Sixty seconds.
That’s all the Infernal Crown needed to rewrite fate.
Larissa’s borrowed blade twitched in the elder’s spine—a feral thing savoring the kill. The man collapsed, his last scream strangled by tendrils of living shadow. She lood over him, breath ragged, her silk robes now a second skin of gore. Only her eyes remained untouched—twin shards of cobalt blazing through the crimson mask.
Muffled. That’s how ti had folded since Vicente’s gift first bit into her soul. Each stab, each snapped bone—she’d moved syrup-slow, yet the clock hands blurred. Now reality snapped back with vicious clarity.
Vicente observed from his perch—a throne of writhing obsidian, its armrests coiled with ebony spiders, eternally spinning chains. The cellblock bowed to his influence: iron bars blossod into thorn vines, ceiling stones wept black sap.
Of all the family mbers there, only one high-level Sorcerer remained alive. This old man was now also sared with Larissa’s blood, but his face was clean enough for his horrified expression to attract the attention of the survivors.
In addition to Larissa and Vicente, so of the inmates, also shocked, watched the situation in sepulchral silence, waiting for the next steps of the monster who had invaded this unit.
Vicente finally opened his mouth and said, speaking to the enemy survivor, "Go back to your family. I want you to make them understand why things ended this way."
With Vicente’s words, the domain of darkness fell away, allowing so of the light from the luminous formations in this underground area to function again, while the magical pressure there decreased severely.
But as the remaining Sorcerer gathered his strength to run out of there, he couldn’t help but look back and see in even greater horror so of his dead companions rising, now changed, although still with auras just as strong as before.
When the undead claid by Vicente finished forming, they knelt in unison, shouting similar words to their master.
Vicente smiled mischievously as he watched the survivor turn a few degrees paler.
"Is that enough for you?" Larissa asked, still with so resentnt in her voice.
Although the Infernal Crown subordinate to Vicente’s crown was now on her head, he had given Larissa total freedom-as Devil Abby Miller had done with him before. Although, in theory, Vicente was now Larissa’s master, in practice, she felt free enough to address to him without worrying about a more formal approach.
Vicente continued to look in the direction from which the Sorcerer had left and said, "When he gets ho and finds his fellow leaders all dead, I’m sure his revenge will be complete."
Larissa felt a chill, imagining the scene described by Vicente on a level that was as if she could see what he had caused at the Alpine Eye Family headquarters, even so far away from that place.
A smile broke out on Larissa’s lips as her muscles finally relaxed. After all the suffering and hatred she had been through, having her affairs resolved made her feel lighter, for a mont forgetting everything else.
"Good. Thank you for coming back for ." She said softly as she looked at the result of her fury-assisted by Vicente.
On the outskirts of this underground prison area lay the distorted, sliced and even exploded remains of the bodies of at least two dozen mbers of this advanced unit of the Alpine Eye Family. The blood on the floor was forming puddles and in so places, it would be possible to sink an entire human foot into this accumulated essence.
Vicente looked at her as her aura retracted completely, with the throne disappearing. "There are things we need to discuss, but before we do, let’s leave. Lyra and Rex are still out there in the hands of people. I don’t know if they would be similar to their captors or worse."
She realized that neither of them was at Vicente’s side and rembered how they had fallen into the hands of a pirate group who had sold them into slavery when they entered the Inviting Isles. "I see you killed the bastards who sold us." She indicated one of the undead accompanying Vicente on this journey.
He nodded as he headed towards the building’s exit. "When I returned, I used a device to resurface our ship."
"I see. So it hasn’t been long since it happened? We’ve been here for months, or years..." She looked at the dark floor, sowhat uncertain. "I’ve lost track of ti in this place."
Seeing his friend look back, Vicente tapped one of her shoulders on the side and spoke with a tone of regret. "I’m sorry about that. After what happened earlier, I had a lot of trouble leaving the place I was in. Otherwise, I would have returned sooner."
Due to the Infernal Crown connecting them, Larissa understood Vicente’s situation without needing to hear it from him. "Don’t worry, you ca quickly enough... And at the end of the day, you’re not our father. We’re the ones who weren’t strong enough." She clenched her fists in anger at herself, having put herself in the situation that had brought her to this mont.
Vicente said nothing about it, allowing his friend to learn from the experience. "Anyway, tell what happened that day when I left. You were unconscious, but you must have felt sothing, right?"
She nodded in agreent as she finally found herself back on the surface, forced to shield her eyes from the light as she looked around in satisfaction. "Yes, I felt your farewell and also the presence of the one who attacked us that day."
As they began their flight directed by Vicente’s guides, heading towards the force that had bought Rex and Lyra, she explained, "Vicente, that powerful man who attacked us, he also left a ssage before he left. He said he would co back and take the gem in one of his hands."
Vicente looked at the item he had acquired earlier and couldn’t help but beco more serious. But unlike that day, he now didn’t fear Transcendents so much that he didn’t know what to do. "That’s bad... I hope it doesn’t reach us any ti soon. But he’ll be in for a surprise if he keeps to those words."
She just watched him, aware that Vicente wasn’t the sa as before.
"Anyway, let’s go rescue Lyra and Rex. I have important plans for this journey before I leave for my destination. But I feel I’m going to have to ask you to accompany , Larissa." He looked at her deeply, showing that he was sorry, but he had no choice.
"What’s wrong?" She frowned in doubt.
"It’s about Hell. I saw and learned about soone, a great expert, supposedly the strongest in the dinsion, who I believe you know." He said before showing a portrait of a man with silver hair and eyes of the sa color. "This is Devil Ritter, the strongest Devil in Hell. I believe he is your old acquaintance, Lothur Ritter."
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