Six-Armed Serpent Demon

Page 49

"Gidlartin" never resurfaced.

Patrick's legs went numb from squatting. Through his arcane eye, he helplessly watched the six-armed serpent demon swagger away and disappear without a trace. After a long while, he finally managed to utter a curse:

"grass"

If the magical fluctuations that occurred the moment the demon fell into the water weren't "Higher Teleportation," he would have eaten the hot food he had just excreted.

Chapter 58 The Call of the Bottomless Abyss

When the two waitresses saw Patrick lounging around in the second-floor corridor late at night, chips were twirling between his fingers.

"The mysterious guest from the South"—that's what the two of them, the female waitresses who made a living by selling their bodies at the casino hotel, called him.

They didn't know his name, but they always talked about him.

Young, handsome, wealthy, with a cheerful and kind smile, and generous with his money. Whenever she was lucky enough to see this customer in the second-floor corridor, a large sum of money would always be thrown into the cleavage of her chest, accompanied by his smile.

Strangely, despite being a lecherous man, he never made any deals with them.

They had jokingly speculated whether he had some kind of problem. But the cleaning lady who had worked in the gold-doored suite boasted that she had seen him naked: his entire body was muscular, not bulky at all, but frighteningly strong. Moreover, he and his female companion made no attempt to hide their relationship from outsiders, and they were perfectly healthy in that area.

Seeing Patrick smiling and walking towards them, the two waitresses inwardly cheered their luck. They smiled sweetly at him and winked at him.

This time, however, he didn't play his chips as usual.

“I need room service,” he said, smiling at the two of them, “for two.”

The two girls covered their mouths in disbelief, their eyes widening in surprise.

Three hours later, Patrick stood naked in the bathroom, letting the shower water wash away the bloodstains on his hands and face. His body was as strong as the waiter had described.

At this moment, he looked up, his eyes closed, the fake smile that always graced his lips gone, and the cheerfulness in his eyes and brows also vanished.

All that remained was an almost sacred peace and tranquility.

This is Patrick's time for wisdom.

Someone knocked on the bathroom door.

Patrick opened his eyes in the water, raised his hands, wiped his face from bottom to top, and then smoothed his hair back.

"Are you done?" Lana's voice asked.

“I was just a little emotional,” Patrick replied, raising his voice slightly. “You know, I hate fish that get off the hook. It feels really bad to have your prey slip away.”

He turned around to look in the mirror.

The "Red Assassin" in the mirror smiled as kindly as ever, looking handsome, cheerful, and full of sunshine: "Thanks to the hotel service, everything is fine now."

He looked down at himself in the mirror and said sincerely, "Thank you."

Following Patrick's gaze, one could see the two waitresses' corpses lying haphazardly on the floor beneath the mirror, resembling two broken dolls violently destroyed by unruly children. Their limbs were twisted at the joints, their feet and hands crushed. Holes were ripped open in their abdomens, their internal organs ripped out and stuffed into their mouths.

The two waitresses' foreheads, faces, shoulders, and chests were covered with wounds left by sharp knives or fingernails, forming three bloody words repeatedly carved into their faces:

"Worship the Lord of Blood and Fire"

"Worship Strife and Tyranny"

"Worship the Red Dragon King"

Their still-clear eyes were filled with pain and terror, clearly indicating that these unbelievable acts of savagery had occurred before they breathed their last.

Lana said from outside the door, "May I open the door?"

"Wait a moment."

When Patrick opened the door, the bathroom had been cleaned spotlessly.

There was no corpse, no scattered organs, and apart from the faint stench of entrails and blood still lingering in the air, almost no trace was left.

“There’s something you need to know,” Lana said eagerly. “I’ve been informed that the Supreme Phantom himself will be attending the trilateral talks in Flame City.”

Patrick was a little surprised: "The Archmage Zaire? He actually came in person?"

"Yes. All the paladins in the city have been mobilized, the lower city has been sealed off, and people are being arrested everywhere. This may also be related to this."

Lana said, "Regardless of who put on that huge firework tonight, the city's leadership is in an uproar. The council of priests and elders has given a firm order to resolve this matter before the tripartite talks begin."

Patrick asked thoughtfully, "So, what are you trying to say?"

“Let’s play it safe,” Lana lowered her voice, “we’ll take this opportunity to report her, that six-armed serpent demon, Ivy Beate. We’ll say she did it all, and get the paladins to deal with her.”

Patrick massages his temples.

"Ivy Beatrice, that's just a name that's hard to tell if it's real or fake."

“Countess, after that devil told me the name Ivy Beatrice, I spoke with the people at the casino and did a little research on the name.”

He said, "The Beate family has declined and gone bankrupt, leaving them with no value to be coveted by anyone else. All that's left are the name of the Beate family, a prominent clan in the city, and the label of being the former fiancée of the Priest of Otucan. She has nothing else. But these two labels have become her shield. Now, no one wants to deal with her, and no one is willing to. Now, you, an outsider, are reporting that the young lady of this city's prestigious family is a demon? Do you have any evidence?"

Lana said, "But we all saw her, and Tusu verified it with the Demon Detection Tool! She dared to come here and gamble openly!"

“She didn’t use the name Ivy Beatrice when she left Downtown; my Magic Eye watched the whole thing. Even the logbook shows she didn’t use that identity when she entered Downtown,” Patrick said. “So the question is, is she really Ivy Beatrice?”

"What do you mean?"

"Before we entered the city, there was a red-haired female paladin who was greeted by the city guards in a procession. Do you remember her?"

Lana hesitated before saying, "Uh, I didn't really notice..."

"At the time, she was accompanied by a Deinonychus and two Owlbear cubs."

Speaking of owl bear cubs, Lana suddenly remembered them.

“That’s Ivy Beatrice,” Patrick said. “I even wasted a ‘Detect Good’ spell that I’d been saving for ages—did you notice the difference between her and that demon from last night?”

Lana shook her head.

Patrick said, "Seductive to the bone, radiant with beauty. That's my assessment of that devil last night. You know, devils are always good at seductive tricks. The devil in the casino used a similar spell, so much so that all I remember now is that she was beautiful, but I have a vague feeling about her specific appearance when I saw her. Are you the same?"

Lana was speechless.

Patrick said, "But the Ivy Beatrice I saw at the city gate was not like that. I remember the details of that red-haired woman's appearance very clearly. Although she was also very beautiful, and somewhat similar to the one I saw in the casino, her facial features were very hard, and she had the cold temperament of a warrior in every gesture."

"...So you suspect that the demon who called himself Ivy Beatrice last night wasn't actually Ivy Beatrice, but was just impersonating her?"

"Otherwise what? Those are paladins from the City of Flame Earth. Can you believe a demon could blend in among priests and paladins without being detected?"

Lana retorted, "But as far as I know, Dragon Paladins place even greater emphasis on the followers of evil dragons. Their Paladin abilities to detect evil are specifically designed to identify followers of evil dragons. It would be more accurate to call it 'Detecting Evil Dragons.'"

“But they have a thousand ways to verify the truth,” Patrick said. “You know the magic used to detect lies, right? According to my intelligence, after that young lady committed such a foolish act, she was interrogated by the priests upon her return to the city. What kind of magical skill do you think is possible to lie in front of so many high priests and paladins without being exposed? Is she the Archmage of Zaire?”

Lana was speechless.

Patrick said, "Ivy Beatrice is just too famous. The stupid things this rich girl did have kept her in the spotlight for months. If you're thinking of going to an unfamiliar place and impersonating someone you know but who's completely out of your daily life, you'd choose a celebrity like her. With a little research, you can know everything about her; she's easy to impersonate."

"And there's one more crucial point."

He opened his hands to her.

"Get this straight, we're the ones who really want to find the Six-Armed Serpent Demon. The paladins aren't looking for any Six-Armed Serpent Demon, but rather the mastermind behind this, manipulating demons to cause trouble in the city and try to sabotage the tripartite talks. To them, this is politics, not some little demon-slaying trick."

"Guess who, after you reported Ivy Beatrice as the Six-Armed Serpent Demon, is more suited to be the mastermind in their eyes? The lonely, down-on-her-luck young lady, the former noble paladin Ivy Beatrice, or a group of treacherous strangers with intricate connections to the Samarachian government?"

"Reporting her will only expose us to the city officials. Do you think we can withstand an investigation?"

Patrick made an exaggerated expression:

“Oh, I seem to have missed something. Let me think… aha, I’ve got it,” he lightly patted his forehead. “You, Countess Lana, the matriarch of one of the founding counts of Samarach. If I remember correctly, your family happens to be a lineage of exorcists, and summoning and calling upon demons is your family’s specialty. What a coincidence, isn’t it?”

Lana's expression changed.

Patrick shrugged. "Do I need to say anything more?"

"...No need."

Lana suddenly became worried: "Won't this affect us?"

"How to say?"

“Those two demons,” Lana said, “I suddenly thought of those two demons who were captured, interrogated, and then killed by Tusu. There are no demons in the City of Flame; they are outsiders from the sea, perhaps spies from other regions or something else. If the city guards investigate along all the clues related to demons, they will inevitably stumble upon demons, and will they eventually find their way back to us?”

Patrick sighed.

"By the time you start thinking about this, it will be too late. Don't worry, I've already taken care of the aftermath."

Lana asked, "So what do we do now?"

"wait."

Patrick said calmly, "Regardless of the demon's true identity, she will contact Gululos again. Keep an eye on Gululos, and that will lead us to her."

Lana still felt somewhat unwilling: "So, we're just going to give up on the clues about Ivy-Beate?"

“This is not my territory, nor is it Samarach. We are short-handed.”

Patrick stroked his chin thoughtfully.

"Although I think the chances are slim, if you insist, you can try to find out Paladin Ivy-Beate's address and workplace. That requires dealing with the city officials, which you can do, but I can't. Squad Leader El is an old acquaintance of mine, and he'd be happy to throw me into the Bronze Dragon Prison."

"I'll stay here and keep an eye on Gurulos's movements."

"When you have the results, if it's convenient, take Tusu to get close to that Ivy-Beate and let him use the Detection Demon to test her worth."

However, at this very moment, "Ivy Beatrice," whom they are thinking about, is facing an unprecedented predicament.

Her emerald green vertical pupils stared intently at the bizarre and incomprehensible sights before her, and she uttered the soul-searching question: "Where the hell am I right now?"

A few hours earlier, the demon, now reborn as Ivy Beatrice, teleported back to her basement, soaking wet.

After tidying up her clothes, she followed the tunnel dug by the dinosaur Raphael back to her bedroom. Both Gu Xiong and Xiong Gu were asleep on her bed, huddled together like a big fur ball.

She changed into her loungewear and got into bed. Lying on her side, she casually scooped one of her paws into her arms, while the other, half-asleep, automatically snuggled up to her stomach, warm and snuggling against her.

The six-armed serpent demon closed its eyes.

Only then did she completely relax.

She turned her attention to her inner world.

After absorbing the soul of the dragon priest Auckland Doto, she felt she was one step closer to recovery, and the strange phenomena in her spiritual world also underwent some change.

Now, as she focused her attention on the circular darkness in the center of the halo, she could suddenly hear something faintly coming from within the circular darkness.

Or rather, the circular darkness is like a non-reflective mirror, through which some sound is transmitted into her mental world.

She drew her attention to the circular darkness.

As her gaze drew closer, she vaguely sensed a powerful pull, drawing her into the darkness. She struggled to stay aloft, gradually understanding the voices emanating from the other side of the circular darkness.

It was a series of indistinct, low murmurs from women.

They seemed to be calling to her, summoning her, in…

She suddenly realized that she had crossed the line.

As her attention drew closer to the circular darkness, the attraction grew stronger. At this moment, her attention was no longer able to escape this force and was directly sucked into the circular darkness.

It felt as if my body had passed through some kind of barrier.

When she opened her eyes, she found herself in a strange place.

The sky was invisible overhead; everywhere was an endless crimson hue, as if the atmosphere here was composed of chaotic and evil energies.

The purplish-black earth beneath my feet is covered with cracks and covered with all sorts of strangely shaped, low-lying vegetation.

She tried to move forward, but found herself transformed back into the six-armed serpent demon form without her noticing.

It tried to slide a step, and a creaking sound came from beneath the heavy body of the giant snake.

Only then did they discover that the purplish-black soil beneath the snake's body was not soil, but rather the fragments of countless bones, soaked in the blood of countless creatures, piled up layer upon layer.

She reached out with her greatsword and picked out a complete, purplish-black skull from the soil formed by the broken bones.

She used the tip of her sword to examine the skull closely through the eye sockets, revealing its robust brow ridges and cheekbones, as well as sharp canines and incisors. A row of protrusions adorned the narrow, small top of the skull.

She muttered, "Where the hell am I right now?"

Just then, the skull touched by the holy, silver-blue sword hissed and began to burn fiercely, turning into a bright, light green flame that also emitted a large amount of dark purple, choking smoke.

The six-armed serpent demon then realized that what he had unintentionally held in his master's hand was "Mand the Slayer".

An angry voice rang out: "Are you an idiot?"

The reborn six-armed serpent demon turned his head to look.

She could hardly believe her eyes; it was a six-armed snake demon that looked almost exactly like her.