262 Reports
“Kneel before Emperor Callant!” One of the higher-grade imperial guards ordered as he slammed his staff on the ground.
At that moment, everyone knelt, except the half-wolf. His gang members were confused by this lack of obedience, and the occurrence made the Emperor arch his eyebrows briefly.
“Luke, what are you doing? Kneel down.” Amelia whispered.
“Kneel down? Why would I kneel? At the moment, it is the Emperor who owes me something.” Luke stated.
Ayumi Yamazaki’s heart raced as if there was a lion stalking her, but she didn’t think to turn around to question the half-wolf’s attitudes.
None of the guards would dare admit such disrespect for the most powerful figure on the continent, so they all immediately drew theirs, and the one with the spear shouted:
“What! Insolent man, put yourself in your place!”
“Downey, calm down, let’s hear what he has to say.” said the Emperor with an overbearing smile.
Luke smiled too, however in a way that made it clear he knew what attitude the Emperor would have. “Callant your name, isn’t it? I must admit I didn’t know that until I got to that bridge. Anyway, Callant, your yard is infested with bugs, and everything is about to get worse… Have you ever wondered what it would be like if monsters started emerging to the surface like insects come out of the ground?”
At that hour, a dry silence hung over the entire environment. None of the guards would dare disobey the simple order to be quiet. Luke’s friends didn’t know what he was doing by being so direct, but they didn’t want to go against it either.
The look on Emperor Callant’s face was a mixture of surprise and disbelief. He partially understood what the half-wolf meant, even with such a pithy analogy, but he couldn’t understand some things yet.
All the tension only dissipated a little when the Emperor decided to say something. “If you were planning to get my full attention, now you have it. Tell me everything you have in mind…”
“The Melki Empire could attack us at any moment.” Luke spoke without winding up.
“Based on what do you assume that?”
“Almost a year ago, Vasconcelos experienced once again after a long time what it was like to have a demon. The mere presence of the demon caused a disturbance in the region, causing some monsters to act out of Dungeons, and even conversation…. Today, I am cursed by one of those monsters, a High Goblin who had magic scrolls, something only a ‘School’ Class mage could do.”
The revelation took everyone in the half-wolf gang by surprise, except for Alexis Dmitry who had already felt it.
“But my curse doesn’t matter now… This demon had a mission to spread the word of a crazy sect whose name was Followers of Chaos. Somehow, the members of the Followers of Chaos were able to use the regional distortion in the Dungeons to their advantage, and were able to give orders to the monsters. In the end, Alexis Dmitry and I managed to lure the demon and kill it, as well as another demon that was on a secret floor of the Dungeon.”
The imperial guards slowly lowered their weapons as Luke spoke, because they noticed in his calm aura that he was not a threat. They were also very impressed, because there were few people in the entire world who could say with such simplicity that they had killed a demon.
However, the Emperor was still suspicious of the half-wolf’s words, even though he seemed to have the full support of the Matriarch of the Strogueher Noble Family.
“Prove to me that you really killed a demon.”
Luke stretched his right arm forward with his palm facing upward, and in the blink of an eye a black axe appeared in his hand, whose blade seemed to be as sharp as a sheet of paper, and no doubt its material was incomparable to any weapon that can be forged by an ordinary blacksmith.
Upon seeing the Pansperm axe, the Emperor looked at a woman among the ten royal guards, and she immediately understood what he wanted. So, she walked over to Luke, as the Emperor said:
“Mrs. Bullock is the best blacksmith in this city, I trust her judgment.”
As the woman approached, Luke held out the Behemoth Axe to Mrs. Bullock, and she was able to bear the weight of it without even shaking.
She looked for only a second, but she could see all the main features of the axe. “Without a doubt it is a Pansperm Weapon that can only be obtained through a Demon Core. I dare say that this is the only axe of its kind in the world, because I have never heard of another one like it. Without a shadow of a doubt, it is veridical.”
“All right, thank you, Mrs. Bullock.” The Emperor thanked her, and the woman returned to her post. “Please continue, Luke Lange.”
The half-wolf was a bit surprised to be called by his real name, not his title as strangers usually called him now, however, he continued his statement anyway.
“Just before we killed the demon, a figure manifested itself through a corpse. This figure proposed a deal to me, which said that it was for me to stay out of anything involving the Chaos Followers. Later, this figure appeared in the same way when I killed the demon. However, this time it declared itself as my enemy and threatened all the people important to me. If this figure wasn’t the First Servant speaking through a corpse, I wouldn’t have even worried.”
After Luke, no one said anything else. At first he was confused by this lack of reaction, but soon something caught his attention. The hearts of all the imperial guards present in the hall sped up exactly when the title of the First Servant was uttered. Nevertheless, the moment the half-wolf looked at the Emperor again, he realized he was still being taken with disbelief.
“You see, Mr. Lange, the demon race is all but extinct and there is no way they could be conspiring on the side of the Melki Empire, which is what I predict you are getting at. Besides, the Cardinal Church hunts down everything foreign in the vast territory of my Empire, so I say that everything you said is impossible.”
Again, a confident smile appeared on the half-wolf’s face, even during this battle against the Emperor’s ego, and Luke said:
“Until two weeks ago it was also impossible to see Erick Smakusa as a disgusting criminal. Don’t you think you’re a little blinded by your pride, Callant? Before you say anything, I have a way to prove in every way that everything we say is true.”