Chapter 263 : Chapter 263
Chapter 263. Retrospection
“Oh, you are here?” Maggie clasped her hands behind her back, her tone indifferent, as though the disheveled woman from moments ago, who had still been talking about some “Elven Queen script,” had merely been Logaris’s hallucination. “How did you find the time to come back and visit us two old seniors who were... engaged in an academic debate?”
Roland, meanwhile, gave a dry cough and calmly tightened his loose belt again. Then, with a casual motion, he grabbed a greatsword out of the void and planted it on the ground, his wandering gaze fixed on the ceiling. “Mm, that is right. We were... training. Yes, training.”
“I ran into a technical difficulty outside.”
Logaris tactfully did not mention anything about “clothes,” “red marks,” or “scripts.” His expression did not change as he directly took out the silver mirror and handed it over.
“This is a communication tool I found on an insider on my side. It is suspected to have ties to Hell. My divination ability is limited, and I could not trace its source, so I wanted to ask you to take a look.”
Maggie accepted the mirror. The slightly awkward look on her face vanished the instant she touched the mirror’s surface.
“This material...”
She narrowed her eyes. A silver light lit up in the depths of her gaze. Then her fingers slid over the cold mirror frame, and a point of dim-blue light appeared at her fingertip before instantly expanding and enveloping the silver mirror.
“Abyssal Sea Blacksilver, mixed with some bone powder from a Nightmare Beast of Hell. This forging technique is very clearly not human craftsmanship.”
Maggie turned around and waved her hand casually. The water elements in the air rapidly gathered, forming a huge water mirror. She tossed the silver mirror into the water, formed seals with both hands, and uttered a string of obscure, incomprehensible syllables.
【Truth Retrospection · Causal Reversal】
BUZZ—!
The water mirror trembled violently, and layers of ripples spread across its originally clear surface. Maggie’s vast mental power cut through the anti-divination disguise attached to the silver mirror’s surface with the precision of a scalpel.
The first thing to appear in the image was the face of Gerald, the supervisor of the fortress’s communications office, written with greed and terror. Immediately after, the threads of causality rapidly pulled backward, and the scene within the water mirror rewound at high speed like a fast-forwarding slideshow.
A dark and damp underground black market. The clamorous sound of transactions. A black-market merchant wrapped tightly from head to toe in a gray cloak appeared. He was lowering his voice as he promoted this so-called all-knowing magic mirror to Gerald.
“Continue.” Maggie ignored this scene. Her fingertip traced an intricate rune in midair, and it sank into the water mirror.
The image rapidly rewound again. This time, the black-market merchant’s figure became blurred. In his place appeared a gloomy contact point hidden deep in the slums of the Royal Capital. A “vagrant” was respectfully handing several identical silver mirrors to that black-market merchant.
“We have caught the mouse by its tail.” A cold smile curved Maggie’s lips. Her vast mana erupted with a boom, and she forcibly traced upward along that “vagrant.”
BUZZ—!
The water mirror trembled violently once more. Its originally clear surface instantly turned pitch-black like ink. A dense smell of sulfur spread out from within the mirror, and the temperature of the entire space became somewhat scorching.
The image began to grow clear.
It was a wasteland flowing with lava, and the sky was a suffocating dark red.
At the very center of the image appeared a huge round table.
On the left side of the round table sat a man in an elegant tailcoat. He looked no different from a human. He even wore a pair of gold-rimmed glasses and toyed with a mirror in his hand, which reflected his pale golden eyes.
Across from him sat a mountain of flesh.
That was right. A mountain of flesh. It was a gigantic demon at least five meters tall, clad from head to toe in heavy black iron plate armor. Beneath its helmet was a huge mouth split all the way to its ears. It was holding the thigh of some unknown magical beast and chewing through flesh and bone with loud cracks.
“Found them.”
Maggie’s voice turned somewhat cold. “As expected, they are old acquaintances.”
“Who are they?” Logaris asked.
“The one on the left, dressed like a nouveau riche, is one of the Seven Grand Dukes of Hell, the Grand Duke of 【Greed】, Kresis.”
Maggie pointed at the bespectacled demon. “He is the shrewdest merchant in Hell, as well as one of its foremost bio-alchemists. What he loves doing most is signing contracts with mortals, using a trivial bit of power to exchange for the other party’s soul and everything they possess.”
At this point, Maggie’s expression grew increasingly grave, and she explained to Logaris in a deep voice, “Every Grand Duke governs one kind of Hell authority. Ifreles, whom you encountered before, governs 【Wrath】. It allows his attacks to carry an extremely powerful annihilation attribute and makes them immensely destructive.”
“As for the 【Greed】 governed by Kresis, it possesses the ability to ‘plunder.’ As long as the conditions are met, he can even forcibly seize an opponent’s blood vitality, energy, and even lifespan... However, this plundering also comes with a price. It cannot be abused without limit.”
Hearing this, Logaris frowned slightly. A rule-based ability that seized by force. This kind of enemy was the most troublesome. Even fire coverage might not work well against him.
At that moment, Roland, who had been leaning nearby and staring fixedly at the water mirror in midair, suddenly slapped his thigh.
“Ah! I suddenly remembered too!”
He pointed at the flesh-mountain demon in the water mirror who was gnawing on a thigh, his eyes widening with a rather exaggerated expression.
Then he scratched his hair and frowned as he tried hard to recall for a while. After all, as a warrior, his memory was not as good as Maggie’s, who was a spellcaster.
“That rice bucket on the right is the Grand Duke of 【Gluttony】, Varrick.”
Roland touched his shoulder, as though he had finally dug out that reckless memory from a corner of his mind.
At this moment, this founding hero had no airs at all. His tone was as easygoing as if he were bragging to old friends in a tavern about his youthful exploits.
“A thousand years ago, I fought that mountain of flesh head-on beside the Great Rift.” Roland spoke with animated enthusiasm.
“That fellow was purely a thick-skinned, tough-fleshed punching bag. His strength was boundless, but his movements were too slow. At the time, I found an opening and struck with one sword. I chopped off one of his right arms on the spot.”
“And guess what happened?” Roland clicked his tongue in amazement. He even vividly made a gesture of stuffing something into his mouth.
“That beast had his hand cut off, yet he did not feel pain at all. He bent down, picked up that severed arm of his that was still spraying blood, and ate it raw right in front of me, crunching through it!”
Roland’s face revealed undisguised disgust.
“Then, less than three minutes later, the flesh buds around his wound wriggled madly, and a brand-new arm grew out. His authority is extremely shameless. He can forcibly restore his stamina by devouring matter, energy, and even magic.”
“What is even more troublesome,” Roland’s expression turned stern, and his tone became serious, “is that anything swallowed into his stomach can not only be perfectly digested, but also allows him to evolve absolute resistance against that material or magic in an extremely short time. He can even produce physical mutations from it. Back then, it disgusted me to death.”