“River of Sloth”
Kleosis, caught in an illusion, wandered the Blood Sea, observing her surroundings and instantly realizing the extraordinary nature of the Can Godpower.
She could even vaguely discern that this might be a ploy from the Female Vampire Queen, but she still had no idea how to break free from it.
As she walked, the entire blood-red space began to distort, constructing scenes of stunning complexity.
Once again, Kleosis was enveloped by a landscape of mountains and rivers, but she was not submerged—instead, she was squeezed and pushed until she stood inside a row of seats, where from behind the walls of the private room, waves of biting insults and ridicule drifted in.
“The verdict begins now!”
“Filthy healer!”
“Useless noble!”
“Despicable liar!”
“Slackers who never do anything right in the party!”
“For fun! Always slacking off and never doing your part!”
“Every time after the weekly battle, all you do is patch up some wounds, you never actually help the party at all. What’s the point of having you? Why don’t you just go home and inherit your big fortress?”
“Damn Bolu Family! Damn Earl! May your whole family die!”
“At night, you always disturb everyone’s rest, yet you’re clearly the richest among us, still pretending to be poor!”
“Your tastes are disgusting! Shameless! Absolutely revolting!”
“As a priest, you never care about your teammates’ lives or deaths. Every single time you heal, you dawdle and make us all suffer, always leaving us battered and exhausted. Useless!”
“Earl’s Lady, you look down on us, don’t you? You must think we’re just your lackeys, huh? But I’m not! We’re the real masters here!”
“Everyone agrees that the team would be better off without you. We don’t need a burden like you.”
“In conclusion, Samimi, get out of our party.”
“Immediate execution—crawl out of here!”
All at once, Melosis realized exactly where she was. Wasn’t this the day when we first kicked Samimi out of the party? This was the high-class restaurant where the infamous feast was held.
Now, as a bystander, she was forced to witness the team’s internal trial all over again, and a rush of complicated emotions surged through her.
She stood quietly at the door, peering into the private room through a crack.
She saw the four members of the Hero Party stand up, pointing at Samimi’s head with arrogant scorn, hurling insults as vicious as possible.
Watching this, Melosis felt a chill in her heart. Was our treatment of Samimi really this awful? So we were truly such a despicable group…
Samimi, for her part, was even more pitiful, shrinking on the ground with her head bowed, truly pitiable.
Yet, somehow, it felt different from what actually happened? But at this moment, Kleosis could no longer distinguish truth from memory; who would bother to remember such things clearly? She had already been misled.
This was the subtlety of the Empress’s Will’s illusion—it rarely overwrites memories, but rather adds fuel to what’s already there, blurring truth and falsehood, twisting everything toward the worst possible outcome.
In the end, Samimi, humiliated and abused yet refusing to leave, was finally kicked out of the room by the big man Fabian, sent sprawling into the streets of the Royal City like a stray dog.
But even then, the Hero Party’s vengeance was not finished.
The phantom Melosis stood by the window, watching the fallen and defeated figure of Samimi, and coldly offered a venomous suggestion: “Let’s spread news of all her disgraceful deeds everywhere. We’ll make sure the entire Royal City knows how despicable she is, so she’ll never be able to lift her head again.”
Hearing this, Melosis’s scalp tingled.
That suggestion—she really had been the one to make it. That much she did remember.
She always knew she wasn’t a good person, but was she really this cruel?
The scene shifted again. Kleosis was forcibly moved to stand beside the fake Samimi as the two wandered the streets of the Royal City.
“Look, it’s her! The burden kicked out by the Hero Party!”
“Filthy wretch! Get out of the Royal City! You have no right to be here!”
“Just seeing you hurts my eyes! Disgusting!”
“Even the Hero Party abandoned you? You really are a disgrace to the human race!”
“Human traitor! Human outcast! Human disgrace!”
The streets were packed with townsfolk of the Royal City. It felt as though the entire city had come out to jeer at Samimi, pelting her with dozens of rotten eggs and wilted leaves, all of them smashing into her face.
Even Kleosis was dumbfounded by the spectacle.
Was it really this outrageous? This ruthless?
But Melosis had no memory of what happened to Samimi after she left the party.
So, this time, the Blood Sea illusion directly assaulted Kleosis’s mind with these “fabricated memories.”
Yet, it had just been said that the Empress’s Will could not invent memories out of thin air, but could only use the subject’s own memories to construct the illusion. Making things up randomly would only leave loopholes, letting the victim see through the illusion.
However, this time was different. The Empress’s Will could combine memories from other witnesses to create the fantasy.
Though the Will of the Queen of the Blood-Sucking Ghosts could not cast illusions directly on Samimi—or rather, perhaps it already had, but Samimi was immune to it.
But the Empress’s Will could extract fragments of Samimi’s memories, and then use scenes from those memories to attack Melosis. How despicable.
Memories that had never been witnessed—Kleosis could only take them as truth, believing Samimi had truly been humiliated by the townsfolk of the Royal City.
The illusion still wasn’t over…
The scene shifted again. Kleosis followed the fake Samimi back to the Bolu Family estate.
“Big trouble, you’re finally back!”
As soon as the fake Samimi returned home, the old gatekeeper greeted her with a heavy blow from his wooden staff, knocking her to the ground.
“You useless wretch! You still dare come back? You’ve disgraced the Bolu Family!”
The young miss led a group of Bolu Family knights and guards, who immediately swarmed up and began beating the fake Samimi.
Only after everyone had their fill did they drag her inside, escorting the bruised, pig-headed Samimi in front of the Earl’s Lady.
“You damn dog! You were kicked out by the Hero Party? Do you know how much effort I spent getting you into that party? You useless burden! I’d rather have given birth to a piece of pork than to you! What’s the use of you? What’s the use of you? Get out! You are already expelled from the family! You’re no longer one of us! Go as far as you can! Don’t let me see you again! Die somewhere! I’ll beat you every time I see you!”
The Earl’s Lady’s face twisted with malice, her face contorted as she beat the bound Samimi, lashing her again and again until her flesh was bruised and swollen.
Honestly, it was a bit too exaggerated.
But again, Kleosis had never seen these memories herself, so she could not judge their truth. Even if they were over the top, she could only accept them.
All throughout, Kleosis followed the scene in silence, her expression blank, emotionless.
She did not experience any mental breakdown, nor was she moved by all the suffering Samimi endured. There was only a faint trace of pity, but nothing more.