Beguiling the Enemy’s Patriarch - Chapter 128

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 128
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“How am I supposed to escape this?”
My brow furrowed involuntarily. I stared at the iron bars for what felt like an eternity, afraid even to touch them. The bars themselves posed no real obstacle—the gaps between them were wide enough that I could squeeze my body through if I contorted myself properly. No, the true problem wasn’t the bars at all, but the massive magical circle suspended in the empty space directly before them.
Raulus clicked his tongue.
[This pathetic thing would be ash in an instant if I burned it.]
Of course, I couldn’t summon purifying flames, so his words were meaningless. My remaining divine power was down to approximately fifty percent, and it was slowly depleting as I kept Raulus manifested.
Could I even destroy this with my own strength? I regarded the glowing red magical circle with profound skepticism. As a test, I drew forth some divine power and prodded it gently, but the result was counterproductive. The intricately woven circle didn’t budge in the slightest, while my body reacted with violent intensity. And that wasn’t even the worst of my problems…
“….”
I gazed grimly at the two figures standing on either side of the passage beyond the bars. So I faced two obstacles: the magical circle before the bars, and the ‘Gatekeepers’ beyond them.
I carefully opened my mouth to speak.
“Um… are you alive?”
A meaningless question. Those things were, in other words, ‘Leria’—corpses controlled by dark magic. There was no way a corpse could comprehend human speech. I tried calling out once more, my heart trembling with anxiety.
“Hey, can’t you hear me? Really? Can you even see me?”
The two corpses remained utterly motionless. They merely faced each other, sparing not a single glance in my direction. Then perhaps…
“Grrrrgh….”
I flinched. I’d carefully brought my fingertip toward the magical circle before hastily withdrawing it. The man standing on the right had emitted a sound like a beast’s cry and suddenly whipped his head toward me.
“Gasp….”
The face I now stared directly at was grotesque. One half of it was caved in, twisted into a nightmarish shape. Thick, hardened scabs covered nearly his entire visage, and a chill of revulsion ran through my entire body. How could anyone possibly regard this as a living human being?
[The stench of rotting corpse is quite palpable.]
Raulus burrowed deeper into my sleeve, muttering his observation. Even if I managed to destroy this magical circle and escape beyond the bars, whether I could actually contend with these ‘Gatekeepers’ remained uncertain. I recalled Leria, whom I’d buried in the depths of my memory—a puppet dancing to Soleia’s commands. A sacrifice.
“…There’s no choice.”
[A direct confrontation?]
“What other option do I have? Besides, if I keep hesitating like this and Hades appears again, I won’t even have time to attempt anything before instant death.”
Death either way—I’d rather choose action. I scraped together what little courage remained, barely visible at the bottom of an empty vessel, and took a deep breath. The technique of destroying magical power with divine energy—wasn’t this what I’d trained for over the past two years?
“And… if I don’t need to confront them and simply pass through…”
I pressed my lips together and fixed my gaze on the magical circle. The Gatekeeper couldn’t see me. But the moment I touched the magical circle, it would react instantly.
“That means they were ordered to guard this magical circle, not me.”
[Oh. You’re rather clever.]
Besides, Gatekeeper or not, they were ultimately dead corpses—mere puppets stained with dark magic. They wouldn’t sense divine power any differently.
“So hurry and pray, Lari. Pray I don’t drop dead the moment I touch this magical circle.”
I didn’t even expect to completely dismantle this enormous circle. What I was aiming for was something far smaller—a tiny gap through which I could slip between those bars.
I stared at the magical circle with unwavering intensity. On the surface, it was merely a complex geometric pattern, but when I concentrated all my focus, its flow became perfectly clear to me. The direction the magical power flowed, where the weaving was dense and where it was loose. Among non-mages, I was likely the only one who could read such things, and no one knew this fact.
“Found it…”
A point where the tingling sensation momentarily grew faint. I sharpened the divine power flowing through my fingertips into a keen edge. Without hesitation, I drove it deep—into the shallowest section of the densely woven red circle. The magical circle shuddered violently.
“Grrrrgh!”
The torn section of the magical net became visible to the naked eye. Both Gatekeepers’ heads snapped upward in unison.
“Yap!”
It seemed uttering strange sounds in moments of crisis was indeed one of my habits. I hurled my body through the breach. My form barely scraped through the bars.
A pain that could never be described as a cute little cry of “ouch” pierced through my skin and stabbed sharply into my bones. I felt a massive chunk of divine power drain from my body, which was more than half-filled with it. Yet I couldn’t cry out. I tumbled once beyond the bars and held my breath completely still.
Tap-tap-tap.
The black-haired Gatekeeper brushed past me with a hair’s breadth to spare. The speed was terrifying. As he threw himself forward with all his might, Raulus, who had been burrowed into my sleeve, tumbled across the floor. I quickly snatched up the small wolf cub. The second Gatekeeper stepped directly over the spot where Raulus had just been. Raulus let out a sharp yelp.
[I almost died!]
I’m the one who almost died!
I swallowed the urge to snap back and quickly pushed myself to my feet. Glancing behind, I saw both Gatekeepers pressed against the iron bars, examining the magical circle. A somewhat deflated murmur escaped my lips.
“They don’t seem to have much intelligence….”
Then again, how intelligent could a corpse be? I quickly seized Raulus by the scruff of his neck and bolted forward. Remaining divinity: forty percent.
It felt oddly like I’d become a video game character. The difference being that restart wasn’t an option after game over. When the game ended, I simply ceased to exist….
The corridor stretched in a straight line ahead. In the distance, I could see another turn. My breath caught in my throat. I heard no sounds of pursuit, but the silence itself felt ominous.
“Ah, me. Seriously!”
And the moment I rounded the corner, curses poured from my lips. It was repetition. Iron bars no different from before. A larger magical circle in front of the bars. And beyond the bars, something creaking…. Creaking…?
“Huh?”
Before I could process it, a stupid gasp tumbled from my lips. Raulus, barely clinging to my hair and dangling precariously, shrieked.
[Hey, hold me properly!]
“….”
That doesn’t seem to be the problem right now.
For a moment, I seriously considered whether I should just bite my tongue and die here.
“Hello?”
Smiling broadly at me from beyond the bars was the final boss of this wretched game—the last person I wanted to see.
“I thought you were clever, but apparently you’re not.”
“Hades….”
Beyond the mountain lay not another mountain, but Hell itself. My head throbbed.
“It would be troublesome if you were injured.”
His voice rippled with an eerie quality.
“I’d prefer my new body to be in pristine condition.”
“New body….”
Soleia’s body creaked like a marionette with severed strings. With a sense of despair, I felt for the remaining divinity within me. It had depleted further, now falling short of even forty percent. Damn it. With less than half my divinity, what could I possibly….
“A body brimming with divinity.”
“What?”
What body? But my thoughts couldn’t continue further—they simply stopped there.
…!”
In an instant, the iron bars bent outward like taffy. Hades leaped lightly over them and appeared directly before me. A soft sound.
“…?!”
“My beloved body.”
Icy lips touched the crown of my head. I found myself tightly embraced in Hades’ arms—or rather, Soleia’s body. Thump. I could hear a heartbeat. A pulse that no corpse should possess.
“We’re going back. To Udeta….”
Hades held me close, pressing kisses across my face and shoulders as if handling a beloved doll. The arm wrapped around my shoulders didn’t feel human at all. It was cold and rigid. Like being held by a skeleton.
“Ugh….”
Moreover, wherever those cold lips touched, my skin burned as if searing. I bit the inside of my mouth repeatedly, trying to focus on the heartbeat resonating through Soleia’s body. It wasn’t dead. The one dominating Soleia’s body was undoubtedly Hades. I had witnessed with my own eyes how the King of the Underground—that mere collection of dry bones—had pierced through and inhabited Soleia’s form.
“Can you hear me…?”
I gazed up at those polished obsidian eyes and barely managed to speak. Soleia’s lips curved into a smooth arc.
“I hear you perfectly well, Princess.”
“You’re not dead, are you? You wouldn’t just be lying there after having your body stolen, would you—”
“Where is Raulus?”
“Here, in this place teeming with your disciples. The last remaining sanctuary, as you called it!”
I thrashed against Hades’s grip, desperate to break free, and cried out.
“I—I have to protect what must be protected—ugh.”
And my mouth snapped shut. Damn it. Hades, gripping the nape of my neck with one hand while clamping his other over my mouth, laughed like a madman.
“Attack me, Princess. With that formidable divinity of yours.”
No, this bastard is absolutely insane.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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