Chapter 522: Ruthless and Decisive

Milena wasn't a particularly clever girl. She knew that better than anyone.

She simply wasn't built for deep thought. Complicated numbers and the tangled workings of people's hearts held no appeal for her, compared to the simple, direct pleasure of swinging a sword.

But Milena was also an obedient girl. Since both her parents had warned her to be careful not to get tricked, she'd decided the simplest solution was to just not listen to anyone at all.

The flaming longsword summoned the Hellgate, along with thirteen powerful cambions as escorts.

When Milena stepped through, the sudden rush of sulfur and blood in the air caught her off guard.

Not with revulsion, but with awe.

Hell's sky was a deep, dark red, streaked constantly with burning meteors. The ground lay shattered and broken, littered everywhere with desiccated corpses. Shredded fragments of souls drifted aimlessly through the air.

This was Hell, after all. Sinners certainly wouldn't be carrying out their punishments in a scenic locale.

The thirteen cambions dropped respectfully to their knees before Milena at once. Sariel's own essence had summoned them.

The cambions were all tall and imposing, devil-human hybrids each marked by crimson skin, horns, and a pair of wings on their backs. At a glance, Milena couldn't tell one from another.

But the moment these cambions got a proper look at Milena, their faces twisted into all sorts of strange expressions.

Disdain, amusement, cold smirks...

To the cambions, Milena looked exactly like some child who'd stumbled onto a powerful artifact and had no idea how to use it.

Preying on the weak while fearing the strong was practically a code of conduct among devils. If a summoner wasn't strong enough, the devil would swallow them whole without a second thought.

Milena looked easy to push around. Sure enough, one of the less composed cambions sauntered over with a grin.

"Lovely lady, allow me to introduce myself. My name is—"

This particular cambion had a rather handsome face—right up until Milena's fist flattened his nose, sending his whole body spinning through the air.

The rest of the cambions froze. What was wrong with this young woman? Wasn't she even going to let him finish a sentence?

The other cambions began to feel a flicker of shared anger for their comrade, only for Milena to draw her longsword. The scorching hellfire forced the cambions back.

The cambion who'd just been sent flying gritted his teeth through the pain, but in the end, all he could do was shut his mouth and bow his head. They'd been summoned, and until they managed to break free of the binding, they were Milena's servants by rule.

Under the rules of summoning, they weren't permitted to harm her.

Having thoroughly cowed the group, Milena raised her left hand and spoke into the small mirror in her palm. "Mother, they've settled down."

Black Rose had been directing things remotely, and had ordered Milena to deliver a show of force right off the bat. The cambion who'd approached her first had become her unlucky target as a result.

Watching the scene unfold through the magic mirror in Milena's hand, Black Rose commanded, "Have one of them come over."

Milena had no idea why, but she didn't bother asking. She simply pointed at the cambion she'd just punched. "You. Get over here."

The cambion, still cradling his nose, approached warily and asked, "What do you require, Mistress?"

He sounded outwardly submissive, but inwardly, he was already looking for any chance to get his revenge.

"Milena, take out a scroll and cast a silence ward over the rest of the cambions, then hold the mirror up to his ear so I can speak to him."

Milena did as told, digging through the pile of scrolls until she found the silence ward and cast it over the remaining twelve cambions.

Inside a silence ward, no sound could be made or transmitted. For most spellcasters, being silenced was as good as being stripped of magic entirely, since casting without verbal incantations was a rare skill few could manage.

But Black Rose hadn't ordered the silence ward to stop these cambions from casting spells.

Once the mirror was held to the injured cambion's ear, Black Rose asked, "How do I find Sariel? Which direction is the palace? Answer in your quietest whisper. Move nothing except your mouth. I'll take your head off if you so much as blink."

The cambion flinched, startled to realize that the girl was only a puppet. The real "master" was on the other side of the mirror, and her tone alone made it clear that she wasn't someone to trifle with.

"I swear I'm not lying, but reaching the Archduchess's residence won't be easy. We're standing in the wilderness of the first layer of Hell, at least two thousand kilometers from your destination. Between here and there lie the territories of three other lords, and the great Blood River. You've surely heard of it. Endless battle rages there without pause. The only way to reach the Archduchess's territory is to cross that battlefield."

Black Rose asked the same question three times over, but his answer never wavered.

The cambion thought he'd passed the test, but Black Rose gave another order. "Toss him back in the ward. Pull out another one and ask him the same thing. If his answer doesn't match, kill them both."

The cambion, with blood still trickling from his nose, went wide-eyed. This new master of his was crueler than any devil he knew!

He was certain he hadn't lied, but what if the other cambion decided to?

If Milena had summoned them on some other plane, he wouldn't have been afraid. The laws governing devils meant they couldn't freely leave Hell in their true forms, so on other planes, they only existed as projected avatars. Killing the avatars might lose them a bit of vitality, but that was it.

However, the cambions were currently in Hell.

If they were to die here, they would die for real.

His protest meant nothing. Milena grabbed him by the throat and shoved him back into the ward, then gave a light gesture. Countless pale-blue vines sprouted inside the barrier and dragged another cambion out.

This cambion tried to struggle, only to find that once the blue branches wrapped around him, his whole body went limp. He couldn't summon a trace of his own magic.

Even in Hell, Milena could still summon the whisperwood, whose powerful anti-magic effect remained unchanged.

If it could affect even Gareth, a handful of mere cambions stood no chance at all.

The cambion dragged over by the whisperwood was asked the same question—but clearly, this one hadn't fully given up on defiance. He pointed off in a random direction, one that happened to belong to a particularly vicious lord's territory.

Black Rose pressed him repeatedly, and caught him contradicting himself. He was almost certainly lying.

Black Rose said, casually, "Kill him."

Milena didn't hesitate for a second. One thrust of her sword pierced straight through the cambion's heart.

The blood, seared by hellfire, gave off an overpoweringly foul stench. The cambion thrashed wildly for a moment before falling completely still.

"Good." Black Rose gave another order. "Pull out some of his hair and send it to me."

The magic mirrors allowed for small-scale interplanar teleportation. Ambrose had used them to conduct trades with the Unholy Kingdom and transport small physical objects between planes.

The mirror in Milena's hand might be small, but sending over a single strand of hair was no trouble at all.

Once Milena transmitted the cambion's hair to the Umbral Depths, Black Rose took hold of it and activated her legendary boon.

Death Gaze allowed any living creature she locked onto with her senses could be transformed into undead. And this cambion's corpse was still perfectly fresh.

The only catch was that she had to do so through direct perception.

Through the mirror, Black Rose could only "see" whatever image the mirror showed her, but she couldn't lock onto anything in Hell with her own senses directly. That was why she needed Milena to transmit some part of the cambion over to her.

Converting a corpse was far quicker than converting the living. Within seconds, the freshly killed cambion had become a zombie.

Hybrid devils had powerful bodies, and this new zombie carried real combat strength, though its intelligence was a lost cause. It was good only as high-grade cannon fodder.

With that lying cambion dealt with, Milena turned to look back at the ward.

Her mother had said it clearly: if the two cambions' answers didn't match, both would die.

As for the one with the broken nose... Wait, why were there several cambions in there with broken noses now?

Milena stared, stunned, at the tangle of brawling cambions inside, a full five of them now covered in blood.

Oh no. Which one had it been again? She couldn't tell them apart anymore.

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