Chapter 654: The Priest
In the capital, after Nox and the group fled the royal academy, things seemed to have cooled down, at least for the demons.
Of course, there were still a few humans left in the city, but they were in deep seclusion, not even daring to come outside to search for food.
A few brave ones had attempted to come out at night; however, they were all captured and dragged to the prison. A few who attempted to run were outrightly killed.
One thing the humans had noticed, though, was that as long as one surrendered, the demons seemed to take them away—maybe inflicting a little harm here and there to satisfy their sadistic urges.
However, if you chose to run, you would be outrightly killed. No one knew what happened to the humans after the demons took them away or what they did with them.
But the majority chose to be captured rather than killed. The rest outrightly escaped, believing that the demons would do sick, unspeakable things to them. They would rather die than become subordinates of those sick creatures.
As for the Big Five, the nobles whose power was only below that of the King of the Vermilion Kingdom, they had fled. When the Order of the Flaming Rose had shown up, they had put up a fight.
It was only when more powerful enemies showed up that they all escaped. Not even experts like them could defeat the demonic army, which naturally had a more powerful build.
The royal castle was still holding firm, but anyone could see it was only a matter of time before it crumbled to the ground. After all, constantly fighting for this long depleted mana at a frightening pace.
And the protective arrays installed required monster cores to keep running.
Due to tensions with neighboring kingdoms like Snowhelm, which had been brewing for years now, the kings had made sure to stock their treasury with high-level monster cores, not to mention the reserves they had prior.