…The edge forcefully torn from a magic construct still carried dried, blackened bloodstains.
Victoria grew more and more horrified the longer she looked at that parchment array map.
“Isn’t this the house layout map of Gram Town…? The entire town was actually built for this magic! This… this is an extremely massive ancient sacrificial magic array!”
Victoria looked at the magic array diagram, and all the clues in her mind gradually linked together. The doubts in her heart were finally more than half resolved.
If this evil demon was not eliminated, the true reason the town was massacred would never be revealed. Her sense of justice would never allow her to retreat now.
“Tomorrow night, we will go to Gram Town again!”
Victoria put the array map away, then suddenly turned to her personal maid and ordered, “By the way, tomorrow send someone to the college to inquire about everything regarding Annabell.”
“Huh? Why?” The maid looked utterly confused.
Victoria glared at her. “I told you to go, so go. Why all this nonsense?”
The maid pouted aggrievedly. “Understood.”
After the maid withdrew, another trusted maid tentatively asked, “Your Highness, you aren’t interested in that Miss Annabell, are you…?”
Victoria shook her head, walked to the window, and looked at the night outside. “Don’t overthink it. I am simply curious.”
“What is Your Highness curious about?”
Victoria asked in return, “What do you think of Annabell as a person?”
The maid thought carefully. “She treats others harshly, is extremely rude to Your Highness, and acts incredibly arrogantly… However, her powerful strength is truly awe-inspiring, and… she doesn’t seem to have the murderous malice rumored of her.”
Victoria smiled slightly. If she were truly as cold-blooded and ruthless as the rumors said, she could have simply stood by and let that Banshee tear her to pieces.
So she was truly curious about what kind of person this infamous Duke’s Daughter really was.
Suddenly, she very much wanted to learn more about her.
Deep night.
Tens of miles away from Gram Town, beneath a deep mountain cliff, in the gloomy shadows that never saw sunlight all year round, a bizarre figure like smoke yet not smoke, wearing a tattered long dress, was clutching the hard rock wall with sharp claws.
She twisted in pain, and her throat let out an extremely harsh, shrill Banshee wail.
“Almost… so close! I was so close to getting that core crystal! I almost hurt her too…” The Banshee’s voice was filled with extreme resentment and unwillingness. “But… but if I don’t get that thing back quickly… once ‘Master’ finds out, I… I… I will be abandoned!”
The Banshee frantically tore at her own pale white hair, falling into extreme panic. “I cannot be discovered… absolutely not… Next time, even if my soul scatters, I must not fail again!”
The Banshee slowly raised her head, brushed aside the scattered long hair covering her face, and revealed a face as pale as paper.
Victoria’s “time-space water mirror” magic had extremely harsh limitations. It could only be cast at midnight, at a specific moment when the mana tides in the air were calmest. Therefore, everyone from Sky College temporarily rested at the waystation.
“I never expected the representative sent by the Empire would actually be the Fifth Princess.”
“I heard that Fifth Princess mainly studies extremely holy punitive magic. She has spent years at the Empire’s borders subjugating Abyssal Demons and upholding justice, and has extremely high prestige among commoners!”
“She is also a genius who has long remained at the top of the rising star list.”
An inner court male mage rolled his eyes and said fawningly, “However, even if she is a genius of the Royal Family, she is absolutely not as strong as our Senior Annabell. The Chief Student is invincible in the world!”
Annabell leaned on the sofa, her head aching from these sycophants, and coldly interrupted, “Shut up. Go now and evacuate all the commoners from those small villages around Gram Town.”
“Allocate a sum of gold coins from my account and give them enough compensation to live for several months. Once we clean up the filthy things here, let them return.”
Strangely enough, many small villages were also located around Gram Town, yet only Gram Town had suffered utter devastation, while the other villages were completely unaffected.
“Ahem, after all, this place is close to our college’s sphere of influence. I don’t want to be distracted by fragile commoners when a fight breaks out. This is also so the task can proceed smoothly.”
Annabell glanced at the students’ surprised eyes and explained coldly with extreme tsundere pride.
The inner court students stood at attention in unison. “Yes! Chief Student!”
The others exchanged glances. There was no such rule in the task scroll…
Could it be that the rumored cold-blooded, merciless Villainess who killed without blinking was really, as the fanatic club fangirls said, just a tsundere with a cold face and a warm heart? But the way her red-blue heterochromia looked at people was indeed truly terrifying…
***
After evening arrived.
At the waystation, Victoria, preparing to set out, asked her personal maid, “Have knights been sent to evacuate the nearby commoners?”
The maid shook her head and answered, “Your Highness, by the time our people arrived, all the villagers had already been evacuated. It is said that Miss Annabell ordered the Sky College students to do it.”
Victoria frowned slightly. “Did she use magic to violently drive out the commoners?”
The maid shook her head again. “That is not the case. According to the villagers, the people from Sky College were not only gentle in attitude, but also gave them a large sum of gold coins, enough to live comfortably in the city for half a year.”
Another maid could not help but interject, “Perhaps this is just a face-saving project by Sky College to protect its reputation?”
“Although Annabell is stunningly beautiful, she is the ‘great demon’ of the Trandy Family. How could that kind of cold-blooded noble truly care about the lives of commoners?”
Maid A hesitated. “But… she not only gave gold coins, she also arranged everything properly. Maybe her bad reputation was deliberately smeared by those nobles in the Royal Capital who envy her? Maybe she is actually a good person.”
Maid B glanced at her quietly. “Yesterday… before you saw that beautiful face of hers, you did not say that…”
“Ahem,” Maid A quibbled, “I am just judging the matter as it is! We cannot follow others blindly. Seeing is believing, hearing is not! Whether she treats commoners sincerely or falsely has nothing to do with us.”
Victoria raised her hand and interrupted their argument. “Enough. Time is almost up. Let’s go. We are meeting up with them.”
Midnight.
The Sky College and Royal Family group arrived outside Gram Town. The town was surrounded by mountains on all sides and very isolated.
Ordinary wooden houses stood throughout the town, but if one looked down from high above, they would discover that these houses were arranged according to some ancient and bizarre dark magic array pattern.
As soon as they stepped into the town, the temperature in the air plummeted to freezing point, accompanied by an oppressive feeling that made it hard to breathe.
At this moment, the silver moon hung high, illuminating the entire dead silent land. All the houses and dried bloodstains shone pale and desolate under the moonlight. This silence, along with the town’s bizarre past, made everyone present feel terrified.
“Sen… Senior, why is it so cold here?” A water-attribute junior female student from the inner court hugged her arms and said with a shiver. “We did not notice it when we investigated outside during the day. I never expected the night here to be… Achoo!”
A maid on the Royal Family side had not even finished speaking when she sneezed heavily.
“Something is wrong…” Victoria extended her fingers and felt the flow of mana particles in the air. “The cold here is no small matter. It is mixed with the abyssal curse and can directly erode a mage’s mental strength and constitution.”
A mage’s constitution was already far beyond that of ordinary people. If it were merely ordinary cooling, it could not possibly freeze them like this.
Suddenly, an extremely warm heat wave rushed toward everyone. The bone-chilling cold that had invaded their marrow was instantly dispelled, and everyone felt as if they were soaking in a hot spring, warm all over.
“It is the Chief Student’s strange fire!”
“What is going on… ah, it is Chief Student Annabell!”
Everyone looked toward Annabell. She casually snapped her fingers, and a deep black flame quietly rested on her fingertip, burning away all the cursed cold air that tried to approach. Although it was only a small flame, it radiated an extremely warm aura.
Facing everyone’s grateful gazes, Annabell expressionlessly said with extreme harshness, “I don’t want to see you trash retreat because of this insignificant cold and delay my task progress. In the end, you are all still too weak.”
Victoria nodded gratefully to Annabell, but Annabell proudly turned her head away, leaving her only a cold side profile.
Victoria was not angry either. She said to everyone, “The central altar is almost here. Let’s go.”
Passing through the winding, bizarre streets of Gram Town, they arrived in front of the mayor’s large house. Victoria ordered the Royal Knights behind her, “Open it.”
“Yes!”
Several high-rank knights worked together to activate their battle aura and blasted apart the floor tiles inside the house, revealing a heavy hidden door.
Accompanied by a harsh gear sound, a pitch-black passage leading underground appeared before everyone.
Following the stairs, everyone entered a vast underground hall. The walls and floor were covered with dense dark magic incantations emitting a faint red glow.
Looking at this terrifying scene, everyone could not help but picture it: the villagers of Gram Town were simple medicine farmers during the day, but at midnight they would gather in this underground hall and perform some unknown evil sacrifice…
“Begin.” Victoria took out a crystal ball, her expression grave. “My magic can rely on this item to trace back what exactly happened here that night.”
Through the “time-space water mirror,” reflecting past scenes onto a water surface condensed from mana was a high-order magic requiring extremely high mental control. In the entire Empire, few people could cast it.
The maid proudly puffed out her chest. “With this skill, Her Highness the Princess has solved many strange cases and exposed countless hidden Abyssal Demons!”
Annabell silently rolled her eyes inwardly. ‘Could this princess have deliberately trained so hard in this support magic just to become an otherworldly female detective?’
Once everything was ready, Victoria suspended the crystal ball in midair, clasped her hands together, and began chanting the spell in a low voice. As mana was injected, a calm water mirror gradually condensed beneath the crystal ball.
The Royal Knights and maids immediately spread out, firmly protecting Victoria in the center and staying alert to movements around them.
However, just as the image on the water mirror was about to become clear, an extremely cold, bone-piercing sinister wind suddenly blew through the Main Hall. The [void black flame] at Annabell’s fingertip shook violently.
“Ah-!”
A Royal Knight standing at the outermost edge suddenly let out a scream and fell heavily to the ground. His whole body convulsed, his eyes rolled back like a dead fish, and white foam continuously poured from his mouth.
In less than two seconds, screams echoed one after another through the hall. “Help!” “Careful, a monster is attacking!” Several knights were instantly gravely wounded by some invisible force before they even saw the enemy’s shadow!
The two maids guarding Victoria immediately raised their staffs and chanted loudly.
They had followed Fifth Princess in subjugating heresy for years, so they naturally knew what magic to use against this kind of hidden undead creature.
“Magic Flash!”
“Holy Fire!”
A pure white light beam, dazzling to the extreme, erupted from the tips of their staffs and swept across the dark corners ahead like a searchlight.
Under the illumination of holy light, an extremely terrifying figure was forced to reveal its true form in midair.
It was a woman in a tattered long dress, her long hair covering her face. Her skin was the pale white of a dead person, and her whole body emitted a horrifying resentment and death aura.
It was an extremely powerful high-rank vengeful spirit Banshee!
Light-element magic had a natural restraining effect on the undead. The Banshee let out an extremely sharp, shrill screech in the white light. “Ah-!!!”
The Banshee’s wail transformed into a physical psychic sound wave. Everyone present felt as if their eardrums were brutally pierced by steel needles, and their brains instantly fell into extreme dizziness and agony.
The Banshee’s strength was terrifying to the extreme. She actually withstood the burning of holy light and instantly teleported in front of several knights. Her sharp claws, like cutting through tofu, directly tore them and their armor into pieces!
Then, the Banshee backhanded the two casting maids away. Carrying suffocating resentment, her ten fingers like hooks, she lunged straight at Victoria, who was casting the water mirror magic with her eyes closed and completely defenseless!
“Your Highness!!!” The maids fell to the ground and screamed in despair and terror.
Just at the critical moment when the Banshee’s claws were about to pierce Victoria’s throat-
“Get back.”
An ice ray shot over, and the impact of mana forcibly drove the Banshee back!
The one who acted was Annabell! At some point she had flashed in front of Victoria, holding the family’s demon sword, her silver long hair wildly dancing in the aftermath of mana.
Since the demon had been forced into physical form by the flash spell, she naturally would not hold back.
The Banshee let out an angry roar, clearly enraged. Only… Annabell frowned slightly.
‘Something is wrong. This defense is too strong. I did not hold back with that magic just now, but after taking a hit, this ghost-like Banshee only flickered slightly and was actually unharmed?’
Annabell snorted coldly and was about to activate the strange fire on the sword to give this blind vengeful spirit a soul-level “Flame Incineration.”
However, the Banshee was extremely cunning, as if she had sensed that instinctive fear-inducing power within Annabell. She actually turned without hesitation, transformed into a wisp of black smoke, and instantly vanished into the intricate underground passages of the hall.
She ran faster than a rabbit.
At the same time, because of the psychic impact from the Banshee’s wail, Victoria’s magic was interrupted. The water mirror in midair shattered with a crash, turning into a puddle of water.
Victoria’s face was pale. She staggered back several steps. Looking at the dead Royal Knights all over the ground, she immediately understood that the group had just suffered an extremely terrifying attack.
“Chief Student! Are you all right?”
“That Banshee just now was simply too terrifying. That scream almost made me lose my mind!”
The Sky College students gathered around with lingering fear, their expressions uglier than one another.
“However, Senior Annabell is truly invincible!”
“She only used one spell to force her back, and even just coldly shouted once, and that terrifying Banshee fled in panic!”
It was clear how badly these college disciples who prided themselves on being elites had been frightened just now.
One by one, they desperately crowded around Annabell, afraid that the monster would kill out from the shadows again.
Annabell put the demon sword back into her storage space and pursed her lips impatiently. ‘Truly a bunch of burdens who cannot accomplish anything but ruin everything.’
She snapped her fingers again, summoned [void black flame], and used its warmth to disperse the lingering cold curse in everyone’s bodies.
“Thank you, Miss Annabell, for saving us.” Supported by her maids, Victoria walked up to Annabell and bowed her head in sincere gratitude.
If Annabell had not blocked in front of her just now, with that Banshee’s terrifying speed, she would probably now be lying headless like those knights.
Annabell did not even raise her eyelids, her tone cold. “Don’t flatter yourself. I only did it to ensure the task could continue.”
“After all, if you died here, there would be no one left to cast that time-space water mirror magic. I saved you, but don’t think I would cozy up to the Royal Family. We are natural enemies. When it is time to draw swords, I will absolutely not hold back.”
[Ding! Fifth Princess Victoria’s affection level toward you has fluctuated. Current level increased to: Stranger!]
Listening to the cold System notification in her mind, Annabell did not care at all. As long as it was not a negative number exploding a treasure chest, this painless increase meant nothing to her.
Even though Annabell’s attitude was so terrible, Victoria still said seriously, “No matter what, I, Victoria, will remember this life-saving favor and will definitely repay it in the future.”
Annabell glanced at her and directly turned to leave. “Do as you like.”
Victoria stared fixedly at that arrogant yet incomparably powerful silver back, falling into deep thought.
She discovered that this “Villainess” of the Trandy Family seemed completely different from the madman in the rumors who only knew cruel slaughter.
She had developed a strong interest in Annabell!
The water mirror magic had been forcibly interrupted. Not only did it cause a magic backlash, it also missed the best time to cast tonight.
With no other choice, everyone could only take the knights’ bodies and reluctantly retreat to the border town.
After returning to the waystation, the atmosphere was extremely oppressive.
“This time, we lost several knights.”
“That Banshee’s strength is far more terrifying than we expected.”
“Ordinary magic attacks are almost ineffective against her. She is definitely a high-rank vengeful spirit with extremely strong intelligence. Her strength is probably no less than an eighth-rank Grand Archmage!”
Everyone gathered in the meeting room, discussing tonight’s thrilling encounter. The Sky College students had long lost the relaxed mood they had when they came to “drink soup and seek treasure.”
The monster’s strength was too terrifying. Just one instant ambush had almost wiped out the entire group. If not for a monster like Miss Annabell holding the line, they would all have been finished in that underground room today.
Victoria calmly analyzed, “Whether she is a high-rank undead or some cursed Abyssal Demon cannot be determined yet, but her strength is undeniable.
Moreover, her goal does not seem to be killing, but to destroy this dark crystal ball in my hand that serves as the altar’s Array Eye. If we do not completely purify this Banshee, we cannot safely cast the time-space water mirror to restore the truth.”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
On the other end of the meeting table, however, Annabell leaned back in her chair, lost in long thought. Her mind kept replaying the scene of the Banshee’s claws pausing in front of her, then decisively turning to flee.
Annabell frowned slightly, her fingers unconsciously tapping the tabletop.
Sitting across from her, Victoria secretly observed Annabell by the light. Watching that usually arrogant girl now remove her cold disguise, her brows slightly furrowed, revealing a hint of solemnity and sorrow.
That exquisitely beautiful side profile, under the lamplight, actually radiated a fatal attraction that made one want to investigate and understand her.
Victoria was slightly startled. ‘How could I feel this curious desire to investigate a Duke’s Daughter who is regarded as a political enemy of the Royal Family and notorious for evil?’
“Your Highness?”
“Your Highness?”
Under the soft calls of her maid, Victoria finally snapped back to her senses, and an unnatural expression flashed across her fair cheeks. “Ah, sorry, where were we?”
Victoria quickly adjusted her state and decisively issued an order.
“We will rest and regroup for now. Pass down the order: the knight order is to immediately seal off Gram Town completely. Whether day or night, absolutely no adventurer or commoner may approach within half a step!”
The meeting dispersed.
Victoria returned to her luxurious room. As soon as she entered, she saw an exquisite mithril treasure box painted with the Imperial Royal Family emblem on the table.
“Your Highness, this was urgently sent by Second Prince Richard through the Royal Family’s secret teleportation array.” The maid stepped forward and reported.
Victoria’s eyes focused.
“Sent by Second Brother? When I left the Royal Capital, Second Brother instructed me that the Gram Town tragedy was absolutely not caused by ordinary dark magic, that it involved great Abyss secrets, and told me to be careful in all things… Open it and see what is inside.”
The maid carefully undid the magic seal on the treasure box and said in surprise, “Your Highness, there is a handwritten letter from Second Prince inside!”
Victoria took the letter and quickly scanned its contents. “…So that is how it is.”
The first to notice something abnormal about Gram Town was actually Second Prince’s intelligence network. Second Brother managed the Royal Family’s secret intelligence agency.
This was the final clue that his scouts had desperately sent back from Gram Town before the tragedy occurred. He believed it might help us.
Therefore, regarding the inside story of this matter, Second Prince understood it far more deeply than he showed on the surface.
Victoria looked at the remaining things in the box. Inside lay quietly a broken crystal emitting extremely weak mana, as well as an old parchment magic array diagram.
That crystal fragment looked as if it had been torn from some extremely massive magic construct…