Vol 3: Prologue (1)

The barren landscape of the Taine Ze region was a place directly under the rule of the Brimstone Family, one of the five Great families. The region was mostly a desert region as more than 60 percent of this region were barren and the only places that weren’t a sandy desert were the sections the Brimstone family had absorbed from the surrounding regions and converted into their lands.

In this massive barren area of landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions were hostile for both wild plant life and even beasts, a striving and blooming city stood at the center of it all.

Of course, there were more than a dozen cities in this region. However, none of them even came close to matching this one. The place was in no way inferior to the Winged City and was even larger and livelier, spotting over 2 million permanent residents most of which were hunters as the sands contained various dangers lurking underneath. The city was a sort of gathering place for strong hunters as this was one of the most dangerous regions in the demon continent, second only to the Darknar region.

Most of the trades that occurred here deal with weapons and beast cores, alongside rare metals like adamantine and even Duranium. Due to this fact alone, the Hunter Guild had grown tremendously over the years and now hold a certain level of influence and as long as they don’t directly go against the Brimstones, they would be left alone, giving them the same amount of freedom as freemen with added benefits.

That was until 5 years ago when a certain demon noble had incited all the different hunter guilds in the entire continent, causing them to merge and unite, creating a single guild that had given them enough power to rival the ruling class. Higher ranking Hunters now had the same amount of privileges as low-class nobles with various other perks.

The new rank of demon baronet was even created mainly for high-ranking merchants and Hunters.

There were even a few behemoths that had joined the Hunter Guild in the last few years, making the entire Great Five

family hesitate. Now the Hunter Guild could operate freely in any region as long as they don’t interfere with noble politics. Most of the stronger freemen would naturally choose to join them as well.

This place was Sun city, one of the top five largest cities in the demon continent which held the largest Hunter guild in the continent. Naturally, that was now considered the Hunter Guild’s HQ. Needless to say, the Brimstones weren’t pleased with that particular noble for creating a force that could almost rival them. However, what they felt was just demons’ pride as no amount of quantity could compete in the face of absolute power. And the Great five could be said to be an embodiment of absolute power.

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In the center of Sun City, stood a massive castle as it intimidated every and all buildings in the city no matter how tall they were.

A petite cloaked figure skirted down the halls of the said castle as she whistled to herself in delight. The figure was brushed by two heavily geared guards as she turned a corner in the hallway that was restricted.

One of the guards was about to raise his arm to stop her when the other hurriedly grabbed his hand. The guard in question turned around in confusion and was about to berate his partner for not following the instructions given to them by the elders but was stunned by the deathly pale face of his partner that seemed like he had just been drained of all his blood.

The guard hurriedly shook his head and brought his index fingers to his mouth as he beckoned his second to be quiet and let that figure leave in peace. The petite cloaked figure stopped a few meters away from the guards and turned her pretty head around and with a playful smile, she spoke softly. “Aww… How boring~” She then continued her whistling as she proceeded down the hall with steps that seemed as though she was skipping.

The guard that almost stopped her was frozen in his spot. He hadn’t sensed it before but he now knew who that was and had almost lost his life for making such a foolish mistake. Just thinking of how he was so close to death made him sweat buckets. He tried to take a step back only to trip on his legs and fall on his metal-clad butt.

The cloaked girl continued her journey not minding the commotion she had caused behind her as she headed for a large arched double door at the end of the dark hall.

With a swoosh, the large arched double door that looked like they couldn’t be moved easily swung open, and the cloaked girl waltz in the room like she owned the place.

“Heeeellow… how could you guys start without Lil o me~”

In the room sat a long stone table with 12 black seats and 5 other cloaked figures seating on the various seats. There were also three other figures in the room that didn’t bother to hide their appearance bringing the total number of people seating around the long stone table to an even eight with the addition of the cloaked girl, there were now nine people in the room.

“Don’t ever barge into a meeting an hour late and make demands. Take a seat and shut up.”

An aged man spoke sternly without even turning his head to look at the cloaked girl’s figure like the others had done. He sat at one of the head seats at the end of the long stone table. He had short white hair with slight streaks of red and had a stoic expression on his face and an eye patch ran across his left eye.

He had a neatly trimmed beard of white and wore an extremely luxurious red and white robe. His fingers were adorned with several rings that gave various glowing effects that matched the glint in his scarlet-colored pupils.

“Whoa… How scary~” The cloaked girl said as she skipped ahead and sat next to one of the other two figures that weren’t cloaked. One of which was a young lady, she had light brown hair, styled in a twin tail, her oval face and soft facial features made her look like an adorable child, she wore skin-tight leather armor with gold-colored metal vambraces and greaves.

The cloaked lady sat down next to Izabel and proceeded to shift her chair closer to her, dragging it on the ground which made a loud scraping sound that brought glares in her direction. However, she didn’t even spare a glance at those eyes as she went ahead with what she was doing until she was close enough to Izabel to lock arms with her.

Izabel’s brows twitched but she forced herself to calm down and the aged man turned his gaze to the last uncloaked figure in the room, prompting him to stand up and continue reading out the file in front of him. He was a somewhat middle-aged man with short brown hair and green eyes and wore a monocle over his left eye. He had an elegant demeanor and wore a simple-looking but luxurious black suit.

“Since lady Citrus has finally decided to join us, I’ll go over the report one more time.”

Citrus wasn’t even paying attention to the man speaking as she was busy rubbing her cheeks against Izabel’s chest. The middle-aged man’s expression did not change even though most of the cloaked figures in the room were openly expressing their annoyance. He cleared his throat before continuing.

“We’ve received the report from both Lady Izabel’s group and our scouts stationed in the eastern parts of the Darknar forest. According to Lady Izabel, their group had failed to eliminate the target and capture the Nymph because of the interference from two strangers.”

He adjusted his crystal monocle and. continued. “According to her, their original plan was changed when a sudden horde of lesser basilisks ran out of the Darknar forest in a frenzy. They didn’t have a choice but to use the artifact to take control of that horde, replacing the original plan that involves the use of mountain golems for a revised one with the lesser basilisks.”

“Well, that wasn’t a bad decision. Any one of us would find it difficult to capture 10 mountain golems for the original plan and a horde of 200 lesser basilisks should have had the same effects, if not better.” One of the cloaked figures spoke.

“Normally, that would be correct. But it should’ve been obvious that lesser basilisks wouldn’t go berserk and run into the sun for no reason. Moreover, there was about half a dozen magic Beast with them. Lady Izabel should have immediately reported this change and as such, she is fully responsible for this failure.”

“Hey!” An ice-cold voice that almost made everyone in the room freeze came from Citrus as her eyes narrowed at the middle-aged man, making his body instantly tense up. “Watch your tone, low-ranking trash like you has no right to speak to my precious little sister like that. Try it again and. You’ll die.”

Aamon Val Brimstone’s expression didn’t change, but everyone heard his dry gulp of saliva and could see the faint trembling of his entire body. There was no way he could be considered a low-ranking noble as he was a Tier 4 mage and head of the Information and Strategic department. He was also considered a demon Marquis so how could anyone consider him a low-ranking noble.

However, even with all that authority and power, he still could not bring himself to refute what this very young lady had said to him. Neither did he think he could guarantee his own safety if she actually decided to take his life. The air in the room was so stale and heavy that no one could to bring themselves to speak.

An awkward atmosphere ruled the room until a fist was suddenly slammed on the hard stone table, creating web-like cracks on what would be a heavily reinforced table. “Enough!” The white-haired aged man commanded bringing everyone’s attention to him.

“We do not have time for your nonsense Citrus, behave yourself for the rest of this meeting or get out.”

Citrus clicked her tongue and scoffed under her breath. “As long as he watches his tone.” She then proceeded to rest her head on Izabel’s shoulders and Izabel could do nothing but lower her head shamefully.

“Alright, you may continue Aamon.”

“As you wish, Lord Malik.”

Aamon then brought out a simple-looking yellow crystal and threw it to the center of the table, the crystal hovered a few inches above the table before it slowly started to spin. It then revealed a holographic map of the Darknar region before zooming in to focus on the Darknar forest.

“As you can see, this is the previously recorded activities in the Darknar forest, and although our influence there is limited, we still control more than 10 percent of the forest resources. However, our scouts reported that a burst of negative energy went off in the eastern parts of the forest recently. Although they were able to survive it due to them being close to the western region that is ruled by the undead King and we had already geared them towards attacks of that nature.”

“So you’re saying this burst of negative energy is related to the berserk lesser basilisks lady Izabel encountered?”

“I believe so.”

“And what about the two demons that interfered.”

“Yes, them. This is when it gets more complicated.”

“How so?”

“According to the report lady Izabel’s subordinate brought back. He concluded that the female demon should be a high-ranking demon noble from one of the other Great Four, but according to his description, we couldn’t find a match in our information database.”

“And the Male?”

“Yes… Hm… Before that, there is a piece of information in the report that we just couldn’t believe so we had someone extract his memories, please see for yourselves.”

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