White Stone City’s night today was quieter than usual.
After the explosion at the Lord’s Manor and the mysterious disappearance of almost everyone within it, there should have been a major upheaval here, yet it was surprisingly calm.
And this atmosphere of calm was absolutely abnormal.
This inevitably attracted many outside gazes, who dispatched their own agents to spy on the secrets hidden within this city.
Then, they would discover that this city, even though it had lost a quarter of its people, and even lost a lord and a castle, was still operating as steadily as ever. It was truly bizarre!
Unreasonable, too unreasonable.
You see, no matter where you are, when a leader and his residence vanish into thin air, it’s like a person’s brain disappearing.
It shouldn’t continue to function normally. It should be like a corpse, gradually ceasing to breathe, then its organs beginning to malfunction.
Ultimately, it should be torn apart by vultures and hyenas, its remains decomposed by flies and maggots, until only a pile of pale white bones remains, weathered by time into dust and buried in history.
That is the normal course of events.
But White Stone City was still running, as if it never needed that lord or the people in that manor to manage it in the first place.
Something else was controlling this city, making it operate slowly.
Even so, White Stone City’s “life” was only alive in the simplest sense. At this moment, it looked lifeless, like an old man on his deathbed being kept alive by artificial means.
The original outsiders, having keenly sensed the shift in the wind, had already fled one after another. Some speculators still remained, wanting to be the first to feast on the fresh flesh.
Unfortunately, they waited and waited, but that opportunity never came.
In the Inner City of White Stone City, on the third-floor balcony of a manor estate, a young girl in a black and white maid’s dress, with long, pale cyan hair, was gazing at the starry sky in the distance.
“Sigh…”
Wendy let out a light sigh. She felt time here was passing excruciatingly slowly, even though it was better than being locked in a cage.
Ever since leaving Sophia and Nina… and more importantly, leaving Enya, she had begun to find life dull.
‘Maybe it’s because I can’t go out and move around freely?’
‘That must be it. Staying in this big house all the time is boring too. Those maids are such boring people. I don’t want to play with those dullards.’
Wendy pouted, grumbling in her heart about the human maids who usually took good care of her.
Yes, she was that kind of elf.
In person, she wouldn’t dare at all, only daring to talk behind their backs.
She straightened up from leaning on the balcony railing, stretched, and let out a comfortable groan.
“Mmm~”
“Sigh, I wonder how long this break will last…”
Thinking about how rich she would be in the future, a silly, happy smile appeared on her pretty face.
“Hehehe~”
When she finished laughing and turned around to go to sleep, she found someone standing behind her, someone who hadn’t been there a moment ago.
It was a silver-haired woman, breathtakingly beautiful, with a pair of dragon horns on her head, dragon wings on her back, a dragon tail peeking from under her skirt, and a black dress accentuating her graceful figure.
The moment Wendy saw Enya, her knees instantly lost their strength. Fortunately, she reacted quickly and grabbed the railing behind her with her hand, or else she would have performed a knee-smashing act right in front of Enya, completely losing all face for the elves.
Seeing the elf’s reaction, Enya asked Wendy half-jokingly.
“Am I that scary?”
“N-no…”
Wendy recovered after a moment, finally snapping out of her frightened state. After straightening her long legs, she pursed her moist, thin lips, lowered her head slightly, and replied.
“Mistress isn’t scary at all. It’s just that your appearance was a bit too sudden, so… so Wendy was startled.”
“Mhm, a reasonable explanation.”
Enya nodded. She turned and walked into the room. At this moment, she was also carrying something covered with a black cloth.
The object was placed on the tea table. Enya lay sideways on the spacious sofa, and Wendy also came to sit opposite her.
Wendy twisted her fingers together and tentatively asked.
“Are we leaving tomorrow?”
Enya gave her a look but had no intention of responding to that question.
She had waited at home until her daughters were asleep before leaving her avatar and coming out, heading straight to White Stone City to find Wendy. Of course, she had brought Sylvia along—the very thing she had just placed on the table covered with the black cloth.
From Antiros, she had learned that the hidden existence behind Sylvia was only known by the title “Lord of a Thousand Faces.” As for what He wanted to do, it was a complete blank.
What exactly was the purpose of this hidden existence? For now, it seemed the only breakthrough point could be found on Sylvia herself.
The other party wanted to obtain the Goddess of Night’s Cicada Shell, yet wasn’t desperately craving it, because the investment was far from matching the potential gain. This also indicated that the Lord of a Thousand Faces’ ambitions extended far beyond that. Then there was the matter of what lay beneath the Northern Mountains.
Although Enya was still quite formidable now, and ordinary powerhouses couldn’t do anything to her—whether in terms of mechanics or stats, she was higher and stronger—Enya couldn’t stay like this forever.
Recovering her strength to deal with the major events that might occur next was the most urgent matter for Enya right now.
So, after staying at home for so many days, it was time to go out.
Her gold-red Dragon Eyes, fixed on empty space, slowly narrowed into deep slits. Enya sat up from her side-lying position on the sofa.
She looked at the caged bird covered with black cloth on the tea table, her thin lips parting as she spoke, half-playful, half-serious.
“Sylvia, you will agree in the end.”
“……”
Inside the cage, Sylvia opened her deep purple eyes in the darkness, staring at the void of the black cloth. After a while, she did not respond.
What Enya meant by “agree” was the transaction she had previously proposed to Sylvia.
Namely—
She would kill Sylvia’s original body, and after cutting off the original’s head, she would give that body to the current Sylvia to use.
The core of this transaction was to give Sylvia, this created puppet, the true freedom she had never possessed. Freedom was an irresistible poison to a puppet.
The reason Sylvia didn’t agree was that she had no such desire. After all, she was created as just an empty doll. Dolls and puppets don’t have their own desires.
But Enya naturally had a way to make Sylvia into a doll with her own desires, to make her live loyally for her own desires.
The Divine Fragment she had peeled off from the Goddess of Night’s Cicada Shell using the Blade of Spirit Calming Flower was a remnant of the Authority of Desire.
Although not particularly complete, it was definitely more condensed and pure than those fragments existing in the present world, which were almost infinitely diluted and mixed within ordinary people.
At the border of White Stone City, in an ordinary small town, many people had already begun their busy day.
At the town gate, a guard who had just come on duty was lazily sitting on the ground, leaning against the city wall, stealing a moment of rest to doze off.
He was squinting, about to fall asleep, when the person next to him suddenly kicked him. Frowning, he opened his bloodshot eyes, only to be pained by the strong sunlight.
The man hurriedly shielded his eyes with his hand, only then able to open them a little to see who had kicked him.
Seeing who it was, he cursed.
“You bastard… trying to die?”
“Heh, get up. A carriage came this early in the morning.”
The one who kicked him was a man with a stubbly beard. Grinning with yellowish teeth, he smiled at the man on the ground and joked.
“Where did you have fun last night? The sun’s already over the mountains, and you still haven’t recovered? Could it be you went to that widow’s house?”
Hearing this, the man who had just gotten up from the ground elbowed the stubbly man, looking unhappy as he cursed.
“Go to hell, mind your own business, got it…”
“Heh.”
The stubbly man didn’t mind at all. It seemed the two were used to talking like this. He lazily walked towards the city gate.
Not far down the road, a carriage was slowly approaching. The carriage body was of average workmanship, and the horses didn’t look very good either. With years of experience, they knew there was no profit to be had. The soldiers responsible for opening and guarding the gate lost interest, until the carriage came a bit closer.
They all widened their eyes, looking at the person driving the carriage.
It was a woman, with unseen pale cyan hair, wearing a maid’s uniform. Her appearance was even more exquisite and beautiful than the mayor’s wives, arousing interest from afar.
“Is she from White Stone City?”
“Just one carriage? Could it be some young lady from a big family going out?”
“Then I…”
They kept discussing, and the carriage’s speed didn’t slow down. In no time, it arrived before them.
Wendy drove the carriage slowly. After entering the town’s gate, she glanced at the humans eyeing her, but only regarded them as roadside weeds.
The carriage didn’t stop. Those few people didn’t know whether to stop it or not. According to past rules, they were supposed to stop it and collect a toll.
While they hesitated, the carriage had already traveled some distance. No need to consider it now.
They started talking again.
“Did you see that just now? That woman’s ears were so long…”
“Could she be a foreign race!?”
In the human world, “foreign race” usually referred to the beastfolk from the north and the Demon Race from the south. Within the Northland States, these two foreign races were not few in number.
In neighboring Qingshui City, foreign races were relatively fewer. If you went a bit further east, in those few countries, whether it was orcs or the Demon Race, you could see them casually on the streets.
“Should we report it?”
“Who’ll go?”
The few lazy men began shirking the responsibility, arguing for a long time without deciding who would make the trip.
On the carriage, Enya had already put on a mask, taking on a human appearance. It was still her true form’s silver hair and golden eyes, just with some details slightly modified.
Enya lifted the carriage curtain, looking outside through the window. As she looked, her eyes were gold-red Dragon Eyes.
Breaking Illusion was an ability innate to her eyes.