Six-Armed Serpent Demon

Page 58

It was twenty minutes later when she had fully digested the soul of Port Master Burktura.

Although Port Authority Chief Burktura has become the ghastly figure he is today, he is still a human being, not a demon.

Considering that he will be summoned to the Abyss again by the Olive Green and will have many opportunities to absorb the essence of the Abyss, the Six-Armed Serpent Demon chose to use the soul of Boktura to strengthen the mortal hunter class this time.

Port Authority Chief Boktura may not be a legend, but his soul is of exceptional quality.

She sensed that the profession of mortal hunter had made a major breakthrough.

His emerald green vertical pupils shone brightly.

With her professional magical knowledge swirling in her mind, she could now cast second-circle arcane spells as a mortal hunter, and had also gained a new professional power, "Mortal Slash".

This is the most important class ability of the Mortal Hunter, allowing her to inflict significant damage on all mortal creatures with "Mortal Slash," just as a Paladin can severely cripple evil-aligned creatures with "Evil Slash." However, Mortal Slash deals twice the damage of Evil Slash of the same level.

The six-armed serpent demon laughed gleefully.

—Of the three attributes of Demon Slayer Mande, "Demon Slayer" and "Holy" are of great help to her. Now, the final attribute, "Power Slash," can finally come in handy.

Her smile startled the vice-captain sitting opposite her, causing him to break out in a cold sweat.

For those twenty minutes, the imposter young lady's gaze remained wandering, her mind elsewhere. The vice-captain assumed she was contemplating whether or not to kill him to silence him.

The vice-captain originally thought that since he had been shot through the jaw and head by an arrow, a bottle of high-grade medicine that could save him from such a serious injury would cost 750 gold coins.

—After spending so much money to save myself, if I had just obeyed, they probably wouldn't have tried to kill me again, right?

He wondered if he should try to negotiate with the "young lady" (the woman's nickname).

But as time went on, Ivy Beate remained seated in silence. The vice-captain's confidence eroded little by little, and he grew increasingly anxious and uneasy.

The moment she revealed her murderous smile, he finally succumbed to the pressure, and his mental fortitude completely crumbled.

"I, I'll recruit."

The vice-captain pleaded. Although the wound had healed under the effects of the magic potion, he still felt a faint, phantom pain in his tongue as he spoke, as if the arrow had pierced it.

"I'll tell you anything you want to know, just don't kill me."

The six-armed serpent demon, now in the form of Ivy Beatrice, let out a long breath and came to her senses: "Alright, where to begin?"

The vice-captain was taken aback.

"Aren't you going to ask me any questions? Are you going to make me answer them myself?"

“I know a lot,” she said, lowering her eyes, “For example, you are followers of Demogorgon, and you’ve been infiltrating this city for a long time…”

She recalled the files on changes in the fishing and shipping industries.

"Because you are worshippers of Demogorgon, you named your cover Salt Marsh Fisheries Ltd. However, the Paladin City Guard still caught you red-handed. The City Guard discovered the company's heretical beliefs and proselytizing activities, and began to monitor the movements of all company members around the clock, requesting the arrest of Salt Marsh's top executives. But you had a well-informed mole, Port Master Burktura, so the City Guard's plans naturally couldn't be kept from him. So you killed to silence them, dealt with all the publicly known company executives in advance, and went into hiding."

"Even while in hiding, you still didn't forget to pay homage to your master. That's why your accomplice, the accountant Tevodo, assigned the file number when classifying the cases. Tsk, I really should have interrogated Tevodo properly before executing him; I missed a big fish... But mistakes are inevitable. After all, in this world, how could an unarmed ordinary person, without any magical equipment, possibly have access to your demon cult's important secrets? Who could have imagined?"

She gave a sarcastic smile.

"Fortunately, unlike the original Ivy Beatrice, I don't possess considerable knowledge of demons, otherwise I would have missed this inconspicuous little trick. Salt Marsh File, number. The Salt Marsh is the alternate name for the first layer of the Abyss, the 'Demon Stomach,' in Demorgogan's territory—so why did you deliberately reveal such a clue? Because it requires you to constantly display and praise its name?"

With each sentence she spoke, the vice-captain's expression gradually crumbled.

When he heard the words "execute Tevodo" come out of the imposter young lady's mouth, he broke out in a cold sweat, as if he had been soaked in water.

At this moment, the six-armed snake demon curled up one leg, used his heel to push against the chair, raised his five toes, and used a small file to trim his toenails one by one.

As she trimmed the branches, she muttered, "So, just say whatever comes to mind. But think carefully before you speak, because you're using information to buy your life."

Toenails are a distracting condition.

After the six-armed serpent demon settled in the City of Flame, it discovered that since its reincarnation as a demon, its fingernails had grown exceptionally fast, easily developing into sharp, pointed claws. Moreover, after transforming into a human using a "mortal's skin," this phenomenon occurred not only with its fingernails but also with its toenails.

It has to be said, these shoes are extremely wasteful.

So she had to trim her toenails almost every day.

She meticulously filed away the sharp spikes growing from the tips of each toenail with a file, then blew on them. She then gently moved her toes, satisfied with the result of her repair.

Her voice drifted softly into the vice-captain's ears:

"If what you say contains something I don't know but happen to be interested in, I'll allow you to walk out of the port authority's side alive. But if you argue and try to fob me off with things I'm not interested in, or if you ramble on and annoy me, I'll send you to keep the port authority company."

As she said this, the imposter Ivy Beatrice stared intently at her big toe, as if speaking to her fair and delicate toe.

But if she were looking at the vice-captain instead of his toes, she might not be able to say a single word properly.

“I have truth serum and honesty candles here, but using them on you would be a waste,” he said lazily and dismissively. “I can ignore your messages.”

The deputy captain trembled all over, paused for less than a second, and began to confess. What he said was basically the same as what the six-armed serpent demon had analyzed through the clues.

“Port Master Burktura, he is our High Priest.”

The deputy captain pleaded, “I started out as a fisherman, but Boktura would pick some of us to join them. He picked me. I had no choice. Boktura is the head of the fishing industry in the port, and we all have to listen to him, otherwise he won’t buy our fish, burn down our homes, and sell the women in our families… Nobody dares to defy him. Ador, Ador is one of his men too. His home is in Burning Harbor, and he’s a fisherman like me.”

Ador, Ivy Beatrice's attendant, was also the man who eloped with her in the same carriage.

The six-armed snake demon switched to its other foot: "Continue."

“I know you want to know who harmed you,” the captain carefully observed her expression, but unfortunately, he couldn’t discern anything. “Back then, you suddenly came to Fireport to investigate the Salt Marsh files. Your family’s estate administrator and the Burktura were both very nervous. Because the Burktura had already begun preparing the Dragon Madness Plan at that time. But I don’t know what happened afterward. Your family’s estate administrator was actually Burktura’s deputy, not me. At the time, I thought the Beate family were also demon cultists like us, until you got into trouble and I guessed that they were the ones targeting you…”

The estate administrator of the Beate family…

His emerald green vertical pupils narrowed slightly.

However, the couple, Brokway Swango and Lowen Beate Swango, claimed to be the guardians of the family estate after the Beate family's decline.

She glanced sideways at the deputy team leader, wondering if asking "who was the property supervisor at the time" would arouse his suspicion, and then lowered her eyes again.

"Go on."

“I really don’t know,” the vice-captain said tremblingly. “I’m just a pawn under Boktura.”

She scoffed, "You're not."

—Otherwise, you wouldn't have come with Burktura to interrogate me late at night, and pulled out a dagger to slit my throat. You're a killer who does Burktura's dirty work.

The vice-captain innocently shouted, "I really—"

"Shh-"

She interrupted him, saying, "Quiet. First, I don't accept arguments; second, if you can't say anything of value, you'll die."

The vice-captain's face turned extremely ugly.

“They will kill me,” he whispered. “They will burn my house down, kill my family, kill all my friends. They are capable of doing it…”

"What does it have to do with me?"

She looked at her rounded toes with a puzzled expression, and said casually, "Then you can die now."

—You, who stormed into my house trying to kill me, don't actually expect me to protect you, do you?

She lowered her long legs, which were curled up on the chair, and kicked forward, striking the deputy squad leader between the legs.

The excruciating pain caused the vice-captain to instinctively bend forward, forgetting that he was strapped to a chair. He immediately lost his balance and fell, chair and all, in front of "Ivy-Beate".

The next second, Ivy Beatrice's bare foot stepped on the back of his neck.

My head and neck were cracking.

Feeling his cervical spine about to be crushed by this immense force, the deputy team leader was terrified and shouted, "I know, I know! I'll tell you, I'll tell you everything!"

Her voice remained languid yet filled with disgust: "Tell me."

The bare feet pressing on her neck were increasing their force.

"Project Dragon Madness!"

The vice-captain shouted hoarsely, "I know about the Dragon Madness Plan!"

The pressure on the back of the neck showed signs of weakening slightly.

“Boktura has a plan—no, no, the Demon Lord has a plan that he has entrusted to Boktura to carry out.”

The deputy captain, who had narrowly escaped death, quickened his pace.

"It has a twin brother with whom it shares a deep, unspoken bond. They hate each other and each wants to eliminate the other. In this world, they each have their own agents. Boktura is its agent, while its brother's agent is across the sea—a king of strife and tyranny..."

"So the Demon Lord shut himself off, severed ties with his brother, and gave Boktura a series of clues, instructing him to contact the Demon Lord's enemy, another demon lord, Lord Grazt the Dark Lord… He helped the Enser people and Grazt connect, on the condition that he obtain the Dragon's Madness Lock from the Enser people. Because the Lich Samaster had a secret laboratory in Enser, used to store some of his unused items. He was… teleported to Abel."

"The Dragon's Madness Lock will arrive at Fireport tomorrow... It's coming with Gilerkin, the leader of the Enser people, and it's related to the tripartite meeting. Berktura, no, Berktura is just carrying out the Demon Lord's will. The Demon Lord believes that his twin brother's agent will definitely come to sabotage, and he can use the power of the Dragon's Madness Lock to wipe out the Bronze Dragon and his twin brother's agent in one fell swoop! I, that's all I know!"

Meanwhile, in the burning night sky, the dark red scales shone brightly in the firelight.

The two-headed dragon spread its wings, casting a huge shadow on the sea, which was reddened by the firelight, and flew straight to the southwest.

Chapter 70 The Pilgrimage Begins

Losques-Otukan stared blankly at Berlik, who was also a dragon, his dim, vertical pupils filled with confusion. Berlik also stared blankly at the priest, his gaze no better than Losques'.

At this moment, in the huge office at the Fireport dock, only the two dragons gazed at each other affectionately, while outside the office, they were surrounded by nearly a hundred fully armored paladins of the city guard.

About an hour ago, the newly appointed Bellyscale Priest Losques-Otukan led a pilgrimage to Fireport.

This was a complete surprise attack; no one at the dock was informed beforehand.

Instead of following the usual route from the top city down the mountain road to the bottom city, the pilgrimage team boarded a large ship and sailed directly into the dock.

As soon as the ship came to a safe stop, a large contingent of paladins from the city guard, led by squad leader El, quickly disembarked and immediately sealed off the dock and offices.

The city guards that Losques brought were mainly members of the Lower City Guard, so the newly appointed clerk, former Lower City Guard Captain Berlick, immediately directed them to the dockside picket line's usual resting place.

Caught off guard, and with Port Master Burktura and his deputy absent, the dock patrol was leaderless and offered no resistance. They were all easily arrested by the paladins led by Berlik.

When the chaos subsided, the low-ranking priests, lined up in two columns, slowly disembarked.

As they walked, they chanted scriptures and scattered flower petals and holy water along the way.

Surrounded by a large retinue, Losques-Otucan, dressed in the robes of a bronze dragon priest, stepped off the ship with a dignified and majestic air, exuding confidence and high spirits.

There is no evidence yet that Port Commissioner Burktura is a follower of the devil, and Losques-Otucan also thinks it is not important.

Losques had it all planned out: a surprise attack, the arrest of Port Master Burktura, followed by a public reading of his crimes in the harbor: monopolizing the docks, persecuting fishermen, and a list of other crimes Burktura committed to monopolize the fishing industry. Burktura would then be severely punished.

Why not immediately win over the hearts of the many fishermen in Huoshaogang?

As for the other questions concerning Port Master Burktura, they can be dealt with slowly through interrogation. The paladins have plenty of ways to detect lies; they're not afraid to pry open a person's mouth.

Even assuming that Bektura did not err in his faith, his public declaration of his crimes, the eradication of the long-standing criminal gangs operating in the dockside fishing industry, and the transfer of the fishing industry to municipal management would be enough to declare the pilgrimage a success and garner him sufficient political capital.

—In addition, he could take the opportunity to settle personal scores and severely punish his former fiancée who had brought shame upon the Ottokan family.

Losques-Ottocan was furious at the thought of what El had said to him.

Those filthy demons, and that damned pimp couple, they must all be punished!

And her, that damned woman!

Despite being the former fiancée of the Ottokan family, she preferred to elope with a lowly commoner servant, causing a huge scandal, rather than marry him. Judging from what El said, it seems she was even dragged into trouble by a pimp and his wife after arriving in Fireport…

—Damn Ivy Beatrice, why don't you just die?

—"During his time as a dock accountant, he colluded with the port authority chief, Burktura, and even joined the organization that worships demons together."

He squinted his yellow eyes and silently pondered how to write the verdict regarding her.

—This charge is excellent, especially suitable for burning at the stake.

But Losques-Otukan never expected that when he thought the situation was settled and stepped off the ship, he would find that the port master, Boktura, and his deputy were not in the dock office, and that damned woman had not come to work either.

Moreover, Berlick's report upon his return after leading his men to arrest members of the dockside patrol further fueled his anger.

"What did you say? Berktura wasn't caught, and he's been missing since last night?"

Berlick said, "Yes, someone saw him leave the tavern with the vice-captain, but they are missing. Neither of them has been found at their homes."

Losquez Otucan was speechless.

He and Berlik stared at each other for a while before realizing that things seemed to be deviating from their original expectations.

Where is El?

The Bellyscale Priest finally couldn't help but ask, "He ordered you to arrest Boktura, but where is he?"

He tried to sound calm, but in reality, he was bursting with anger and just wanted to find someone to hold accountable.

Berlik said in a flat voice, "He received a tip from an informant and led his men to Beate the accountant's residence."

Loskes' eyes lit up.

Right now, Paladin squad leader El's hand is gripping the doorknob of the "Ivy-Beate" house.