Chapter 139: The Ice Princess
“From now on, you stay in this room. You are not allowed to go anywhere except to welcome Anastasia and for essential official occasions. Reflect on your actions!”
After throwing down these words, the furious Wadsworth stormed out, ordering the guards to seal off the area and forbid the Grand Prince from leaving the residence unless absolutely necessary.
He also summoned the attendant waiting outside. Lindberg absolutely couldn’t continue to live in this world. If they needed to investigate the matter afterward, they could simply shift all the blame onto Lindberg, claiming that he acted on his own to curry favor with the Grand Prince.
Poor Lindberg. He had been enjoying the company of beautiful women at the Fairy House for the past two days, completely unaware that this was the last pleasure he would ever experience.
Inside the residence, Lance’s face was contorted.
The magic scroll in his hand healed the wound his father had inflicted on his face, but the trauma in his heart couldn’t be healed so easily.
Because of the princess consort incident, his relationship with his father had been very strained in recent years. He couldn’t understand why the Aberchian family insisted on upholding the thousand-year-old tradition of marrying women from the Maysfield family.
He never imagined that his father would accuse him of murdering the Hero so indiscriminately.
He heard the orders his father gave outside and knew what Lindberg’s fate would be, but he was powerless to change it.
Just like his father’s attendant, Lindberg had been his companion since childhood. Although they weren’t brothers, they were closer than real brothers.
Qin Chu!
Suddenly, the Hero’s name emerged in the Grand Prince’s mind.
That’s right, it was this guy! It must have been this damned bastard who deliberately framed him and sowed discord between him and his father, wanting to leave him with no one to rely on.
He also wanted to steal Loseweisse away from him.
No… Loseweisse was his. No one could take her away.
Tiny, dark red scales suddenly appeared on Lance’s eyeballs, like a thin film covering his pupils, leaving only a bloody crimson in his vision.
“Give me power!”
With a hoarse voice, Lance looked towards the Void, giving the order to that mysterious, unknown existence.
Soon, the scales began to spread across Lance’s body, covering him completely in the blink of an eye. Then, like shedding skin, they peeled off layer by layer.
After the scales fell off, Lance’s aura clearly expanded, seemingly stronger than before.
Hahahahaha…
Inside the residence, the Grand Prince laughed hysterically.
Along with his mad laughter, the scales began to spread across his body again.
Madness filled his eyes. Noble Saintess Loseweisse, please wait patiently. I will definitely save you from Qin Chu’s clutches.
…
Meanwhile, at the Conrad Demon Beast Nest.
Qin Chu, Ekaterina, and Violet had already reached the deepest level of the cave.
Just as the explosion occurred, Qin Chu used the small spatial magic formation imprinted on the magic scroll to teleport the three of them here.
Listening to the continuous rumbling and the tremors beneath their feet, Qin Chu’s expression was strange, “Violet, I just asked you to create some chaos so that I could separate from those people. Why did you cause such a big commotion?”
Judging from the sound, the mountain above the Conrad Demon Beast Nest was about to collapse, right? The violent rumbling and tremors spread hundreds of meters underground, and dust fell from the ceiling.
He didn’t know if this power was stronger than a nuclear warhead on Earth.
It almost caused the entire Demon Beast nest to collapse. If Qin Chu hadn’t used the spatial teleportation magic scroll and the pseudo-Immovable as a Mountain ability in time, they would have been injured.
However, there was also clear confusion on Violet’s beautiful face. She shook her head, “I didn’t do it. The explosion happened before I could do anything.”
Qin Chu was stunned. Anthea and Shaye’s figures simultaneously emerged from his body. Anthea held her spear, and together with Violet and Ekaterina, they remained vigilant of their surroundings.
Shaye lay on top of Qin Chu’s head, “I just sensed the aura of Mana bombs. Someone must have planted bombs in the cave in advance, waiting for you to enter and then detonate them.”
Shaye’s words angered Qin Chu. Someone was trying to assassinate him! This was a truly insidious method. He was such a good person, elegant and gentlemanly, he hadn’t offended anyone…
Uh… Qin Chu’s fingers passed through Shaye’s head and scratched his hair. It seemed that he had indeed offended quite a few people.
For example, Athena. Of course, because Athena thought there was Jie Luo’s remnant soul in his body, she definitely wouldn’t do this.
Loseweisse… She wouldn’t do this either, so she could be ruled out.
After thinking about it, it seemed that Grand Prince Lance was the most likely suspect.
Damn it, how dare you plot against me! I’ll kill you later.
But the most important issue now was how to absorb power. This was a rare opportunity, and he couldn’t miss it.
This was the deepest part of the Demon Beast nest. Qin Chu had been here in the first playthrough and was very familiar with it. He could hear rustling sounds, clearly some strange creatures were approaching in the darkness.
Although there was no light here, the darkness couldn’t affect Qin Chu’s vision. He could clearly see his surroundings. The cave was about ten meters high, surrounded by rugged rocks. There were countless openings leading to unknown places, densely packed and intertwined like the blood vessels in a human body. A sinister, fishy smell permeated the air.
A large number of round worms, about three meters long and fifty centimeters in diameter, were wriggling on the ground, the walls, and the ceiling. They looked similar to Phantoms, their bodies covered in dense fluff, their abdomens with countless soft, wriggling limbs.
Perhaps because they were too round and fat, bumps appeared on their bodies as they moved.
The front end of their bodies wasn’t a mouth, but a bunch of wriggling tentacles like those of an octopus, the insides of the tentacles covered in dense, hard barbs.
Among the dense tentacles, there was also an oval, tubular object that could spray highly corrosive acid.
The barbs and acid on their tentacles allowed them to easily dig through hard rocks. Almost all the intertwined tunnels in the Demon Beast nests were their handiwork.
Burrowing Worms!
This was the name humans gave to these Demon Beasts.
They weren’t very strong, averaging around level 30, but… their numbers were simply too large.
Everywhere he looked, there were Burrowing Worms. Their ugly and disgusting appearance didn’t affect Qin Chu at all. In his eyes, they were just mountains of small experience packs.
“Then… Devour!”
Taking a deep breath, a smile appeared on Qin Chu’s face. He spread his arms, and countless slender, translucent tentacles like those of a slime emerged from his body, extending rapidly in all directions.
As soon as the strange tentacles wrapped around a Burrowing Worm, the Devourer’s effect immediately took place. In less than two seconds, the Burrowing Worm’s power was drained by Qin Chu, its body quickly shrivelling up, falling to the ground and turning into dust.
In a short time, the surroundings were cleared. Seeing the Burrowing Worms in front of him still wriggling and slowly crawling towards him, Qin Chu was too impatient to wait for them to approach. He walked forward, leaving only shriveled corpses in his wake.
The Grand Prince wanted to create the illusion of a Demon Beast outbreak, blaming the assassination of his fiancée, Anastasia, on the Demon Beasts.
The military camp near Conrad was also on high alert. The nest had been destroyed, the seal broken, and a large number of Demon Beasts would soon swarm out.
But no one knew that not a single Demon Beast would leave this nest. All of them would be absorbed by Qin Chu as experience packs.
Although the gains from each Demon Beast were small, the feeling of his strength slowly increasing every second fascinated Qin Chu. He was like a greedy glutton, devouring everything.
At some point, Qin Chu had even reached the entrance to the abyss at the deepest part of the nest.
It was a huge, purplish-black void, leading to an unknown world. An endless stream of Demon Beasts emerged from this void. The Demon Beasts appearing here were no longer just Burrowing Worms. More and more other types of Demon Beasts began to appear, some of them quite powerful.
The Demon Beasts on the other side of the entrance seemed to have sensed that the seal of the nest had been broken. A large number of them swarmed out, eager to rush out and wreak havoc in the outside world. But unfortunately, only destruction awaited them.
Even those powerful Demon Beasts would be severely injured by Ekaterina, Anthea, and Violet as soon as they appeared, then thrown to Qin Chu as large experience packs.
Qin Chu didn’t know how much power he had drained from the Demon Beasts. He only knew that the corpses of the Demon Beasts had filled the cave, and he even had to assign someone to clean up the corpses.
Bang!
A huge troll, over nine meters tall, had just poked its massive, round head out of the entrance. Before it could even get up from the ground, Violet descended from the sky like a gust of wind.
With a muffled thud, her slender leg, with its delicate foot, slammed heavily onto the troll’s head. The hard head of this powerful Demon Beast, over level 75, instantly caved in.
Its legs couldn’t withstand Violet’s power and snapped with a crack. Its body knelt on the ground, and a shrill scream erupted from its bumpy head.
The next second, the Devourer enveloped it like jelly, instantly draining the troll’s body, leaving only a huge, dried corpse standing at the entrance.
With the troll’s death, the Demon Beasts in the abyss on the other side of the entrance seemed to sense that there was a terrifying hunter constantly hunting them.
The endless stream of Demon Beasts came to an abrupt halt.
Level: 61
Class: Hero
Strength: 527
Stamina: 466
Agility: 671
Spirit: 1802
Defense: 958
Charm: 6
Qin Chu checked his stats. They had indeed greatly improved. As expected, the Devourer was the fastest way to increase his strength.
But Qin Chu could also clearly feel that the growth rate was getting slower and slower.
He didn’t know how long he had stayed in this darkness, slaughtering no less than eight thousand Demon Beasts, but his level had only increased from 47 to 61.
He felt that this growth rate was a little too slow, and it was getting slower and slower.
“Shaye, are you stealing my experience?” Qin Chu scratched his head and asked suspiciously.
“Ha, how is that possible? Why would this Witch steal your experience? Don’t talk nonsense.”
Shaye immediately answered, but there was a hint of guilt in her voice.
Seeing that Qin Chu was just casually asking and didn’t pursue the matter further, Shaye and Anthea both secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Even some existences within his body seemed to be rejoicing.
He waited at the entrance of the nest. After an unknown amount of time, a humanoid creature with two curved horns on its head and large bat wings on its back emerged from the entrance. It had a beautiful, almost demonic face, and its body exuded a sinister charm.
In an instant, the gazes of Qin Chu, Anthea, Violet, Ekaterina, and Shaye all focused on this creature.
The strange Greater Demon shivered.
In the next moment, its handsome face turned deathly pale. Without a moment’s hesitation, it turned its head and dove back into the abyss. Then, even the purplish-black entrance closed completely and disappeared without a trace.
The few of them looked at each other, Ekaterina’s heavy sword not even raised, Anthea’s spear not even swung, and Violet’s fist still hanging in mid-air…
In the end, this Greater Demon, clearly many times stronger than the previous Demon Beasts, actually just ran away!
Ran away?
Among Demon Beasts, the closer their appearance was to humans, the higher their rank.
If Qin Chu remembered correctly, that guy just now should be one of the Seventeen Abyssal Demon Generals under the Demon King Nagath. His level should be close to 90. If they could have captured him, the rewards would have been extraordinary.
Unfortunately, the higher the rank of a Demon Beast, the higher its intelligence. This guy ran away too quickly, decisively and without any hesitation. As expected of a Demon General, he even closed the entrance to the nest, completely cutting off Qin Chu’s thoughts.
Qin Chu had no choice but to start his journey back.
He unfolded the magic scroll, and a huge magic formation appeared beneath the feet of Qin Chu, Violet, and Ekaterina. With a bright flash of light, their figures vanished abruptly. When they reappeared, they were already out of the cave, surrounded by a dense jungle.
It was already late at night, and two full moons cast a silver light in the sky.
Just as Qin Chu was trying to figure out their current location, he suddenly heard the sound of metal clashing. He subconsciously walked towards the source of the sound, and soon he saw dozens of assassins in black tight-fitting clothes in the forest, surrounding six people. Their daggers continuously launched fierce attacks, and some of the black-clad people on the outer perimeter held staffs, casting lightning, ice, and fire spells with surging Mana.
With a hiss, a man in armor was struck by lightning, his body instantly paralyzed. In the next second, four or five daggers pierced through his body almost simultaneously. With a thud, long wounds appeared on his throat, heart, and abdomen. Blood spurted out, and his body collapsed to the ground.
The remaining four guards quickly changed their formation, back to back, resisting attacks from all directions while protecting a woman in the center.
It was a beautiful young woman with icy blue hair that shimmered mysteriously under the moonlight. An ice-white dress wrapped around her curvy figure, her skin as fair and delicate as snow. Her icy blue eyes sparkled brighter than gems, making the moons in the sky lose their color.
Perhaps because of Mana exhaustion, her face was even paler. Her fair hands were clenched tightly, but she couldn’t squeeze out any Mana.
So beautiful!
Even though Qin Chu had many outstanding women around him, he couldn’t help but admire this woman when he saw her.
Her beauty even overshadowed Saintess Loseweisse.
A large number of corpses were scattered around, including those of the assassins in black, the woman’s maids, and her guards.
The situation was clearly not good for this woman. Only four of her most loyal and powerful guards were left by her side, but they were already covered in wounds and clearly couldn’t last much longer. The enemy’s strength was ten times greater than theirs.
But even in this desperate situation, the woman didn’t lose her elegance and nobility. Her cold eyes swept over the assassins who kept charging at her, and her icy white lips finally parted, her voice as clear as cracking ice:
“I am Anastasia Maysfield, Princess of the Ice Duchy. Who are you? Why are you attacking me? Have you considered the consequences?”
It was her… The Grand Prince’s fiancée.
He didn’t expect to encounter this pitiful girl after leaving the Demon Beast nest.
In the first playthrough, Qin Chu didn’t have much interaction with Anastasia. He only met her once at a banquet, and then she committed suicide that night.
She was a beautiful and pitiful woman.
“Consequences? There will be no consequences,” said the assassin leader, his face covered with a veil, standing at the back of the group, his voice filled with mockery.
“Stop struggling, death is your only destination.”
“No one will come to save you.”
At this moment, Anthea, who was beside Qin Chu, suddenly frowned, a strange expression on her face.
A few seconds later, Anthea suddenly looked up at Qin Chu, “Save her.”
Huh?
Qin Chu was stunned, not understanding Anthea’s reaction. She rarely took the initiative like this.
“She and I…” Anthea thought hard, but she couldn’t describe the feeling, “She and I seem to have some kind of connection…”
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