Far away, in the Sarkax Royal Capital on the western continent, the church had shed its Gothic, cold-hardened outline and sacred halo, revealing another side lurking in the shadows.
Night was like ink, thick and impenetrable. Oselenka was submerged in slumber.
Its spires and bell towers pierced the night sky; the occasional moonlight filtered through the clouds, outlining the church’s grim silhouette.
In the dead of night, complete silence reigned, broken only by the occasional cry of a night bird. All personnel within the church had already gone home.
However, a single, discordant black shadow silently appeared in the church’s main hall.
He wore a voluminous black robe that nearly merged with the shadows, holding a wand in his hand.
He was the Fourth Seat of Black Utopia, a mage with strength as high as the mid-seventh tier.
Now, under the direct orders of the Deputy, he had infiltrated this church. His target was a tome said to record certain ancient, forbidden magical knowledge.
The corner of the Fourth Seat’s mouth, hidden beneath the shadow of his hood, twitched. Impatience and disdain filled his mind.
A theft… another one of these low-class tasks.
He grumbled internally. Wasn’t he, a dignified seventh-tier mage, someone to be revered and feared wherever he went? And here he was, sent to do something so sneaky and underhanded…
If this got out, it would be a complete disgrace. The Deputy was something else. Instead of sneaking around like this, it would be more “honorable” to just take it by force.
But, complaints aside, the mission had to be executed.
Dark magic did have a unique advantage in stealth, concealment, and instantaneous assassination, which was precisely why the Deputy had chosen him for this task.
The Fourth Seat suppressed his petty arrogance, deciding to finish this quickly. Get the item and leave immediately. He didn’t want to spend another second in this gloomy church.
Relying on his supreme shadow affinity and mana concealment techniques, the Fourth Seat moved like a mural blending into the background, passing silently through the empty main hall and corridors.
Following the intelligence provided by the Deputy, he headed straight for the archive area located at the rear of the church building.
True to expectations, two guards stood rigidly before the heavy oak door of the archive. They wore silver-white light armor, with swords at their waists.
Their eyes were sharp, maintaining considerable vigilance even late at night. They exchanged a low word or two at intervals to confirm each other’s status.
Hidden in the shadows of a corner, the Fourth Seat calculated the shift change. If he had to wait for the next guard shift to replace them, he’d be stuck here for at least another nine hours.
He didn’t have that kind of patience.
Just as the two guards turned to speak to each other and their attention wavered for a split second, the Fourth Seat moved.
He didn’t even fully emerge from the shadows. He just raised his wand from the darkness and gave two extremely slight flicks in two different directions.
There was no dazzling light, no violent surge of mana—only two pitch-black threads, darker than the night itself, shot out from his wand tip instantly!
Fifth-rank magic—Shadow Sting.
Two extremely faint, dull thuds echoed.
A tiny black hole appeared in the throat of each guard. Their bodies stiffened, their pupils contracted abruptly, and without even being able to raise an alarm, they slid silently to the floor…
The Fourth Seat glanced emotionlessly at the corpses on the ground. Without further delay, he quickly approached the archive door.
There was a simple magic lock on the door, but to a seventh-tier mage, it was as good as nonexistent.
His fingers traced over the keyhole. A strand of pure dark mana seeped in, dexterously disrupting the internal magic structure without triggering any alarm.
Click.
A soft sound, and the door opened.
He slipped inside, gently pulling the door shut behind him.
Even if someone soon discovered the dead guards, he was confident he could find the item and be miles away before any pursuit could be organized.
However, as soon as he entered the archive, the Fourth Seat’s brow furrowed slightly.
Unlike the solemn sanctity of the church outside, this archive was filled with a stale breath and a faint, musty odor… and…
And a faint, cloying, sweetish smell.
The space was larger than he had anticipated. Tall bookshelves nearly touched the ceiling, densely packed with all sorts of heavy tomes, scrolls, and manuscripts.
Besides the books, the room was filled with all kinds of bizarre items—
Rusted metal artifacts, strange biological specimens, powerless gemstone scepter, and some twisted religious sculptures…
The Fourth Seat collected his thoughts, ignoring the unsettling displays. He walked quickly towards the area storing the texts.
The name of the tome the Deputy had given was quite ancient. He could only search by quickly flipping through each one.
It was, without a doubt, a tedious and time-consuming job.
The number of books in the archive far exceeded expectations. The covers and titles of many were severely worn, or they were written in extremely ancient and obscure scripts.
The Fourth Seat searched impatiently for a long time, scanning nearly half the area’s collection, but still found nothing.
Frustration welled up in his heart again.
Just as he was considering whether to expand his search—
“AHHHHH!!!”
A miserable, female scream tore through the silence of the archive without any warning.
The Fourth Seat’s entire body jolted violently.
Not from fear, but because the sound was so abrupt.
He instantly assumed a combat stance, wand held across his chest, shadow mana swirling rapidly around him.
Had someone found the guards dead outside?
No… That’s not it!
The source of the sound… was too close!
It seemed… to be coming from inside the archive?!
How was that possible?
He had scanned the room when he entered. Other than himself, there shouldn’t have been a single trace of any living being in here!
The sound lasted only a moment before being cut off abruptly, as if something had forcefully choked it out.
But its echo lingered, and in this bizarre room, it was enough to make one’s hair stand on end.
The Fourth Seat’s eyes were sharp as an eagle’s, carefully sensing the direction of the sound.
Finally, his gaze locked onto a single oak bookshelf pushed against the wall at the very back of the archive.
This bookshelf…
Compared to the others, it seemed a little too “flush” with the wall. The fit was unnaturally seamless.
A hidden door?
The Fourth Seat’s heart stirred.
He approached the bookshelf, reaching out to carefully touch the wood grain and edges, even leaning in to sniff.
Sure enough, at the seam where the bottom of the bookshelf met the floor, he detected a strange scent, laced with that same cloying, sweetish smell.
The Fourth Seat hesitated no longer. He began to thoroughly examine the area around the bookshelf.
Eventually, his gaze fell upon an inconspicuous stone flowerpot next to the shelf.
He moved the flowerpot aside.
On the smooth stone floor beneath, a palm-sized, dark red magic array was etched.
Indeed!
A cold smile touched the Fourth Seat’s lips. Without hesitation, he channeled a thread of mana into the array.
Creak—
The heavy oak bookshelf began to rotate slowly inward, revealing a tunnel that sloped downward behind it.
That woman’s scream from earlier had definitely come from the depths of this tunnel!
A flicker of resolve flashed in the Fourth Seat’s eyes.
The forbidden tome the Deputy wanted was most likely hidden deep within this secret tunnel.
He wasted no more time. Shadow mana surged around him. Like a silent, black stream of shadow, he slid swiftly and cautiously through the opening of the revolving door.
The tunnel inside was unusually spacious, but its architectural style was completely different from the solemn Gothic church above. It had… an indescribably weird feeling.
But the Fourth Seat didn’t dwell on it.
He pushed his shadow stealth to its absolute limit, moving rapidly through the tunnel.
The tunnel wasn’t straight; it wound its way downward.
After rounding a sharp corner, the sight before him made the Fourth Seat’s pupils constrict…
Just a short distance ahead, the back of a figure dressed in pure white robes stood facing away from him.
And at the feet of that white-robed person lay a single…
No, the half of a single, naked, female body!
The woman looked young. Her skin was pale. Her eyes were wide open, her face frozen in an expression of ultimate terror and agony. But life had long since left her.
A pool of blood had spread out, not yet fully coagulated…
From her abdomen to her chest, her body was marked with several vicious, torn wounds. The edges were jagged and uneven, as if she had been savagely gnawed and ripped apart by some wild beast.
And the white-robed figure, whose back was to the Fourth Seat, had something in their hands.
Were they…
Chewing?