Eternal Thief

Chapter 1545: Secret hidden under the Black Hermit Castle (1)

The moment the Dread Duchess stepped into the passage, the air changed as it thickened. Its process was slow at first and then crushing, like invisible mud dragging at her breath.

At that moment, a stench rolled out of the dark ahead of her, not merely foul, but wrong as it was the smell of death that had forgotten to die. Her nose twitched beneath the veil, a slight but visible frown creasing her expression.

”It’s the corruption of Death Qi, and it’s already corrupted to this degree?” She muttered, her tone edged with disdain and disgust.

The deeper she descended, the heavier it became, and the walls wept with black condensation, and the light of her abyssal Qi pushed back a mist so dense it felt alive.

At that moment, a memory pressed into her mind as her frown deepened, ’It’s the same prickling crawl I felt from that imposter’s body when he chose suicide over interrogation...’

She could feel that same creeping chill now slither through her spine, and her expression grew colder as she could imagine something she didn’t want to.

”You worm... what were you feeding down here?”

After several minutes of descent, the passage widened sharply and then came to a sudden halt.

The Duchess stepped out into a cavern that felt like the hollowed stomach of a beast, and her eyes narrowed when she saw bones carpeted the ground in a grotesque mosaic.

Those old bones were crushed to powder, newer ones were still sticky with rot, and a few were so fresh that the marrow glistened.

Demons, devils, abyssal beasts...it didn’t matter; they all shared one thing, and that was every corpse had been sucked dry, drained of Qi, blood, spirit...everything!

A cemetery of victims who had died horribly, steeped in resentment thick enough to stain the air with a suffocating, metallic ache. Even the Duchess felt it, and her aura flared with cold fury.

”That bastard dared to do this in my kingdom?!” Her voice cracked like a whip through the chamber, ”That treacherous filths have opened their guts to corruption!”

She stepped forward, boots crunching over brittle ribs, and then she saw in the center of the carnage, a crimson platform stood like a heartbeat frozen mid-throb.

Upon it rested an altar, dark stone drenched in dried blood, and atop the altar was an idol!

The moment the Dread Duchess saw it, she vanished in a blink and reappeared directly before it. Her eyes widened and then hardened with raw hatred.

The idol was a monstrous thing. A burly humanoid form, four demonic wings unfurled behind it like rotting banners. Its face was hideous with one massive, lidless eyeball staring emptily ahead.

From its forehead rose a single horn, twisting and branching outward like the trunk of a dead tree, each branch ending in jagged thorns that dripped an aura of decay. The statue radiated a hunger that seemed to consume everything.

”It can’t be...” The Duchess’s voice dropped to a venomous whisper, and her hands curled into fists as fury warred with disbelief.

”This wretched idol... the Devourer of Dead...” Her eyes burned with raw rage.

”Undead Draugr!” She spat the name like poison as she seemed to have recognized the statue, and she was more than hostile against it.

”The statue of Undead Draugr with an offering altar, and that bastard said, ’Heretic Star’ and mentioned the ’Inverted Dawn’... there is no doubt about it!

”It’s that Cult of Undying Star! But how is that possible!? They were annihilated by the Evernight Fiend King thousands of years ago, and only some low-level dregs managed to escape.

”But those weaklings shouldn’t be able to build all of this and then almost turn the Black Hermit City into the epicenter of a sacrifice ritual site. But why would that lunatic cult manage to crawl into my domain of all places?!”

The cavern trembled around her as her killing intent erupted, sharp enough to slice the lingering miasma. She knew how disgustingly the Cult of Undying Star operates, and they treat lives like livestock and have no qualms in sacrificing anything as long as it meets their creepy goals.

The Cult of Undying Star wreaked havoc a few thousand years ago, and it grew to such an extent that even the Evernight Kings of the Evernight Council had to step out of their seclusion to exterminate it, especially their Cult Master, who managed to wound the Evernight Fiend King despite only being a Half-Abyssal King!

Nonetheless, the Cult of Undying Star perished. However, the horrors it left were still like wounds on the Abyssal Plains’ history, and every Abyssal Being hates them to the extreme, especially those who were victims of the tragedy brought by the Cult of Undying Star.

However, now that the supposedly destroyed Cult of Undying Star had resurfaced again, and the depths of their abilities had surpassed everything the Dread Duchess and probably everyone in the Abyssal Plains believed, she knew a massive storm was coming.

But what made her even more uneasy was the fact that the Cult of Undying Star chose her Kingdom to perform this ghastly ritual, or whatever they called it, and it almost seemed to succeed in their schemes.

At that moment, Dread Duchess was again grateful towards the Moonless Wandering King and Nomad despite her doubts, as she still thinks that it was the Moonless Wandering King who helped her avoid a calamity, and Nomad took all the risks.

Dread Duchess’s eyes were filled with killing intent and hatred, ’I need to gather the King Circle and have them inspect this place as soon as possible. We can’t let the Cult of Undying Star rise again and must stop them in whatever they are scheming because their target this time seems to be the Evernight Council!

’Furthermore, the ancient remnant that Nomad had unsealed before it vanished, I need to verify it, and I have a feeling that whatever the Cult of Undying Star was planning, it might be related to that ancient remnant, and if it’s gone, their schemes would fall apart before they even begin!’

Dread Duchess suddenly felt that having Nomad wreak havoc in the Black Hermit City wasn’t so bad as she had thought because it helped her tremendously, and she felt slightly guilty about treating him coldly earlier.

But before she could spring into action, she needed to do something even more critical as she looked at the idol of Undead Draugr.

With killing intent, she lifted one hand over the altar, and abyssal Qi coiled around her like an executioner’s blade, dense enough to crush stone.

”Begone filth!”