Chapter 207: Chapter 65. The Attendees (2)
Ariel’s army, mainly the silver knights, looked a lot weaker than I had expected. The knights appeared in front of the castle, which was almost done with the decorations, exactly a day after Ariel showed up. I had heard of the knights in the past.
I was looking at them from the top of the Royal Observatory of Greenwich. There were exactly 250 knights, and they seemed somewhat different from regular monsters.
“Everything is as reported,” I confirmed.
The knights looked more or less the same from what Krithli and Oswen had reported to me. I had sent the two to deliver the invitations to the archdukes. The dark elf and the blacksmith, while handing my invitations, observed the archdukes and conveyed what they had seen to me.
‘Is that it?’ I thought.
I wondered if the knights were everything that Ariel brought with her. If she did not bring any other monsters, the archduke must be very confident. Ariel would not manipulate behind the scenes, so I could take whatever I saw from the archduke at face value. However, I felt that the knights alone would not be enough to confront other archdukes.
“She sure is very confident…” I supposed.
Ariel Diablo was perhaps the most confident one out of all the archdukes. She must have thought that she would be okay with just the knights. However, I decided to hold my judgment and watch the knights more closely.
The 250 knights came through the main gate of the castle. They differed in sizes, and all of them were female. All of the knights also seemed to be of different ages.
I took a deep breath to find more about their mana.
The mana from the knights smelled somewhat different from those of monsters. I could not explain it, but I could feel that the smell was somehow associated with a bad omen. It was hard to identify the type and the nature of mana coming out from the knights. They were not similar to those from either Death Knights or Dark Warriors.
‘Perhaps they are a combination of multiple species,’ I considered.
I nodded slightly.
The knights were not a completely new species, because I felt somehow familiar with some of them. Furthermore, not only some of them felt like humans, but also some had higher levels than those of other knight-like monsters.
I could not fathom Ariel’s intention behind creating an army with such a kind of knights.
Besides, I wondered if what Ariel had done was even possible at all.
‘Were there types of monsters that I had not known? It sounds interesting,’ I reflected.
There were more than thousands of different types of monsters, and I would not be surprised if there were kinds that I was not aware of.
However, not knowing some types of monsters was not the concern here. It could be that Ariel produced a new type of monster by combining existing monsters. Such monsters, who were born after mixing more than one type of monsters, were called chimeras. I wondered how Ariel could keep such a large number of chimeras and maintained them.
“It’s impossible,” I remarked.
I did not have much knowledge about chimeras, but as far as I knew, it was nearly impossible to make and keep an army of chimeras.
Normally, one could combine no more than three types of monsters to create one chimera. Should the number of monsters, which were combined, increased, the body of the resulting monster would become unstable and explode.
Then, suddenly, I accidentally made eye contact with one of the female knights who was standing in front of the formation.
“Hmm…”
When our eyes met, I could not help but click my tongue and nod. At that very moment, I learned something new.
“Superior species are mixed,” I concluded.
Then I realized that the small number of knights, which Ariel came with, was much more powerful than thousands of, perhaps even tens of thousands of, other monsters.
“She sure is a character,” I declared.
When I found out about the knights and how powerful they were, I could not ignore them anymore.
I suspected that none of the archdukes, except for Ariel Diablo, would show up at the meeting place on time. Archdukes were proud, direct, and condescending. They had a sense of entitlement. I anticipated that they would not take my invitation seriously.
However, I was wrong. A day after Ariel’s silver knights appeared, archdukes appeared with their armies from all directions. They showed up almost at the same time, and, for a moment, I suspected if the archdukes had secretly made an agreement. However, I knew that such a scenario was unlikely, and I decided to believe that everything was a coincidence.
The armies, which the archdukes brought, were huge in numbers. There were hundreds of thousands of monsters, and they filled the fields near the castle. It was quite a sight, but also frightening at the same time.
The archdukes and their respective armies arrived at the front gate of the castle. Then the Archdukes and their top demons got off from whatever they were riding, fixed their clothes, and came forward confidently.
None of them looked nervous, and all of them looked very confident that they would be victorious in the end.
Unfortunately, there would be only one victor in the end. I knew that every moment would be a competition, so I tried to keep my actions and emotions in check.
“Open the gate,” I ordered my monsters.
Soon, the gate opened, and the archdukes and their demons came into the castle.
A strange atmosphere surrounded us.
Although I tried to make the Royal Observatory as fancy as possible, the archdukes would have found it nothing more than a small castle.
I did not have enough time to transform the observatory into an extravagant castle. Running out of time, I tried to make it look fancy using expensive decorations.
It seemed that the archdukes did not mind the shabby castle. They came because of the contents of the invitations I sent them.
“The invitations were rather provocative…” I affirmed.
In every invitation, I included the recipient’s secret on purpose. When the archdukes showed up, I expected that they would come at me and ask how I found out about their secrets. Instead, they seemed to be checking on me. Surprisingly, none of them looked nervous.
I immediately ordered my monsters to prepare for a feast. The banquet soon began with Lamia’s song.
“Let us enjoy ourselves.”
Dressed up like men, I politely made a toast. The atmosphere in the room felt very calm. I intended to mimic the humans’ parties. Such a vibe must have felt somewhat uncomfortable and unfamiliar to the demons.
However, the demons in the room were archdukes. They had gone through all kinds of stuff, and such a strange vibe did not seem to bother them much.
The archdukes and their demons raised their glasses and finished their drinks.
“The drink is good.”
Ufa looked somewhat happy. Out of all the archdukes, he was the most interested in liquors.
I walked towards him when I heard his compliment.
“I was told that it was one of the best kinds of drinks. It was something like cognac… I’m not the biggest fan of liquors, so I might have gotten the name wrong. Anyway, don’t you think humans make good drinks?”
Ufa loved drinks, and he could have found my words insulting, which I said on purpose.
However, the archduke responded in a completely different manner than I had expected.
“Well, this drink is much better than what you scribbled in the invitation.”
“I guess I’m not a good writer. I only wanted to make you laugh.”
It would be awkward to apologize for whatever that was on the invitation, so I tossed it back.
‘Is the Wizard of the Moon here?’ I wondered.
I sneakily looked around Ufa, but I could not find Gustarte, the Wizard of the Moon, anywhere near him. Ufa must have thought it better not to reveal his strongest weapon in the meeting. Although the wizard was very powerful, he was very unstable.
I had anticipated that the wizard would not attend the meeting, and I was correct. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to check.
However, Ufa’s demons looked stronger than I had expected. They had more mana compared with other demons. I wasn’t sure if they improved rapidly or Ufa played another trick.
“It’s the Succubus Queen!” I recognized.
Out of all the demons and monsters of Ufa, Groggy Infir stood out the most.
The demon was obsessed with succubi. He filled his entire dungeon with succubi, which, unfortunately, led to his death in the end.
Now Groggy was with the Succubus Queen, which I had never seen even in my previous life. The monster was very powerful and had a level of three. Never had I seen such a monster anywhere, not even in the Auction of Devildom.
I guessed that Groggy could have gotten her as a reward for completing a quest.
Then I turned around and examined Pandemonium and his demons.
The archduke and his demons did not look much different than they had been when Kirin and the awakened heroes of Korea had attacked them.
After Oculus’s death, Pandemonium absorbed most of the dead archduke’s forces, but he and his demons did not improve in strength since then. The archduke spent much effort and power attacking my dungeon, which turned out to be futile.
Overall, Pandemonium looked the weakest out of all the Archdukes, and I was sure that the archduke himself already knew that.
“This feast is like…a human’s party.”
“Pandemonium, I am sure that you have gone to one. You have lived a long life after all.”
“I have seen it once. But I don’t think you invited us for a meaningless party like this, Randalf Bruciel, do you? I thought we are here to discuss a solution?”
Then I nodded and remembered that the invitations urged the archdukes to gather and discuss plans for the angels.
However, I did not expect that Pandemonium would be interested in angels because the angels on Earth were not big of a threat to the archduke. And I did not mention anything about the coming of the Seraph in the invitation.
Somewhat puzzled, I replied to the archduke, “Well, of course, we are going to talk about the angels…”
“I don’t mean angels. We can crush the pitiful angels any time.”
I could not fathom what the archduke wanted to talk about. Bewildered, I looked at Pandemonium.
The archduke frowned. In fact, the other archdukes and demons started to frown as well.
They seemed to think that I was pretending to not know something.
‘I’m missing something,’ I thought.
However, I could not think of what I was missing out.
I assumed that the archdukes and demons were expecting something from me. Then I decided to fake a smile, as though I was in control of everything.
“I’m talking about the special event… I’m sure you know about it, too.”
Special events popped up from nowhere, and it was also hard to predict when they would show up. At the moment, I did not know or hear about any recent special events.
Other demons also seemed to know about such occasions.
‘Did an invitation for a special event just popped up to all of the demons here? I didn’t receive any,’ I wondered, confused.
I wasn’t aware of any special events, and it was indeed very strange. Had everyone received a notification, I was pretty sure I would have received one, too. However, I wasn’t aware of the said event. Furthermore, other demons responded quickly to my invitations and came to the gathering.
Everything was going in a different direction than what I had anticipated.
When I stood still, Pandemonium stepped up and whispered to my ear, “Open the way to Devildom, Randalf Bruciel. I’m sure you know how. Otherwise, you would not have called all of us for this meeting. I don’t have time for a lame party like this.”
Everyone was looking at me.
‘This is not good,’ I thought.
I wanted the archdukes to keep each other in check and become hostile towards each other.
My plan failed, and it seemed that I had become the public enemy.
At that very moment, I was starting to feel the holiness spreading nearby. It was so potent that it stung.
“The angels have escaped from the sacred area.”
Ariel Diablo, looking towards the far east, spoke quietly.
“This is not good…” I muttered.
Such news was the last thing I wanted to hear at that moment.
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