Chapter 276: What Happens With The Hero’s Relic?
Helen began to look inside the interior of the relic with great curiosity.
"Uh... I do not remember her having a demonic tail... or those disgusting wings on her hips. Is she really a demon queen?" Helen asked, tilting her head and looking at Ryan in search of a logical explanation for the prisoner’s strange appearance.
"Yes, it is definitely her. Her mana signature is unmistakable," Ryan said as he approached a little closer and crouched slightly in front of the small flask Helen held in her hands.
"For some strange reason I do not know, the relic’s restrictive magic forced her to take that true form inside her prison, but not even Rigal himself seemed to know why it happened."
"Anyway, I am glad to see you alive, Ophelia," Ryan added with a smile of genuine relief, feeling a great weight disappear from his shoulders.
"Ryan..." Ophelia murmured, resting her small hands against the cold crystal wall. "I am so sorry. I was extremely naive to trust in my own power, and I stupidly allowed them to seal me with such a cheap human trick..." She looked down, looking completely ashamed in front of her new allies.
But then, Ophelia suddenly looked up with an immense and sudden surprise shining in her beautiful red eyes, noticing the castle’s silent environment for the first time.
"But if you are standing here talking to me so calmly in the middle of the room, did you perhaps... manage to defeat the demon king Rigal himself all by yourself?" Ophelia asked with an astonishment she could not hide in the slightest, trying to search for the beastman’s gigantic corpse all over the destroyed place.
"Helen helped me in the combat. Otherwise, without my swords, I would not have been able to survive his overwhelming brute force," Ryan clarified, giving his brave companion the credit and honor she deserved.
"But to answer your question, yes. The demon king Rigal is definitively dead."
"That is simply incredible..." Ophelia murmured, dropping to her knees inside the flask from the pure impact of the impossible news.
"Even though I was the one who sought you out and directly involved you in my own plans, you were the one who ended up saving my life in a humiliating way and finished off the biggest threat in this castle. You truly never cease to amaze me, Ryan..." Ophelia said with an unusual and warm tone of surprise, showing a deep and unwavering respect for her powerful ally.
"Naturally, after all, my boss Ryan is the strongest man in the whole world," Helen said with immense pride puffing out her chest, showing a huge smile of superiority toward the encapsulated queen.
Ophelia crossed her arms inside the small flask, nodding in approval and recognition.
"I certainly believe he is. But, you did not do too badly either. Well done, heroine," Ophelia added, directly praising the madness and bravery of the woman in front of her.
Upon hearing that sincere and noble praise coming from an authentic demon queen, Helen opened her mouth to speak and drop some rude or ironic comment as was her usual defensive habit.
But her agile mind went completely blank. She found no words at all to respond to the compliment and simply closed her mouth, looking away to the side while an evident and unusual blush of pure embarrassment covered her pale cheeks.
"Anyway, enough chatting. Right now the most important thing is that we have to get you out of there," Helen said, quickly recovering her tough posture to hide her embarrassment.
She glanced at Ryan, seeking his visual confirmation. "Can I try?"
Ryan nodded affirmatively, crossing his arms to observe the process.
Helen proceeded very carefully. She placed her hands on the relic’s golden seal and turned the glowing lid with firmness and brute force. A slight magical hiss escaped the thick crystal when the seal broke, releasing a bit of golden dust and holy light.
Helen placed the golden lid to the side on the dark stone, and then positioned the uncapped flask right in the center of the throne’s first step, making sure it was completely stable on the floor.
Ryan, Helen, and Chloe immediately backed away a couple of meters. They all readied their senses and waited patiently for a massive explosion of dark smoke, a blinding flash of light.
Or at least for the demon queen’s dense body to grow to its normal size in a matter of seconds, shattering the small sacred crystal in the liberation process.
They all held their breath, staring at the magical bottle’s opening.
But time passed. Ten full seconds. Twenty seconds. Forty-five long and agonizingly silent seconds of pure expectation in the throne room.
Absolutely nothing else happened. Ophelia’s small figure was still standing exactly the same at the bottom of the open flask, blinking with evident confusion and looking up, waiting for the magic to take her out of her humiliating confinement.
"Eh?" Helen murmured, breaking the tense and ridiculous silence with an expression of total disbelief on her face.
"Do you feel any different?" Ryan asked, approaching the flask again.
"No... I do not feel anything..." Ophelia murmured. She tried to fly and exit the flask, but upon reaching the exit, she was repelled by a light that forced her back.
Even though the flask was open, and there was apparently nothing there, she could not get out despite trying several times with the same result.
"And I cannot use my telepathy either..." Ophelia confirmed. "That means everything is still the same."
"That is because that is not the way to deal with the hero’s relic," an unmistakable voice intervened from one of the windows.
Ryan turned around.
And there they were: Karol, Mirian, Alicia, and Beatrice.
"Ah! I told you, Helen did come," Mirian added from the window.
They all had just arrived thanks to Karol’s flight magic.
"It cannot be, my lady Ophelia turned into a tiny demon!" a voice yelled from the other window.
"Do not be disrespectful, brother!"
The twins had also just arrived at the hall.
"Karol, what do you mean? Do you perhaps know how to free Ophelia?" Ryan asked as they approached.
The twins ran and stared intently at Ophelia, who greeted them with a bitter smile.
"I have a theory, let me try," Karol said, taking the relic in her hands and analyzing it.
"I see, it must be that."
"Eh? Did you notice something? Can you free my lady?" one of the twins asked.
"Relax, I think it will be possible," Karol said confidently. Then she turned, turning her back to them, and slowly walked down the throne’s steps.
"Maybe," she added.
’What do you mean maybe?’ Ryan asked himself with some doubt. ’This is no time for games...’
Karol stepped away a little.
"I think this distance will be enough." And upon finishing the sentence, she forcefully threw the relic.
"Ah!" the twins yelled in unison.
The relic, right before hitting the ground, remained suspended in the air.
Karol’s flight magic stopped it completely, and from the base, a small light on the relic glowed.
"Calm down, calm down, nothing will happen." She took the relic back in her hands.
"I just wanted to see where the seal was." So, using electricity on her finger, Karol erased a strange, tiny seal from the relic’s crystal.
"These relics are designed to be very powerful, but releasing the seal is not a problem. I can imagine there is a reason for that, but I do not know what it is."
Then, a blinding light began to emerge from inside the bottle, and Karol threw the relic to the ceiling.
In the air, the sound of glass breaking echoed.
And the winged and tailed figure took shape at her usual height.
"It worked!" the twins yelled in unison.
When Ophelia regained her normal size.
Her body appeared naked, as her clothes had been completely torn.
Ryan took off his trench coat, and amidst the blinding light, he threw it.
Ophelia caught the trench coat and put it on. She landed on her feet on the floor, looking at herself with some surprise, and her wings and tail disintegrated.
"How strange..." she said with slight surprise.
"Well, it seems you are back to being yourself," Ryan said, approaching her.
"Did you get your powers back?" he asked.
"Yes, I think so. I will try to inform Janina and Ivis of everything that happened," she said, closing her eyes and clinging to Ryan’s trench coat.