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In the City of Death, Morthveil...
The people of Morthveil had no idea that someone was slaughtering them.
Lucifer and his soldiers had moved with terrifying ease and silence. In a single night, they had sent one-third of Morthveil's entire population to their graves.
In the houses where, until recently, rotting corpses wrapped in white bandages had lain, now only the empty bandages remained. The bodies were gone.
Because those people had been turned into minced meat.
Lucifer had chopped them into such tiny pieces that no solid body parts were left. What remained was nothing but a disgusting slop of pus, blood, bodily fluids, crushed bones, and flesh. Even pigs would refuse to sniff it, let alone eat it.
The other soldiers who had come from Westirifer were also killing the people of Morthveil, but none of them did it with such merciless brutality.
At that moment, as Graham, Elina, Nora, Carrion, and the rest of the soldiers watched Lucifer one by one, pure terror was visible in their eyes.
Shortly before dawn, Lucifer had used telepathy to inform all his soldiers of a location and ordered them to capture the people of Morthveil and bring them to him.
Because of this order, a massive crowd of soldiers and captured citizens had gathered in front of the house where Lucifer sat. Inside, Lucifer was calmly seated.
In his hands was Nightfeast, and at that moment its color had shifted from obsidian black to a dark, blood-red hue.
Beside him lay a massive pile of human flesh slop—so enormous that it was difficult to describe its quantity.
The soldiers brought people to him one by one, and Lucifer turned each of them into minced meat.
In this way, while sitting in one place, Lucifer had, in just four hours, reduced 400,000 people of Morthveil into nothing but bloody pulp.
There was no emotion on his face. He was nothing more than a cold-blooded killer.
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While Lucifer's wrath was clearly visible in the city of Morthveil, on the other side, the Hektor Duchy was trembling in fear.
To be precise, it was not the entire duchy that was terrified, but the ducal family of Hektor whose condition had become utterly miserable.
And the reason behind their terror was only four individuals:
- Lady Commander Artemis
- Nocturna
- Velerica
- Almyth
The moment they received Lucifer's order, Zyrene, Almyth, Velerica, and Nocturna had rushed toward Keilname State at their maximum speed and reached there within ten minutes.
Upon arrival, the four of them went straight to the former Count's mansion, where they met Rowena, Maxwell, and Artemis.
Without wasting any time, Zyrene informed the three of them about Lucifer's orders.
Artemis immediately accepted the orders, handed over the security of Keilname State to Zyrene, and departed for the Hektor Duchy along with the three Shadowborns.
Everything happened so quickly that Rowena and Maxwell didn't even get time to react.
After the four left, Maxwell and Rowena asked Zyrene for an explanation. Without hiding anything, Zyrene told them that they had all received Lucifer's order: the entire ducal family of the Hektor Duchy was to be wiped out that very night.
Upon hearing this, Maxwell and Rowena were at a loss about how to react. They had only just integrated Keilname County into Westirifer that day, and suddenly their master had issued orders to destroy the Hektor Duchy as well.
Meanwhile, Artemis, Velerica, Nocturna, and Almyth were advancing toward the Hektor Duchy at subsonic speeds. In less than half an hour, the four of them reached the capital of the Hektor Duchy—Valmeria.
It was nighttime, and security was not particularly tight anywhere.
The Hektor Duchy was a fairly large territory. In terms of military power, it possessed around 800,000 soldiers in total.
However, at this hour of the night, the patrols were weak. Even if scouting had been done properly, the soldiers had no chance of detecting Almyth, Velerica, and Nocturna, who were traveling through the Shadow Realm.
The Shadow Realm was a space that only Shadowborns could enter. Even Lucifer could not access it.
As for Artemis, finding her was even more impossible because she was using her Presence Concealment ability.
Using their stealth skills, the four of them infiltrated the ducal palace and reached the Duke's chambers without being noticed.
Inside the Duke's chambers, they found Duke Herald Hektor lying in bed with his wife Velta sleeping peacefully beside him. At the same time, the Duke was having sex with his own daughters, Xerti and Falecrera.
Xerti was impaling herself on her father's cock, while Falecrera was sucking on her father's balls.
None of this had any effect on Almyth and the others.
The moment they entered the Duke's chamber, Artemis dropped her concealment. In an instant, the three Shadowborns surrounded Herald, Velta, Xerti, and Falecrera.
Everything happened so fast that neither Herald nor Xerti had any time to realize what was happening.
Seeing Artemis and the three Shadowborns, Herald growled loudly and shouted, "Who the fuck are you all? How did you get inside?"
Because of his shouting, Velta also woke up and asked, "What happened, darling?"
Herald replied, "Intruders."
That single word put Velta on high alert.
Herald then looked at Nocturna and demanded, "Who are you people? Where have you come from? And what is the meaning of your coming here?"
In response, Velerica calmly said, "We three are the wives of Westirifer's ruler, Master Lucifer. Leading us is our Commander Artemis, who is Master Lucifer's loyal confidant.
As I said, we four have come from Westirifer, and our purpose is the destruction of the Hektor Duchy."
After explaining everything in a relaxed manner, Velerica added, "Since I have given you all the information, your time in this world is over."
With those words, Velerica raised her hand and pointed her index finger at Herald.
Seeing this, Herald snarled, "Insolent… That bastard Lucifer from yesterday is planning my assassination—"
Before he could say anything more, a black beam shot out from Velerica's index finger. It punctured Herald's head, smashed into the headboard of the bed, and shattered it. With that, Duke Herald Hektor bid farewell to this world and attained eternal peace.
Before Xerti could even process the instant death of her father and husband, Almyth and Nocturna acted swiftly and killed both Falecrera and Velta. Artemis then delivered the final blow to Xerti, sending her to join her father and mother.
After that, everything proceeded smoothly. One by one, they slaughtered Herald's 29 concubines, 18 sons, and the remaining two daughters.
In this manner, the entire ducal family of Hektor was wiped out in a single night.
Following that, the four of them systematically eliminated every member of the ducal palace staff—maids, ministers, confidants—leaving no one alive. In the same night, along with the duchy, its 800,000-strong army was also completely annihilated.
Under Artemis's leadership, the three Shadowborns established their dominance over the Hektor Duchy and declared that, from that day onward, the Hektor Duchy was merging into Westirifer.
Their announcement caused massive commotion, but when the citizens learned that the four of them had killed the entire Hektor family and its army, terror spread throughout the duchy.
No one had imagined that their entire power structure would collapse in just one night.
In response to the citizens' unrest, Artemis released her concealed aura. The moment the aura spread, an overwhelming dread filled the entire city of Valmeria.
The people realized that this was not the aura of an SS- or SS+ rank individual. It was far more dreadful—an SSS- rank power level. Feeling this terrifying aura, the commotion died down instantly out of pure fear, and the Hektor Duchy was successfully merged into Westirifer.
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While Artemis, along with Almyth, Nocturna, and Velerica, was creating havoc in the Hektor Duchy, the situation in the Morgen Duchy was no less horrifying.
The Morgen Duchy was the true powerhouse of the south-west region.
Because of its already strained relations with Westirifer, the Morgen Duchy had been on high alert for some time.
Drake cavalry patrolled the borders densely, supported by approximately 90,000 foot soldiers keeping constant watch.
In the capital city of Kyasrovlent, an anti-magic field surrounded the ducal palace on all sides. Inside the palace were around 10,000 SS+ rank mages and 23,000 SS+ rank hunters.
Soldiers patrolled the streets, and the entrance gates of Kyasrovlent were guarded by 100 soldiers on each side.
The security was so tight that not even a bird could fly into the duchy unnoticed.
However, the Morgen Duchy had no idea that Westirifer's forces were anything but normal.
They had placed guards in the air and on the ground. Since there was no sea, they didn't worry about water. But they had completely forgotten to guard the shadows.
Because only the Shadowborns in the entire Sunflare Augustiland possessed the skill to move through shadows.
It was not magic. The Shadowborns used the Shadow Realm to travel anywhere they wished—an exclusive ability that even Lucifer could not access.
Because of this, when the four Shadowborns stealthily entered Kyasrovlent, no one noticed them, and the anti-magic barrier caused them no trouble.
Traveling through the Shadow Realm, neither the mages nor the hunters sensed their arrival.
After infiltrating the ducal palace, the four Shadowborns hunted down and killed Merwin Kyas Morgen, Cecilia Kyas Morgen, Link Kyas Morgen, Merein, and all eleven of their concubines without giving them a chance to react. After finishing them, they began cleaning out the rest of the palace.
In no time, all the ministers and their families were sent to their deaths. The guards, maids, and servants inside the ducal palace were also slaughtered—none survived.
After killing every resident of the ducal palace during the night, at dawn Bellatrixa and Kaelith publicly announced that the Morgen ducal family no longer existed and that, from today, the Morgen Duchy was under Westirifer's control.
The moment Bellatrixa made this announcement, chaos erupted throughout the Morgen Duchy and its capital, Kyasrovlent.
Soldiers surrounded the ducal palace from all sides and began warning Bellatrixa, Kaelith, Aurethia, and Severina to release the ducal family and surrender themselves.
However, Severina's reaction was completely different from what they expected.
Using her skill Shadow-Pull, Severina displayed the headless bodies of the 14 remaining members of the Morgen family to the ducal guards. At the same time, Bellatrixa, Aurethia, and Kaelith used Shadow-Pull to drag out and show the bodies of the more than 33,000 SS+ rank hunters and mages who had been guarding the palace the previous night.
The shock of so many SS+ rank deaths was profound, but even deeper was the blow of the complete annihilation of the Morgen family.
The four Shadowborns, however, did not care what the people thought. Seeing their terrifying intent, both the citizens of Kyasrovlent and the Morgen Duchy army surrendered without resistance.
In this way, the Morgen Duchy also fell under Westirifer's control.
Thus, in a single night, Lucifer's subordinate—Lady Commander Artemis—and his Shadow-wives had completely taken over two territories. All that remained now was the formal announcement.
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