Wendy collapsed onto the carpet, done for. He stared blankly at the constantly struggling silver-gray soul, then looked at the perfect, lifeless shell on the bed. Only those two words remained in his mind.
From start to finish, he had just been a fool, a pawn kept in the dark.
Laxana watched Wendy’s expression, a mix of disbelief and utter despair, and the sick, eerie smile on her face only grew more brilliant.
“Seeing you like this, I know I bet right.”
Her ethereal voice carried a satisfaction of having avenged a great wrong as she floated slowly before Wendy, extending that pale, phantom hand, wanting to caress the Prince’s cheek once more.
Wendy instinctively shrank back.
Laxana’s hand paused midair, a barely perceptible flicker of loss passing through those silver pupils, but it was quickly replaced by a thick possessiveness.
She withdrew her hand and appreciatively examined the “trophy” still struggling futilely within it.
“To be honest, before making my move, I only held onto a one-in-ten-thousand hope.”
“Even though I had already imagined Astreia’s power, only when I truly fought her could I personally experience that nearly unsolvable pressure, that absolute power that transcends the rules themselves.”
She glanced at the quiet body on the bed, and a trace of lingering fear actually showed in her eyes.
“Even sacrificing everything to enter the so-called ‘Seven Luminaries Convergence,’ before her, it was just a slightly bigger joke…”
“But…” Laxana shifted the topic, a hint of playfulness creeping into her voice, “I really do have to thank her.”
“If she hadn’t humiliated me so thoroughly before, mocked me, trampled all my dignity under her feet…”
“I wouldn’t have had the courage to gamble everything and cast that forbidden magic I wasn’t even confident in myself—’Spiritualization.'”
Cold sweat had already soaked through Wendy’s back.
He didn’t know what expression he should use to face this completely unfamiliar, utterly terrifying woman right now.
But in the end, his remaining survival instinct overpowered everything else.
“Laxana… please…” Wendy spoke in an almost pleading tone, struggling to get the words out, “Don’t… hurt her anymore…”
Yet Laxana turned a deaf ear to his plea, merely tilting her head and saying teasingly, “My Prince, are you still feeling sorry for her? Don’t rush. Let me tell you a story.”
A story?
Wendy’s thinking short-circuited.
At a time like this, she wants to tell a story?
“In the handwritten notes I left behind in ‘Xiyong,’ I came across an interesting kind of monster.”
Laxana completely ignored Wendy’s stunned expression and continued on her own.
“They are a type of subhuman creature with a giant shell on their heads, a pair of sinister little eyes, and trunks that droop down like an elephant’s. Their limbs and bodies resemble obese humans, and their skin is a very gloomy gray.”
Her description made an exotic and ugly monster image involuntarily surface in Wendy’s mind.
“They like to dwell by the sea or by rivers. Every day they do nothing, just sit there like a statue, holding a fishing rod that appears to have no hook, staring blankly at the water.”
Laxana paused, smiled slightly, and looked at Wendy.
“Guess, what do they use to fish?”
Wendy’s Adam’s apple bobbed. He couldn’t utter a single word.
He had no mood for guessing games right now. He only wanted to know if Astreia could still be saved.
Laxana didn’t seem to care about his answer either. She gently shook the hand holding Astreia’s soul and continued in that same ethereal tone.
“Once, a party of human adventurers encountered this kind of monster subhuman by the seaside. Seeing how bizarre it looked, they wanted to capture it alive and sell it to a circus for a big profit.”
“But when they launched a sneak attack, they were horrified to discover that this subhuman was impervious to blades and fire, immune to water and steel. Even the strongest mage in their party’s full-power fireburst spell couldn’t leave a single mark on that gray skin.”
“Even stranger, from beginning to end, that subhuman never even turned its head. It just kept staring blankly at the water, as if it didn’t care about them at all.”
“Seeing their attacks were useless, these adventurers grew curious. They desperately wanted to know what this invulnerable monster was fishing for. And what exactly it used as bait?”
“Just then, the subhuman lifted its fishing rod…”
“Those bold adventurers quietly crept closer…”
“And then… guess what happened?”
At this point in the story, Wendy’s heart gave a violent lurch, and an extremely ominous premonition surged wildly up his spine.
Given the current atmosphere, and this question, the answer was obviously not going to be anything good, even a fool could figure that out.
If he answered… and guessed wrong, would he be treated like an idiot?
If he didn’t answer, he’d definitely be given a hard time.
Driven by a strong will to survive, he steeled himself and tentatively guessed, “Could… could it be… using humans as bait?”
“Hehe, how clever. As expected of my Prince~”
Laxana’s eyes instantly curved into two crescent moons, and that expression actually bore a hint of the silver-haired little girl’s innocence from before.
But Wendy only felt his hair stand on end.
“At the end of that subhuman’s fishing rod, there was no hook at all. Only a strip of cloth soaked in its own blood, covered in bizarre incantations.”
“The moment those human adventurers got close, that strip of cloth came to life as if possessed, violently wrapping around their faces!”
“Then, they all fell unconscious…”
“When the adventurers regained their senses, guess what they saw?”
Laxana asked again, but this time she didn’t wait for Wendy to answer before revealing it herself.
“They… saw their own bodies!”
“Huh?”
Wendy was dumbfounded.
Saw their own bodies?
What’s so strange about that?
Can’t you just look down and see it?
Watching Wendy’s bewildered expression, the smile on Laxana’s face grew even deeper. She explained with great patience, “What I mean is, their souls left their physical bodies.”
“Then, from an observer’s perspective, they saw their own bodies.”
“It was only then that the adventurers noticed in terror… their limbs… were all gone.”
“Their entire bodies had been made into something smooth, with only a torso and head, like a rubber stick.”
“Rubber stick?”
Those three words struck like a thunderbolt, exploding inside Wendy’s mind!
He whipped his head toward the struggling soul phantom clutched in Laxana’s hand.
The ominous premonition in Astreia’s heart reached its peak at this moment.
“You… you don’t mean to?!”
“Heehee~”
Laxana let out an eerie light laugh. The palm gripping Astreia’s soul suddenly erupted with an overwhelmingly dazzling black light!
The light was so intense that Wendy instinctively raised his arm to shield his eyes.
The light came fast, and it went fast.
When Wendy lowered his arm and looked forward again.
He was completely dumbfounded.
The thing held in Laxana’s hand had changed.
The silver-gray phantom that had been struggling, identical to Astreia, now… only a head and a smooth, bare torso remained.
Those slender limbs, those powerful legs that had locked him in countless times before, were all gone.
It had become… a rod-shaped object that was deeply familiar to him.
This bizarre and absurd shape instantly reminded Wendy of a certain indescribable “toy” he had seen on certain unspeakable websites in his previous life.
“My Prince~”
Laxana slowly brought this brand-new, “Astreia Limited Edition” toy right up to Wendy’s eyes, almost pressing it against his face.
Those silver pupils were filled with mockery and cruelty.
“Now guess again, what exactly does that monster subhuman make people into such things for?”