Chapter : 1263

Prince Linkon and Princess Arisa stood in the center of it all, a small, stunned island of royalty in a sea of silent, whispered death. They were no longer the targets; they were the audience, witnesses to a secret war they had never even known existed.

And Franz. Franz was a king whose castle was being dismantled around him, stone by silent stone. The arrogant, condescending amusement was a distant memory. His face was a mask of ashen, disbelieving horror. His elite honor guard, his twenty perfect, unholy warriors, were being systematically, and almost casually, exterminated by a group of… servants. The sheer, profound, and absolute humiliation of it was a poison in his soul.

He had to act. He had to retake control of the narrative, of the battle.

He let out a roar of pure, frustrated rage, a sound that finally shattered the eerie, whispered silence of the garden. "You think your little tricks can stop the coming of a new age?" he shrieked, his voice a ragged, tearing sound. "You are insects! You are fighting against the inevitable tide!"

He drew his own weapon, an elegant, black-hilted rapier whose blade seemed to be forged from a shard of solidified night. And he charged. Not at the butlers or the maids. He charged directly at the still, calm center of the storm.

He charged at Lloyd.

But he never reached him.

Annalisa, her face a mask of cold, professional fury, her silver serving tray now a blood-splattered, and surprisingly effective, shield, simply stepped into his path. She was flanked by four of her best butlers, their hidden blades now drawn, their eyes holding the cold, dead light of men who have killed, and will kill again, without a flicker of hesitation.

They formed a silent, unshakeable wall of black silk and deadly intent between their commander and the enemy.

The message was clear. You will not touch him.

The counter-ambush was perfect. The enemy was contained. The royals were secure. And the commander of the entire, magnificent operation had not yet moved a muscle.

Lloyd stood where he had been, his clipboard still held loosely in his hand. He watched the final, desperate struggles of his enemies with the detached, almost bored, interest of a man watching a particularly predictable play reach its inevitable conclusion.

He looked at the seething, trapped, and now utterly impotent form of Franz. And he allowed himself a small, tired, and deeply satisfied smile.

His trap had been a resounding success. And now, it was time for the main event.

The garden, which had been a stage for a silent, lightning-fast counter-ambush, now became a cage. Annalisa and her four elite butlers formed a perfect, five-point cordon around Franz, their movements a fluid, practiced dance of containment. They did not attack. They simply… were. An unbreakable, and very patient, wall of black-uniformed death.

Franz, a Crown-Ranked devil worshiper, a being of immense power and arrogance, was trapped. He was a cornered, snarling wolf, surrounded by a pack of quiet, and very professional, sheepdogs who had just revealed themselves to be, in fact, a pack of even bigger, and much more efficient, wolves.

He looked past them, his plum-colored eyes, now burning with a desperate, hateful fire, locking onto the calm, still figure at the center of it all. Lloyd.

"You," Franz hissed, the word a venomous, sibilant thing. He finally understood. The servants were not the true threat. They were just the pieces. This quiet, unassuming, and infuriatingly calm "decorator" was the player. The grandmaster.

"I have read the reports about you," Franz snarled, his voice a low, dangerous rumble of dawning, and very horrifying, realization. "The Lion’s Cub. The hero of Ashworth. I thought they were exaggerations. Propaganda. The desperate myth-making of a dying kingdom."

He let out a harsh, barking laugh, a sound that held no humor, only a wild, desperate, and self-loathing disbelief. "They weren't exaggerations, were they? They were understatements."

Lloyd simply inclined his head, a small, polite, and deeply infuriating gesture of acknowledgment.

"And you," Franz continued, his gaze now sweeping over the ongoing, one-sided slaughter of his remaining Curse Knights, "you knew we were coming. This entire, magnificent, and utterly humiliating spectacle… this wasn't a counter-ambush. This was a trap. A welcome party. You were waiting for us."

"The King's hospitality is legendary," Lloyd replied, his voice a smooth, calm, and utterly unapologetic thing. "It would have been rude not to prepare a suitable reception for such… distinguished guests."

Chapter : 1264

The quiet, sarcastic confirmation was the final, twisting turn of the knife in Franz's pride. He had walked, with a supreme, arrogant confidence, directly into a perfectly designed, and beautifully decorated, abattoir.

His rage, his humiliation, and his own, fanatical devotion to his dark god, all boiled over into a single, final, and suicidally defiant roar.

"Then you will face me yourself, Lord Ferrum!" he shrieked, his voice a ragged, tearing sound. "You will not hide behind your trained monkeys! You will face the righteous fury of the Seventh Circle!"

He raised his black rapier, and his demonic power, the power of a Crown-Ranked master, was finally, and fully, unleashed. A swirling, chaotic vortex of shadow and black fire erupted around him, a storm of pure, unholy energy that sent Annalisa and her butlers stumbling back.

He had become a miniature sun of pure, abyssal power.

"You should have stayed a decorator, Lord Ferrum," he sneered, his voice now a layered, demonic chorus. "You should have stayed with your flowers and your silks. Because you have just, very foolishly, stepped into a war you cannot possibly comprehend."

Lloyd looked at the magnificent, terrible, and deeply impressive display of demonic power. He looked at the swirling vortex of shadow-flame. He looked at the arrogant, and now utterly doomed, man at its center.

And he simply smiled. A slow, gentle, and almost pitying smile.

"I agree," he replied, his voice a quiet, conversational thing.

And then, he summoned his own spirit.

It was not a subtle materialization. It was a cataclysm.

The very air in the garden seemed to ignite. A silent, concussive wave of pure, absolute, and overwhelming annihilation erupted from the space behind Lloyd. It was not a heat that could be felt; it was a conceptual heat, a wave of pure, sun-destroying energy that made the very laws of thermodynamics tremble.

The beautiful, enchanted light crystals that illuminated the garden did not just go out; they shattered, their magic unmade by a power of a fundamentally higher, and more terrible, order. The gentle, whispering fountains did not just stop; their water instantly, and silently, flash-vaporized into clouds of superheated steam.

A nine-foot-tall demon, forged from the living heart of a volcano, materialized. Its skin was of jagged, black magma armor, its inner core pulsing with the light of a dying star. And in its hands, it held a colossal, twelve-foot-long zanbatō, a greatsword whose blade was not steel, but a roaring, contained river of pure, annihilating fire.

This was Iffrit. And his arrival was not an entrance; it was a judgment.

The swirling, chaotic vortex of shadow-flame around Franz did not just falter; it was cowed. The lesser, chaotic fire of the Abyss recoiled, it whimpered, in the face of the pure, absolute, and utterly sovereign fire of creation’s heart.

The spiritual pressure that radiated from Iffrit was not just a level above Franz's. It was a different universe of power. Franz was a Crown-Ranked master, a formidable power in his own right. Iffrit was a Transcendent. A god.

Franz’s arrogant, triumphant smile froze on his face. The demonic fire in his eyes was extinguished, replaced by the dawning, wide-eyed, and utterly abject horror of a man who has just realized that he has not cornered a sheep, but has willingly, and very, very stupidly, stepped into the cage of a sleeping, and now very, very awake, god of destruction.

The silence in the garden was now of a different, and far more terrible, quality. It was the silence of a lesser god in the presence of a greater one. The quiet, professional slaughter of the remaining Curse Knights had ceased, as Lloyd’s ghost brigade, their own, human-scale violence rendered a pathetic, childish thing in the face of the two new, divine presences, had frozen in a state of profound, and very sensible, awe.

Franz stood as a statue of pure, unadulterated, and comprehensive shock. His own, magnificent, and terrifying spirit, a Crown-Ranked Hellfire Crow, a being of living shadow and cold, abyssal flame, materialized beside him in a desperate, instinctual act of self-preservation. It was a beautiful, terrible creature, its wingspan a twenty-foot spread of oily, black feathers that seemed to drink the very moonlight, its eyes two burning embers of hateful, intelligent malice.

It was also, in the face of the nine-foot-tall god of annihilation that now stood before it, a pigeon. A small, pathetic, and very, very flammable pigeon.

The Hellfire Crow let out a terrified, guttural squawk and took an involuntary, hopping step backward, its own, lesser demonic nature screaming at it to flee from the presence of a true, primordial fire.