shambles. Elena didn't expect the skill to be so hard to digest. But what does she know? It wasn’t her problem. The excitement she felt was not from those matters, it came from her thirst being quenched. That desire to scourge out the secret magic of this Kingdom was slightly itching ever since she saw the capital.

The soldiers guarding the Academy didn’t have a clue as Elena moved past them. She was under the [Invisibility] spell. She had also changed her clothes to the rogue outfit she used previously back in Silver Pass city with the mask. She would like to pretend to be an adventurer later for the dungeon. That mask would be too eye-catching so she may have to take it off though. The dungeon was very tempting every time she left the Academy but she had to hold herself back.

Obviously, she couldn’t leave her interest alone forever. She just had too many targets of interest so she was in an indecisive mood for quite some time. She picked the easy and simple one first and left the hardest and biggest problem for last. That problem was the [Teleportation] that she had no way to do correctly no matter what. Spacetime needed more than just magic control. Dungeons were related but they were just a curiosity to her.

She activated the indicator Rune in her left wrist. It signaled her the location of the Princess. A red light path leading through walls and buildings linked Elena to the glowing tiny little girl in the distance. The small girl was located far down below the castle where Elena was leisurely heading to. This light was only visible to the bearer of the Rune. The red theme color had no significance except for her signature. Her true form was covered in red feathers after all. Every bigshot had a theme or so her little maid had told her.

The capital had been doing quite well. Businesses were always happening everywhere she looked. Shops on the two sides of the streets sold all sorts of things. Some even pulled her eyes toward them by their strangeness and interesting appearance. It occurred in her heart that going shopping may not be a bad idea after all. She may take her maids to do that later.

There was an increase in the number of groups that started watching the Academy. She knew the reason all too well. It was because of her after all. While the instructors and students didn’t show much reaction, they were in fact, sending lengthy reports everywhere. Her ridiculous display of magic had been a good stir in the delicate balance of the peaceful era. Many of the groups that surrounded the Royal Academy were from foreign countries. Their purposes varied but the overall situation was the same, ‘Gather information and kill if the chance presents’.

The whole area around the Academy may as well be considered a new border since most of the residents here were no ‘residents’. Nothing new to Elena. These people would benefit her in the long run. National secrets could pop up anytime from them and Elena had stopped looking down on the craftiness of humans since the third Hero. Or was it the fourth? She didn’t remember.

While passing the busy street she noticed a familiar sight. Her heart trembled a bit. Only a bit. It was a handsome black-hair teenager with a group of four girls doing shopping or whatnot.

A tiny trauma that she didn’t know she had resurfaced again.

Elena jumped to the roof instantly leaving behind only a cracked road. Some city folks were startled but she didn’t care as long as her targets didn’t notice. Looking around she saw an alley that had many turns at the end. A muffled girly scream that sounded a bit like her echoed faintly at the empty space she was looking at. A simple spell but quite effective.

The young man perked up and started to go toward the alley immediately. Her expectation was not betrayed seeing his reaction went completely in script with the thirty-one otherworldly nut-heads and one local she had to deal with before. She was not sure if he was really the one or not but she would test it right away.

The four beautiful girls with colorful hairs went with him to investigate the alley. When they were at the second turn and saw nothing, the handsome young man started to touch the ground with one hand under his chin as if he would know something by doing that. Before they could express their doubt, high steel walls rose up all around and blocked all exits. An imperceptible veil of darkness smudged the alley into a blurred vision.

[Confuse], [Confuse], [Confuse]…

Elena didn’t wait for them to react and immediately cast [Confuse] on all five of them. She jumped down while giving the girls a deadly glance of the full-power [Evil Eyes] before hugging her real target.

As four puddles of rotting goo were starting to form rapidly, the two of them had already burrowed deep under the earth, head first. Small tremble could be felt on the surface but it quickly went away.

Elena was currently heading straight down with almost lightning speed. Her clothes had been shredded by the rocks long ago along with her [Invisibility]. She couldn’t see anything but she still felt the body in her hand so it was good. The target hadn’t escaped yet.

This was her latest assassination method to deal with the Hero to avoid activating their Blessing. By using her own toughness and the environment to destroy them as much as possible before blasting them with her ultimate demonic magic attack in the magma below. The heat, the pressure, the damage, and the lack of air would finish the job. The local Hero had only survived due to the sacrifice of an Apostle to save him with a last-minute ass-pull. The Blessing that nullified her spells that could one-shoot them was already irritating and then there were the Apostles that readily sacrificed themselves for the Heroes.

Back to the present, she didn’t hear any scream or feel any resistance from this trip’s partner. That made her wary. But there was no Apostle nearby so no one would save him either.

When she punctured through the planet’s crust, she discovered that the young man only had a bit of his torso left, thanks to his suspiciously tough shirt. Everything had been scrapped away. At that moment, she concluded that she had been wrong.

He wasn’t the one.

She breathed out in relief but stopped in panic as magma started flowing in her nostrils. After returning to the surface and sitting on a nearby roof, she heaved a sigh of relief for real.

Think back on it, the possibility of a Hero appearing out of nowhere is extremely low. I didn’t leave any trail so even if there is a Hero, he will not go after me. Probably.

Talk about confidence. To her, a Hero would always survive the trip down there. They may stab her a few times while traveling too. Seeing a dead body at the end of the trip was just strange. She had to admit that the boy was stronger than most people. He had to be someone important. Meeting him reminded her that her life was not secured yet. She had to be stronger. She needed more power. Every little thing could be a new guiding light.

Trying not to think too much about it, she quickly discarded the matter and continued on her way after a quick fix of the alley. She didn’t do much since there was no corpse left. The pile of rotten goo could be left as it was. The girls’ items were burnt though. They were all junks and no valuables to collect.

After reforming her clothes, Elena continued to move on the roof and arrived at the castle without any more surprise. Or so she thought.

A bunch of men in royal guard armor were gathered around the base of the mage tower on the west side of the castle. That place was also the entrance to the secret lab underneath. There were also battle mages patrolling the perimeter with squadrons of knights.

The security is a bit tight today. Is there something going on?

Elena flew over the wall easily while casting [Invisibility] again. She was currently on the south side of the castle. Below her was a big garden with many exotic trees. There was no magical tree so she didn’t bother with it. A few towers were placed around the garden as residences for royalties and high ranking nobles.

She didn’t know the exact size but this castle was bigger than the Academy and way overshadowed her old castle. It was more beautiful too. White wall, deep blue tiles, gold-rim windows. The many towers and mansions inside the castle walls made an overwhelming sight for any who stepped through the gate. All the buildings made it feel crowded like a small town that surrounded the capitol.

Elena would totally get lost here if she didn’t have her indicator Rune. While jumping around the place to think of a way to slip in the lab, she saw an eye-catching woman in one of the towers. She latched onto the window to observe since the sight caught her eyes.

The woman had extremely beautiful blonde hair, definitely a royalty. She was sitting by the bedside and petting the head of a motionless little girl lying on the bed.

“Huh, the little Princess? Wait, my Rune says she is down below so this is not her.”

The mutter made the woman look back at the window behind her. She saw nothing and tilted her head.

Somehow, I don’t like that woman. She looks too beautiful and young to be a mother of three.

Elena had already guessed the identity of the unusual beauty in the tower. That could only be the current Queen and by the way she was caring for the fake flesh bag on the bed, she ought to know nothing. The mana inside the Queen was stronger than most mages, but it was still weaker than the Cecilia girl.

In conclusion, despite being talked about as if she had the King in her pocket, it must be the King who was using her as a pawn and a cover. To Elena’s knowledge, no insidious leader showed their true face, even to family. Family was just another tool for them anyway.

So, I will have to look out for this King too, huh? I don’t believe he will feel safe with my father’s military power. The old man's army could level this capital easily.

Elena wanted to cast a small curse on the Queen before moving on but the inside of the tower was pasted with a lot of anti-magic formation and all sorts of alarm. Small curses wouldn’t manifest in there and breaking the protections would stir the whole castle. Trying so hard just to cast a small curse wasn’t worth it so Elena left the Queen alone.

She landed near the entrance of the mage tower on the west side to investigate the situation. Unfortunately, no one was gossiping or leaking any details. They were all professionals at work here. With no other good idea, Elena decided to just kill them all and go in. This meant she had to take the risk of losing this place as they would definitely change their secret hideout. But it was not important anymore since she had seen almost everything inside already.

She wouldn’t use ‘strange magic’ here though. Even if there was no mage of her level in the castle, magic was still magic and could be looked into. A façade was always a good choice.

She took out her normal-looking mithril II daggers and spun them around her fingers a few times. She could feel her dagger handling skill improved a lot with repeated uses. And there was a slight increase in her physical strength recently which was a bit confusing to her. But she wouldn’t complain about that.

Elena counted the targets carefully. There were thirty royal guards and ten mages in the vicinity. There were more mages inside the tower but that didn’t matter. The one-hundred-meters-wide area was isolated by three-storey-high walls. Which was quite high as it was just one floor lower than the tower the Queen had been in. The mage tower in the middle was a combination of four tall, ten-meters-wide towers clumped together with each door of each tower facing one cardinal direction. It was six storeys high and had powerful magic canons on the roof that could shoot Intermediate level spells, based on Elena’s quick analysis.

The patrolling guards didn’t seem to come inside this area so she started to work right away. Swift like the wind and invisible to the eyes, her blades sliced throats ceaselessly within a minute. Physical activity was not her strong suit so she couldn’t do it efficiently enough and alerted them when she was just three kills in.

There was no sound barrier this time since she needed to link these kills with assassins or rogues. If she hid this little massacre with magic now, the castle would still find it out later in the day anyway. Since she planned to end this big, she would make it messy to worth the trouble. And they being alerted didn’t slow her down as she was still invisible and merciless.

After ten minutes, she cleaned the place of forty men and some unfortunate mages in the tower who heard the commotion and rushed over. In total, there were thirty guards and more than a hundred mages died. Only some mages who were in serious research on the higher floors and didn’t bother to leave their room lived through this incident.

Mages were a precious resource so the Kingdom’s loss was colossal this morning. None of that was Elena’s concern as she proceeded to the basement and further down below.

She encountered some corpses along the way down. No need to think too much as it was clear that someone had infiltrated this place before her and was locked down there.

The Kingdom made a blockade at the entrance was a good move to prevent escapees. She guessed there would be many more guards and knights down there to hunt the rats.

I don’t know what is so tempting but I am joining in!

She could also ditch this murder responsibility for the convenient group here. Staying in the dark was way too good in her situation. Of course, to prevent information leakage, she would have to hunt down all the intruders for the Kingdom like a good noblewoman that she was.

Since hunting was not her forte, Elena decided to lift a few rules for herself and use magic to seal the whole underground laboratory. Now, nothing would pass through this magic wall of hers. It would be a real shame on her part if anyone was to escape after all.

At the lowest level of the mage tower, the door to the first layer of the sin of the Kingdom was slowly closed shut by the power of doom. The shadow of the small human-shape Demon King merged with the darkness as if there was no such a being existing in that place.

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He was one of the Shadows. Cold-blooded killers under the direct command of the Emperor. Shadows would follow the will of the Emperor to their last breath. He and people like him were just a normal unspoken secret of every nation. Nobody talked about them but everyone knew they existed somewhere. He was just an individual of this group.

His name had been erased long ago since the day the Emperor picked him out of the corpses of his friends. The new team he was put in called him Rev for ease of calling. Because he was very good with the new type of ‘crossbow’ that had been developed by the Great Sage, the Revolver. He could dispatch twelve soldiers with precise headshots in under one second while his weapon could only hold six shots at a time. His skill was unmatched in the Empire.

He didn’t know much about his weapon. He just knew that it could shoot a piece of metal faster than any crossbow he had seen. The metal pellet flew as fast as him running at his maximum speed. That was not something possible for other weapons. Assassination had never been easier. The only minor flaw was the loud noise when pulling the trigger. But a cheap talisman of sound nullification could negate it completely.

“Rev. Two groups of five on the left.”

The team leader called him quietly as their group of four crawled on the ceiling of the hallway. Without delay, he moved forward and looked down at the left corridor. His muzzle flashed briefly without a sound and ten bodies fell down. He caught and put the smoking emptied cartridges in his pocket then reloading the weapon again.

When he returned to his position, there were ten more bodies lying bloody behind them. Everyone in his group was also as deadly as he was with their own specialties. They didn’t have a uniform but everyone in a team liked to dress in a similar getup as each other for easy identification. Just a little joy that they had the freedom for.

Rev caressed the weapon on his hip. He had always secretly wanted to go alone in an enemy base with his bag of ammo and unleash his polished skill. But these weapons needed to be kept a secret until the next war so nothing could be done about that.

His team leader signaled them to drop down and go inside one of the rooms. He had memorized the map so he knew that room contained the thing they were here for. His team leader was doing his part in setting up the hidden anti-magic barriers around the door and corridors. They would be activated by the leader later if they were blocked inside. Their team was specialized in assassination and espionage so in an area without magic, they were unstoppable. Not necessarily winning but definitely unstoppable.

This mission was an important objective that was issued by the Great Sage. There was a leap in the mana compression research in the Kingdom due to the recent Apocalypse. Their spies couldn’t get the detail and he felt that it wasn’t that important but the Great Sage had made a fuss. So, the Emperor gave them the task to retrieve this research and sabotage the Kingdom’s other projects as much as they could.

Normally, this mission would be impossible. But currently, the Kingdom was not in its best state. Almost all the soldiers and Knights had perished in the monsters’ attack. And the Emperor had pulled along the other nations into the political cesspool in the Kingdom’s capital to increase the mess. While everyone was fighting with their mouth and backstabbing each other, their Empire had been silently preparing a swift takeover of the Kingdom with pure military might.

To do this effectively, Rev along with many other groups of Shadows were sent here to do the work. The Emperor even sent a special combatant that was abnormally powerful over the Kingdom. He didn’t know where the young man and his female companions went but they were supposed to stay low around the Academy. Their order had yet to arrive. Their job would probably be an elimination job on that Count’s daughter since their defense against assassination was too good. Well, he believed that he and his team could take care of the little girl with no problem but they had their own important jobs to do.

The team leader had finally cracked the door open. It was time-taking and tedious but safety came first. They poured into the room and started killing the mages inside. With the four of them, the room was cleared in a blink of an eye. No resistance whatsoever.

The room was filled with weird machinery that did things with floating crystals and glowing glass-cylinders. These subjects were too difficult for a mere Shadow like him to understand. However, even he could see that the big red feather in the middle of the room was the most important object here. It was inside a tall glass pillar that connected from the ceiling to the floor.

His team leader broke the glass without hesitation and put the feather inside a wooden case. The other two teammates had also taken all the documents inside the room. His duty was standing guard at the door so he could see the whole room and the corridors constantly. He let out a small breath of satisfaction as the mission was half-way done, they just needed to leave now.

The other teams must also be about to complete their objectives by now. The Kingdom was too helpless this time. The only powerhouses left that could prevent their escape were the Court Wizard, the Headmaster of the Academy, and the General. But they had been pulled away by ‘important’ national matters created by the Emperor. Seriously, their Emperor was just too terrifying to fight against. With so much planning and conspiracies, the spent resources had to be enormous. If it was him, he wouldn’t have the guts to mobilize so much budget. His hand would be trembling even before picking the pen up to sign the papers.

“We are done. Destroy this room and wait for the breach.”

The team leader tied the wooden case and some other small trinkets on his back. He looked like a pack mule more or less. But his combat power didn’t decrease, he was specially trained for this job. If extreme cases happened, they would destroy everything first and then retreat. It was fine as long as the enemy lost the benefit too.

Rev followed the order immediately with his eager hands. He threw a round packet the size of a fist in the room after his team had gone out. The door was closed shut with a talisman just a moment before the muffled sound of explosion hammered out on the walls. A little bit of dust fell down here and there but the whole underground complex was still pretty solid.

Rev loved using tools made by the Great Sage. The old man’s inventions were very aligned with his taste. Non-magical attacks were easy to use and still deadly. The revolver and the bomb were already wonderful weapons in his eyes but the Great Sage seemed to have some better ideas in his head. Rev couldn’t wait to test them all out himself.

But it wasn’t the time yet. He followed the leader along with his two other teammates to another corridor. They had to wait for the signal from the other teams before executing the retreating plan.

No matter how weak the Agava Kingdom had become, this was still their secret lab. There could be some fearsome defensive mechanics waiting quietly somewhere. Thus, they had to be prudent and plan out each step carefully. The next part was just to hide and wait for the extraction team to open a tunnel on the first layer. Going out the main door was impossible with the whole mage tower and knight battalion waiting.

With them acting as a distraction and pulling the whole castle’s attention, the digging team wouldn’t be noticed. The tunnel was made with pure manual labor since using magic under the castle’s soil would alert the tower immediately. The Court Wizard had some amazing formations in place. Even the Empire didn’t have anything like these.

His team moved stealthily on the ceiling while killing any strayed group of soldiers they found. They left the knights alone since there would be strong resistances. Ruckus was not ideal. Rev wondered how many men had fallen in this raid. The army of the Kingdom couldn’t be depleted easily even if most of them died a while back.

But there was something wrong in the air. Rev felt it. The long hallway was eerily silent for a while now.

This shouldn’t be the case at all considering how they were all being hunted pretty heated until now. The knights would never retreat. It smelled like a trap.

“Leader, is something wrong?”

One of his teammates whispered a question quietly. It wasn’t a question about the current silence. He along with the other two pulled out their weapons warily while taking some distance from the leader.

The team leader was shaking visibly and crushing the ceiling with his hands. His eyes were bloodshot and the mask was soaked with blood from his mouth. He looked insane right now.

Rev threw three talismans on the leader’s back. One sealing talisman and two exorcizing ones. Black smoke covered his whole body briefly before disappearing. A heavy breath was exhaled before sanity returned to the man’s eyes. He looked back at them and nodded in appreciation. They all reformed their formation with extra talismans ready.

“It looks like they change the tactics and pull out all the stops.”

Possession was a powerful attack on living creatures. Simply being possessed was enough to kill a normal person. Except mages on the rank of wizards, trained individuals like them were only able to persist and fight a long, losing battle until someone saved them. Otherwise, they were as good as dead. Necromancy was not forbidden for nothing.

Using the dead was the most notable ability of necromancers. This meant the Kingdom also had some in their dark pocket. Obviously, their Empire had those too. Taboo meant nothing to rulers. They only needed to follow the moral standard on the surface for the mass to see and nothing more.

The deadly defense surprised them a bit but they could deal with it if they were careful. Seeing the Kingdom unleashed the dead souls in their underground complex meant they were cornered for real. From this point onward, there could be any atrocity awaiting them.

On the outside, the lab was just being quiet and vacant. But since the vicious dead spirits didn’t have physical appearance, possession could happen at any moment. Their supplies of talismans were also not unlimited. The only hope was put on the arrival of the extraction team.

As time passed, Rev’s team moved from room to room to hide and defend themselves from possession and the reanimated corpses. The soldiers they had killed so easily were now becoming a menace. Bullets and blades could no longer put them down. Elemental magic was effective, for a while. The mutilated corpses just kept reforming and standing up. There were even some of the other teams among these revenants. 

Currently, their team was taking a small rest in a storeroom on the third layer that they had barricaded in. Exhaustion was shown clearly on everyone’s face. They were nearing their limit. The first layer on the lab was full of those revenants since most of the dead soldiers were there. They were forced to go down here again.

“I read in the report that in the monster attack there was also a Lich. Could it be from here?”

“Not possible. If the Kingdom had such a thing, they would let it loose on the Empire long ago.”

“Huh, true. I would do that too.”

The idle chat was just a way to release the tension. They were not as emotionless as the nobles like to think. Acting professional was good for the job but they needed a rest now.

“Can’t believe we had to deal with undead in this place. I hate things that don’t die.”

“Same.”

“Shsss! I hear something.”

The leader who was staying near the back wall motioned for us to shut up as he focused on listening. Rev was a bit unhappy that the break was over so soon. But he got ready nonetheless. They all started to check where the noise came from. It could be from another freaky defense for all they knew.

But they soon found out that the noise was not from beyond the walls. It was inside their room. Or more specifically, it was on the leader’s back.

The wooden case was vibrating slightly every now and then. It was so subtle that the team leader had thought that was his breathing. They put the thing down and prepared defensive talismans on their hands as the leader flicked open the case with his sword.

There was only the red feather inside that container. But it was showing how it was not a normal feather clearly for all to see.

Golden aura surrounded the red, vibrant feather with tiny red feathers of light floating like dust around it.

Sweat poured down on their faces as they watched the unknown phenomenon. The big feather did nothing but they felt like their heart was palpitating heavily. The leader closed the case and put all the sealing talismans that he had on it. It was just his hunch but he felt they would die if he let the thing expose itself to open air. He trusted his instinct above all else. That was how he had been living for so long.

Rev was also covered in cold sweats. He looked at the leader with fear in his eyes.

“Does the Great Sage know what that thing is?”

“Don’t know. Don’t ask. Our job is to deliver this to him.”

“I really hope we can deliver this to him.”

They all felt it. The terrible forth-boding terror like a stare on their neck the moment the case was opened. It was like they were all paralyzed under a big shadow at their back. They were terrified of whatever that was, and they called themselves Shadows. It really felt like a bad joke that they couldn’t laugh at.

Rev gripped his revolver harder than he had ever done in all his years. His senses sharpened up as he reloaded the best bullets he had.

“Let’s move. I don’t like staying here.”

They all agreed with the decision. Wild instinct or not, they couldn’t be sure anymore in this hellhole.

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End of chapter 19.

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