"What are we doing here?" Erin was profoundly confused. She assumed that since they hadn't found any further physical clues from Mrs. Wells today, they would be leaving the street entirely to search elsewhere.
After bidding farewell to the grieving mother, the two of them hadn't actually left. Instead, Damian pulled Erin around a blind corner and silently cast an HP Disillusionment Charm on them both, flawlessly concealing their figures.
"Mrs. Wells is absolutely hiding something from us. She recognized those footprints. Following her might lead us straight to the kidnapper," Damian explained calmly.
"Huh? How did you figure out she was hiding something? I didn't notice anything suspicious at all," Erin asked curiously.
"Intuition and experience, I guess. I felt that her physical reactions were deeply unnatural," Damian lied casually.
In truth, the moment Damian noticed Mrs. Wells's emotional spike, he had secretly cast Legilimency directly into her mind when their eyes met, successfully reading her chaotic surface thoughts.
Although her mind was highly panicked and he couldn't see the specific details, Damian had easily confirmed that the kidnapping of Ismur Wells was directly related to her husband's factory.
"It seems I still have a lot to learn about investigating!" Erin completely believed his lie. She clasped her hands together, her adventurous spirit fully restored.
The two of them observed Mrs. Wells's movements from afar. However, they waited in the alley for a long time, and the mother didn't leave her doorstep; she just stood there, seemingly paralyzed by indecision.
"Why is she just standing there for so long..." Erin covered her mouth with her gloved hand and yawned. The boring, tedious reality of stakeouts quickly made her impatient.
Finally, Mrs. Wells moved. But instead of returning to the safety of her house, she stepped out into the street.
Damian and Erin watched her aggressively flag down a passing rickshaw and climb inside. This kind of cheap rickshaw service was highly common in the massive Sixth Ring of the Royal Capital; human labor was exponentially cheaper here than purchasing or renting magical beasts.
Erin rubbed her eyes. "Hey! She's moving—quick, we have to follow her!"
Erin rapidly drew her wooden staff and cast the Swift Step Runic spell on herself and Damian to drastically increase their running speed.
The two invisible figures moved swiftly, easily matching the pace of the mundane rickshaw Mrs. Wells had hailed.
After nearly twenty minutes of tailing, the rickshaw stopped far outside the upscale residential area, pulling up to the iron gates of an industrial factory.
The rickshaw puller said breathlessly, "We're here, Madam. The fare is fifteen Copper Pennies."
"Keep the change as a tip." After getting out of the carriage, Mrs. Wells hurriedly tossed two ten-denomination Copper Pennies onto the seat.
"Thank you for your immense generosity, Madam!" The puller happily scooped up the coins and was about to offer a few words of blessing when he realized the woman had already sprinted through the factory gates without looking back.
She seemed to be in an absolute panic, generously giving a massive five-penny tip. Given her previously displayed stingy, nouveau riche nature, Damian knew she would never normally surrender that much coin.
It was the peak of working hours. The laborers in the factory were busy moving raw materials, and the chaotic scene was one of deafening hustle and bustle.
After Mrs. Wells entered the main building, she completely ignored the workers and sprinted straight into her husband's private office.
Her husband, Reginald Wells, was sitting blankly behind his large mahogany desk. His eyes were deeply bloodshot, and heavy, dark circles weighed down his eyelids, making him look as if he hadn't slept for a week.
When Mrs. Wells burst into the room, her fragile composure finally shattered completely.
She lunged across the room, grabbing her husband's arm and demanding shrilly, "Where is Ismur?! You must know! Tell me where he is!"
Reginald silently stood up, violently shaking off her grip, and walked over to lock the heavy office door.
"What are you screaming about?" Reginald asked, his voice hollow and deep.
Mrs. Wells frantically recounted what had just happened, speaking rapidly as if her life depended on it. "Two Court Wizards just arrived at the house! They cast a spell where Ismur was last seen, making the physical tracks visible..."
Mrs. Wells grabbed her hair, screaming hysterically. "I saw your boot prints there! They were your prints! You were the absolute last person Ismur saw!"
"Reginald!" she shrieked. "What did you do to my Ismur?!"
"So that's it..." Reginald slumped heavily back into his chair, as if all the remaining strength had suddenly left his mortal body.
He slowly looked up at his hysterical wife. "What happened to Ismur... you should know very well... Perhaps this is simply our retribution..."
"You are his father... How could you... How could you do it?!" Mrs. Wells finally broke down entirely, covering her face as she sobbed uncontrollably.
Reginald's expression suddenly became utterly ferocious. He slammed his fists onto the desk and roared at her, "Do you think I wanted this?!"
"Its appetite is getting bigger and bigger! I can't control it anymore!"
"It's completely out of control!" Reginald screamed. "It's all because of you! If it weren't for your pathetic greed, bringing back that demonic contract, why would I be in this nightmare?!"
Mrs. Wells violently wiped her tears, arguing back fiercely. "Are you blaming me for this?! It's because you were too useless to save the factory! That's why I had to..."
Suddenly, Mrs. Wells's expression froze in absolute horror. "What... what's wrong with you...?"
She watched Reginald's expression rapidly warp into sheer mania. His bloodshot eyes began to glow with a terrifying, unnatural crimson light, and his entire facial structure constantly deformed as if something was pushing from beneath his skin.
With a sickening crack, Reginald's entire skull violently split into four massive segments, blooming open like a grotesque flower.
What was revealed inside was not his human brain, but a massive, pulsating mouth covered in rows of dense, razor-sharp fangs. It was undeniably the maw of an otherworldly monster.
After his skull split open, his original facial features sloughed to the sides of the segmented flesh, yet his deformed human mouth mechanically kept repeating, "This is retribution... This is retribution..."
Seeing the horrifying sight, Mrs. Wells screamed in sheer terror, backing away. "You really are crazy! You actually let that monster possess you!"
Before Mrs. Wells could finish screaming, the massive, four-segmented monster mouth suddenly lunged forward, stretching unnaturally wide to completely envelop her entire head.
Snap! When the four segments of the monster's maw clamped shut, a sickening crunch echoing like a smashed watermelon rang out.
After devouring her head, the four-segmented mouth retracted, and Reginald's skull seemingly stitched itself back together. He appeared completely normal again, though his head was now significantly distended due to the extra flesh stuffed inside.
Reginald's face constantly twisted and bulged. A horrifying crunch, crunch sound, exactly like a wild dog rapidly gnawing on a bone, echoed loudly from within his skull. Fresh blood continuously leaked from the four invisible seams in his scalp.
In front of the possessed man, Mrs. Wells's headless corpse slowly toppled to the floor. The arterial blood aggressively soaking her gaudy dress vividly highlighted her horrific end.
"Ahhhh!" A piercing scream suddenly echoed inside the locked office.
It was the scream of the Long-Eared Clan hybrid.
Erin Syl was a pampered flower raised entirely within a greenhouse. She had never witnessed such raw, visceral gore in her entire life. The sheer horror shattered her naive illusions of adventure, leaving her utterly terrified.
Before Reginald had locked the heavy office door, Damian and Erin—still under the effects of the Disillusionment Charm—had easily slipped into the room behind Mrs. Wells.
They had silently observed the entire domestic dispute, but Reginald's sudden, violent mutation had completely exceeded Damian's expectations. The time from the skull splitting to Mrs. Wells's decapitation had occurred in mere seconds.
Moreover, until Reginald had physically split open his head, Damian's True Magical Perception had detected absolutely zero magical fluctuations radiating from the man's body. It was only after the horrific mutation was complete that dark, violent magic began pouring from the creature.
Erin's piercing scream immediately attracted the possessed Reginald's attention. His distended skull violently split into four segments again, revealing the blood-soaked fangs inside.
The split maw opened wide, elongating across the room as it snapped violently toward the source of the invisible noise.
Damian instantly yanked the stunned Erin toward him, pulling the terrified princess tightly into his embrace as he desperately rolled to the right.
The monster's massive jaws snapped shut on empty air, biting with such terrifying force that it completely shattered the stone floor tiles where they had just been standing.
"Your Highness Erin, are you alright?" Damian asked softly, looking down at the Long-Eared girl who had buried her face deeply into his chest.
The two of them were currently sprawled on the floor. Erin's face flushed deeply. After taking a ragged breath, she reluctantly pulled away from his comforting embrace and shakily stood up.
"I... I'm fine..." she stammered. However, the violent, uncontrollable trembling of her elongated ears clearly betrayed her sheer terror.
Hearing them move, Reginald turned again. With a grotesque flick of his elongated neck, the four-segmented mouth aggressively snapped toward them once more.
Damian's eyes went cold. During the momentary pause, he had already mentally constructed his Innate Spell Model. With a casual clench of his right hand, a massive, crackling hand forged entirely of raw lightning materialized in the air above the monster.
It was the translated Runic version of his HP magic—the Great Lightning Summoning!
The giant hand of thunder violently grabbed the mutated monster, lifting it entirely off the ground, and squeezed ruthlessly.
As the deafening sound of shattering bones echoed through the office, the foul stench of scorched, alien flesh rapidly filled the room.
When the massive lightning hand finally dissipated, a mangled, shapeless lump of charred meat plummeted to the floor.
"So... so powerful..." the pale-faced Erin murmured, completely awestruck.
Although Erin was technically royalty and had met countless Formal Wizards within the Alliance, she had never actually witnessed one engage in a brutal, life-or-death battle. She had absolutely no real understanding of just how terrifying a First-Level Sorcerer's innate power truly was.
Damian sensed that the violent magical fluctuations within the charred lump of meat were rapidly dissipating. He slowly walked forward, preparing to examine Reginald's corpse.
At that exact moment, the dying Reginald seemed to momentarily regain a sliver of his human clarity. His mangled, burnt face hanging near the floor coughed painfully, and the demonic crimson light in his eyes gradually faded.
He glanced at his wife's headless corpse lying across the room, and blood-stained tears leaked from his eyes. "This is... retribution..."
Reginald looked up, his dying eyes focusing on Damian, whose Disillusionment Charm had dropped during the attack. He struggled to speak. "You are... an Honorable Court Wizard... aren't you..."
"Perhaps... you still have many questions..."
Using the last dregs of his fleeting life, Reginald recounted the entire horrifying truth.
Reginald had proudly taken over the factory left by his father a few years ago. It was a standard, mid-tier Magic Factory dedicated to mass-producing enchanted parchment and self-inking Quill Pens.
However, the factory was teetering on the absolute brink of bankruptcy.
Decades ago, magic had been an exclusive realm entirely restricted to elite wizards. It was completely separated from the common folk and was never applied to civilian infrastructure. The Royal Capital of that era had strongly resembled the medieval squalor Damian remembered from Muggle history.
When the Former King of the Blizzard Kingdom ascended to the throne, he aggressively mandated the integration of Runic arrays into civilian sectors like heavy industry and agriculture.
Following those aggressive reforms, the Royal Capital experienced an explosive industrial revolution. Massive, automated Magic Factories were rapidly constructed throughout the Sixth Ring.
As time passed, these hyper-efficient factories completely wiped out the traditional manual labor industries. However, after the Former King tragically died, the kingdom's technological momentum stagnated. The Court Wizards hadn't successfully engineered any new, groundbreaking magical production instruments in years.
Without the ability to innovate or expand into new markets, the factories were forced into a cannibalistic competition over existing trade.
More and more Magic Factories began exclusively producing basic parchment and Quills. Product prices plummeted due to over-saturation, but the raw operational costs remained staggeringly high. In the end, the only factories capable of turning a profit were those that secured massive, exclusive contracts with the Merchant Guilds and the Court Wizards.
The remaining independent factories were systematically starved out and eliminated. The Wells family factory was one of those doomed enterprises.
Last year, Reginald had finally accepted defeat and decided to formally close the factory. However, his desperate wife had returned home carrying a highly restricted magical contract she had bought on the black market.
She had purchased the contract from a rogue, cloaked wizard using a massive sum of borrowed gang money. The rogue wizard claimed that signing the contract would allow the user to summon an invisible, otherworldly entity that would systematically eliminate their corporate competitors.
Naturally, all summoning contracts demanded a steep price. The cost of maintaining this specific entity was providing it with continuous offerings of fresh flesh and blood.
Desperate to save his father's legacy, Reginald signed the contract in blood.
But what he hadn't anticipated was the summoned entity's highly specific palette. The monster utterly refused mundane meat; it demanded the raw flesh of either humans or magical creatures.
He begged his wife to track down the rogue wizard to break the pact, but the man had vanished without a trace. Because purchasing magical beasts for slaughter was far too expensive, Reginald made a horrific choice: he began feeding the entity human vagrants.
Soon after, Reginald's main business rival died under deeply mysterious circumstances. Reginald ruthlessly seized the opportunity, aggressively swallowing up the rival's market share.
Within a few months, he became a wealthy regular client of the Sixth Ring's underground gangs—purchasing bodies for the entity—and fulfilled his wife's shallow dream of moving to the upscale 116th Street.
However, recently, his expanded business ran into severe supply chain issues, and he completely lost control of his cash flow. He could no longer afford to buy victims from the gangs.
Worse still, the Otherworldly Monster tethered to the contract was growing stronger and constantly demanding larger, fresher sacrifices.
Reginald had missed his feeding deadline by exactly one day. Enraged by his failure, the Otherworldly Monster violently possessed his body and devoured his ten-year-old son, Ismur, as a penalty.
After Reginald choked out his final words, his life completely faded.
Instantly, the ring-shaped metal disc hidden within Damian's mind pulsed violently. A brilliant flash of multidimensional red light—visible only to Damian—floated out of the charred corpse and was rapidly absorbed by the disc.
Because Damian had previously fused the native Blue Crystal into the metal disc, it possessed the ability to actively absorb the energy from a distance without Damian needing to physically touch the corpse.
However, recognizing the energy made Damian frown deeply. He had long confirmed that the red mist absorbed by his key was entirely composed of pure Void Power.
The monster that possessed Reginald Wells was actively saturated with Void Power, Damian realized in horror.
"Could that black-market magical contract actually be summoning parasitic creatures from the Void-corrupted Gap World?" Damian wondered internally.
Damian had a dark premonition. If the Void Creatures had successfully infiltrated the Royal Capital through civilian contracts, this seemingly isolated murder likely connected to a far more terrifying conspiracy.
Damian easily found the blood-stained magical contract Reginald had mentioned locked inside the office desk drawer.
But Damian had absolutely no intention of investigating it further. The rogue wizard who sold the contract to Mrs. Wells would be impossible to track down without exposing his own identity, and poking into the Void's infiltration was far too dangerous right now.
"Why do people still resort to such horrific means?" Erin asked, her voice trembling as she stared at the carnage. "The Alliance's magic has completely solved the problem of starvation in the city. Why are they never satisfied?"
Damian glanced at the naive princess. "Human greed," he said softly. "Who knows?"
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