Chapter 712: The Hero's Intelligence
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 712: The Hero's Intelligence
"Black Book."
Deep within his consciousness space, a heavy book with a pitch-black cover slowly drifted upward.
"Extract the record from the moment I stepped into this corridor."
Flip, flip.
As if stirred by an invisible breeze, the pages began to turn rapidly.
They settled on a blank page.
Text, so perfect it looked printed, began to surface rapidly across the pure white paper.
[Muen Campbell was escorted to his destination by the Demon General Govelt. It was an ordinary corridor, devoid of anything suspicious, yet this very normalcy piqued Muen Campbell’s suspicion. Oil lamps flickered with light as Muen Campbell stepped onto the straw-woven carpet. He cautiously observed the numbers on the doors lining the corridor, completely failing to notice that the moment he entered, an inconspicuous mirror on the wall rippled slightly, trapping him within the Mirror Space of the thirteenth floor.]
"A mirror."
Muen opened his eyes.
Not far from him, his reflection in an old, ordinary mirror—one that seemed to blend seamlessly into the wall—opened its eyes at the same time.
Muen reached out, his fingers tracing the eclectic patterns on the mirror's frame. Since he was investigating, there was no way he would have overlooked this mirror; no matter how ordinary it appeared, he still hadn't detected any abnormalities, neither then nor now.
"Hidden quite deep, isn't it..."
It seemed a specific method was required to pass through this mirror.
"But I don't have the time to go poking around for it."
Muen’s gaze sharpened, and the depths of his pupils suddenly turned profound.
It was as if a black sun were rising over a distant wilderness.
Sizzle.
Black Flame flickered.
Its core was deep and dark, but the pure white outer flame surrounding it was like a feathered robe woven by angels, appearing utterly divine.
It wasn't scorching or blistering, yet the moment it touched the glass, the old mirror began to vibrate violently. A massive hole was instantly burned through the smooth surface.
Simultaneously, the entire corridor shook fiercely. Dust and debris tumbled down as countless cracks spread across the walls and floor.
It appeared that this entire pocket of space was on the verge of collapse now that the mirror had been pierced by the Black Flame.
"Was I too rough?" Fortunately, he had already checked; there was no one else here but him.
Muen stepped directly into the void within the hole.
The space inside was suddenly plunged into darkness, all light blocked by the mirror's threshold. Muen looked up; in this dark void, only a dozen or so mirrors stood scattered about.
"One mirror per Mirror Space?"
Muen scanned the area, marveling at the sight.
To think they would use something so profound just to imprison people. It seemed the Demon Race wasn't quite as he remembered—they didn't just rely on crude, brute force.
A race that had endured since a thousand years ago was bound to have its own hidden depths.
"Let's see. According to the Black Book's records, I was held in Mirror Space No. 13, so the exit should be..."
Muen was about to search carefully for the mirror representing the exit, but before he could even begin his investigation, one of the mirrors rippled of its own accord, even trembling slightly.
Muen paused.
"Are you afraid I'll burn you all down?"
He shook his head, amused.
"How could I? I'm not a cruel person."
Of course, the more important reason was that Muen knew many female adventurers were still being held in these Mirror Spaces. He didn't know what kind of impact destroying the mirrors so crudely would have on them.
Therefore, he couldn't actually destroy all the Mirror Spaces just because it was convenient.
Regardless, he had made it out smoothly and quickly.
Muen felt a slight sense of relief.
He had to admit, that mirror was a truly powerful and eerie tool. If not for the Black Book and the Black Flame, he might have been trapped inside for a very long time. By the time he got out, he might have failed his objective entirely—it might have been too late for everything.
A Demon Race prison was certainly not something one could just slip out of by picking a lock.
"But then again, Maven and that other girl slipped away so fast. They must be carrying some incredible items themselves."
He wasn't the only one sent by the various factions with a sharp nose for opportunity.
In critical moments, those people were equally reliable.
He just hoped they would optimize their infiltration methods next time; otherwise, they were liable to give someone a heart attack.
Muen sighed as he stepped out of the mirror, cautiously observing his surroundings.
No corpses, no blood.
But his intuition told him that a battle had taken place here, one that had ended in a very short amount of time.
"Is this fire?"
Muen looked at the scorch marks on the ground.
"Doesn't look like Maven or Leita's work. Is there someone else?"
To use fire magic to destroy the evidence—the logic was sound, but he wondered what the point of destroying evidence was in the heart of the Demon Race's headquarters.
Speaking of which, aside from the traces of fire...
"...There seems to be a familiar scent."
Muen sniffed lightly, his brow furrowing.
He wasn't usually sensitive to scents, but thanks to his upbringing as a young noble master and his increasing contact with various beautiful girls, he had become more familiar with the unique fragrance each of them carried.
After all, if he didn't remember such things, playing "Guess Who" and getting it wrong could be a death sentence.
But this scent...
"How is that possible..."
Muen shook his head and gave a self-deprecating laugh. "I'm probably just too tense and hallucinating."
He pushed these useless thoughts to the back of his mind.
Muen took out Elizabeth and gave it a light tap.
Flickering arcs of electricity spread out, constructing a profound Alchemy Domain.
The domain expanded first, then contracted. Under Muen’s increasingly skilled manipulation, it shrank until it perfectly hugged his silhouette.
Presence concealment.
Then, Muen snapped his fingers.
The corridor was brightly lit by oil lamps, but in that instant, the space around Muen distorted visibly.
Then it quickly returned to normal.
In the span of a single breath, Muen’s figure completely vanished along with the distorted light.
"Now... time to get to work."
*
"It stinks..."
"Yeah, reeks."
"Why do we have to come back and guard this place?"
"Shut up. This is Lord Granrika's order. It's an honor to receive orders from Lord Granrika, you get me?"
"I get it... but it stinks."
"Ugh, get lost! Stop annoying me!"
A demon with a hideous face resembling a pig's head shoved his companion aside, stepping past him to lead the way into the forward area.
"Hmph, who doesn't want to be somewhere else? I want to go to the battlefield too. I heard that if you kill enough humans on the front lines, you get rewards from the Demon Generals! I heard the rewards include my favorite gems... Hmm?"
Clatter, clatter...
The sound of something rolling reached his ears. The pig-headed man looked down.
"A gem!"
At a nearby corner, a translucent gemstone had rolled out from nowhere, shimmering with a faint light in the dim environment.
The sudden appearance of a gem in a place like this was highly suspicious, but this low-level demon’s limited brain capacity clearly couldn't process that. He sprinted forward without the slightest caution, leaping into the depths of the shadows to snatch the gem into his palm.
"A gem... hehe, my pre—"
Zzt.
Silently, a faint sound rang out, like a fingernail scraping against metal.
The pig-headed man’s movements froze. Then, his head rolled onto the ground, just like the gem had moments before.
"Hey! Is—is something happening?"
The other pig-headed demon heard the noise and came waddling over, his large belly swaying.
"You idiot, did you pass out from the smell? I told you, I told you this place—"
Another flash of cold light.
This pig-headed demon didn't notice anything wrong either. He didn't even have time to blow the iron whistle hanging from his chest before he and the severed whistle... were separated from his head.
The light distorted slightly, revealing Muen’s figure.
"So ugly."
Muen frowned. "The appearance of these low-level demons gets more grotesque by the individual. Are they really the same race as those high-class demons?"
Despite being demons, they possessed a certain "beauty" born of crossbreeding man and beast; no one but these low-level demons could pull that off.
But now wasn't the time to worry about such things.
Muen picked up the lantern from the ground and flicked his finger. A spark of Black Flame jumped out, instantly incinerating the two pig-headed demons into nothingness.
"Their souls are too fragmented; I can't get any useful intelligence."
Muen sighed softly. After confirming he hadn't left any traces, he held the lantern aloft and followed the winding spiral staircase all the way down.
He seemed to be deep beneath the city now, as he had been walking downward for a long time. This place was remote and freezing, permeated by a constant, foul stench. Even the demons were unwilling to stay here for long, leaving only two low-level demons to stand guard.
However, Muen was getting closer and closer to his goal.
Muen took out a small piece of translucent crystal. At the center of the crystal, a faint light was pulsing.
This wasn't a precious gem, but a locator.
A one-way locator.
"This is it."
Muen held the lantern high.
The lantern's glow wasn't enough to illuminate the area, so more starlight descended.
But the scene these stars illuminated was far from beautiful.
It was... a mountain of corpses.
It looked as if countless bodies had been carelessly tossed down from above, gradually accumulating into a mountain.
Some had turned completely to bone, while on others... Muen could still see a hint of color on their pale skin.
"Is this the source of the stench?"
Expressionless, Muen stepped into the mountain of corpses.
Fortunately, perhaps because the other end of the locator hadn't been thrown in here very long ago, Muen didn't need to desecrate these already desecrated remains for long. He quickly found his target.
It was also a corpse.
A corpse that was already half-rotted.
Her face was unrecognizable; he could only tell it was a woman. The bandages wrapped tightly around her body seemed to tell a story of the horrific torture she had endured while alive.
But Muen suddenly reached out and tore the bandages open.
The locator's light was growing brighter.
Densely packed corpse beetles were startled, scurrying away in all directions.
Muen reached into a cavity in the corpse's abdomen and pulled out an object the size of a hen's egg, wrapped in oil paper.
She had apparently hidden this item inside her own wound to evade the demons' search.
"Thank you for your service."
Muen closed his eyes, mourning in silence.
The object was small, but it felt incredibly heavy in his hand.
Because the person before him was the Imperial military scout who had sent out that final message.
And what he held now was the true, final intelligence left behind by this... hero.
"You will be remembered forever."
Though he wasn't a believer in the Goddess, Muen still offered the Goddess's blessing to this remnant soul that had perished in a foreign land.
Only after doing this did Muen gently tear open the oil paper wrapping.
First was a black object the size of a button—the other end of the one-way locator. The fact that it was placed here meant this hero had long since anticipated her own sacrifice.
Then came several pages of handwritten intelligence. The handwriting was messy, clearly written in a great hurry.
"War... Souls... Reincarnation... Demon King?"
The words "Demon King" were clearly circled, with the word "Resurrection" written next to them.
Then, an arrow connected "Resurrection" back to the initial word, "War."
"Does this mean..."
Muen quickly drew an inference based on these markings:
"The purpose of the war isn't to conquer the Empire, but to resurrect the Demon King? And this resurrection process is related to 'Souls' or 'Reincarnation'?"
Muen’s pupils constricted.
If that were the case, the Demon Race's objective in this war was even more terrifying than he had imagined.
After all, the birth of a Demon King was far more dangerous than the Empire's defense lines being breached. That was the final boss of the original book's later stages; he didn't even know if that Demon King had any connection to the legendary Demon God.
But then again...
"This doesn't quite add up."
The Imperial army stationed at the border numbered only a hundred thousand at full strength. Even if they killed all hundred thousand and successfully collected their souls, could a hundred thousand fragmented souls really resurrect a Demon King?
One had to remember that back in the Lost Homeland, the Evil God's "rations" numbered in the millions. If a hundred thousand souls were enough, would the Demon Race have struggled in the Abyss for so long?
Furthermore, the army had the assistance of the Church's clerics. There was no way they would give the demons an easy chance to collect the souls of the fallen.
"There are still many mysteries, and this is just a theory."
Muen temporarily set aside these deductions and focused on the present.
For this hero to risk life and limb just to pass on the words "Demon King," it couldn't be based on vague information that only allowed for theories.
Muen continued to flip through the pages.
The rest were filled with increasingly chaotic handwriting; it was clear that by this point, she had been tortured to the point where she didn't even have the strength to hold a pen.
But he could vaguely see that she was repeatedly writing the words "Demon King," followed by constant question marks.
"What does this mean? Is there something about the 'Demon King' that she couldn't understand?"
Muen frowned and turned to the last item.
The last thing was a crumpled, battered photograph.
It was clear that it had been taken with magic in extreme haste; the lighting was chaotic and full of ghosting.
But when the photo was smoothed out, Muen could clearly identify the familiar, pretty face on it.
A dignified and beautiful face.
"How is this possible?"
Muen gasped in disbelief, his voice failing him:
"An?"