Chương 132: The Overlord of Crime (16)

Simon and Duchar looked upon their combined work with contentment. A week had passed since Bert's demise, during which Simon mostly spent time working on the containment device with the Honorius family while Belzemine handled his criminal empire in Valne. What their Crown of the Minotaur lacked in splendor, it more than made up in brutal charm. A diadem of rune-carved steel with a pair of silvery bull horns, it radiated miasma and power.

A crystal slot was left empty in its center, right where the metal would touch the center of the wearer's forehead. The building process helped distract him from the frustrating lack of progress on Anna's disappearance. Simon had tasked all of his agents to look for her, from Shabram to his criminal contacts. None could find her. She had simply vanished out of thin air, leaving her distraught father to promise his vast rewards to anyone capable of locating her. So far, no one managed to follow up on it.

Where did Verney take her?

"This seems like a success," Duchar said, stroking his beard.

"The crown should draw this Minotaur's seal into itself and let Your Majesty use it for the ritual safely enough. However, we cannot ascertain what will happen to this Muse once the archfiend's crystal is drawn out of her. The seal only applies to the Zodiac Fiend, not its current host."

"Her potential escape is a risk I have already considered and prepared for," Simon reassured him.

"Still, I suspect she will be out of commission for some time. The Muse has been bound to it for over three centuries. A sudden separation is bound to induce a shock of some kind."

"But will it lead to death or to temporary incapacitation followed by recovery?" Duchar pointed out.

"A dryad will not die so long as her manatree survives, and she is unlikely to welcome our attempt to use the crystal with grace."

"Then we must run the ritual as soon as we extract the crystal, without wasting any time." Simon then sensed Belzemine telepathically reaching out to him, and opened his mind to her,"Yes?"

"The one called Velvet just visited me," Belzemine replied,"She informed me that a Weaver meeting is due tomorrow, and that the 'time to settle our accounts has come.'" Simon smirked in anticipation.

"Did she give you the meeting's location?"

"Yes. A castle in Lore." At long last, those betrayers' reckoning was finally at hand. Simon would first destroy them, and then he would complete the Dark Visionary ritual.

"It is time," Simon informed Duchar.

"Seize the fetch for Hector, issue the orders, and regroup at our meeting point in Magvolia. Keep an eye on Cassandra as well to ensure the Minotaur cannot tempt her." Duchar nodded obediently, and with a little hint of pleasure.

"It will be done, Your Majesty. I confess I am rather curious to see how my son will interact with the fetch."

"Me too. This will be the opportunity to confirm whether or not they share a single mind or are all independent." Simon turned his focus to another branded ally of his waiting elsewhere in Telluria.

"Eole?" She immediately knew why he had contacted her.

"Is it time to wipe them out?"

"Yes. I'll send you the location soon." He could almost taste her anticipation on her end.

"Did they tell Vouivre yet?"

"One of the fetches did." Then it was Verney's doing.

"I don't think she believed it."

"Good," Simon replied, having anticipated the doublecross and laid the groundwork accordingly.

"Then let's proceed." Everything was going as he had foreseen. After paying a brief visit to Granny Radhag to recover his secret weapon and having Belzemine summon him back to Valne, Simon had her use one of Duchar's teleportation gems to regroup with the Honorius family. They would have only a very short window of time to use the Attic to reach Magvolia before it all went crashing down. Simon then met up with Velvet and Silk at the butcher's shop.

The fetch guarding the front counter was missing, with the two sisters waiting in its place next to a pile of snow and wood.

"Anxious?" Velvet mused upon seeing Simon, her hand playing with a knife. The purge had already begun.

"No," Simon replied confidently." Eager."

"Do not lower your guard," Silk said sternly.

"He and his allies won't go down without a fight. He has the Scales, and Chrom Cruak."

"Borsh and Granny are with us, as is Vouivre," Simon countered as he put on his Overlord outfit, shrouded it behind a Nightveil, and cast all of his buffs.

"We're as well prepared as we can be."

"Rightly so," Velvet said as they guided him into the Attic.

"Let's kill that demon." The sisters both put on the Assassin Class outfit, a skin-tight black garb with a face mask covering their mouths, boots, and gloves, and a fan-shaped red collar standing upright on the back of their necks and opening in the front. Silk wielded a curved Fablan saber and her grimoire, while her sister settled on black daggers. The trio walked up into the Weavers' meeting room, in the shadow of the spider statue.

None of the organization's other leaders were present yet, with one exception: Lord Albert's gutted body was bleeding onto the table, his entrails spilling onto the ground. The party started without us, Simon thought as he heard the Attic's door behind his group slamming shut on its own, as he expected it to. He spotted two other branded forms stepping out of the shadows. Here are my thralls.

"Like lambs to the slaughter," Borsh grumbled.

"Oh, is it house cleaning day already?" Granny asked nonchalantly upon spotting Albert's corpse.

"Yes, it is," Verney's voice echoed out of the darkness.

"A long-overdue dusting." A wave of miasma coursed through the room and transformed it. Space itself twisted and distorted around Simon's group. The shadows themselves seemed to recede, and though there was no light, the very room around them appeared to expand and become more visible.

An endless ground covered in dizzying, spiraling, maddening rugs stretched as far as the eye could see under a sky of floating doors, fiery lamps providing a measure of light, and bizarre surrealist paintings representing twisted landscapes. Defaced statues of humans, mannequins, and dolls appeared across the dark horizon without reason or purpose, like a strange monument parodying humanity.

More importantly, music boxes placed all across that strange place intoned a vicious music that sharply constrained Simon's magic. The song was exactly the same as the one Bert used against him in Muse, and he had the sharp intuition it crippled Remedia during her last battle too. Valravn the Uncanny Twins trapped you in his Abyssal Domain! All teleportation effects are negated! Illusions and lies can no longer be identified, divinations are impaired, and any spell or effect requiring a willing target will fail!

Magic sharply debuffed! The responsible party appeared a dozen or so meters away from Simon's group, no longer bothering with his human appearance. Verney's clothes remained mostly unchanged in his true form, except for the fact that they seemed to merge with the ambient shadows. A hood now covered his faceless visage, which had lost any and all features, and his skin was now a pallid, sickly kind of white.

It was so pale, so nearly translucent, that Simon could see his own reflection when he looked at it, and sinister whispers echoed with each of his steps. The Twins Zodiac Fiend seemed disappointingly human to Simon at first, but the longer he watched him move, the more unnerved he felt. The body proportions were slightly off, with the body being long and thin, while the limbs were a bit too thick, the arms a little too long, and the fingers too delicate.

Simon could have sworn Verney subtly changed size each time he blinked, losing or gaining inches in one place or another. The outline of faces appeared on his skin like fleeting shadows. This demon's horror was subtler than its monstrous kindred. His form looked just human enough to seem reassuring at a distance, only to further unnerve up close. He just felt wrong. Renal walked up behind him, carrying a pair of scales encrusted with Exodeos' crystal, which didn't surprise Simon all that much.

He had an inkling that the Ninja was a closet cultist ever since he had defended the Cocagne facility. Only Voltobauta is missing, as expected, Simon noted. The Necromancer had already sent his resignation letter after helping the White Unicorn cross the Dragonsea. And Albert's purging spares me the need of hunting him down. Excellent.

"Welcome to my humble abode, Your Majesty," Verney said, his voice a haunting whisper whose tonality changed with each word, as if multiple voices constantly switched as he completed his sentence. It came from everywhere and nowhere all at once in spite of his absence of a mouth.

"Are you loving the accommodations?"

"I see you prepared a fitting welcome," Simon replied, glancing at the music boxes.

"So you were the one who warned Bert."

"He died for our cause, and taught us much." The demon chuckled darkly, his laughter more like a rattle in the wind than a human noise.

"As if we didn't both know it would end this way. You joined this organization to destroy me from the start, didn't you?"

"Where's Chrom Cruak?" Velvet asked, her voice oozing hatred.

"He wanted no part in this, the old geezer?"

"You should ask him," Verney replied, pointing at Simon with a finger that subtly lengthened as he spoke.

"Chrom hasn't answered my summons ever since he walked into the Poison Gardens."

"Don't you know?" Simon smiled behind his helmet. This looks like a Plan C situation…

"All that adventurers find in haunted basements is a quick and unexpected demise."

"It is of no consequence." Verney rubbed his fingers against a strand of black hair flowing out from beneath his hood, and that which wasn't there a second ago.

"I do not know what trap you laid in that dungeon, but we will simply find another bearer for the Ram… and your trick led us to the true prize either way." Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Simon summoned his morning star from his Inventory, his blood boiling in his veins.

"Where is she? If you killed her, I swear to the Dark–""She's quite safe, I assure you." Verney raised his hand.

"Let's draw the line in the sand first, before we come to blows." He snapped his finger, the noise echoing across the Abyssal Domain. Simon sensed his vile power straining against the connections he shared with his thralls, like a scissor closing down on a string. Valravn's Disloyalty shattered your Devil Bran– Destruction negated by Deceitful Title. The scissors shattered helplessly, much to Simon's amusement and Verney's obvious frustration.

"Oh?" the demon asked in genuine annoyance.

"That is a first."

"Good try," Simon replied. Plan D situation. Excellent.

"But you're right. Let's draw a line in the sand." Borsh grunted, while he and Granny Radhag flanked Verney and Renal, surrounding the duo. The Ninja drew a sword with a sneer of disdain.

"Traitors."

"Is this your final decision?" Verney asked the two Weavers.

"Granny has a feeling she has bet on the right horse," the hag replied with a wicked grin as she put on her Chemist garb, a white coat strapped with potion-filled bandoliers materializing in place of her rags.

"I have no choice," Borsh said, glaring at Simon. His fur turned to metal, his teeth to spears, and his eyes to glass. His Automaton Class' transformation appeared to let him retain his beastly shape.

"He can kill me at will."

"A pity," Verney replied without any sincerity, his faceless visage turning to the twin sisters.

"This is your last chance to come back into the fold, my wayward daughters." Simon's eyes widened in slight and genuine surprise." Daughters?"

"He lies," Velvet snapped venomously while Silk remained silent.

"We have no father, and we don't need one."

"And yet, it is I who created you two," Verney replied.

"You see, Your Majesty, they're not really twins… they're just halves. Two sides of a single spare vessel." Simon wasn't entirely sure what he meant by that, and he didn't care all that much.

"You must have been a poor father to inspire such disloyalty in your own daughters then, fiend," Simon taunted him, "And an even poorer prince, for your own troops to turn against you."

"You still don't get it? The Prince was a myth, a shell game. We would each bear the mask and play the role depending on the situation… until these two's greed and ambition spiraled out of control." Verney turned to Velvet and let out a giggle with a thousand voices.

"I blame that one. I poured too much resentment for nobles and father figures into her heart. Too many wounds without the reason to–" Had he not been so used to betrayal, Simon would have missed the attempt at distraction and the traitor's blade aiming for his back. He immediately activated Chaos Wave to repel the twins away from him, but Silk's blade managed to graze his armor before the spell activated.

Simon immediately sensed his Nightveil, Energumen, and all of his buffs being stripped away from him the moment it made contact. The Rogue has stolen all of your buffs. Simon's Nightveil began to swirl around Silk, but he managed to catch a glimpse of her true Class outfit before the shadows enveloped her; a brownish leather version of the Assassin garb, with a rich, grey hermine cloak strapped to her shoulders and a bandana around her forehead. So it's true, Silk is the Rogue! Simon cursed.

His Chaos Wave had thrown back the sisters, with Silk quickly adjusting her landing while a surprised Velvet nearly fell. He sent out a telepathic message to his thralls.

"Attac–" Verney sprung to action before he could even articulate that thought, rushing forward in a burst of speed that made Renal look slow. He quickly crossed the distance between himself and Simon, whipping up a stormy wind in his wake, and lunged at him with a shadowy replica of his elven sword. Even using his Spell for Speed ring barely allowed Simon to intercept the blade with his morning star. The shock on impact was so violent his weapon cracked, the impact throwing the Overlord back by many feet.

That single clash was enough to tell Simon he would lose a conventional battle. Verney alone was faster than Renal and hit harder than Thalas, and Silk only had to point her sword at him for Simon to sense the ring on his finger disappearing. The Rogue stole your Ring of Spell for Speed! Borsh had immediately rushed at Renal, who barely managed to dodge the werewolf's claws.

The scales he held oozed miasma that quickly began to gather in the form of Exodeos' armor, while Granny Radhag's attempt at casting an offensive spell fizzled out due to the ambient music. The only real surprise was that Velvet anticipated neither her sister's betrayal nor Simon's counter. Though she managed to regain her footing, her surprise was written all over her face.

"What are you doing?!" Velvet angrily snapped at her sister.

"We agreed–""We have no choice, they've found the reincarnation!" Silk replied, her grimoire snapping open and its pages flipping on their own.

"Come forth, Lotan the Isolator!" Whatever the 'reincarnation' talk meant, it seemed to shake Velvet to her core. She briefly glanced at Simon and Verney, confusion written all over her face… and then she rushed back at her sister with a clenched jaw and look of pure anger. This is a Plan A situation, Simon thought with a mix of glee and annoyance as Verney rushed at him for a follow-up strike. On one hand, it was the least optimal scenario…

but on the other hand, it was the one he had planned for since the very beginning. Steal this, you treacherous whore. One of the first things Simon did when he obtained the Inventory Perk was to test how it worked; He had learned that container and content were usually treated as two separate objects, with one key exception: when they held liquid. Item selected: Cauldy the Living Cauldron Simon summoned Granny's enormous cauldron right on top of Verney, burying him under its massive weight.

Burning liquid boiling within it and kept frozen in time inside his Inventory spilled over its lid, letting the animated constructs joyfully rain down fire on everyone in the vicinity. Simon himself quickly put his Ring of Cursed Flames to protect himself, while Silk and Velvet both moved back at immense speed. I still can't believe animated objects can be stored in the Inventory, Simon thought as he watched the living cauldron pump out more alchemical liquid.

He thought his Inventory would fail to store it the same way it didn't register undead as objects, but soulforged constructs worked just fine. I should try and bring Hector along for the next reign. Unfortunately, the miasma pouring out of Silk's book had already coalesced into a monstrous horror.

With an all red exoskeleton and white bones, this creature had four archanid-like legs supporting a torso like a centaur, except the upper half belonged to a vicious crab with pincers each large enough to crush a man whole. It had skeletal wings bound by membrane like a bat, and its crustacean visage had two red eyes glowing beneath a pale, illusory copy of its miasma crystal. Simon could almost taste the malevolent hatred radiating from this Casval-sized abomination.

The burning liquid stopped a few meters away from it by a bounded line, as if encountering an invisible barrier, while Silk pulled a still confused Velvet to her side for her own protection.

"Granny cannot spellcast!" Granny Radhag complained through telepathy as she grabbed a bottle of alchemical fire off her bandolier to throw at Renal and the still-forming Exodeos.

"I can see that," Simon thought as he chose what to do next in an instant. Unfortunately, a drug chemist and crippled hag was near useless to him in this particular scenario, except for one thing: her high mana reserves.

"Pandemic Bomb." Although the music boxes crippled his magic, this particular self-destruct spell used all of the target's mana to fuel itself. Borsh and Granny both began to swell as their own bodies turned against them.

"You treacherous–" Borsh never got to finish his sentence as his body exploded in a burst of flies and poison. Granny only had time to gasp before she suffered the same fate. Renal was too close to both to escape the swarms rushing at him and was swiftly enveloped, as was Exodeos. While the Ninja screamed in pain and agony as he was promptly caught and devoured alive, the Zodiac Fiend simply waved his hand and annihilated any bug getting too close to him.

"You dare bind us, Valravn?" Exodeos asked, his voice as monotonous as ever. The Zodiac crystal on his body was a misty imitation, showcasing that this was a mere avatar of the true demon.

"Has Mardok's ambition infected you too?"

"I can't have you destroy the world we ought to rule over, brother," Verney's voice came out from beneath the cauldron. Shadows leaked out from beneath the animated device and surrounded Simon, before emerging in the form of four identical copies of the Twins archdemon. None of them had caught fire from the boiling liquid.

"Was that your plan to kill us? Incinerate us with an alchemical fire bomb? Did you think that we're not immune to–" Simon burst out laughing at his foolishness. His cold, cruel laughter of pure catharsis echoed across the Abyssal Domain, vile and sinister. It actually rattled Verney enough for him to freeze without pressing the attack.

"You foolish, faceless man," Simon said in between fits, "You think I planned to burn you?" Yes, Simon had caressed the hope of killing Verney during this meeting had the sisters not betrayed him… but how could he not account for their betrayals after so many double-crosses? He could trust these vipers to be untrustworthy, and that made them predictable.

"What are you–" All of the Verneys' heads suddenly snapped up at once, all speaking at once with a hint of unease.

"What… is this?"

"Ah, you finally noticed?" Simon couldn't resist the urge to gloat a bit, after working towards this moment for many months.

"I guessed your Attic's true nature the moment you told me it was a unique ability of your crystal. Really nifty Abyssal Domain you have here." Silk was the first to catch on, her eyes widening.

"Vouivre isn't here."

"What do you–" Velvet choked upon realizing that, yes, this gathering was indeed missing one key element.

"She's not here."

"This is a trap!" Silk realized, tossing her sword aside and raising a hand towards Renal's corpse. The scales binding Exodeos appeared between her fingers.

"He outplayed us!"

"Individuals using the Attic are actually transiting through your Domain, which allows you to transport your troops across vast distances," Simon said, ignoring them. It was over the moment he cast Pandemic Bomb earlier.

"But having hundreds of minions telepathically connected to myself, I realized even an archdemon couldn't possibly mentally authorize every individual teleportation or keep hundreds of portals open at once at all times. You needed to… delegate that responsibility to manage your empire."

"So many intrusions…" All four Verneys gripped their crystals. A droning, buzzing noise began to resonate from above.

"You compromised a fetch?"" Now, you're getting it," Simon taunted him.

"Your possessed fetch left all the doors open for my minions to walk through while we were talking earlier, even your secret routes, and when I cast Pandemic Bomb earlier, well… I had a lot of targets." The signs were already present above them. The doors in the sky cracked and bent, as if someone was ramming against them from the other side or filling their corridors with so much mass they struggled to contain it.

The buzzing and droning only increased while poison seeped through the hinges, slowly rusting them away. All of the Cobweb's pathways were now infected, with flies pouring out of all their doors and into their hideouts across the world. Every thief, slaver, and crook associated with them was in for a nasty surprise. Their doors would become useless, their operations crippled for months if not forever. The Prince of Spiders would rule over ashes.

And the funny thing about Abyssal Domains was that they weren't all that different from any barrier or sealing magic. There was only so much stress they could take before they broke.

"So no, burning you was never the plan." Simon summoned an orb of Hellfire flame inside his palm.

"I'm burning down your Attic, and the entire Cobweb along with it." The doors shattered, and the swarms of Hell were unleashed upon the Abyssal Domain. A veritable flood of flies erupted from the pathways, devouring the wood, rusting steel with poison, and droning with hunger. They darkened the Domain's sky with their overwhelming numbers, their droning drowning out even the music boxes' melody.

The sheer amount of poison they released in the air resulted in a vile, purple smoke cloud quickly filling out the entire Attic like the Darkwood's miasma shrouded its forest. Ruins of broken corridors collapsed onto the ground below as entire pathways snapped under the sheer weight of the bugs. The entire place was collapsing in on itself. The storm of flies hungrily descended upon the people present, like death with a billion mouths.

Silk immediately pulled out a teleportation gem and shattered it, disappearing alongside her sister, Exodeos, and her Crab fiend all at once before they could be swallowed up. The swarm crashed onto their now empty spot with sufficient mass to cause a small quake. Silk had fled in spite of the Abyssal Domain's anti-teleportation effect.

"So the Rogue can slip through teleportation wards…" Simon grunted in annoyance.

"Good to know." Verney himself looked up to the enormous horde of flies rushing straight at him… and then ran towards a newly conjured door while his shadowy copies disappeared. Simon had no doubt he could have won a fight, but the real danger was elsewhere. With his Attic crumbling, the archfiend would soon risk being stranded away from all his critical operations. And what was a spider without a dark corner to hide in? A bug to be crushed.

"By the way, I sold Mel your identity before coming here, so expect a Paladin severance package soon," Simon said as space itself began to crack and the Domain started crumbling. He could already feel that he could teleport away again.

"Nothing personal. I'll come pick Anna up soon if they don't kill you first, so…" He tossed the flame into the cauldron right as Verney rushed through his emergency door.

"See you soon, Prince of Nothing." Simon teleported away a mere second before the cauldron exploded, laughing all the way.