The Gabriel Empire’s southern border region, the original Norlander Duchy’s capital, Nolan City’s center area, Duke Brandon’s mansion.
Bella had never visited Norlander Duchy’s capital before. She had also never been to Duke Brandon’s grand mansion. Bella had originally thought that her own mansion was breaking regulations but it wasn’t until she had laid eyes on Duke Brandon’s mansion that she realized her own residence was rather normal.
In terms of area, Duke Brandon and Bella’s mansions were about the same, however the decadence of Duke Brandon’s mansion far surpassed Bella’s mansion. Bella’s mansion had been built by Blood Demon King Eleanor; although it was very large, the materials used to build it were ordinary stone and wood.
Bella strongly suspected that Brandon’s mansion had been modelled after the Emperor’s own palace. That magnificent architectural style, besides lacking the sign of the imperial palace, was practically identical.
There were many Wolfman guards patrolling the area, but this didn’t affect Bella and her companions’ ability to infiltrate the grounds. With their black witch robes, they practically had a free pass to go wherever they wanted. The Wolfman guards did not even dare to block their way as they entered the mansion.
Bella and her companions had seen that meteor shower in the distance; it should be the long range support that the Darkness Sacred Region was giving Sarn City. Either way Sarn City was secure; Bella wasn’t worried at all. After all, there was a genuine demon king holding down the fort. No matter how hard headed the Beastmen were, they wouldn’t be able to surpass Blood Demon King Eleanor.
Inside Duke Brandon’s mansion, there weren’t many Beastman guards. The security details within were handled by the Dark Humans. Presently, there were none here, as all of them had probably gone outside to deal with the crazed zombies.
Bella had planned to assassinate the Beastmen’s Third Army Group Commander, Wolf King Springhall. Springhall was the leader of the Wolfman race, and was one of the Eight Great Beast Kings of the Beastman race. He had long acted as the strategic commander behind the scenes of many Beastman invasions of the Gabriel Empire.
Wolf King Springhall’s greatest battle record was five years past; he had lead over 50,000 Wolfmen cavalry to completely rout Duke Brandon’s 110,000 strong Border Duchy’s Alliance Army. Duke Brandon’s strategic ability was not bad, but the troops of the Alliance Army were too crappy. Their battle prowess was untenable. This was added to the fact that several Dukes were extra skimpy with their budget which led to the poor quality of the soldiers’ basic equipment. Besides the officers, the soldiers were all wearing the cheapest armor and were completely unable to go head to head with the Beastmen’s savage assault.
Due to the enormous size of Duke Brandon’s mansion, Bella was in a rush; there was no way she’d be able to investigate the entirety of the mansion. If the black robed wizards returned, they would be forced into a reactionary position. Bella could only rely on Noreya and Elaine’s help.
Noreya didn’t refuse either. There was a major difference between her and regular human assassins, and that was her ability to capture a person’s heartbeat. This was an ability that belonged to assassins of legend. Upon reaching that realm of ability, an assassin would be able to discern the heartbeats in their surrounding area, thereby pinpointing their target’s position.
Of course, this heartbeat detection wasn’t a universal ability. One would only be able to detect surrounding heartbeats during the skill duration, and once the skill ended there would be a long cooldown time before it could be used again.
Noreya tightly closed her eyes, and listened in silence. Soon, she opened her eyes again with a strange expression on her face, as if she had made an important discovery. Elaine used a different method to scout the mansion. She released several puppet insects and ordered them to investigate the area.
Elaine’s method was a bit slower than Noreya’s technique. However, once her puppet insects had returned and reported their findings, she took on a strange expression as well. When the two girls pointed, they ended up pointing toward the same direction.
According to their findings, Kenneth wasn’t actually here. They weren’t sure if he had gone with his black robed underlings to go suppress the corpse burial area, but his room had been discovered by both Elaine and Noreya. As for the quarters of Wolf King Springhall, they didn’t appear to be within Brandon’s ducal mansion.
Bella was very angry that their target wasn’t there. They couldn’t just leave like this, otherwise they would have made this trip for nothing. They had to at least leave a souvenir of their visit. Under Bella’s orders, Noreya and Elaine led her toward Kenneth’s quarters.
There were two passages to Kenneth’s room; one of them was filled with traps as well as the corpses of a large number of black robed people. By the looks of their equipment, these people were likely human assassins that had infiltrated the mansion. Moreover, all of the dead were male assassins, there wasn’t a single female.
On the previous level, Bella had also only seen male assassins. She figured that no female assassins had accepted this mission.
There were many many traps in this passageway. There were hidden arrows, as well as pitfalls. Looking at that bloody hallway gave people a chilling sensation. The other passageway however, looked exceedingly ordinary. It was very peaceful and did not look dangerous at all.
Bella and her companions decided to test out both pathways. The person who designed all of these trap mechanisms would never have guessed that they would encounter a puppet master, the cheating master Elaine. She summoned forth zombie puppets that looked almost alive and used them to test both hallways for danger.
These zombie puppets had almost the same body temperature as normal humans. They even had an internal mechanism that mimicked a heartbeat. The traps in the passageway immediately identified the puppets as real humans and launched several volleys of arrows. The realistic puppets walking down the trapped hallway barely made it ten meters in before they collapsed to the ground, damaged so severely that they barely looked human anymore.
The ones walking down the ordinary looking path did not fare much better. Although at a glance, the hallway did not look to be trapped, Bella firmly believed that the most peaceful looking area would often be the source of danger.
This passageway also was trapped. Within ten meters, those zombie puppets were entangled by dozens of tentacle-like black strips. The black tentacles seemed to be some sort of demon; they felt as if they were alive as they constricted around the puppets.
“Such speed, these tentacles… They’re, forget it, either way my puppets aren’t ordinary cannon fodder.”
The puppet silk in Elaine’s hands trembled violently and her entangled puppets self destructed with a “peng”. Accompanying their explosions, a wave of cruel green liquid exploded from the puppets’ bodies, splattering over the black tentacles.
Those tentacles reacted as if they had been sprayed with sulfuric acid and dissolved in short order. That cruel green liquid was practically infectious. Soon, the entire passageway was dyed a sickly shade of green and the remains of that black tentacled demon were left everywhere.
“Elaine, you…”
“Bella, this is the strongest corpse water, and is specifically used to dissolve demons. It’s mine… or more accurately, she gave it to me.”
Elaine’s explanation seemed to be avoiding something, and Bella didn’t ask her to clarify which beauty Elaine was referring to with “her”. After all there were plenty of girls around Bella that could produce secret poisons, for example, Betty. It was only afterward that Bella found out that Elaine had been referring to Bella herself.
The Gabriel Empire’s southern border region, the original Norlander Duchy’s capital, Noland City’s corpse burial ground.
The black robed wizards were currently creating a magic array, and were desperately trying to hold back the crazed zombies charging their position.
Among the black robed wizards, the leader was a youth wearing a black sage’s outfit; his image was eye-catching. He was the Darkness Wizard God, Kenneth. This “Wizard God” title wasn’t claimed out of empty pride, it was because his power was nearing godly levels.
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