Chapter 106 – Messy Event [5]

Morgan Desdemona looked at the scene in front of her with quiet surprise, her eyebrow arching upward.

She was not in her own body. She was not foolish enough to come and steal something from her family’s burial with her actual body, where she could be seen and identified.

Instead, she had taken one of the maids belonging to a Tier Three Heir participating in the Royal Event, used her Soulblade’s Unique Manifestation — Shadow Swap — and exchanged her own shadow for the maid’s.

Being at Exalted rank while her target was only Imbued, she had been able to take full control of the maid’s body with minimal effort.

However, her Soulblade Manifestation carried two fatal disadvantages.

The first was that Morgan would be limited by the power and physical ability of whoever she was controlling. Added to that, fighting in a body that was not her own was suicidal.

The second was a disadvantage all Soulblade users shared: time limit. Her Manifestation would not last indefinitely.

And when the effect wore off, her victim would remember everything she had been through.

That was something that could compromise the entire operation.

Even so, Morgan had not hesitated. She took the risk knowing she had no other choice.

With that in mind, she had anticipated a difficult time getting inside the Burial of Hood. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Yet the sight in front of her was completely different from what she had expected.

The door — black, with crimson lightning crackling around it — of the Burial of Hood, a hidden realm where the dead of the Hood family were interred, was already open.

Morgan frowned, briefly wondering if it was a trap. But all those thoughts dissolved the moment her eyes dropped to the floor just beneath the door.

A message was etched there in blood. Not human blood, the blood of an untainted beast. Whoever left it had been careful about divination.

Morgan focused and read the words.

’Don’t get caught!’

She immediately thought of her younger brother, Dorian. Morgan smiled with quiet pride, then checked the anti-divination ring on her finger to confirm it was still active.

Then she planted her feet and leapt through the door of the Burial of Hood.

Her senses twisted upside down for a moment before she regained full consciousness; her feet sinking deep into something wet, sticky and heavy.

A deathly, acrid scent struck her nose like a punch, making her wince instinctively. She covered her nose with her forearm. It was useless.

She cursed and looked down. Her legs were submerged to the knee in blood. She shuddered, feeling the cold and familiar sensation of death creeping slowly up through her legs.

She took a deep breath.

’I need to be fast.’ Morgan thought urgently. If she didn’t die here by some mechanism, then soon enough the Head Maid — or even the King and Queen — would react to the Event.

By then, even as family, the consequences she would face would be far too heavy to bear.

’So strange.’ She mused.

None of this was what she had expected. She could only hope that it was Dorian that had improved on their original plan.

She bit her lip and finally cast her eyes around.

The realm was morbid. The ground was a river of blood — black and red mingled together — that moved as if it had a mind of its own.

The sky was made of Dugub — the Representative Beast of Vorn — those crimson-black flies spread across the heavens above, forming something akin to a face. A face that made Morgan feel her skull was being cracked open the longer she tried to look at it.

She gave up, apprehension rising in her chest, and turned her full attention forward.

There, in an uncountable succession, stood gigantic tombstones.

All of them black with crimson stripes forming unique patterns. None of them emitted the same feeling. The materials they were made of were clearly different from one another. Their heights varied too.

The taller the tombstone, the more suppression Morgan felt simply trying to look at it.

Her very soul would tighten as if a fist were closing around it, and death would begin to consume her if she held her gaze too long on certain ones.

They were terrifying.

These were the remnant Aspect Essences of the dead ancestors of Hood.

On each tombstone was a name and a cause of death. And at the foot of each one...an item.

The items differed between every tombstone. Some were weapons. Others were things as simple as musical instruments or clothes.

That was what Morgan needed. Not the full body, that was impossible anyway. She only needed the Linked Artifact.

Only that, and she could summon her dead grandfather as a Shadow Clone. The Linked Artifact held, after all, a fragment of the soul of the deceased.

Moving urgently, she pushed through the blood water reaching her knees, heading toward one tombstone — the most recent, positioned at the very front — where a name was etched:

Mort Kadavre Hood — 32nd King of Hood; Cause of Death: Killed by *******

Morgan stood before it. There was a certain pressure, but not to the point of soul-crushing. She lowered her head and looked at the Linked Artifact.

It was a picture.

A young Dantes with an annoyed expression. Sefira with a wide smile. Seraphim smiling warmly. Behind the three stood Morenna and a handsome middle-aged man with full black beard, a mirthful expression.

They looked exactly like a perfect family. Yet Morgan knew well how that family had ended up.

She clicked her tongue in concealed frustration, then stretched her hand toward it.

She grasped it, and her hand froze instantly. A loud, furious voice boomed inside her head.

’Who are you?! How dare you touch my Fragmented Soul!’

Morgan dropped to one knee immediately, blood pouring from her eyes, her nose and her ears simultaneously. She cursed, not having expected that even the residual essence of a long-dead king would carry such awareness.

But she had to be fast.

Around her, the realm was growing restless. The other tombstones were beginning to react.

She was running out of time.

’I SAID WHO—!’

’I am your granddaughter!’ Morgan shouted back in her mind, then coughed blood. ’I am the firstborn of your daughter Sefira! I need you! And I need you to accept me quickly so I can escape! I cannot be caught by the Hood! I cannot!’

’Sefira? Sefira, my daughter? LIES!’ He bellowed. ’You don’t carry her blood! Who—!’

’My shadow! Look at my shadow!!’ She shrieked, losing even more blood, her right hand slowly turning black from the corrosive effect of the past King’s residual Aspect.

If it continued at this rate, she would lose the entire arm.

Morgan cursed again.

But it seemed the past King did look. He paused, seeing how the shadow differed from the body it belonged to.

And even in death, Mort could pierce through Morgan’s shadow and access her true body.

That realisation caused her further harm as it accelerated the countdown on her Soulblade Manifestation significantly.

It was bad. Morgan was growing frantic, fear and apprehension dragging at her.

But then...

’That is true!’ Mort exclaimed, having confirmed that Morgan was indeed his granddaughter. The realisation made him stop hurting her instinctively.

’Why are—!’

’No time for questions!’ She screamed, gripped the picture tightly — she couldn’t store it because of its unique properties — and used the last of her strength to run.

In an instant, she was outside the Burial of Hood.

She looked around. Still no one. She kept moving, not toward the outside as anyone would expect, but toward the room she had been granted inside the Hood’s house, a privilege of her position as the first grandchild of the family.

’Where are you going?!’ Mort exclaimed again.

Morgan didn’t answer. She ran for her life, the anti-divination ring masking her presence, and disappeared.

Shortly after Morgan vanished, a guard appeared, holding the headless body of Emily Stone and her severed head.

He looked at the still-open door of the Burial of Hood. He smiled, set the body and head down directly in front of it, and used his essence to direct Emily’s blood across the floor in a spreading pool.

Then he raised his sword and drove it through his own heart, detonating his essence from within.

But just before the action completed, the numerous black threads around his head disappeared — as if they had never existed — and the man regained consciousness for one brief, terrible moment, right as his heart exploded.

"W-What..."

He barely managed the words before dropping dead beside Emily’s corpse, his heart destroyed.

In the same fashion, the three other guards left in front of the door of the Hall of Welcomes died identically — witnessed only by Sarah, the sole person still conscious among the scattered maids and butlers of the Heirs.

Her blue eyes were wide with shock and horror.

’Praise the Queen.’ She thought, thinking of Cassius and the fact that he had planned all of this.

She shuddered, then reached down, picked up a fallen weapon from one of the dead guards, and struck herself hard in the head with it.

She lost consciousness immediately, not wanting to be the only suspicious person awake when she arrived.

Yes. Her.

The Head Maid.

Because now that the guards who had been under her were dead...

"Hm?" Persephone, who had been tidying Cassius’s perpetually messy room, paused. Her head snapped toward the direction of the Hall of Welcomes.

...the Head Maid was now aware that something had happened.

—End of Chapter 106—