Stephen glared sharply at Venistia and tried to get up from the floor.
Fortunately, Stephen's body had returned to functioning normally and wasn't sluggish or unable to move. It seemed that what she had put in the juice was only a sleeping drug and contained no poison.
Stephen looked at Venistia with killing intent and spoke.
"Where did you bring me?"
Venistia smiled, but she didn't answer him.
Stephen frowned when he didn't hear an answer, although he had expected her not to respond to his question.
Stephen looked at himself and found that his size was still the same as when he was disguised, so he assumed that he had been asleep for less than 10 hours.
After Stephen had trained his body, it could continue functioning automatically using the Disguise skill even while he was asleep, but there was a time limit for using it automatically, with a maximum of 10 hours.
That was more than enough time for Stephen to rest while carrying out long missions and doing other things.
Although Stephen couldn't find any difference in his appearance, he felt as though something disgusting was crawling inside his body.
Stephen felt disgusted and strange and looked sharply at Venistia.
"What did you do to me?"
Venistia lazily sat on the sofa, lowered her legs, put on her beautiful black high heels, stood up, and walked toward Stephen.
Her footsteps echoed through the hall. When she was three steps away from Stephen, she stopped in place and looked at him. Then she raised her hand and pointed her index finger toward Stephen, looked at him playfully, winked with her right eye, and said,
"Boom boom boom~"
Despite her cute voice as she imitated the sound of gunshots, what happened next erased all the cuteness she had shown just moments ago.
Stephen's body trembled, and he suddenly felt a sharp pain gnawing at his bones.
Stephen felt as though something were crawling through his organs from the inside, surrounding every part of them and squeezing them with tremendous force. The most painful part was his heart, whose beating suddenly became so forceful that Stephen clenched his teeth tightly from the pain he was experiencing.
"Ah!!"
Stephen's body curled slightly from the pain, and his breathing became strained, but he raised his head and looked at the woman with intense killing intent.
'I'll kill her!'
The moment Stephen thought this, he felt strange mana surrounding his body.
Stephen's eyes widened in shock when he realized what this mana was.
'Demonic mana?!'
'Why is it inside my body?... Don't tell me...!'
Stephen gritted his teeth, trying to ignore the pain gnawing at his organs, and looked at Venistia with intense killing intent, causing Venistia to raise her eyebrows in surprise.
"That killing intent you're releasing is amazing."
"Are you perhaps a hidden serial killer?"
Venistia looked at him curiously for a moment, then smiled, raised her hand, and gently placed her palm against her cheek.
"But that doesn't matter now, since you've become my subordinate."
When Venistia said this, Stephen's expression turned dangerous, and a dark aura appeared around him.
'Subordinate!'
Stephen wanted to kill the woman in front of him, but there were several problems with attacking her recklessly. He didn't know her rank or even her strength, and he didn't know what this place was.
Venistia's expression showed some surprise as she looked at Stephen.
"I gave you some demonic power, but I didn't expect you to use it this quickly!"
"Looks like it suits you quite well."
The pain squeezing his organs gradually began to lessen, but Stephen wasn't paying attention to the pain he was feeling. Instead, he stared blankly at his hands, from which demonic energy was emanating.
It wasn't only his hands. Even his body was emitting this demonic energy.
Stephen felt an overwhelming sense of disgust, to the point that he wanted to pierce his own body with his hands and pull out all the demonic mana that had been forcibly inserted into his body.
But Stephen knew that this was impossible.
'She contracted me with a demonic contract... No, an incomplete contract.'
Venistia wasn't a demon, because Stephen knew that the noble demons were forbidden by their king from leaving the Demon Realm, and the weak or non-noble demons couldn't create subordinates by giving them their power. It was impossible for them to do so, as it had been mentioned in the novel "Finding Hope," which Stephen himself had written.
Therefore, they couldn't create contracts. That was how Stephen knew that she wasn't a demon.
Stephen looked at Venistia. She was wearing comfortable clothes, but they still had the same Victorian-era style.
Only one thing remained in Stephen's mind.
'A conduit!'
Stephen concluded that there was only one possibility left: she had a conduit.
This conduit transferred demonic energy from her to another person and turned that person into her subordinate.
In other words, it worked as a link between the subordinate and her demonic energy and formed a contract with them.
But now, with the incomplete contract successfully taking effect and demonic mana entering his body, Stephen decided that he would attack this woman and kill her. There was no other solution.
But before he could move to attack her, the damaged door to the place suddenly opened, producing a creaking sound that echoed throughout the room.
A man entered with slow steps.
The man had wheat-colored skin, sharp, narrow yellow eyes, and neatly arranged chestnut-colored hair.
There was a scar extending from above his left eyebrow down beneath his eye and slightly across his cheek.
The moment Venistia saw the man, her face lit up, and she headed toward him.
"Cipher, I've been waiting for you."
Stephen had noticed Cipher entering and looked at him, narrowing his eyes slightly.
'What terrible luck... Her partner has arrived.'
Stephen lowered the hand he had raised slightly without making it obvious and silently looked at the two of them. But when he heard the name Cipher, he frowned and remembered something that the scorpion-tailed woman from the Hollow Crown gang whom Stephen had fought had said.
"Hmm, I wonder if Cipher will agree to be my boyfriend after I eliminate the nuisance causing him trouble."
"Oh, just imagining it would be wonderful."
(Author: A little reminder, this was in Chapter 60, when the scorpion woman spoke after Stephen was poisoned.)
Stephen thought with a frown,
'Could this Cipher be the same one that scorpion tail was talking about?'
'If he really is, then this situation will be bad.'
Cipher's gaze first fell on Venistia, and his expression became warm. However, because his expression was rigid, Venistia couldn't notice it.
But soon, Cipher noticed Stephen's presence, and his gaze turned cold.
'Who is this bastard?'
Venistia noticed Cipher's gaze and spoke in a cheerful voice carrying a hint of playfulness.
"Oh, him? Isn't he extremely handsome? I found him at my nightclub and brought him here to become my servant."
As she spoke, she smiled, slowly raised her hands, grabbed a strand of her hair, and began playing with it between her fingers in an alluring manner.
Cipher looked at her with a cold expression and clenched his teeth so tightly that the veins on his face became visible.
'That bastard! He tried to seduce my Vinia!'
"Venia! Not even a single day has passed since the leader threatened to kill us if we didn't complete the mission, and you're fooling around now!!"
All traces of playfulness and mischief disappeared from Venistia's face. She looked at Cipher with a frown. Her cherry-colored lips curved downward, and her eyebrows drew together as she assumed Cipher was angry with her for fooling around.
Venistia bit her lip and looked at Cipher in annoyance.
'Is this all he cares about? Doesn't he feel jealous because I brought a handsome man here?!'
'So annoying! Cipher is so annoying. Hmph.'
Venistia folded her arms and looked at Cipher with annoyance.
"I brought him because I suspected he had been sent to investigate us. I also needed a spy inside the Star Guild so I could use him to infiltrate the guild."
Venistia looked at Cipher as though she were the one who had been wronged and was now waiting for him to apologize for what he had done.
Cipher's sharpness quickly disappeared. Although his expression remained rigid, his voice brightened inwardly.
'Great! So my Vinia isn't interested in him~'
A short distance away, Stephen, who had listened to their entire conversation, now had a blank expression.
"...."
'...That woman was the same scorpion tail from the Hollow Crown gang... And now I'm standing in front of two members of Hollow Crown.'
'Not just two members. They might even be two of the leaders within the gang... And that's not all.'
'I've now become part of the Hollow Crown gang, and I have demonic mana inside me. If anyone senses it... I'll become the target of every guild and Awakened.'
'And worst of all, I'm not even strong enough to take down two leaders of the Hollow Crown organization.'
Stephen felt that everything had now turned completely against him.
Well, and who was to blame for this?
Of course, it was Stephen!!!
Because he had pushed himself to the absolute limit, leaving himself exhausted and tired and causing him to lose his concentration.
It was incredibly embarrassing that someone with an S-rank intelligence stat had fallen into such a trivial trap.
Stephen regretted not listening to Mark's words back then.
'Sorry, Mark... I'll listen to your advice in the future.'