Our Family Has Fallen

Chapter 1247: Chapter 683: Ancient Portico

Hamlet, ruins, old mansion.

One night passed, and Lance was not clear about what happened in the ruins earlier; he had been up all night researching the materials obtained from the leader’s room, trying to find the evil cult leader and the whereabouts of the dungeon.

Then, he discovered many interesting situations from those items, involving Hamlet’s number one insider—the butler.

Although he had previously predicted the butler’s role, it was just a guess based on the actual situation; now it was ”ancestor certified.”

If the leader is the ancestor’s representative in the Ascension Sect, then the butler is the ancestor’s agent on the surface.

One for appearances, one for reality.

He realized that if, like previous Lords, he was deceived by the butler, the ancestor would utilize the butler to issue tasks to control the successor’s actions.

This is why the butler could offer lucrative rewards and extraordinary equipment as benefits for the revival of Hamlet, while also arranging for cultists to spread this extraordinary equipment and gold coins throughout the territory.

These things constantly stimulated him, prompting the Lord to recruit more people, and then launch greater wars.

This has been the case for the past decade. The simple and violent stimulation drove those people into madness, following the butler’s requirements to ”revive” the territory step by step, but ultimately leading to death.

As for that money and equipment, in any case, the adventurers or the Lord, in the end, will all become the ancestor’s food, the stepping stones on his path to godhood.

Thus the gold coins and equipment are naturally reclaimed, continuing onto the next unlucky sucker.

Then they encountered Lance, this oddity, who managed to kill the butler right from the start, directly freeing himself from their control.

Perhaps at that time those guys didn’t pay much attention to Lance and were not willing to flip the table and fight desperately with him, instead using bandits, witches, and the like to deal with him.

Lance even remembered that just after the battle with the witch, a ”heir” suddenly jumped out claiming to be the Lord of Hamlet, only to be sent straight into a sanatorium.

In the early stages of the wild redevelopment, the Ascension Sect no longer hid, a large number of cultists gathered in the wilderness, intending to make a move against Lance.

However, they were still stuck in their old ways of thinking, attempting to bleed Lance dry through a war of attrition, since the cultists were not afraid of consumption, dying, after all, would just mean returning to being part of the ancestor.

But unfortunately, they failed. Lance withstood the pressure, even managing to make his initial accumulation by sacrificing the corpses of cultists, otherwise how could there be so much Spiritual Essence treatment and strengthening of soldiers?

Following that, a batch of old soldiers emerged, equipment upgraded to muskets and cannons, alongside all sorts of new gadgets.

The subsequent series of actions further made the higher-ups in the Ascension Sect realize Lance had completely escaped their control.

Daring to send equipment and gold coins, Lance was indeed bold enough to pocket them, which in turn would become bullets aimed back at them.

Thus it was only natural that the Ascension Sect high echelon decided to seal away those things, which were stored in the fourth-floor warehouse of the old mansion.

Clearly, Lance wasn’t giving the ancestor any respite, nor would the ancestor allow Lance any gain.

No wonder the game made it so that the butler could easily produce so much equipment and gold coins, and that enemy drop rates increased with difficulty, even small monsters could drop jewels and gold equipment.

Yet Lance battled his way to the old mansion, encountering only sporadic equipment, most of which were contributions from his sacrifices.

After all this fuss, you brat, did you take commissions on the benefits the ancestor handed me?

Going through those documents made Lance even more certain that these legacies falling into his hands now truly should thank this surprise attack plan.

If he had slowly finished clearing the ruins first, what would be left might just be an empty shell.

Because Hamlet’s power expanded too fast, the Ascension Sect’s final counteroffensive after the Beast Lair battle failed utterly, the sect high-ups felt the strain, and planned to relocate.

Now Lance understood why it was so easy to take the old mansion, it turned out that a batch of followers had been taken away by the leader.

The places they selected made Lance somewhat amused; they were territories surrounding Hamlet, like Ovando and Bastia.

They planned to split up, decentralize, and then utilize the high-ups they’ve controlled over the years to unite and launch a grand war to completely destroy Hamlet.

At the same time, the deaths brought by the war would accelerate the ritual progress, advancing their ultimate goal—Ascension.

But Ovando was already under Lance’s secret control, the so-called high-ups had long been cleaned out, as for Bastia, the Earl there was no fool either.

One was closest, and the other the strongest in the vicinity; with no issues there, if those other riff-raff could muster up three hundred Knights remained unknown.

To this, Lance could only comment, ”Nice plan, I’ve already reached your doorstep, and you’re still thinking about development, aren’t you?”

It was Lance who was initially seeking time for development, and now it was the ancestor’s turn?

One can only say from today onwards, the roles have reversed!

Lance genuinely laughed; if there weren’t people around, he might have laughed out loud.

The ancestor isn’t keeping a stiff upper lip, he’d be better off biting a lighter.

But joking aside, Lance also recognized that he must pierce through the dungeon and take down the ancestor before the sect controlled those guys to launch a war.

He must not give the ancestor a chance to turn the tables.

Lance couldn’t help but cast his gaze upon Audrey, who was already awake.

”Go find the underground entrance.”

”Me?”

Audrey felt as if she had overslept and missed something, or wasn’t fully awake.