Volume 2, Chapter 29 – Crumbling Walls

Gently shaking her head, Anastasia answered in a serious tone.

“No suspicious situations were encountered; everything was normal. After seeing your magic, Your Highness, the people in the sanctuary are in much better spirits. They are even calling you a Holy Son and a Divine Messenger.”

Holy Son is understandable, but Divine Messenger is a bit too much. My wings are just things I can create casually.

Fia coughed twice.

“Ahem, let’s put that aside for now. I encountered something strange.”

As she spoke, Fia took out four diamond-shaped flying knives with a silver sheen from her storage backpack.

Anastasia frowned.

“These are…?”

“These are things that flew at me from a blind spot while I was cleansing the chaos. At first, I thought someone was hiding in the streets and ambushing me. So, whenever a flying knife appeared after that, I would use a large-scale firestorm—the Red Lotus of Calamity—to sweep the area. However, the ambushes continued. There were a total of four ambushes throughout the day. If there was an attacker, he should have been purified by the fire long ago. He wouldn’t have been able to ambush me repeatedly, unless he was attacking from over two hundred yards away. But that doesn’t match the attack strength of the flying knives. An ordinary flying knife can’t fly that far.”

“Were you injured?!”

“Of course not. An attack of this level can’t hurt me.” Fia smiled wryly and spread her hands, gesturing for Anastasia not to get anxious. “Besides the attack strength being as weak as a mosquito, don’t you think something is very odd, Anastasia?”

“Mmm,” with Fia’s reminder, Anastasia raised her eyebrows. “Your Highness means that even after you cleared the area with a large-scale fire, the ambushes still occurred, so there must have been more than one attacker?”

Fia gently shook her head.

“I suspect that the attacker is not a person but chaos. Someone is controlling the chaos to attack me. Just like how the chaos ambushed our convoy from underground before we entered the city, chaos itself doesn’t have that kind of intelligence. Anastasia, did you not notice that the chaos that attacked the ordinary soldiers was only in the first wave? All the chaos that came after that was concentrated on attacking Estelle and Norton. Unless someone is controlling this chaos, which only has instincts, I can’t think of a second possibility.”

Lowering her head, Anastasia fell into thought.

“I’m not sure about Norton’s side, but Miss Estelle, who was beside me at the time, was indeed targeted by a large amount of chaos. The chaos was very focused. It would bypass the soldiers and go straight for Miss Estelle.”

A creature that only has instincts suddenly having a purpose, combined with the Despair Demon General having demonstrated the ability to control chaos, the reason was already very obvious.

Even Liti sensed that something was wrong.

“But if someone is controlling the chaos, who would be the suspect? The person not only ambushed sister but also targeted that golden-haired loser. If that’s all, we could suspect that annoying guy Norton. But if even Norton was attacked, then there are no suspects left, are there? Or is it possible that Norton being targeted by the chaos was something he deliberately created to mislead us?”

“That’s unlikely,” Fia denied. “When I saw Norton being surrounded by chaos, he already had multiple injuries. If I had been a little late, he would have died. There’s no need to risk one’s life just to mislead others. To bet on me saving him would be too naive and risky.”

“If the attack during the day had been a little stronger, I would have considered the attacker to be a doppelganger of the Despair Demon General. But the flying knives that flew at me were only at the First-Tier level. That’s impossible for the Despair Demon General’s doing. So I don’t have a suspect for now. But one thing is for certain: the other party dislikes me very much and doesn’t want me to continue cleansing the chaos.”

By the end of her sentence, a cold look had appeared on Fia’s exquisite, doll-like face. The more anxious the other party was, the more it meant she had hit a nerve. She had to take this opportunity to speed up the cleansing of the chaos to gain an advantage.

Fia’s words made Anastasia and Liti fall silent. The three of them walked a considerable distance before Anastasia finally broke the silence.

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“Could it be the same person who assassinated Miss Estelle? The evasive nature fits perfectly. Your Highness also mentioned this morning that the chaos did not enter the sanctuary because of the [Tears of Life], but because the Despair Demon General was controlling them not to. And if chaos can actually sneak into the sanctuary, it makes sense that they would have almost assassinated Miss Estelle. Hiss…”

Halfway through her sentence, Anastasia suddenly gasped, and her face became grim.

“Miss Estelle joked with me in the first half of the night that the reason the person who assassinated her only tortured her and didn’t kill her was that they wanted Miss Estelle to leave and didn’t want her to stay in Oro City. This aligns with what you just said, Your Highness, about the attacker ambushing you and not wanting you to continue. And if we add the fact that the chaos was concentrated on attacking Miss Estelle and Norton, does that mean that the person controlling the chaos knows Miss Estelle and Norton, and that’s why they only tried to drive Miss Estelle away instead of killing her directly?”

“Oh.”

I have to say, Anastasia’s idea was quite far-fetched. The chaos attacking Estelle and Norton might have just been because Estelle and Norton were the leaders. As for chaos sneaking into the sanctuary and assassinating Estelle without anyone knowing, that was an even more absurd notion.

However, if she were to start with the premise that “the person controlling the chaos knows Estelle and doesn’t want her to stay in Oro City,” all the mysteries would be solved. Even the clue about Noreen that Estelle had learned from the soldiers and commoners last night would make perfect sense.

For example, if everything was Noreen’s doing, the matter would become simple.

Noreen didn’t want Estelle to approach Oro City, so she used chaos to block the convoy. This would explain why the chaos in the initial attack only focused on the horses and did not kill the soldiers in one blow. Because Noreen didn’t want to cause casualties. As long as the horses died and the soldiers were injured, the convoy would not be able to enter Oro City. As for concentrating the attacks on Estelle and Norton, that was a way of using brute force to try and make Estelle retreat out of fear.

However, Noreen had misjudged her strength. She had not expected that she would be able to heal the injured horses and soldiers after eliminating the ambushing chaos. And she had even eliminated the chaos all the way from the city gate to the sanctuary with her flames. In that case, in order to prevent Estelle from staying in the city, Noreen could only choose to assassinate her. She would wait until Estelle was separated from everyone else and, by making Estelle feel pain, make her timid and force her to flee the city.

The flying knife that flew at her during the day could also be attributed to Noreen. Her continued advance would increase Estelle’s confidence and make Estelle choose to stay in Oro City. For that reason, Noreen would have wanted to attack her.

Finally, Noreen appearing in the sanctuary and being seen by many people would corroborate the view that Noreen was still alive.

Of course, there were a few logical flaws in this deduction that could not be ignored. First, if Noreen were alive, why wouldn’t she have come to find Estelle? Second, if she didn’t want Estelle to stay in Oro City, Noreen could have just talked to Estelle in person. There was no need to go through all the trouble of ambushing and assassinating. Finally, there was no clue as to what Noreen’s reason was for not wanting Estelle to stay in Oro City.

In the end, the fact that Noreen not only survived the disaster but also gained the ability to control chaos was, in itself, something unbelievable.

Seeing Fia’s pensive expression, Anastasia asked softly.

“Your Highness, do you have a clue?”

“No… it can’t be called a clue yet.”

There was too little she knew and too many contradictions. It couldn’t even be called a clue; it was just a far-fetched guess.

Fia put the things she couldn’t understand to the back of her mind. She let out a long breath and looked up at the front.

While they were talking, the three of them had unconsciously arrived near the castle. The chaos in the lake had been burned away by Fia, and now all that was left was rubble and a deep, sunken crater. The black castle stood abruptly in the center of the crater. Illuminated by the reddish-orange sunset, it was not beautiful at all, but exceptionally eerie. A sense of death and desolation washed over them.

“This is the castle… Sister, have you already cleansed the chaos inside?”

With her eyes slightly narrowed, Liti looked at the castle in the distance and tilted her head.

“Mm. Because I wanted to see if there were any living people inside, I took the opportunity to cleanse it during the day.” After nodding gently to Liti, Fia also looked at the castle. “I didn’t even find a single corpse. The inside of the castle is a mess. It looks like it was razed by a shockwave. There are cracks everywhere on the ceiling, and a part of the walls have collapsed. However, the outside of the castle is completely intact. It’s quite bizarre.”

As if she were evaluating something, Anastasia’s expression was grave as she observed her surroundings.

“The crater and the surrounding environment here are consistent with the refugees’ descriptions. An explosion occurred around the castle. The scale… If the chaos was not a secondary disaster caused by a magic spell, the magic that appeared here should be at a quasi-Seventh-Tier level. If chaos was a product of the explosion, then this magic would be powerful enough to be ranked as Eighth-Tier—at least a quasi-Eighth-Tier. For an Oro territory to be hit by a magic spell of a near-forbidden-spell level, when a place like Aurora City should have been the target, the Darkborn are as despicable as ever.”

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“Sister, can we go in and take a look?”

“We can, but you have to be careful not to leave my side. Although I have cleansed the chaos in the castle, no one knows if there will be other things.”

For example, the Despair Demon General.

Thinking this, Fia used [Wind of Exploration] and [Mana Vision] to scan her surroundings. She didn’t find anything unusual—she didn’t find anything unusual, but she did find a figure approaching them from behind.

It was Estelle, who was rushing over from behind them.

Fia canceled the heat-sensing vision of [Wind of Exploration]. Estelle, with her golden hair fluttering with her dark red dress, immediately appeared in Fia’s vision. Because she had left the sanctuary on a whim, Estelle had no soldiers following her.

In just a moment, Estelle was in Fia’s group of three.

“Hah—hah—why did you leave so far without saying anything? If I hadn’t heard those annoying small nobles say you were heading this way, I would have thought you were caught by chaos.”

Estelle was panting, and the look on her face as she glared at them with her eyes widened was a bit playful, which made Fia find it amusing.

“You were worried that we would leave you with the mess?”

“I wouldn’t think so badly of you. Because you wouldn’t do that.” Facing Fia’s teasing, Estelle confidently snorted. “The Dofilia I know is a responsible noble who will see things through to the end. Even if she lost her memory, that quality would not change.”

For some reason, Liti made a “glugluglu” sound, as if she was angry. Fia pretended not to hear it.

“In any case, I’m relieved to see that you’re all safe and sound. Next time you go for a walk, at least say hello to me. You had me worried for nothing.”

Continuing the conversation on her own, Estelle wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. She subconsciously looked up, and her gaze, following the direction Fia’s group had been looking, fell upon the black castle. Slowly, the relaxed expression on Estelle’s face froze. She pursed her lips and said nothing.

Unlike the last time she had come to the castle with Fia in the night, the castle now, illuminated by the sunset, looked exceptionally desolate. Without the chaos that had formed a lake, the yellowish-brown crater and the crumbling walls around it only added to the bleak atmosphere. This disaster had destroyed almost everything Estelle held dear. Compared to the bustling and vibrant castle from a week ago, the current crooked-topped, lifeless building only made one feel a sense of unfamiliarity and desolation.

After a moment of silence, all that was left in Estelle’s voice was bitterness.

“Has the castle been cleansed?”

“Mm. There is no chaos inside anymore. We can go in and take a look.”

“Let’s go take a look.”

Taking a deep breath, Estelle took the lead, walking down the gentle slope into the deep crater, stepping on the yellowish-brown earth as she walked towards the castle.

All the way, no one spoke. Fia’s group of three simply followed Estelle in silence.

Although the buildings around the castle had been destroyed, Estelle still accurately found the castle’s main entrance. She stopped in front of the huge five-meter-high double doors.

The city gate had not been closed; one side was still open.

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“Did Norton make this when he broke out with me…”

Estelle’s fingers traced the impact marks on the black doors, and she murmured in a low voice. One could tell that the doors were originally engraved with impressive reliefs, but due to the chaos’s corrosion, they were now covered in large and small dents and were exceptionally ugly.

Estelle turned to look at Fia, her expression filled with a sense of helplessness and desolation.

“Fia, can I go inside and take a look?”

“This is…” Fia was about to say “your home,” but looking at Estelle’s pale face, she could only change her words. “It’s fine.”

“Thank you.”

With a forced smile, Estelle entered the dark, lightless castle. Fia, who was following behind, used an appropriately bright [Illumination] spell to light up the room. A great hall with a ceiling of seven to eight meters appeared before them. From the picture frames left on the walls, and the spiral staircase and corridors around it, one could tell that this was the hall used to direct guests.

“The portraits of my father and grandfather are gone… This is where I beat up that noble who insulted me and realized that as long as I became stronger, no one could criticize me.”

Estelle’s voice sounded as if it were coming from a distant past.

“Where were you, Miss Estelle, before the disaster happened?”

“In the main hall. Follow me.”

With a gentle wave of her hand, Estelle walked straight into a corridor on the side of the great hall.

Again, the procession was silent. The only thing they could hear was the heavy sound of their footsteps.

As far as the eye could see, there were only ruins and broken bricks. And because chaos had corroded a large amount of tables, chairs, and wooden racks, the atmosphere of life had completely disappeared. The entire castle felt as if it had been abandoned for a long time.

“The training grounds… where my sister Noreen trained me.” Biting her lips lightly, Estelle turned around. “Fia, you’ve been to the castle. I want to ask, did you see any corpses here?”

“Not a single one.”

Fia, who was following behind Estelle, answered. It was very out of place at the moment, but Fia still wanted to say that even though Estelle said she didn’t have a habit of using perfume, Fia could still smell a familiar perfume scent on Estelle, and the scent was much stronger today than before.

“Is that so?”

Estelle’s voice showed no signs of emotion. She simply continued to walk forward, until they reached a large hall with a beautiful door on the third floor of the castle.

The once-huge doors had been violently torn down and were now lying on the ground. The walls and ceiling were full of cracks, to the point where one would wonder if the ceiling would collapse if they walked inside. They could only guess at the hall’s past glory from the ruins scattered on the ground.

“This is the main hall, where my father and others would discuss important matters—ugh.”

At this, Estelle seemed to have run out of strength. Her legs went weak. If she hadn’t managed to place her hand on the wall, she would have fallen to the ground.

“Estelle?”

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Fia quickly went forward to support Estelle. The hand that was free was clutched at her chest. Her usually lively face was now terrifyingly pale and lifeless. She forced a smile.

“It’s nothing. I just feel a little unwell.”

“How about we stop here? I’ve already confirmed that Count Oro and Noreen are not inside. Let’s call it a day.”

“No… It’s not that I don’t trust you, Fia, but I have to see for myself. This is… this is my responsibility.”

Taking a deep breath, Estelle, after steadying herself, gently pushed Fia away. She hobbled into the main hall—a dusty smell, and the stench of something rotting, filled her nose. However, Estelle had no time to frown at it. She slowly and carefully stepped over the broken stones and remnants of decorations scattered on the ground, her gaze meticulously sweeping through the collapsed stone pillars.

From Fia’s observation, the main hall was the most heavily damaged area in the entire castle. Other places seemed to have only been affected by the periphery. In other words, the center of the explosion was very likely in the main hall.

Anastasia felt the same way.

“It seems this is the center of the explosion. What happened here at the time?”

“I don’t know…”

As if she was recalling something, Estelle stopped in a daze. A hint of a tremble was added to her voice. She couldn’t even maintain her standing posture and had to collapse onto a collapsed stone pillar beside her. She felt as if a giant stone was pressing on her chest, and her breathing became heavy and short. With her left hand clutching her chest, she bent over and explained with difficulty.

“At that time, here… here were only my father and my sister Noreen… They… they were discussing the transfer of the Count’s inheritance… I… I happened to be passing by and was listening in from the door…”

“What’s wrong with you?”

Fia and Liti wanted to go forward, but Anastasia stopped Fia, gently shaking her head.

Estelle continued to explain with great difficulty. She didn’t seem to have heard Fia’s call. She just kept on talking to herself.

“My father and sister were arguing about something… Then… then my sister—mmh… ugh… ughhhhh!!”

Her voice became increasingly difficult to understand. By the end, it had become a painful, inarticulate scream. Estelle’s hands were clenched tightly over her chest, her facial features twisted together, and her body, out of her control, tilted and fell to the ground covered in broken stones.

“Hey!”

Fia and Anastasia immediately rushed forward. Anastasia straightened Estelle’s body. Fia quickly checked Estelle’s breathing.

She’s still breathing.

But her face had completely lost its color. Her expression was still one of extreme pain. Her hands, which were clutching her chest, had even torn her dress, leaving streaks of red on her skin.

“She fainted. Miss Estelle must have seen something in the main hall at that time. That must be the beginning of everything.”

“Mm. Let’s go back first.”

Nodding with a serious expression, Fia had Anastasia hold Estelle. She then took the worried Liti and, after taking a deep look at the main hall behind them, flew back to the sanctuary.