Opportunities always coexisted with danger, but Marcus, the Prime Minister of the Empire, had long since grown accustomed to finding his own chances amidst chaos.
At this moment, he hovered in the air above the center of the square. While maintaining his gravity domain, his mind was already racing, calculating how to turn this sudden crisis into leverage to consolidate his own power.
First, under the guise of “suppressing the Demon King Cult rebellion,” he could implicate those noble families who usually opposed him. By framing them with charges of “colluding with the Demon King Cult in secret,” he could naturally suppress his political opponents and confiscate their fiefs and properties.
Second, Crown Prince Finn's performance during this incident had been utterly pathetic. He had first been rendered speechless in public by a condemned prisoner, and then panicked when the explosion occurred.
Once they investigated and uncovered the true identity of that steward—if he really wasn't some ordinary person and had somehow controlled the Crown Prince...
Then, after the Crown Prince overthrew the Emperor, Marcus could ally with the other nobles to depose Finn directly and ascend to that position himself as the Imperial Regent.
But if that steward really was just an ordinary person, Marcus could still use Finn's disgraceful display to further tighten his grip on him, making the Crown Prince rely even more on his reliable Prime Minister.
As long as he played his cards right in the end, he could still truly control the Authority of the Empire from behind the scenes as a regent minister.
At this thought, a smug, complacent smile appeared on the corner of Marcus's mouth.
He was already beginning to imagine himself sitting on the throne of supreme power, looking down upon all the officials.
“Hmm?”
Just then, a sharp attack suddenly lunged at him from below.
Marcus snapped back to his senses and dodged to the side. Looking down, he saw that a large circle of phantom-like enemies had surrounded his gravity domain at some point.
These phantoms took various shapes. Some held rusted longswords, while others grasped broken staffs. They stared at him with hollow eyes, slowly closing in.
“What are these things?”
Marcus frowned.
He had no idea where these creatures came from, but he knew that since he was currently maintaining his gravity domain, it wasn't convenient for him to launch a large-scale counterattack.
So, he raised his voice and shouted toward the edge of the square, “Knights! Come and support me!”
But no one responded.
He looked around, only to realize that the entire imperial capital was now teeming with these phantom-like enemies.
The knights were locked in fierce combat with them, the members of the Demon King Cult were also fighting them, and even ordinary commoners had been swept into the fray.
Battles raged everywhere, and chaos reigned supreme. No one had the spare time to respond to his orders.
“Damn it... Why hasn't Roland returned yet?”
Marcus cursed under his breath.
He figured that with Roland's strength, pursuing a mere Demon King Cultist shouldn't take long.
Yet so much time had passed, and he was still nowhere to be seen... Could something have happened on his end as well?
But before he could ponder further, the phantom enemies launched another attack at him.
Marcus looked down at the two masked individuals he was suppressing within his gravity domain.
The one wearing the smiling mask hadn't moved in a long time; they were likely dead.
As for the one wearing the crying mask, although she still seemed to be struggling to hold on, her stamina must have reached its limit after being suppressed for so long.
Sensing that these two no longer posed any threat to him, Marcus withdrew the concentrated domain pressure acting on them. He expanded his gravity domain over a wide area, slamming all the phantom enemies that had just attacked him directly into the ground.
Pinned down by the immense gravity, the phantom enemies were unable to move, their bodies pressed flat against the ground, yet they continued to struggle, seemingly oblivious to pain.
“What strange creatures. Could this be a branch of undead beings?”
As Marcus frowned, pondering the origin of these creatures, he suddenly heard the sound of two sets of footsteps behind him.
Marcus whipped his head around, his expression instantly turning as pale as if he had seen a ghost.
The two masked figures were currently standing behind him completely unscathed. Their breathing was steady, as if the gravity suppression that had lasted for dozens of minutes was nothing more than a comfortable massage.
“You... You two...”
Marcus's voice trembled with disbelief.
“You were clearly suppressed by me for so long... How can you act as if nothing happened?!”
Luna, wearing the crying mask, glanced down at her flat chest, then looked up and uttered a single word in a flat, emotionless voice:
“Trash.”
This word was like a sharp thorn, piercing precisely into Marcus's most sensitive pride.
His face flushed crimson in an instant, and his eyes became bloodshot with rage—he was the Prime Minister of the Empire!
Even the Emperor wouldn't dare say such a word to him!
Yet this nobody who had appeared out of nowhere had insulted him so casually!
What an absolute humiliation!
“You all deserve to die!”
Marcus roared, instantly redirecting half of his domain's suppressing force onto the two of them.
The gravity intensified abruptly, causing the stone tiles beneath their feet to spiderweb with cracks.
Marcus thought the two of them would grovel on the ground just like before, struggling to survive like losers.
But this time, they didn't even bend their waists.
The two of them still stood straight and tall in place, as if the gravity that was powerful enough to crush solid rock was absolutely nothing to them.
Marcus was utterly horrified. “What kind of sorcery is this?! You haven't even comprehended the embryonic form of a Domain! Why can't I suppress you?!”
Olivia, wearing the smiling mask, tilted her head slightly, a hint of lazy apology in her tone:
“Sorry about that, but the same trick won't work on a cowb—on me a second time. So, the game is over.”
She raised her hand and gently snapped her fingers.
A thick bolt of lightning crashed down from the night sky, striking Marcus squarely on the head.
Electric arcs crackled and leaped across his body. After his frame convulsed violently a few times, the Prime Minister of the Empire rolled his eyes back and collapsed flat on the ground, completely losing consciousness.
With Marcus's fall, the gravity domain he maintained dissolved into nothingness.
The phantom enemies that had been pinned to the ground regained their freedom. They slowly crawled back up, their hollow gazes once again locking onto the living.
“Hmm... This is my first time seeing this kind of existence. Where on earth did they suddenly pop out from?”
Olivia watched the rising phantoms, a trace of curiosity flashing in her eyes.
She raised her hand and released a bolt of lightning. The electric arc swept across, utterly dispersing the cluster of phantoms in front of her.
Yet before long, the dispersed phantoms condensed back into shape, fully restored as if nothing had happened.
Luna also tried attacking with wind magic. A dense flurry of wind blades sliced several phantoms into pieces, but similarly, they reassembled after briefly dissipating.
“Heh, interesting.”
Olivia looked around. Marcus was unconscious, and the commoners who were originally in the square had already been evacuated by the Church of Light. Aside from the two of them, there was no one else here.
Furthermore, she could sense the presence of the other three headmasters, who had already mobilized and were handling the chaotic situations in various corners of the imperial capital.
“In that case, it should be perfectly reasonable for a warmhearted and kind soul like me to appear here, right?”
With that, Olivia reached out and took off the smiling mask, revealing her mature and charming face as an excited smile curled her lips.
She intended to expand her Domain and go all out for a real fight, to see just how long these phantoms could hold out against her full power.
But just a moment before she could release her Domain, the surrounding light suddenly dimmed.
Rate on N.U.
