Chapter 1017: The Nightmare on the Tower

Claude, a high-ranking demon hunter who was captured by the demonic army on the front line, was in a strange state of mind as the others. He had refused to talk and even attacked Vivian; there was nothing they could do about him. Hao Ren thought that this guy would take a long time to recover. After all, even the MDT could not understand what was in his mind. But now, he regained his sanity all of a sudden.

This came as a pleasant surprise. Y’zaks went up to Claude curiously. “Do you know what you’re doing now?” he asked.

“I’m still suffering from the sequelae,” Claude said, standing in the middle of the soldiers. His face was a little pale, still wearing his tattered clothes, and a chain restraining him. He looked a sight and embarrassed too. “Looks like I have caused you guys a lot of trouble,” he said.

“It’s not just trouble,” White Flame said, standing in front of Claude with her arms crossed. “Let me first ask you a couple of questions so that I know you’ve fully recovered,” she said.

Meanwhile, Hao Ren came up to Lanina and whispered, “Have you seen the situation on the lower floors?”

“We followed the signs and caught up from the rear. Of course, I’ve seen them all,” Lanina said. Her slender tail was waving in the air, and her mesmerizing eyes were full of enthusiasm. “It’s a wonderful phenomenon. If I’m not mistaken, space and time in this tower must have changed. People in the tower seem to be imprisoned in the cracks of the dislocated space and time. This world is exciting,” she said.

A succubus, who was neither into men nor women, she disliked her own natural talent. But she liked everything about warfare and science. Hao Ren could only marvel; she was trained under Y’zaks after all.

Meanwhile, White Flame had asked him some verification questions, which were all about the internal affairs of the demon hunters and the details of things before the civil war. She then certified Claude as “clean”—he had recovered. Breathing a sigh of relief, she said, “Phew… Finally, at least one guy has become normal again. Maybe I should first take the rune shackle off you.”

“No, leave it on,” Claude said, taking a step back. The rune shackle on his body creaked. “I asked for it. I don’t think I’m completely stable. The… The voice still rings in my head sometimes—the acouasm, visual hallucination, and other thoughts. I feel that wearing these things is safer—safer for everyone,” he said.

“Voice?” Vivian came forward. “Did you say there is a voice?”

“Yes, a voice… maybe not. It’s hard for me to describe it clearly,” Claude said. His muscle tensed when seeing Vivian. It was as if an urge to attack that was not his own still lingered in him. But he along with the rune chains had suppressed this impulse. As Claude himself said, wearing the shackles was a wise move. “That thing is lingering in my spiritual world like a thought or a personality in my brain. It is not a sound but something more direct and effective—”

“Thought control.” Hao Ren interrupted him. “Really, you should prepare a few more modern vocabulary dictionaries in the library. Sandwiching them between the moldy Potionology manuals would do your thinking a great favor.”

“Well, Thought Control; it sounds very appropriate,” Claude said, looking at Hao Ren while arcing the corner of his mouth. “I know the term, just that it didn’t come to mind at that moment.”

“So the problem is still about mind control,” Vivian said with her arms crossed. She did not expect the question would eventually come back to its most primitive origin. “Smarter, more effective, more concealed, but in the end, it is still a mind-control? The answer is a letdown.”

Claude quickly shook his head. “No, it is different from mind control. I personally experienced this process. I’m dead sure that there is no external force to distort or remotely control our thoughts. It just inspires and enlarges part of the thoughts deep in our hearts and then it lets this trend develop. Though it may sound offensive to admit it here, the purification of heretics is indeed the idea in the subconscious mind of every demon hunter, including your comrades who are standing by your side. Had they also heard the thing in my mind, they would become no different from the Council of Elders,” he said.

Claude’s words had caused a commotion among a small number of demon hunters at the scene. Some less steady demon hunters looked slyly at the demonic soldiers who stayed silent. Lanina said indifferently, “There is a dark side to everyone. Extracting and magnifying a specific dark side is not a clever way for us demons. It was just that the guy who fiddled with the mind of the Council of Elders and sages was more powerful.”

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White Flame whispered, “You guys do have a big heart.”

“In our hometown, every creature that breathed couldn’t wait to kill us,” Lanina said, shrugging. “We have long been used to the hatred. By a lower standard, you are simply an exemplary ally, at least you have been fighting side by side with us.”

“Let’s come back to the topic at hand,” Hao Ren waved his hand to interrupt the conversation between Lanina and White Flame. He looked into Claude’s eyes and said, “So it was that voice, the guy who controlled the thoughts of the elders and sages? The state of the tower now…”

He raised his hand and pointed to the remains of Sage Beetholis. “His death was also because of the voice?”

By now, Claude only noticed Beetholis lying not far away. He cried out, “Sage!”

“He was here when we found him. The way he died is bizarre. His body has completely turned into smog, leaving only this clothes and some ashes behind,” Teuton explained. “So what happened here?” he asked.

There was a sense of horror in Claude’s eyes as if what happened in the tower was terrifying. He lowered his voice and said, “We have awakened an ancient will; a powerful, incomprehensible and non-physical being. It quickly affected everyone through the mysterious connection between the various ruins of Coldpath.”

“Specifically, who woke that thing up? Why wake it up? What kind of thing was it originally?” Hao Ren was pouring the questions out of his mind.

“It was the sages,” Claude said. His answer was expected. “After Elder Hasse returned from the Ancattero territory, the sages summoned him and immediately conducted a few secret meetings. I don’t know about what they were discussing, but they were all nervous in an obvious way. Then the sages took out a piece of sacred artifact from the treasure vault and held a ritual in the ceremonial hall. Things started to go wrong after that,” he said.

Claude tried to recall and describe what happened after the ritual. “At that time, only the sages were in the ceremonial hall while the others were ordered to wait outside. There was a strange noise coming from inside the hall as if people were quarreling. Then the ritual was over, but the sages did not leave the hall. They said that they would like to meditate in the hall for a while. That’s what I can recall so far. What happened after that was that everyone’s mood became a bit strange, but no one was aware of this anomaly. The changes were subtle, and it had already taken effect before we noticed it,” Claude said.

“That is to say, at least in your memory, the sages had never left the hall?” Hao Ren stared at Claude. “Except for some kind of power that came out of the hall, no one or thing left, right?” he asked.

Claude thought for a moment and nodded hard. “Yes,” he replied.

“I’m afraid that the sages had been destroyed, at least at mentally, after the ritual,” Vivian said, pointing to the clothes and ashes of Beetholis. “Beetholis might have barely escaped, but only made it this far. The message on the wall is all that he could leave at the time,” Vivian said.

Lily turned to look at the message on the wall. “According to the message, that ‘thing’ should still be in the ceremonial hall,” she said.

White Flame was suspicious of something. “The ‘thing’ has infected Coldpath entirely, will it still stay in the hall?” she asked.

“Because it hasn’t completely escaped,” Hao Ren blurted out. “It’s just the ‘thing’s’ power that leaked out of the hall. The sages probably noticed that the situation was out of control halfway through the ritual and they must have used some sort of measure to hold that ‘thing’ up at the site of the ritual!”

Vivian had an instinctive sense of distrust towards the demon hunter sages. “How do you know that the sages would do this?” she asked.

Hao Ren pointed at Beetholis’ last words on the wall. “Because they didn’t want to let that ‘thing’ out—they didn’t even know that they would unwittingly release that ‘thing’!”