The Great Cathedral, reception room.
Aurora froze when she saw the three visitors. Once she recovered, she hurriedly dismissed the surrounding servants and approached with her head lowered and an unusually meek expression.
"M-My Lord, what brings you here?"
"You've taken good care of us these past few days. Now that our business is finished, we'll be leaving soon, so I thought I'd stop by before we go."
Samael glanced at Mari, the troublemaker who had quietly followed along behind them, then turned back to Aurora with a brilliant smile.
"Ah, you're too kind. It has been my honor to serve you."
The blond fairy bowed, visibly flattered. The movement brought the fair curves of her chest perilously close to spilling free, leaving Samael momentarily dazzled.
Fortunately, he was a man who had weathered plenty of trials. He quickly regained his composure, steadied himself, and gently helped Aurora back up.
"As a small token of gratitude, I don't really have any suitable gifts to offer you, so..."
Ether surged through the air. Flickering Runes traced out a Magecraft array leading directly into a private space.
Samael reached into it, his smiling vertical pupils fixed on Aurora's elegant, refined face.
"...how about I treat you to a cup of tea?"
As he spoke, he held out a crudely made cup filled with tea to the Chieftain of the Wind Clan.
The instant Aurora saw the pale green liquid swaying inside, however, her pupils contracted sharply. Her face turned as if she had seen a ghost, and she stumbled backward several steps.
"What are you panicking for? It isn't poisoned."
Samael rolled his eyes at her, lifted the cup, and took a small sip to prove it.
Aurora patted her chest in relief. Yet before her heart could fully settle, Samael had already lowered the cup and turned an intrigued gaze on her. His narrowed serpentine pupils contracted until they resembled two razor-sharp slits.
"Still, I've heard Wind Fairies are rather skilled at making poison?"
"I-It wasn't me! I don't know anything about it! My Lord, please believe me!"
Aurora instantly went pale and frantically waved her hands in denial.
"I haven't even said what happened, and you already know what I'm talking about? Looks like you really are involved after all."
Samael deliberately drew out the last words, amusement and mockery written across his face.
"..."
Aurora immediately realized her mistake, and her expression stiffened.
Run!
In the next instant, Aurora pushed the speed of a Wind Fairy to its limit. Without the slightest hesitation, she spun around and bolted for the door.
Buzz!
The surrounding Ether vibrated. Runes and Ogham characters appeared in overlapping layers, forming a dense spatial array. Ripples spread outward, bringing down a crushing force equivalent to tens of thousands of tons.
Aurora beat her wings frantically, but she was like a butterfly caught in a spiderweb. She dropped from midair with a thud, completely immobilized beneath the combined suppression of Mari and Morgan, who had been prepared from the start.
Tch. She gave herself away that quickly. All chest and no brain.
Samael strolled over at an unhurried pace, shaking his head in disappointment.
Earth Fairies specialized in forging and construction. It made perfect sense for Foul Weather, as their chieftain, to carry a forging hammer around. But why the hell would a dwarven-like being casually carry poison?
He had obtained, in a single day, enough poison to potentially bring down a Great Mother-class fairy. Anyone with half a brain could tell that the Wind Fairies, who specialized in poison-making and alchemy, had to be involved.
At present, the Great Cathedral was essentially the only place capable of supplying something like that.
That was why, after leaving the underground workshop, Samael had naturally begun to suspect Aurora. Since they were about to leave anyway, he had stopped by to test her.
The result was almost ridiculous. In fewer than three sentences, she had already blurted out everything she should and should not have said.
Samael genuinely could not tell whether the psychological trauma he had inflicted on Aurora was so severe that she completely lost her composure around him, or whether this woman had put every last point of her natural talent into her chest and looks and simply never bothered using her brain before speaking.
"My Lord, please let me explain. I-I'm innocent..."
Aurora watched the demon approach one step at a time, trembling like a leaf and drenched in sweat as she desperately racked her brains for an excuse that might actually hold together.
Samael nodded as if he accepted her explanation. But the moment he turned away, a vicious grin spread across his face as he addressed the two spellcasters skilled in illusions and dreams.
"Morgan, Mari, just as I told you earlier, give our Chieftain of the Wind Clan a proper welcome and help her prove her innocence."
"No! I don't want to go in!"
Aurora's face drained of color. She screamed and struggled desperately.
But as the two spellcasters struck their staffs against the floor, blue-black and purple-red ripples spread outward, twisting and distorting everything they touched.
At the same time, an unbearable itch spread across Aurora's body. She instinctively reached up to scratch herself, only to discover that her once delicate fingers had somehow twisted into writhing masses of flesh resembling tangled tree roots.
Looking down made it even worse.
In the mirror, Aurora's once beautiful golden hair had become countless wriggling lampreys. Her limbs resembled the sprawling branches of a banyan tree, fused together with the flesh of her torso. Her face had vanished completely, leaving only a mouth lined with countless tiny, razor-sharp teeth. Clumps of mucus-covered rotten flesh multiplied and writhed from every part of her body, while hundreds upon thousands of blinking eyeballs squeezed through her skin, shifting and crawling chaotically across her body.
Even though Aurora knew perfectly well that this was only an illusion and none of it was real, the indescribable horror still drove her into endless terror and madness.
Outside the reception room, Samael listened to the ceaseless screams and howls coming from within. The corners of his mouth curled upward as he happily sipped his tea.
Only after leisurely finishing his fifth cup did a soft knock finally sound from behind the closed door.
Fifteen minutes? Not bad. Your endurance has improved.
The Ancient Serpent's lips curled into a malicious grin before he pushed the door open.
The once noble and elegant Chieftain of the Wind Clan now looked like a fish stranded on the beach. Tears and snot covered her face, her pupils were completely unfocused, and clear drool hung from the corner of her mouth. Her expression was blank and utterly broken. Her limp body sprawled across the floor, trembling and writhing like a boneless worm.
"My Lord! No! I was wrong! Please spare me! I'll never do it again!"
The instant Aurora saw Samael enter, she jolted and sprang up from the floor. Then, with astonishing speed, she threw herself around the Creator's leg and clung to it for dear life, sobbing uncontrollably with tears and snot streaming down her face.
"How did it go?"
Samael glanced at her while casually twirling his teacup between his fingers.
"She confessed everything. Foul Weather did indeed buy the poison from the Great Cathedral, but Aurora never dealt with him directly. In a certain sense, she's innocent."
Mari answered with a grin, clearly delighted by the entertaining spectacle she had just witnessed.
"In a certain sense?"
Samael raised an eyebrow, and the teacup spinning between his fingers came to a stop.
"She didn't directly collude with Foul Weather, but she had more or less guessed what he intended to do. Even so, she secretly sold one of the Wind Clan's finest poisons to the Chieftain of the Earth Clan at a low price when he came looking to buy something highly toxic..."
Morgan looked coldly down at Aurora, who was still twitching and writhing on the floor and absolutely refused to get back up. Contempt filled her gaze.
"You never mentioned that to me..."
Samael let out a quiet sigh, his eyes taking on a meaningful look.
"My Lord, it was all Foul Weather's doing! I didn't do anything! Someone is framing me! I'm innocent!"
Aurora shuddered and hurriedly tried to defend herself, looking deeply aggrieved.
"Did you really not do anything, or did you want to but simply lacked the nerve?"
Samael's smiling question instantly silenced the guilty Aurora. Her expression froze, and she could only stammer wordlessly.
She was not stupid.
The man before her was the Creator who had slain the Predatory Star and stood guard over the gods' tombs. He was essentially among the strongest beings on the entire planet.
Combined with the psychological trauma left behind by the little black room, Aurora might have been extremely unhappy about being restrained by him, but asking her to personally poison him was another matter entirely. She truly did not have the courage.
But not daring to do it was not the same as never wanting to.
This time, for instance, by quietly allowing Foul Weather to buy a deadly poison, she had effectively handed that idiot a knife and used him to test the strength of the monster before her.
Whatever happened, she believed she had nothing to lose.
Aurora had thought her scheme flawless. Who could have imagined that only half a day later, the monster himself would come knocking at her door?
"Knowing about something like this and failing to report it makes you just as guilty as the traitor..."
While Aurora was still dazed, Samael calmly delivered his judgment.
"Morgan, Mari, just throw her into the little black room."
"No! I won't go! I'd rather die than go back in there!"
Aurora snapped back to her senses. Her face turned deathly pale as she wrapped both arms around Samael's leg and wailed at the top of her lungs.
It was a sight pitiful enough to make anyone who heard her cry and anyone who saw her feel sorry for her.
***
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