Chapter 129 : Do They Provide Meals
Chapter 129: Do They Provide Meals?
However.
Just as they were about to step into the foggy forest—
A black figure descended from the sky without any warning.
There was no sound.
Like a falling leaf, it drifted lightly down and landed directly on the path they had to take.
“Gentlemen.”
The figure slowly straightened up.
Moonlight pierced through the thin mist, illuminating that exquisitely beautiful face, along with those crimson eyes flickering with an eerie glow in the darkness.
And the two pitch-black daggers still dripping with blood.
Lilia tilted her head, revealing a bright smile that, to the three men, was more terrifying than a demon.
“In such a hurry… where are you planning to go?”
“Could you…”
“Take me along to have a look?”
The one-eyed man stared at the woman who had descended from the sky. Clearly, she was alone, and she was even wearing that kind of small leather skirt that looked good for nothing but appearance—but he still felt his legs cramping uncontrollably.
“To hell with it!!”
The one-eyed man roared, trying to mask his fear with volume.
He suddenly swung his chipped machete, slashing wildly toward Lilia’s head without any technique.
If he couldn’t escape, he’d at least drag someone down with him!
However—
“Too slow.”
Lilia didn’t even bother drawing her second dagger.
A trace of impatience flashed in her crimson eyes.
She merely shifted her body slightly, twisting her heeled short boots against the ground.
The heavy machete grazed past her nose and slammed into the dirt, scattering sparks.
The next second—
“Crack.”
Lilia gripped the handle in reverse, not using the blade to cut his throat, but smashing the hilt brutally into the one-eyed man’s wrist joint.
The sound of bone fracturing was crisp and satisfying.
“Ah—!!”
His scream had barely escaped before it was kicked right back into his throat.
Lilia’s kick had no technique at all—purely Maid’s Monstrous Strength (Beginner) combined with the resentment of an overworked laborer.
The one-eyed man flew backward like a broken sack for five or six meters, crashing into the tall, skinny man behind him, knocking both of them over.
“Do I need to keep going?”
Lilia flicked her dagger, still clean of blood, tilting her head with a chilling smile under the moonlight.
“I’m in a hurry.”
“Even though the boss isn’t here, I have a bad habit—when I work overtime, my temper isn’t very good.”
Silence fell over the scene.
The fat man who had been running at the back dropped to his knees with a loud “thud,” the impact of his knees echoing sharply.
“Spare me! Spare me!”
He kowtowed repeatedly while crawling backward, his face covered in snot and tears. A nauseating stench of urine quickly spread through the air.
Lilia frowned in disgust and stepped back half a pace.
She walked up to the fat man.
“What’s with those empty cages? Where are the real people?”
The fat man trembled all over, the flesh on his face rippling like waves. “I’ll talk! I’ll tell everything!”
“The cargo… no, those people were never transported this way! This convoy was just a cover!”
The tall, skinny man beside him, clutching his chest and coughing blood, changed expression drastically and shouted hoarsely, “Shut up! Fatty, are you trying to die?! That’s the church’s top secret! If that lord finds out you betrayed—”
“Thud.”
A pitch-black dagger stabbed into the ground right beside the skinny man’s ear, slicing off a few strands of dry grass as the blade hummed.
His voice stopped abruptly.
He stiffly turned his head, staring at the weapon less than a centimeter from his carotid artery, his Adam’s apple bobbing violently.
“Top secret?”
Lilia dusted off her hands, her gaze cold.
“Tell me—do you think that lord kills faster, or do I act faster right now?”
The skinny man instantly shut up, curling into a ball, obedient like a freshly hatched quail.
Seeing this, the fat man’s last line of psychological defense completely collapsed.
This wasn’t a maid at all—this was even more terrifying than those cultist lunatics!
“The real base… is to the west! Past this foggy forest, there’s an abandoned ruin from the old era!”
The fat man spilled everything like beans from a bamboo tube.
“Not just today’s batch! The humans, demi-humans smuggled over in the past few months, and even refugees fleeing from various territories—they’re all over there!”
“How many people?” Lilia frowned.
“Sev… several hundred? No, maybe over a thousand…” the fat man swallowed, his eyes flickering. “Over there… they provide meals.”
In this godforsaken place where even birds wouldn’t stop and magical beasts roamed freely, thousands of people gathering together?
“The Immortality Society running a charity kitchen?” Lilia sneered. “I bet they’ve added quite a few ‘ingredients’ to those meals.”
“It’s not free…” the fat man shrank back. “That steward said, as long as you join the society and offer loyalty and labor to the ‘New God,’ you can gain eternal power… and never be bullied by nobles or demon overlords again.”
Good grief.
Lilia was impressed.
This was clearly a pyramid scheme!
And the way they sold the dream practically had the words “regardless of life or death” stamped on their foreheads.
That so-called “eternal power” was probably like what happened in Batori’s mine—turning people into stitched-together monsters with no sense of pain, only capable of labor.
“So those people just eat and live there for free?” Lilia continued pressing. “No work?”
“They work! Of course they work!”
The fat man seemed to recall something horrifying, his face turning deathly pale.
“They’re digging something…”
“Right beneath those ruins! They say… it’s a ‘divine relic’ left behind long ago! The steward said that as long as they dig it out and activate it, they’ll gain the power to slay gods… and overthrow the tyrant in the Palace of Eternal Night!”
Tyrant?
That “tyrant” Demon Queen was currently resting quietly within her shadow, not leaking even the slightest killing intent.
【Divine relic?】
Hera’s voice finally sounded in her mind.
Carrying a lazy mockery, along with a sense of absurdity—as if watching ants attempt to lift an elephant.
【Let’s go take a look.】
Lilia’s heart skipped a beat.
It was over.
The boss’s curiosity had been piqued.
This wasn’t “taking a look”—this was the scythe of death already raised, just waiting to harvest.
“Lead the way.”
Lilia kicked the fat man forward, not even bothering with the other two half-dead ones.
“If you try anything funny, I’ll slice you into 108 pieces and arrange you on a platter for those undead that didn’t get their fill earlier.”
…
After passing through the foggy forest, the terrain suddenly opened up.
But the sight before her made even Lilia—a transmigrator accustomed to the luxury of the Palace of Eternal Night—freeze for a moment.
It was a massive basin deep within Dark Moon Canyon.
Rather than a base, it looked more like a gigantic open-air construction site.
Countless torches and magic crystal lamps lit the basin as bright as day. Dense clusters of tents and crude sheds clung to the ground like patches of rot.