Chapter 186

Chapter 186

* * *

Before the catastrophe had befallen Yggdrasil castle, Noel Vertium’s chamber had been peculiarly still. No one had attempted to check on him again after he had refused his lunch, so he sat alone in his chair picking at the armrest anxiously.

Boom.

Without warning, a heavy sound came from the other side of his door. It gave him the impression that something had slammed against the wall facing his room not once but twice.

Creeeaak.

His chamber door opened slowly, but there was no one in sight. The Blue Knights should have been standing guard on the other side, but for some reason, the air flowing in through the opening was all too quiet. The young clan leader staggered up from his seat to cautiously inspect what or who was behind his apparent freedom.

Have the puppets arrived?

He had given a specific command to all of his combat dolls before leaving the Gold estate and had been expecting their arrival. He gently pulled the doorknob toward himself as he stepped over the threshold. He immediately noticed the Blue Knights lying unconscious on the floor before him. They appeared to have suffered no external injuries, and the corridor was so quiet that Noel supposed he might even be able to hear an ant crawl past him.

If this wasn’t the work of my puppets, then why are they...?

An extensive lack of proper sleep had finally started to take its toll on his mind as his thoughts trailed off into blankness. Even so, the tumultuous pain in his heart prevented him from lingering on such useless thoughts for long. Then as if to remind him of his ultimate purpose for coming to Yggdrasil, the face of his target surfaced out of the fog in his mind.

“Nix...”

A malicious spark flashed across his cloudy, green eyes. Noel proceeded to stagger away from his room in search of his prized puppet. All the while, a cacophony of weapons clashing and screams wafted through the windows in waves from outside. Before long, Noel’s clumsy pace soon changed to a near sprint as the urgency of reaching his destination—of reaching Nix—seemed more and more dire.

* * *

Deon Agrece noticed the commotion just outside of the castle walls as well. He had been alone in a room that restricted even a stray ray of light from sneaking in and sat sunken deep into a chair as his chin rested on the palm of his hand. Sounds of heavy weapons colliding rang harmoniously with the shrill screams flooding the castle grounds.

It was still early in the afternoon, but as he leaned over to listen more closely to the noise from the center of his pitch-black room, he imagined for a moment that he had returned to that fateful night in Agrece that previous winter. He slowly rose from his seat to walk toward the heavily draped window.

Fwoosh.

As he pushed the weighty curtains away, a brilliant ray of sunlight pierced through the thick clouds hanging high in the sky to bleach his line of sight. He lowered his red eyes a bit to see the scene unfolding in the field below his room. His eyes were unusually dry and unaffected by what he saw. Those who were less familiar with his nature would have expected even him to wince from bearing witness to such grotesque slaughter.

However, the unexpected nature of the disaster outside simply amused him briefly. He was fascinated to see that one side of the combatants continued to move despite having their necks impaled and limbs severed, but that was the extent of his reaction to the carnage.

Then a moment later, his gaze turned toward the wing of the castle directly facing his room. From where he was, he could see through the distant windows. Through them, his crimson gaze was able to make out the figure of a man scurrying through the hallway.

It was none other than Noel Vertium, and it was apparent that his puppets were the ones who had invaded Yggdrasil. Deon also knew that the puppet made from Achille’s cadaver was still locked away somewhere in that wing of the castle as well.

Sunlight continued to shine into his heavily veiled crimson eyes as he stared on. He slowly released the thick curtain before finally making his way away from the window. He had been drifting through an uninterrupted stillness without any way of gaining any ground since arriving in Yggdrasil. Yet it suddenly felt as if an opportunity had been hand-delivered to him in that brief moment.

The Agrece opened his door, then stepped out of his unlit room. He entered an even darker corridor before proceeding toward his target.

* * *

Roxana tore her necklace off from around her throat. The circular jewels it was composed of fell from the string she had just severed to scatter onto the floor.

In an instant, thick tufts of smoke rose into the air from the cracked surface of each gem. Then loud banging noises sounded from each plume as if something within the pillars of smoke had just exploded.

“Wh-what was that smoke just now?! They seemed to come from those jewels you just dropped.”

“You must be mistaken.”

“But we just heard them explo—”

“I assure you, that was merely a coincidence.”

Roxana was quick to cut off both Pandora and Luzark’s questions. She then proceeded to throw the remainder of her hair accessories at the puppets who came charging through the smoke. She aimed each one of them at the puppets’ eyes as it was the weakest of their visible body parts. Without their vision, the creatures halted momentarily, then slowed their pursuit of the three entirely.

From what she had seen of their abilities back at the Gold Manor, it was evidently most effective to damage the puppets’ hearing or to confuse them with loud noises. Unfortunately, she had used up all her means to do so after snapping her necklace. Both her Fipellion and Castro companions had been left speechless as they watched the Agrece’s flawless pinpoint precision as they made their escape.

The delay in the puppets’ advance allowed the three of them to run away to safety. It would have been foolish for them to take on such an army with so little to defend themselves.

“Shut the door!”

They immediately sealed themselves inside the nearest adjoining corridor they came upon. Closing the heavy door had been no easy feat, but they managed to seal it tightly and even move its bolt into place before the puppets could swarm in behind them.

“There are weapons in the exhibition hall!”

With a new destination in mind, they turned their backs to the dolls pounding against the door to continue running. The exhibition hall was located on the left side at the very end of the corridor they were in. It was filled with swords and spears that were displayed so visitors to the castle could admire their rich heritage.

“Who the hell are they?! And how did they get into Yggdra—?!”

“They aren’t human!”

Pandora glanced back at Roxana while clutching her chopped hair. It was then that a sudden realization spread across her doubtful face.

“D-don’t tell me th-those were... Vertium puppets.” She stammered as she couldn’t believe the words even as she spoke them. Luzark’s expression immediately hardened as he listened to her. Aside from Nix, it was Roxana’s first time facing off against one of the Gold clan’s puppets as well.

A small laugh escaped from her lips upon realizing just how different both the combat puppets and the Gold Manor’s attendant puppets were from him since none of the aforementioned creations could feel even the slightest bit of pain.

Just then, the ringing in her ear returned accompanied by an even more painful headache than she had experienced shortly before. Her head felt as though her brain was trying to burst through her forehead.

Since the beginning of the invasion, she had been using her scattered butterflies to assess the situation throughout the castle grounds. As she was sharing her vision with a number of her fluttering monsters simultaneously, the strain on her body was severe. It also didn’t help that the effects of the neutral territory's magic circles were still at play.

The puppets had already infiltrated the inner regions of the castle, and from what she could see some of them had swarmed into the adjacent wings in apparent search of something as they were smashing down doors as well as any and everything in their path.

Then it occurred to her that they weren’t looking for something but someone. Other butterflies then showed her that the dolls in other areas were also moving rather strangely. They would attack everyone in their sight but immediately return to their search as though cutting the defenseless people down was the least of their concerns.

She refocused her attention on the butterfly she had sent to Cassis. He was busy destroying every puppet that he came across as though he was stomping on bugs in a particularly terrible infestation.

The trail of pieces of destroyed dolls he left in his wake formed a rather ominous trail, but his movements as he charged down one corridor after another seemed to have another purpose other than protecting those around him.

She bit down on her lip forcefully. I made it clear that you shouldn’t come to me. I’m fine.

Her gaze wandered restlessly from one butterfly to another inside the castle. Although she had changed her mind, she couldn’t ignore the fact that she had until very recently been secretly planning to endanger everyone in Yggdrasil for her own selfish reasons. Even so, she had never once considered an all-out massacre of everyone residing in the castle.

What could have driven Noel Vertium to go this far?

Her expression hardened as she recalled seeing the Gold clan leader’s rather unstable behavior from the moment he had arrived at the gathering.

“Let’s split up. I need to go somewhere right away.”

As soon as she made her announcement, she turned away from the other two, then dashed toward the opening at the end of the corridor.

“Wait!” Pandora and Luzark called out to her in unison, but she was already gone.

Thanks to the swift handling of the sudden crisis by the Blue Heir and his knights, the puppets had not managed to conquer every wing of the castle yet. Thus, the Agrece was able to move ahead without any additional interference.

She had also seen Jeremy escape from the garden in order to head toward her, but the manner in which he was moving had prompted her to instruct the butterfly she had sent to the garden to guide him on the safest route to her as possible.

Meanwhile, another one of the winged demons had attached itself to Cassis. He, however, appeared to be moving against its guidance as if he knew the tiny creature would not lead him to his lover. She then turned her attention to Nix and found that he too had noticed the commotion outside of his cell and was in the midst of frantically pacing about in his small, confined space.

Judging from the puppets’ movements, it was clear that Noel Vertium was intent on retrieving the blond youth under the cover of his dolls wreaking havoc. That was precisely the reason the younger sister of the doll’s former self was hellbent on reaching him first.

A sudden bout of dizziness overcame her and caused her vision to blur for a moment. She had overexerted herself quite a bit mentally by continuing to use the poison butterflies so much within Yggdrasil’s sorcery barrier.

Just then, something shot up from beside her, then took hold of her waist. She reflexively tapped her ring, then used the small blade that popped out of it to stab her faceless assailant.

Unfortunately, the tiny weapon was insufficient for piercing through whatever had wrapped itself around her hip. The thing proceeded to slink its way over her wrist as well, then stopped moving entirely.

In a flash, the blond found herself hoisted off the ground with incredible force. As her feet dangled in the air, she frowned upon seeing that the remainder of her torso was being tied up in midair since the surprise attack had successfully caught her off guard.

“Where are you off to in such a hurry, Lady Roxana?”

A carefree voice that vastly contradicted everything that was going on at that moment floated its way up to her ears. The speaker was further away than she initially anticipated, which at least told her that they were not the individual or thing responsible for yanking her into the air.

She raised her crimson gaze away from the green vine that was tightening around her to search further in the distance for whoever had addressed her so lightly.

“Orka Fipellion.”

Her voice created an almost chilling effect as she spoke the name of the man who finally came into her view. However, he smiled back at her as if he had come to join her for a picnic on a breezy, spring afternoon.

“Why, hello, my dear Roxana. Lovely day we’re having, isn’t it?”