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Chapter 382 – I GOT PLAYED

And so, the Paladin\'s power surprised her.

"Darkness is also a part of nature, so it doesn\'t really stand out," Paige said, breaking the silence between her and Dion while the two of them walked into the long and dark hallway of a secret dungeon they found. The strong presence of Darkness was coming from it. "What I\'m trying to say is whether Darkness is laced with malice or not, it wouldn\'t be easy to find it. That\'s how the Darkness attribute users, during the time they were hunted down just because of their attribute, managed to hide their power."

It was safe for them to talk freely because she put a sound-canceling barrier around them.

"If you want to know how I gain the ability to detect Darkness, you should have just asked me directly," Dion, who left a decent space between them, said without even turning to her. "It\'s not like it\'s a big secret."

"Oh, dear. You have a nasty temper, Sir Skelton," she said, pretending to be scared of his attitude. "I just didn\'t want to be rude. Moreover, you\'re a Paladin. Isn\'t there value in keeping your power a secret?"

To be honest, she was really curious about Dion Skelton\'s power.

The Paladin\'s divine energy was enough to make him a high-ranking priest if he wanted to. And the fact that he could detect Darkness would be a huge help everywhere.

"You\'re not an enemy, Lady Avery. Moreover, I already told Princess Neoma about my powers, so I don\'t mind sharing them with you. The situation calls for it, anyway," the Paladin said. "I\'m a fallen angel."

She was shocked, but not because of his revelation.

If she\'d be honest, she\'d say she was more shocked by how casual Dion Skelton revealed his secret. He said it as if he just commented on the weather.

[Sir Skelton is amazing, huh?]

"My eyes can detect divine energy," Dion casually continued with his explanation. "In that regard, my eyes can also detect Darkness. After all, Light and Darkness are two sides of the same coin." He paused as if he just remembered something important. "Ah, I think I forgot to tell Princess Neoma that my eyes can also detect Darkness since we were in a hurry earlier."

She tilted her head to one side. "Did you lend your eyes to Princess Neoma or something?"

He nodded as confirmation. "I did. Since we\'re in the Holy Land, I figured my eyes could help Princess Neoma somehow."

"Your intuition is amazing, Sir Skelton."

"It\'s a bare minimum for a Paladin to be at least that perceptive, so I don\'t think I deserve your praise, Lady Avery."

"Oh, dear. You\'re a stubborn one, huh?" she said while shaking her head. "Is it that hard to say \'thank you\' to the person who complimented you?"

He didn\'t give a response.

Curious to see his reaction, she turned to him. Much to her pleasant surprise, she saw Dion blushing. Even his ears were red.

"Oh, dear," she said teasingly. "Someone is awkward with women, huh?"

He turned to her to give her a death glare, but it didn\'t look intimidating because of how red his whole face was.

She couldn\'t help but laugh softly at the cuteness the stiff Paladin unexpectedly possessed.

"Sir Skelton, now that I\'m looking closer, you don\'t look scary even if you\'re glaring at me like that," she said, having fun while teasing him. "Should I help you overcome your shyness by showering you with praises from now on?"

"Shut up," he said, then he walked faster and left her behind.

She laughed while following him. "Sir Skelton, you\'re tall. Your shoulders are wide. Your back looks strong."

The Paladin covered his ears with his hands as he walked faster.

She laughed again, then she showered him with more praises.

[This is fun.]

But her fun soon ended when they reached the last room at the end of the hallway. The Darkness leaking out was thick and condensed. Worse, she could feel there were humans inside. She could feel their life force, so that meant the humans inside were still alive.

They were slowly dying, though.

It seemed like Dion Skelton also felt it because he pulled out his sword, then he slashed the door in just one swift move. The metal door was sliced into two, and it collapsed right away.

The Darkness coming out of the room tried to swallow them up.

She was about to use her Light magic to purify it, but the Paladin was quicker than her.

Dion used his aura as a Swordsmaster, then he mixed his divine energy with it. When he sliced the cloud of Darkness that attacked them, he purified it in the process.

"Sir Skelton, you\'re really amazing," she said, then she summoned her white parasol and swung it around. Like the Paladin, she did it to purify the Darkness that was trying to swallow them up. "And I\'m not saying this just to tease you."

"You, too."

"Hmm?"

Dion Skelton turned to her and looked at her straight in the eye. "You\'re amazing, too, Lady Avery."

Ah.

She was caught off-guard that she didn\'t know how to react by his sudden compliment.

[Did I just get a taste of my own medicine?]

"Sir Paladin! Lady Mage!"

After she and Dion purified the Darkness that covered the entire room, the surroundings became clearer than it was earlier. The Darkness hadn\'t disappeared yet completely. Thus, the black smoke around.

But their purification power managed to calm it down in the meantime.

[It won\'t take long, though.]

"I\'m glad that both of you are safe," Bram, the Holy Knight they met earlier, emerged from somewhere. He looked exhausted, and his divine energy was almost depleted as well. "And I\'m relieved you found us here. We really need your help."

Yes, Bram wasn\'t alone.

She noticed the other priests in the room. But those priests were lying on the floor as if they didn\'t have the strength to move.

[Where is this place?]

There was a huge open well in the middle of the room. The unconscious priests were actually surrounding it. She also noticed that the pillars were covered with gold. Even with the black smoke screening her vision, she could tell the room was luxurious.

"What is this place?" she asked, then she focused her gaze on the open well.

The supposedly blue sparkling water in the well had turned murky.

Not only that…

She covered her mouth with her hands when she gasped. "Oh…"

"Corpses," Dion said while looking at the open well, too. "There are corpses of Elves in the water." He gave Bram, the only one capable of giving them an answer, a cold look. "What exactly is happening here? Judging by your uniform, you must be a Holy Knight. Why is a Holy Knight here with the priests?"

Oh.

Paige suddenly realized Dion Skelton was being openly hostile to Bram. But the surprising part was she agreed with him.

Something was off, and she could feel it in her bones.

But she couldn\'t see anything different from Bram at the moment.

"The priests asked me to accompany them here when they noticed Darkness leaking out from here," Bram explained, his pupils were shaking as if he was afraid. "When we got here, we were shocked to find corpses of Dark Elves in the water. They seem to be the cause of the Darkness that swallowed up the temple. We tried to purify them, but as you can see, we failed."

Huh?

"Oh, dear," Paige said when she realized her bad feelings were never wrong. "I know that Dark Elves are elves that use Darkness attribute," she said warily. "But why does Sir Bram sound like you\'re one hundred percent the corpses are Dark Elves? Judging by their rotting flesh, it looks like they\'ve been dead for a long time now." She smiled "sweetly" at the Holy Knight. "Do you mind sharing your hypothesis with us?"

***

"PRINCESS NEOMA, shouldn\'t you rest first?"

"I don\'t have the luxury to rest," Neoma told Lewis while walking in the hallway leading to the room where the source of Darkness was coming from according to Paige. She received the mage\'s report earlier. "Paige and Dion have found the source of Darkness, so I need to help them purify it. Plus, I need to know the cause of this mess."

The fact that High Priest Wellington, currently the highest-ranking person in the Holy Land, had fallen victim to Darkness would definitely create a huge scandal.

Scratch that.

Just the mere fact that Valmento, the only Holy Land in the West Continent, was swallowed up by Darkness was a big embarrassment already. The empire would surely get criticized again, and some people might lose their faith in the Moon God.

[I need to fix this mess before it gets worse.]

"The Darkness here seems to have been purified a lot," Lewis said when they arrived at the last room in the hallway. "Ah, the door is already broken. It\'s definitely Sir Skelton\'s work."

She laughed softly, amused by the fact Lewis knew Dion so well.

[Right, Dion was Lewis\' direct supervisor back when he was training to become a knight.]

"Prince Nero, I\'m glad you\'re safe!"

Neoma flinched when she saw Bram, the Holy Knight that she met earlier, approached her with tears in his eyes.

For some reason, she felt weird while looking at him.

[Bram\'s divine orb is still the same, but what is THAT?]

Her thoughts were interrupted when Bram suddenly held her by the shoulders.

She felt her skin crawl.

Before she knew it, she had already thrown Bram (who was probably twice her size) over her shoulders. Everyone in the room looked shocked by what she did, but she didn\'t regret it. She felt like she had to do that.

"Disgusting," Neoma said, her eyes now glowing red. "Why is your body now filled with Darkness?"

It was the same Darkness that she saw the Holy Knights throw up earlier.

She didn\'t see it when she met Bram for the first time, but she could clearly see it now. Darkness seemed to be flowing in the bastard\'s veins instead of blood. To be honest, she didn\'t expect she\'d be able to see something like that.

[Is it because of Dion\'s eyes? He didn\'t say he could only see divine energy, after all.]

Bram, who was now plopped to the floor, laughed loudly. "Prince Nero, you have good eyes!"

And after saying that, Bram\'s body turned into several black crows.

[What the hell just happened?!]

All of sudden, Lewis, Paige, and Dion surrounded her like they were a human barricade.

The black crows flew together in one direction. Then they faded into a fine dust. After that, the dust turned into the shape of a man suspended in the air.

"I covered the Darkness flowing in my veins using my divine energy. It\'s good enough to fool the eyes of Sir Paladin and Lady Mage over there," Bram, who was now back in his human form, said while looking down at her from above. "But as expected, our dear Prince Nero is different– you saw through me right away."

It was probably thanks to Dion\'s eyes.

[If Dion didn\'t lend me his eyes, he would have noticed Bram\'s deception before I did.]

But that wasn\'t important at the moment.

"Who gave you the right to make me look up while you\'re looking down at me?" Neoma said in a cold voice. She thought her Moonglow had already been exhausted. But when anger rose in her chest, so did her divine power. "Get down here, you crow bastard."

Her Moonglow exploded out of her body.

The pressure coming from her overbearing divine power was strong enough to make Lewis, Paige, and Dion bend their knees for a moment. Thankfully, the three managed to catch themselves and stand firmly.

Bram, the target of her bloodlust, failed to hold his ground.

The crow bastard plummeted to the ground (smashing it at the process) while being crushed by her Moonglow. It was a delight to see Bram fall flat on his face. And it was even more satisfying to have the crow bastard look up at her as she looked down at him.

"This should be it," she said coldly as she approached Bram. Of course, her three guards stuck close to her. "This is the only appropriate eye level between us, `got it?"

Bram laughed like the maniac that he was. "Your sheer arrogance is proof you\'re a de Moonasterio," he said. He struggled to get up, but he still succeeded. `Guess he wouldn\'t be a crow if he was weak. "But I\'m not your enemy, Prince Nero. I\'m pretty sure you already know by now that the crows exist to support the Crown Prince– the future emperor of the land governed by Lord Yule."

The crow bastard wasn\'t wrong.

For princes and emperors who didn\'t care about the royal princesses born in the family, the crows were useful allies. She also heard from her Papa Boss that the previous emperor, her crazy grandfather, was supported by the crows until her father started the rebellion.

[But Nero and I, the new generation of the de Moonasterios, will never accept these crow bastards as allies.]

"I\'m not an enemy, Prince Nero," Bram said. "We\'re practically family."

She made a disgusted face that was ugly enough to be a viral meme. "Are you trying to make me puke?"

"I guess you haven\'t seen a de Luca in your life yet."

[\'De Luca,\' he says?]

Callisto de Luca was Yule\'s half-sibling– the crazy demigod who led the cult to where it was today.

[Wait, is he saying…]

Her curiosity was answered when Bram\'s hair and eye colors suddenly changed.

In the whole West Continent, only the de Moonasterios possessed white hair and ash-gray eyes. It was the symbol of Yule\'s blood flowing through their veins. Thus, no other families were blessed with the same hair and eye color combination.

[But Bram\'s hair and eye color now… they\'re the same as mine.]

Only the left side, though.

Bram\'s hair color was divided into two, like T*doroki\'s hair from My H*ro Ac*demia. The crow bastard\'s left side of the hair was white, while the other half was black. It was the same case for his eyes, too.

The crow bastard\'s left eye was ash-gray, while the right eye was black.

"The blood of the Moon also flows in my veins, Prince Nero," Bram said proudly. "I am Bram de Luca, the \'Judge\' among the crows."

[How would Nero react in this situation?]

She wanted to attack Bram since he was an enemy to her. But her personal grudge might give away her secret. She couldn\'t think and act like a royal princess at the moment. What she had to do was to move as the Crown Prince.

"I know why the crows exist," she said in a calm voice while hiding her bloodlust. She was thankful that Lewis, Paige, and Dion didn\'t move an inch, as if they were matching her pace. "But I don\'t understand why you\'re here now. I\'m a busy person, so if you\'re only here to introduce yourself, then scram already."

"Aww, don\'t be like that, Prince Nero," Bram said cheerfully. "I\'m here to deliver our presents for your upcoming tenth birthday. The crows celebrate it whenever our chosen heir approaches double digits in age. It\'s a big deal to us, since it\'s the age where we prepare you to become the emperor that we want you to be."

[As if I\'d let you boss me around.]

But she held it in and acted casually. "So, where\'s the gift you\'re talking about? That better be worth my attention, you crow bastard."

"You already have it in your hands, my dear prince."

She just raised her hands to show him that she was empty-handed.

Bram laughed, then he pointed to her left hand. "You have the Hazelden Kingdom in your left hand," he said, then he pointed to her right hand. "And the Valmento, specifically the Holy Knights, on the other."

Her arms dropped to her sides. Did she just hear the crown bastard speak bullshit? "Excuse me?"

The crow bastard put his hands behind him, then he smiled innocently at her. "Prince Nero, I don\'t doubt your ability. But if you think the Hazelden Kingdom fell into your hands all because you worked hard, then you\'re wrong." He opened his arms. "The Hazelden Kingdom\'s downfall, and the Valmento\'s embarrassing defeat– the crows orchestrated all of that to make a hero out of you, our dear heir."

Her brain understood what the crow bastard just said, but she couldn\'t find it in her heart to accept it.

How could she believe that bullshit?

Bram was implying the only reason the Hazelden Kingdom fell into her hands was because the crows helped her do so. That wasn\'t only an insult to her, but also to everyone who worked so hard for her.

"Are you saying you handed everything to me for free? Did you just discredit me and my people?" Neoma smirked bitterly, insulted. "Don\'t fuck with me, you damned crow."

***

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