Half an hour later.
As the clock ticked past one in the morning, a bedroom in Lichtenstein Castle felt exceptionally warm.
The brown solid wood floors, vintage carpet, and opulent textiles gave off a cozy, homelike fragrance beneath the lamplight. Perched high upon this frigid late-autumn mountain peak, their very presence imparted an intangible warmth to anyone in the room.
Inside the bedroom, the atmosphere between Lanqi, Hyperion, and Priestess Sticela had long ceased to resemble that of enemies. By now, it looked like classmates on a trip chatting comfortably late into the night.
Once someone truly accepted Lanqi as an ally, the reassuring aura he exuded became remarkably palpable.
After conversing with Lanqi, Sticela felt as though her future were bright and boundless.
It felt as if she had truly been given a new lease on life.
Perhaps this was the divine answer to the oath she had inadvertently sworn to the Goddess of Fate that afternoon.
And Lanqi was the angel sent by the Goddess to redeem her.
"It's getting late. Let's call it a night here."
Lanqi closed his notebook, clipped his pen to the cover, and gathered the book, looking very much like a teacher preparing to leave after class.
As for the specifics concerning the Resurrection Church, there would still be several days ahead to ask Sticela at their leisure.
Hyperion acted with all the self-awareness of a teaching assistant, ready to leave with Lanqi at a moment's notice.
She noticed that when Sticela heard Lanqi say their discussion was wrapping up for today, a hint of reluctance even flickered across the priestess's face.
When brainwashing was carried out with sincerity and goodwill, it looked like swaying someone through virtue; yet when swaying someone through virtue was laden with sheer calculation, it was essentially brainwashing.
Say he was doing good deeds, and he looked like a criminal. But say he was committing a crime, and he hadn't actually broken any laws.
Never mind. He would never change in this lifetime.
Hyperion had always been a quiet girl.
"By the way, Sticela, as a traitor in this Shadow World, what are your Blood Clan authority and mission objectives?"
Lanqi stood up, pushed his chair back under the table, and asked.
This was the final question on his mind.
"Please watch me."
Instead of answering immediately, Priestess Sticela's entire appearance began to shift. Her stature grew slightly taller, and she gradually morphed into the spitting image of Imperial Princess Alexia.
Hyperion stared in astonishment, looking Sticela up and down, only to find that she looked completely indistinguishable from Princess Alexia!
"The authority of my blood master, Count Saiberna, is [Blood Disguise]. It allows me to disguise myself perfectly as any target I've touched, lasting until I actively cancel it," Sticela explained. By now, even her voice sounded identical to Alexia's.
Furthermore, because she was already familiar with Princess Alexia, she mimicked the princess's tone to perfection.
If they hadn't watched Sticela activate her Blood Clan authority with their own eyes, even Lanqi wouldn't have been able to tell that the person before them was a fake Imperial Princess Alexia.
"..."
Lanqi fell silent for a moment.
This authority, which seemed to grant no combat buffs whatsoever, was actually the most formidable Blood Clan ability he had seen to date.
In virtually any situation outside of direct combat, its ceiling was limitless.
The reviving Blood Clan in the present world had been able to eat away at the Creti Empire with unimaginable speed, and during that process, Count Saiberna had likely been constantly replacing the identities of top imperial officials.
In the end, perhaps even the Emperor of the Empire had been swapped out by Count Saiberna.
Beside him, once Hyperion grasped the full implications of Sticela's Blood Clan authority, she felt a lingering chill.
Thinking about it carefully, under normal circumstances in this Shadow World—or in the true course of history—if the bearer of [Blood Frenzy] had started slaughtering people on the first night, and the deceased's identities could then be assumed through [Blood Disguise], the difficulty of deduction for the challenger faction starting from day two would have multiplied countless times over. For the remaining four days, truth and falsehood would blur amid mounting paranoia, turning the scenario increasingly brutal and degenerating into an extreme battle of wits and psychological warfare!
Hyperion couldn't help but feel fortunate that Lanqi and Frey, that dynamic duo, had essentially killed the competition in half a day, fundamentally changing the very nature of this Shadow World.
"The traitors' Objective 1 is to deduce the identities of the werewolf and the witch," Sticela continued, laying out every detail. "Objective 2 is to obtain fresh blood from both the werewolf and the witch—taken within three hours—and then head to the secret chamber beneath the castle's wine cellar to break the seal on the 'long-missing Blood Clan viscount,' Viscount Augustine. From there, we are to subdue him and enslave him as a test subject, using him to cleanse the Blood Clan dependent brand from ourselves to break free of our blood master's control. Once that mission is completed, we will also lose the right to use our blood master's authority."
At the same time, the quest information panel visible to Lanqi and Hyperion on the challenger side began updating as well.
However, the Shadow World seemed to lag for a second.
Evidently, [Objective 2] for the challengers was meant to be unraveled through deduction as the Shadow World progressed, rather than spoon-fed all at once by reforming a traitor into spilling everything of her own accord.
Gradually, key updates appeared on the quest panel:
[Objective 2: Uncover the secrets and danger hidden within the ancient castle — Information Unlocked]
[Phase 1: Challengers must protect the werewolf and the witch, and prevent the traitors from unsealing Viscount Augustine.]
[Phase 2: If Viscount Augustine's seal is broken, resealing him will reset the objective to Phase 1.]
[Phase 3: If Viscount Augustine remains under the traitors' control when the Shadow World's time limit expires, the objective will be marked as failed.]
With this, the challengers could finally piece together the full picture behind the Shadow World's backstory.
Years before the Banquet of Sanctuary Villains, Viscount Augustine had been sealed here through the combined efforts of a witch and a werewolf.
Years later, in late autumn, the castle's master, High Priest Caligula, summoned twelve members of an anti-Blood Clan esoteric order to gather at this cliffside castle.
However, among the twelve guests were two ambitious Blood Clan dependents. Having learned from elsewhere about the secrets buried beneath this castle and the presence of a witch and a werewolf within the church, they had hatched their own scheme. Neither wishing to submit to the Blood Clan nor wanting to become their enemies, they sought to unseal Viscount Augustine, take control of him, purge their blood master's brand, and study the secrets of the Blood Clan further.
As a result, the burgeoning resistance church suffered a devastating blow.
"Sigh, it seems the prototype of this Shadow World was actually a tragedy," Lanqi sighed, closing the translucent Shadow World interface. In an era without magic cards, when even human magical script had yet to mature, [Banquet of Sanctuary Villains] must have been a terribly grim fragment of forgotten history. There was no telling how many had survived in the end, or whether the church members or the traitors had won, but it certainly could not have been as easy as their run.
"Who would have thought that in this era, the greatest obstacle to fighting the Blood Clan was humanity itself?" Hyperion remarked with a conflicted expression.
Absurd laws, pitch-black captivity, power so terrifying that even the demon race dared not oppose them... It was hard to imagine the price humans had to pay to rebel against these immortal Blood Clan members at their peak. Yet on what was already a dead-end road, there had still been ridiculous infighting.
"I wonder how humanity managed to win in the end. That story will probably have to wait for the remaining two Blood Moon Cataclysm Shadow Worlds. As long as we achieve an SSS rating in this one, we can continue into the next series Shadow Worlds from that era."
Lanqi, however, was not one to dwell on sentimentality.
As an ecologist rather than a historian, his job was to conduct field research and resolve the issues the Blood Clan posed.
He was a man of action.
He reread the details of Objective 2 carefully.
Then, lost in thought, he asked Hyperion, "As long as we prevent the traitors from gaining control over Viscount Augustine, we win this Shadow World, right?"
"...That's right," Hyperion confirmed after reading it over.
Though she had no idea what Lanqi meant by asking, a bad premonition gradually crept into her heart.
She had a feeling that Lanqi's psychotic episode for the night wasn't over—it had only just begun!
And so, just as Hyperion's heart began to race, she heard Lanqi tell her—
"In other words, there's no problem if we challengers take control of Viscount Augustine, right?"
Straightening his suit, Lanqi was as sunny as ever, brimming with supreme confidence in his airtight logic.
Chapter 160