NOVPUBIn the brightly lit bedroom, the two exchanged glances.
"?"
Indeed, it’s true...
But for Hyperion, the real issue was if Viscount Augustin was controlled by Lanci!
She had come to understand Lanci’s cryptic language.
This guy intended to personally rescue Viscount Augustin.
Then take control of Viscount Augustin.
To acquire a Sixth-order vampire experiment to manipulate at will!
You’re not a traitor, but your actions are worse than a traitor’s!
"Stisera, you’ll have to put up with staying in this room for the next few days. We can’t reveal that you’ve joined us in our live broadcast, and on the surface, we are still mortal enemies. However, we will provide you with three meals a day, and you can tell us if you need anything," Lanci said to Goddess Officer Stisera.
Stisera nodded obediently.
Although she knew the Challengers wouldn’t directly trust her, Lanci’s words made her feel very comfortable and secure.
"Hyperion, let’s talk as we walk,"
Lanci had already reached the bedroom door with his notebook, his fingers gently grasped the doorknob by the door frame, and with a light pull, the old door hinge made a slight squeak. The solid door quietly opened, and a wave of late-night chill from the castle corridor hit their faces.
"Mmm."
The two of them exited room 203, and as the main door slowly closed and locked behind them, the intricate carvings on the back of the door cast mottled shadows in the hallway light, as if narrating the passage of time.
In the second-floor corridor, warm yellow light from the wall lamps sprinkled down, casting long shadows of them onto the floor.
"What are you planning to do...?"
Hyperion, walking down the castle’s second-floor corridor, asked Lanci.
They walked side by side, the endless silence echoing under the black wooden floor, only disturbed by the sound of their own heartbeats.
"You think every time we seal a Bloodline Viscount, it’s a merit, right?"
Lanci turned his head and said to Hyperion, smiling as he looked into her eyes.
"...?"
Hyperion was slightly taken aback.
"That’s correct."
She knew that generally, completing such an intricate process would earn them an achievement and boost their final score in the Shadow World.
Like last time in Purgatory Corridor Academy, Lanci did a lot of extraordinary achievements that normal challengers couldn’t possibly achieve.
Once again, their team must have completed some highly cryptic achievements, but even Hyperion was unsure whether the final rating would be SS or SSS.
Normally an A or S rating is the highest one can achieve. Ratings above that only occur if you’ve been particularly outrageous in the Shadow World.
Hyperion felt that Lanci might want to make one last sprint, earn a hefty score, and secure that SSS rating.
But compared to the achievements Lanci and Frey had already made, even if there were a few more scoring points left to exploit in task target 2, how much impact could it have on an already inflated overall score?
"Do you know, Hyperion? During the day, vampires will hide in a safe place, seal themselves in a coffin and sleep, to ensure they’re neither exposed to the slightest sunlight nor unearthed by enemies."
Lanci and Hyperion went into careful detail in explaining.
"I do."
Hyperion thought about it and nodded.
It was a common knowledge introduced at the start of their journey into the Shadow World.
Vampires can cast sealing skills on themselves for protection.
"So, if we can train the combination of the Viscount and his coffin into a fully automated sealing cycle machine, and have him repeat the ’unsealing’-’sealing’-’unsealing’ process on my command for four days, wouldn’t that be equivalent to me sealing the Viscount tens of thousands of times?"
Lanci spread his hands in triumph, laughing as he explained.
If each sealing of the Bloodline Viscount counts as one merit, then he would have earned boundless merits in these four days!
"...?"
Hyperion stared at Lanci’s emerald eyes and widened her own.
Her lips quivered, and she couldn’t make a sound from her throat!
Upon seeing the innocent smile on Lanci’s face, Hyperion realized that what he had proposed was a crazy way to ramp up their merit score through sacrifice!
The achievements they previously reached in the Shadow World were merely a warm-up; the actual large-scale point grinding process had just commenced.
Thus, the corridor fell into a haunting silence.
They passed by bedroom after bedroom, glimpsing through the windows at the forest under the moonlight outside; it was like a sleeping beast, mystical and serene.
The rows of portraits on the wall seemed to be dancing in step with their footfalls, their gazes seemingly filled with curiosity, leisure, and even solemnity.
Ever since Hyperion came to the Shadow World, she hadn’t been scared often because Lanci was with her.
Now, precisely because Lanci was with her, she was terrified.
"Lanci..."
"Hmm?"
"Nothing..."
The two arrived at the staircase, their palms sliding over the carved handrail, feeling the rough and cold wear of time on the stone.
After identifying the Traitor, they had been focusing on confronting the Goddess of Destruction and Earl Paluocas, leaving the identities of the werewolf and witch unattended.
Now, apart from Hyperion, who was known to be the Witch, they needed to find the Werewolf to break Viscount Augustin’s seal.
Hyperion felt that in just five minutes, Lanci had traversed the paths that had taken two historical traitors their entire lives.
The quiet persisted.
Scaling the stone-paved staircase, each step echoed subtly like the heartbeat of the castle at midnight.
Soon, the pair arrived at the third floor, a cool breeze flowed in from the open windows in the corridor, bringing a whiff of the refreshing night air from above.
"Lanci, I have a feeling that this isn’t quite...meritorious..."
Hyperion finally managed to voice her thoughts after several hesitant moments.
"Do we really have to make Viscount Augustin do sit-ups non-stop for four whole days..."
Hyperion muttered under her breath.
She was doing everything in her power to salvage Lanci’s humanity.
She recalled the time when she first met Lanci, he at least seemed human.
Even during their first collaboration in the third round of the entrance exam, Lanci had still belonged in the category of animals.
Since then, however, following the stint in the Purgatory Corridor Academy, Lanci started to appear crueller.
And now, his condition seemed to have worsened yet again.
She dared not to imagine what he would transform into after joining the Rebirth Church and experiencing the remaining two Shadow Worlds in the Blood Moon Bad World series...
"Don’t worry, when the time comes, the Great Love Poet and the clergy will take care of the work. We just need to rescue Viscount Augustin and hand him over to the clergy. The merit will be directly awarded by the Goddess of Destiny, officially verified and all,"
Lanci explained, taking pain to justify his plan.
Although the merit might be skimmed off by the three clergies as middlemen, it was the official channel, genuine and trustworthy.
"Once we finish developing the automated Viscount Augustin cycling device, we can also document it in the report ’On Ecological Balance and Blood Clan Control’."
Lanci even rubbed his palms in anticipation, feeling that their journey in the Shadow World had been overwhelmingly fruitful.
"?"
Hyperion was stunned once again at his words.
She covered her face with her hands, gradually starting to sob.
Striving for over a decade to be accepted as a human by the people of Ichrite, only to have her dream shattered due to Lanci.
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Dear dads, please give me the monthly votes for this month-end. Thank you, bowing down, pang pang pang!
