A large amount of Demon Sentinels had assembled in the military town of Sakerid’s biggest church, the Yunies church, this place had became the base of operations for these demons. At the center of the church’s main room, two demon Kings were currently conversing. One of these demon kings had the body of a beautiful girl, while the other was just a blurry shadow.
“Death, your subordinate has stolen the bodies that my subordinates were trying to capture, is this your order? We’ve known each other for so long, we’ve fought side by side for over ten thousand years, you could have just told me if you wanted those bodies as well. Did you really have to do all of this behind my back!?
“When have my subordinates stolen your prey, Night? All of my subordinates are gathered at the Weir church, over 1000 meters away from the Dak inn where your subordinates were. Are your subordinates blind?”
“It was that 【Corpse Demon】 of your’s who did it, my subordinate Pittmanz told me that the intruder was carrying an ‘Imprint of Immortality’, who else would carry one of those around, except for your subordinates?”
“This… I’ve been unable to contact 【Corpse Demon】 Jerome for a while now. However, I can sense the approximate location where its ‘Imprint of Immortality’ is located… It seems to be around the nearby Nasani inn, I’ll take some subordinates and go check it out, I’ll give you an answer after I return!”
“Fine, but be quick with it. There’s something off about this place, it seems that this entire town has been enveloped by some strong spatial magic and I suspect that some stronger existences have stuck their hands in. We need to be more careful, or else something like what happened ten thousand years ago could happen again.”
“I understand, just wait for my good news. As long as none of those stronger existences intervene, there’s not a single existence from this world that can stand up to us, the twelve demon kings!”
___
In the Nasani inn’s ‘presidential suite’, Bella had already returned and had immediately gathered the beauties of her adventuring party for a meeting. As for Ivy and Susan, ‘eating’ them would have to be left for the future, but Ivy had basically already fallen to Bella.
Susan was the one that Bella was more worried about, Bella was worried that Susan might harbour some ill feelings towards her avoid having any contact with Bella in the future. So, Bella had asked Susan a few questions before the other beauties had gathered, to get an understanding of Susan’s feelings towards her.
“I can keep your secret, I swear to the god of light…”
“No, Susan-nee, I want you to swear to a demon god. I just happen to have a dark contract here, I’ll teach you how to swear on it later.”
“What! You want me to swear to a demon? You might as well kill me, I won’t…”
“Susan-nee, if you don’t want to do this then I’ll have to take some measures to secure you to my side. I’ll let some of my subordinate demons to parade you around each of the 5 human empire’s capitals, not as a captive, but as a honoured guest. You won’t have to swear after that anymore!”
“Don’t force me, please… I….I really can’t…”
“Susan-nee, you don’t have to be so nervous, only me and you will know what happened today. The other three holy maidens will never find out, come, repeat after me…”
Susan had been locked down by Bella’s embrace and had no real way of resisting Bella’s advances. Her friend Ivy had surrendered to Bella almost immediately, forcing Susan on the back foot from the very beginning. Bella had told Susan that she was the only one that was still resisting, and that Bella would definitely ‘conquer’ her, or else Bella would lose face.
“Bella, you… are you a demon! Why do you have to force me like this?”
“That’s right! I am a demon, what’s wrong with that? Susan-nee, if you don’t repeat after me I’m going to have to change my methods, I have quite a few ways to make you listen, but they might not be quite as enjoyable for you~.”
“Bella, I’ll do it, on the condition that you can save this town from its dangers. This is my only request, I’ll do anything if you promise to do so!”
“No problem, Susan-nee. However, you’re going to have to temporarily join my party for a while, I’ll let you see me save this town with your very own eyes, so that you can’t make any more complaints.”
Bella knew that she couldn’t force Susan too far as the girl was one of the Alan faction’s holy maidens, just like Hayley, and the Alan faction was the more traditional faction within the Church of Light and had always been extremely hostile towards anything connected to the dark side. The best way to conquer Susan wasn’t through force, but to use some heart and let Susan surrender herself.
___
Within an invisible magic formation that hovered above the town of Sakerid, 【Tenebrous Demon God】 Elise had gone into hiding in order to recouperate from her injuries that she had sustained at the hands of the Betrayed. Standing not far in front of Elise was a loli with golden locks of wavy hair and another loli with a super long black ponytail at her side.
“Am I hallucinating, 【Light Creator】 Vianne, is standing so intimately beside 【Dark Creator】 Mystica? The world sure is changing.”
“【Tenebrous Demon God】 Elise, your chief asked me to help her find you. How about you go and see her on the Alfred continent?”
“No, I don’t want to see her! She can leave herself anyways, it’s not like she’s actually trapped, tell her to come find me herself. Oh yeah, Mystica, do you know a demon king called Bella?”
“Bella’s title of demon king was granted by me, what’s wrong? You’ve seen her?”
“I’ve only seen her, that bad girl even dared to reject… Nevermind, I want to be by myself for a bit and enjoy some peace, stop bothering me.”
Elise couldn’t bare to tell anyone what had happened between her and Bella, as it was simply too shameful. The other demon gods would laugh themselves to death if they learned that Elise’ ‘gift’ was rejected by a demon king so many times without any hesitation. Elise threw all of the blame on Bella and had already decided that she was going to teach that ‘shameless’ demon king a lesson the next time that she saw Bella.
Mystica and Vianne exchanged a curious glance, the expression that had shown on Elise’s face for just a split second was that of a girl who had just had their confession rejected by their crush. Bella sure was something to have messed up the heart of the 10th ranked demon god while only using her substitute.
Most of the top 10 ranked Worldbreakers were similar to Elise in the fact that it was hard to see emotion in their faces. Especially the 1st ranked chief and the 2nd ranked vice-chief, who would only show expression in the presence of a certain someone, Vianne and Mystica were a little looking forward to seeing those two blocks of ice meet Bella
“Mystica, can you lend me the 4th volume for the manga that you lent me last time, that something something yuri one, I’ve already finished the 3rd volume.”
“That’s enough, Vianne! You stole my 3rd volume before I even finished it, now your here to take my 4th volume, in what kind of world does the light steal from the dark!? Why don’t you go and take Alfreia’s 5th volume, that volume has the most fanservice! I’m still pissed at the fact that she managed to take it from me before I got to read it.”
“Even I can’t do anything when Alfreia decides that she wants to hide. I might as well steal… borrow from you, eh, Mystica, don’t run! Leave the manga behind at least!”
“Never! You’re trying to steal my manga again, I only have a few volumes left. I’m warning you, if you keep stealing from me, our friendship will really be over.”
“Let it end then, we aren’t friends anyways, haven’t light and darkness always been enemies!”
___
In the Nasani inn’s private hot springs, Bella had gathered all the members of her adventuring party for an emergency meeting. Those attending the ‘meeting of the hot springs’ were: The three god level lolis, Angel, Mia, and Noesha; the demon kings Dolores, and Eleanor as well as the demon kings’ maidservants Roland, Annie, Irene, and Lola; The demon world’s princess, Hadias was present as well.
The representative from the Church of Darkness, the 3rd unholy maiden Liz; the Church of Light was represented by the 3rd holy maiden Susan; Ivy represented the human empires as the young lady of one of the Gabriel Empire’s(Swordsmen) 3 big families, the Ignaz family. There were also several representative from the Saviour faction, the Octavian Empire’s(Knights) 10th princess Lisha, the Gabriel Empire’s 1st princess Kriss, and the Aldrich Empire’s(Magic) 5th princess Ariel.
Bella had already ‘categorized’ Ariel as a member of the Saviours, just a moment ago, Kriss had sneakily told Bella that she could feel something similar between herself and Ariel, who definitely was no simple girl. Currently, only Ariel had covered her face using a pure white mask while all the other beauties casually relaxed themselves without much worry in the hot springs.
Ariel had her own reason for doing this, she didn’t want to expose her identity so soon. In the memories of most people, the Aldrich Empire’s 5th princess Ariel was a hideous girl. Which was true, as Ariel had only become beautiful after the body’s original owner had committed suicide and the current Ariel had replaced her after transmigrating.
Of the beauties present, only Kriss and Bella knew Ariel’s true identity. While Susan and Ivy had seen her face, but they didn’t know Ariel’s name. Ariel didn’t want too many people to know who she was, or else she would definitely end up like Kriss with a constant stream of admirers proposing to her left, right, and center.
“Nee-sama, this vial should be that girl Betia’s treasure, ‘Apocalyptic Instinct’. If I remember correctly, this was something that she obtained from the 5th ranked Worldbreaker by exchanging some other treasures, it’s effect was something along the lines of invoking the primal instinct buried within humans. How did you get this?”
“This was a gift from 【Tenebrous Demon God】 Elise, Noesha, do you know what this seal and this black feather is?”
“These are things from the Worldbreaker faction, I don’t know too much about them, but I can give you a guess on what I think they might be. The black feather is most likely a tool that can summon energy wings and the seal is probably a proof of identity. These are just my guesses though, so don’t blame me if I’m wrong, nee-sama.”
Of the three gifts that Elise had given to Bella in return, Noesha was only identify the strange vial, and was unable to determine what exactly the other two items were as they were special to the Worldbreaker faction and not Noesha’s Troublemaker faction. After taking the black feather in her hand, Angel seemed to really like the feather made of dark energy, so Bella decided to just let Angel keep it as a gift.
As for the seal, Mia showed her interest in it after Bella had given it to her and played with it non-stop. Because of this, Bella also let Mia keep the seal. Bella didn’t notice that when she looked away, a faint light flashed on the two loli’s hands, immediately getting rid of the tracking magic that Elise had left on these two items.
The tracking magic that Elise had left behind wasn’t exactly any type of advanced magic, it was only troublesome because it could only be removed by another Worldbreaker, but even a lower ranked Worldbreaker could easily disable the tracking magic of a high ranked Worldbreaker. Elise had never even suspected that there would be any other Worldbreakers around Bella, after seeing Bella’s attitude towards her, Elise would never have believed that any other Worldbreaker would be able to have a proper conversation with Bella.
“Andrea, is Mystica at your place? I’m looking for her.”
“Yeah she is, give me a sec. Mystica-nee, Bella’s looking for you!”
“What is it Bella, is there something else that you want me to do?”
“It’s like this, do you know how we can fix this situation here? I’ve already found the source of the outbreak, can you give some tips? You can ask for whatever you want as a reward after we’re finished here.”
“All of this was caused by that Troublemaker’s treasure, your best option is to find that Troublemaker herself and get her to fix it. She’s probably the only one that knows how to use her own treasures, us Creators don’t have the ability to use Troublemakers’ stuff either.”
“Here’s another tip, the Troublemaker in question is probably still hidden somewhere within Sakerid and has not yet escaped this place. This entire town has been covered by Alfreia’s 《Dreamworld》, there’s no way that Troublemaker can escape while under 《Dreamworld》’s surveillance. Bring that vial when you’re looking for her, it’ll have a reaction when it nears its real owner.”
___
Near the Nasani inn, the machine army were making preparations to withdraw. They had just received orders from the commanding officer Andrea to abandon this location and move to the Yunies church in the town’s central region.
Based on the aerial map that Andrea had provided, Bella had a general understanding of the positions of the various forces within Sakerid.
Andrea’s map marked 6 demon kings, the three within the Nasani inn were marked using a miniature white demon to represent allied demon kings.
The other three demon kings were marked with a miniature red demon, representing hostile enemy kings. One of these hostile demon kings had already reached the nearby Dolan library, and was heading in the direction of the Nasani inn.
As for the other two hostile demon kings, one was located within the Yunies church while the other was currently situated at Sakerid’s north-west quadrant, in the Saniyah graveyard. It seems that the enemy demon kings were not bunched together.
Bella had already heard from 【Dark Creator】 Mystica that these three hostile demon kings were not created by her and were most likely part of the 12 demon kings that had bloodwashed this world ten thousand years prior. As for their reason for appearing in this town that had been destroyed by the outbreak, it was probably to collect the countless malicious spirits that roamed this region.
Many dark rituals required a large amount of malicious spirits to use as a medium, the goal of the three demon kings were quite evidently to gather a large amount of malicious spirits and use them to revive more of their companions.
This problem should have been something that fell under the jurisdiction of the Saviours as Bella was also a demon king and she didn’t have any real reason to make it harder for her ‘peers’. However, she had already promised Susan that she would liberate this town from its dangers, and after doing so, Susan would willingly join Bella’s side. That was a reward that Bella wasn’t going to turn down, she planned to use Susan as a pawn to extract important information from the Church of Light’s upper echelons.
Apart from the three hostile demon kings, the map also marked a giant black question mark at the Sark square, located in the town’s central region. All Andrea had told Bella was that it marked an unknown danger, not going any further in depth about specifics, Bella suspected it was because Andrea didn’t want to, rather than because she didn’t know. Remembering the heavy injuries that she had seen on Elise earlier, Bella speculated that this unknown existence was the one who had fought with Elise prior and wounded her so heavily.
Having the ability to deal such heavy injuries to the 10th ranked Worldbreaker meant that this unknown existence was quite dangerous, something that Bella and the others should keep a wide berth from. It was fortunate that it hadn’t moved for quite a while now and didn’t seem like it would start anytime soon, there wasn’t too big of an issue to leave it alone for now.
After putting away the map, Bella decided to gather all available personnelle and head straight towards the Yunies church. Because most of Sakerid’s central region had already been destroyed by the fight between Elise and the unknown existences, the only place left to hide in the area was the church. It was very likely that the culprit behind the outbreak was hiding there.
As for the three hostile demon kings, Bella chose to evade them as much as possible. There was no reason for her, as a demon king, to start trouble with other demon kings, that was the job of heroes. Bella decided that she and the others didn’t need to steal the heroes’ jobs as job-stealing wasn’t a very respectable thing to do.
Bella had done this out of good will, but the 3 other demon kings didn’t accept it. Not long from now, this apocalyptic town would welcome a covert battle between dark forces that would be unknown to the world. The news that the ancient twelve demon kings had revived did not manage to make it out in time, and when the human empires learned of it, they would have already missed the prime opportunity to seal the twelve demon kings once more.
