The Return of Lilietta - Chapter 178

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 178

Four arms began rapidly juggling with cards and a staff.

Only then did Ethan realize that its body was shaped like a person attached front and back on both sides, just like the Red Queen.

It was definitely a minion of the Red Queen. Probably some kind of card soldier.

The moment he realized this, he threw his body backward.

“Uh, uhh?”

“Get to the corner!”

He pushed Hanna into the corner of the bedroom and stood blocking her front.

Then, with a swooshing sound, he blocked the flying cards by offering his already severed and senseless right arm. Cold blood splattered wherever the cards pierced.

“Ethan, you, your arm…!”

“Don’t worry about useless things and hurry up and connect the communication!”

Ethan continued speaking as he struck down the cards that followed with taut threads.

“We’ve encountered what appears to be a Joker, a minion of the Red Queen, and the manor is being surrounded by demonic beasts!”

“Sur, surrounded?”

“I can sense demonic beasts swarming from outside. That damn Grand Duke bastard must have left the manor to let you have an ‘accidental death.'”

“Uh, uhhh…”

“Damn it, I won’t let you die so stop trembling! First, call Oli or Senior Is!”

Ethan spoke rapidly as he parried the Joker’s staff striking down at him with his dagger and struck away cards flying from blind spots with threads.

Behind him, Hanna trembled violently as she somehow managed to draw up Ode and attempt communication.

* * *

[He, here at, the vi, vineyard ma, manor, a demonic beast in red clown attire has appeared! And…]

Hearing Hanna’s sobbing communication, Olivia finally knew where the other Joker was. She bit her lips hard.

“Demonic beasts are swarming there?”

[Yes, Ethan detected them! Re, Red Queen’s minions, he says…]

“They are Red Queen minions. Card soldiers. The red Joker that appeared there seems to be a minion the Red Queen summoned with new abilities. There’s one here too, a black Joker.”

Olivia spoke in rapid tones then asked back.

“Hanna, you’re listening together with Ethan, right?”

[Yes, yes! I connected it so you can be heard!]

“Good.”

She immediately recited the current situation she was assessing.

“The isolation space activated safely. Sera and I are maintaining it, and Rita and Gid are facing the Red Queen, Heart King, and Black Joker in the arena. Card soldiers have been released into the city, so Senior Is is leading the Special Agents in urban warfare, and Luca is searching for and engaging the Heart Jack. Just like in the Ash-covered Era, the minions will keep reviving as long as the Red Queen is alive, so the front lines will be in a stalemate for a while.”

Oli took a short breath and spoke calmly.

“That’s the situation. Do you need support, Ethan?”

After a moment of silence, Hanna conveyed Ethan’s words in a trembling voice.

[No, not needed… He says to tell you we’ll escape on our own…]

“…Got it. I’ll send a sparrow through Senior Is, so check the escape route with a bird’s-eye view. Hanna, if that snot storage-like bastard Ethan seems to be overexerting himself, you must communicate, understand?”

[Yes… *sniff*.]

“It’s okay, what’s next to you is Beacon’s ghost. I don’t know about his personality, but his skills are certain, so stick close to that guy.”

After ending the communication, Olivia looked around the battlefield isolated inside Rhamcard Arena.

Beyond the windows of the VIP seats, only thick fog could be seen.

Even in the bird’s-eye view provided by Is’s sparrow flying at the top of the barrier, only white fog filled everything.

Rita and Gid were completely invisible. Neither the Red Queen, the old king, nor the Joker wearing a black clown hat could be seen.

Ever since the Red Queen’s ‘kingdom’ had descended in the form of that strange fog, different from what she knew.

“What the hell is happening in there? Damn.”

Olivia anxiously bit her nails and began analyzing the fog using every magic at her disposal.

* * *

When the Red Queen’s kingdom arrives, rose vine-like things sprout and soldiers bloom. And living beings within the kingdom transform into the queen’s subjects.

To explain more precisely, the ‘kingdom’ is both a flower garden where the Red Queen’s soldiers are born and an ability that turns all living creatures within range into demonic beasts under the Red Queen’s command.

This was why Beacon somehow prevented the Red Queen’s kingdom from arriving in the city, and why they didn’t engage in battle until they lured it into the arena’s isolation space where no one else was present.

Rita and Gid, who began full-scale subjugation after trapping the Red Queen in the arena with no one else to get involved, naturally prepared for the kingdom’s arrival while attacking the Red Queen. They had already planned how to resist the kingdom’s demonification.

However, the kingdom the Red Queen actually descended was in a completely different form from what they knew.

In the situation where the King, whose burst body had been restored, was attacking Gid, the Red Queen ignored Gid and charged only at Rita, and the hidden Joker circled around them.

While Gid dodged the King’s attacks and blocked the Red Queen’s blade striking down at Rita, Rita fired restraining bullets at the Joker while mixing in ricochet shots.

Several magic bullets hit the arena walls and viewing stands, bouncing to aim at the Red Queen’s only blind spot – her sides, since she had no front or back.

The Red Queen is not a fast-moving demonic beast. It was fully exposed to the magic bullets bouncing in from the blind spot.

Several streams of blood shot up from the queen’s sides. It screamed, rolled back its eyes, and opened its mouth wide to summon the kingdom.

At that moment, Rita and Gid discovered a new difference between the Red Queen of the Ash-covered Era and the current Red Queen.

“Inside her mouth—”

There’s a strange magic circle.

Before Rita could finish speaking, the queen let out an eerie sound.

A sound that seemed like singing and crying at the same time, impossible to express in human language. A demonic beast’s incantation.

Along with that incantation, the magic circle inside the Red Queen’s mouth glowed, and instead of the thorn vine kingdom, enormous smoke exploded outward. At a speed that left no time to react.

In that instant, Lillieta caught a thick rose fragrance from the smoke.

When she opened her eyes that had reflexively closed, she was standing alone in a space rippling pure white.

Somehow her head felt hazy. Like she was dreaming.

Rita bit the inside of her mouth to regain her senses and called out.

“Gid? Oli?”

No answer came back. She couldn’t sense any presence either. She tried calling her artificial spirit while gripping her revolvers tightly with both hands.

“Gnyug?”

No response from the chatty spirit either. She took a long deep breath.

‘This seems like… a hallucination. Already?’

Originally, the Red Queen doesn’t move from the center after establishing her kingdom. She closes her eyes as if sleeping, holds a heart flower, and focuses on recovering her minions.

If you break through the creatures that became the kingdom’s subjects and the infinitely reviving card soldiers to approach the center where the queen is and deliver a critically lethal attack she can’t ignore, or steal the heart flower to drive her into a frenzy.

The Red Queen, in crisis, spews out rose fragrance imbued with terrible hallucinatory curses as her final desperate act.

Rita had never experienced it directly, but she had heard about it since Lucas, who was being chased after eating the heart flower, was caught by that fragrance and couldn’t wake up for a considerable period.

‘As soon as I smelled the flower scent, I opened my eyes in a space full of white fog… He said he saw himself in a glass box, banging his head against walls and biting his nails.’

Oli, who heard that story, had analyzed that it was probably some kind of hallucinatory curse that brought up terrible memories.

She didn’t know why a pattern that used to appear as a final desperate act in the Ash-covered Era came out simultaneously with kingdom construction, but it was probably due to the magic circle inside the demonic beast’s mouth, and that magic circle was undoubtedly Pascal’s doing.

‘So now I’ll see my nightmares. How do I escape this? With Luca, we woke him up from outside.’

She couldn’t carelessly fire her gun in case she hit Gid or Oli.

Rita prepared herself for the sight of a Mimic jumping out to chew on a blonde head and pondered various ways to wake up from the hallucination.

But nothing happened.

‘What?’

When she began to wonder, something faint suddenly appeared beyond the fog. She took a few steps toward it. The fog diminished and what had been flickering became clear.

“…!”

Ten-year-old Gid Pascal was standing face to face with ten-year-old Rita Pascal. In what looked like a cut-out section of the training facility corridor.

The boy said to the girl.

“Left-handedness is disgusting and strange. The left hand is an ominous hand, and left means something bad. Isn’t that right?”

The girl answered.

“Then just keep using your right hand. You were good with your right hand too.”

The boy smiled.

“Ah, wrong again.”

Young Gid Pascal gripped the training sword he was holding in reverse and slashed his own throat.

Young Rita Pascal screamed.

Lillieta, who was watching the scene, covered her mouth to stop a scream from bursting out.

What… is this?

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