Chapter : 1317

They were Curse Knights, a quiet, trained army made of moving bones and rusty iron. A cold, evil red light burned in their eye sockets. They moved together in a way that was silent, smooth, and creepy. They did not roar or make loud noises. They moved as silently as the grave. They had one single, brutal order: kill every living thing.

In the south garden, a group of twenty knights appeared in a patch of sweet-smelling moon-blossom flowers. Their first targets were a young couple, a minor lord and his lady, who had snuck away from the main party for a quiet, romantic moment. As the skeleton knights raised their rusty swords for a silent, unseen attack, they were not met with screams of fear. Instead, they heard the soft, musical sound of silver hitting steel.

Four of Lloyd’s “maids” came out from the shadows of a vine-covered archway. Their simple, gray servant uniforms looked very different from the evil armor of their enemies. Annalisa, the strong Head Maid, led the attack. Her silver serving tray, with an edge sharpened to be incredibly thin, became a deadly throwing weapon. It spun like a disk of death and cut the heads off the two lead knights in one smooth move. The other maids pulled long, thin daggers from hidden spots in their sleeves. They moved in a beautiful and deadly dance. The garden of love had become a quiet and effective slaughterhouse.

Deep in the winding hallways under the main kitchens, another gateway spat out a wave of fifty knights. Their goal was to poison the palace’s water supply. It was a slow, sneaky attack that would turn the party into a mass funeral. They were met by a silent and unmoving wall of men.

Yaved Ferrum, a distant, serious cousin of Lloyd’s who was helping the King’s personal security team, stood in front of a dozen of Lloyd's “butlers.” Yaved was a man who seemed to be made of stone, and his face showed only a bored, professional sense of duty. “Kitchen is closed,” he said, his voice a low, unimpressed rumble.

The knights charged forward. Yaved and his men did not pull out swords. They just moved. They were a single team, a tight group of trained killers. They used the narrow hallway to their advantage, turning it into a trap that made it easy to kill enemies as they came through. They did not fight with the fancy moves of sword fighters. They fought with the brutal, quick movements of professional soldiers. A knife to the throat, a quick stab through a weak spot in the armor, a broken neck. The battle was over in less than a minute. The hallway was piled high with the broken pieces of the evil army.

At the same time, in other important, planned locations around the palace, the other five of the King's chosen warriors fought their own, much more dangerous enemies. These were not the thoughtless skeleton soldiers. They were Jager's top helpers, the elite, high-ranking devil worshipers who were leading the attack.

In the royal library, the smart warrior Baron Euclid fought a sorcerer whose spells could turn books into hungry swarms of insects with paper teeth. In the Grand Orrery, the serious Baron Glasias, a master of gravity magic, fought an assassin who defied gravity and walked on the ceiling. In the royal stables, the animal master Baron Munro and his pack of summoned spirit wolves fought a cult member who could make the shadows of the horse stalls come alive and grab at people, draining their souls.

The palace had become a battlefield with fighting in many different places at once. A secret, shadow war was happening just under the surface of the beautiful, unaware celebration. Every corner and every hallway was a possible battlefield. The wedding was a beautiful and delicate illusion. Its survival depended on the quiet, brutal, and completely merciless work of the hidden guards protecting its walls. The killing was a secret, kept from the happy center of the kingdom. It was a necessary and brutal price to pay for a single, perfect day of peace.

The war in the walls was a silent and brutal but effective operation. It was a perfect plan to fight back against a secret attack, led by a man who was, at that moment, trapped in another world. But Lloyd's plan had been perfect, and his agents were perfectly trained. He had turned the palace into a perfectly balanced machine, a beautiful and deadly system of traps and quick-response teams.

Chapter : 1318

The silent battles were all very different from each other. In the huge, echoing kitchens, where a gateway had opened near the massive fireplaces, the fight was a storm of fire and steel. The Curse Knights were met by a team of butlers led by a tough veteran named Alaric. His past was a secret, but his skill with a carving knife was famous. The butlers used the tools of their job as weapons. Heavy iron pans became brutal clubs, meat cleavers became short, heavy axes, and long metal skewers became deadly daggers that could pierce armor. The fight was a messy, violent, and surprisingly successful example of fighting using whatever tools were available.

In the calm, quiet halls of the royal art gallery, the battle was a different kind of art. Here, a team of maids, moving with the grace and skill of a painter's brush, fought a squad of knights among priceless works of art. They used their surroundings as a weapon. They knocked over heavy marble statues to crush their enemies. They used the shiny surfaces of polished shields to blind them for a moment. It was a dance of death, a beautiful, silent, and completely deadly performance.

The most important battles, however, were being fought by the King's other warriors. Viscount Nazha, a man who was said to be unbelievably fast, fought a cult member who could teleport in short, confusing jumps. Their fight was a flickering, impossible-to-follow battle. It was a fight that happened in the tiny spaces of time between heartbeats in the long, high-ceilinged corridor of the Ancestors' Hall.

Baron Cliff, the unbreakable shield of the kingdom, a man known for his legendary defensive magic, was in a brutal, stationary fight in the palace treasury. His enemy was a warlock who could make gold and jewels come to life, turning the kingdom's riches into a flowing, liquid storm of sharp metal. The Baron stood his ground. He was like a single, unmovable rock in a hurricane of greed. His magic shields took a huge amount of damage.

The palace was being wounded, but it was not dying. The poison was being stopped, and the infection was being burned away. Lloyd’s hidden team and the King's champions were like a perfect immune system. They found and destroyed the threats with a merciless, surgical skill.

But they were all just the soldiers. They were fighting the effects of the problem, not the problem itself. The true enemy, the source of the sickness, was not in the hallways or the gardens. He was above it all, a quiet, amused watcher, seeing his pieces play their parts in his grand, terrible show.

The beautiful, delicate illusion of the wedding was still holding up. The guests, safe and protected in the middle of the palace, heard nothing. They saw nothing. They drank their wine, laughed at jokes, and cried happy tears. They had no idea a quiet and violent war was being fought for their survival just a few feet away, in the hidden, secret spaces behind the beautiful, decorated walls. The price of their peace was being paid in blood and shadow, a debt they would never even know they had. And the biggest, and most terrible, part of the battle was only just beginning.

Quiet, vicious fights were happening in secret parts of the palace. At the same time, a new and much more awful power started to appear. It wasn't a noise or a shaking. It was a change in the world itself. A feeling of complete and hopeless sadness spread through the whole palace.

In the gardens, Annalisa was about to make a perfect kill, but she hesitated. Her strength seemed to disappear. Her desire to fight was replaced by a deep and troubling feeling that it was all useless. In the kitchens, Yaved Ferrum's strong will broke. A raw, basic fear showed in his eyes. The evil Curse Knights, however, seemed to get stronger from this feeling. Their red eyes glowed brighter, and they moved faster and with more violence.

The fight had been going well for the defenders. Now, that was starting to change.

High above, on the thinnest point of the tallest tower, the source of the sadness showed itself. The air didn't just ripple; it tore open. It looked like a bleeding cut in the sky. A person came out of this rip in the world. He stepped onto the tower point easily, like a man getting out of a carriage.

It was Adler Beelzebub.