After I died, my personal maid rebelled.

In the dead of night, the moonlight shines on the glistening snow.

Oswald and Elene searched for a long time before finally finding the passage through which Leia had escaped the royal city in a forest.

Pushing aside the snow and weeds covering the area, Oswald's gaze swept over the surrounding tranquility as he slowly descended the steps.

After blowing out the lantern in her hand, Elena, who was following closely behind, gently covered her mouth and yawned.

Perhaps boys are just naturally interested in these kinds of secret passages. Rather than focusing on intelligence gathering, Elena suspects that the Duke simply enjoys these boring adventures.

By the way, here's a joke: the last time the Duke entered the royal city, he broke through the army of 200,000 men, smashed down the city gates with an immortal python, and swaggered in...

"If there were a secret passage like this in Ice City, I would fill it with oil canisters and place twenty heavy crossbows at the exit."

The words were still nonsensical, but after obtaining the Duke's memories, Elena probably understood what the Duke wanted to express.

She raised an eyebrow and smiled brightly. "This straight, long passage might be perfect for a master archer to guard."

"It's a reasonable deduction that there are many skilled archers in the royal guard, and that the purpose of designing the secret passage was not to defend against external enemies, but to prevent internal rebellion."

Oswald mentally rehearsed a scenario of rebellion: the royal guard escorting members of the royal family through a passage to the outskirts of the city, and as they faced pursuit by the rebels, several archery masters used the narrow passage to inflict highly effective damage with their unstoppable arrows.

If the number of rebels is too small, they will not pose a threat; if the number of rebels is too large, they will quickly block the space due to the corpses in front of them. So, in any case, they can buy precious time for the royal family members to escape.

Fortunately, the secret passage proved its worth, allowing Rhea to safely escape the royal city with the last vestiges of the royal bloodline.

Unfortunately, the disaster that changed everything stemmed from a sister's massacre of her brother within the royal family.

"The second brother kills the eldest brother, the younger sister kills the second brother; the political center is indeed a natural stage for infighting."

After making a remark, Oswald walked to the end of the secret passage, climbed the steps, and slowly manipulated the airflow to push away the soil covering the exit.

The palace was quieter than the two had imagined, but the stench in the air lingered.

Hanging the extinguished lantern at her waist, Elena cautiously surveyed her surroundings, her fingers already gripping the hilt of her knife.

Her only fond memories of the royal city were the time she spent sneaking in with the Duke. As for her alma mater, the Central Academy, she couldn't even be bothered to recall it; it was all just a series of terrible academic experiences.

A top graduate, skilled in both academics and martial arts, couldn't get a good job in the capital. In the end, she was even forced to go through a roundabout process and personally mobilize the army to conquer the city...

The once bustling city is now devoid of lights. The two stroll through the palace gardens, hearing only the echoing wind through the corridors.

Following the stench, Oswald pushed open a courtyard gate and discovered the body of an adult male lying in the snow.

Oswald recognized this person; he was Claude, the president of the Adventurers' Guild who frequently appeared in the game and gave quests to the heroes.

Oswald crouched down to examine Claude and was surprised to find that there were no other wounds on his body, and the fatal wound in his throat even showed signs of suicide.

His rotting, murky eyes were filled with despair. It was both Claude's good fortune and his misfortune that he was not transformed into a monster by the spiral of desire.

But why did Claude come here?

Looking around, Oswald found nothing unusual. He could even deduce that Claude had not been chased by those monsters.

"Sir, there is another corpse inside."

Elena stood in front of the cabin door, picked up the unlocked chain from the ground, and a more pungent smell of decay wafted from the slightly ajar door.

She carefully pushed open the door and, together with Oswald who came to her side, looked at the rotting mass on the ground that was no longer human.

If this winter hadn't been so cold, who knows how many more maggots would have grown here.

"Claude must have opened the chains, but who was locked inside, and why did he choose to commit suicide?"

Oswald wrinkled his nose hard; clearly, this corpse had died earlier than Claude, and might have even starved to death.

Suddenly, a name flashed through his mind, and Oswald gave an inscrutable sneer.

"Elena, do you think this could be Frank's puppet body?"

"Hmm..." Eline touched her chin with her fingertips. "It should be him. It seems that Nicole and the others were already prepared to abandon the royal city."

Eileen could understand Claude's actions; with a sudden disaster in the royal city, ensuring the king's safety was the top priority.

However, the story behind how Claude knew the king's hiding place and how he obtained the key to unlock the chains is quite intriguing.

"Let's go. The old era has its end. The Frank we know died on the day the curse was born."

Oswald took Elene's hand and turned to leave the courtyard.

There are many other places worth exploring in the palace, such as the treasury and the treasure vault.

Moreover, he had already done everything he could for Frank. He originally wanted Frank to cosplay as Louis XVI, but a bunch of lunatics got involved halfway through, and things went awry. In the end, he was actually going to have to raise Frank's son...

Sigh, it seems no one cares about Frank's child. What a pity, if it were a girl, there might have been many more dramatic and unbelievable stories to unfold.

"The story of how I, as an orphan of the previous dynasty, was kicked out of the duke's mansion by my adoptive parents, and eventually met a down-on-his-luck, rich, and handsome man in the countryside."

As she rounded a corner, a thick, pungent stench filled the air. Alini silently strode forward, her swift bone scalpel precisely shaving off a blood-soaked head.

The twisted body that had been standing motionless was gently laid down on the ground under Oswald's manipulation of the black flesh threads.

Throughout the entire process, neither of them made a sound.

Wiping away the bloodstains with her sword, adding a touch of crimson to the snow, Elena, after surveying her surroundings, soon spotted a monster covered in tentacles wandering toward their location.

Elena took a step back, and saw Oswald raise his palm, black threads crawling across the snow and walls, silently rushing toward the monster.

In the blink of an eye, the monster's entire body was cut into neat chunks of flesh. Apart from the dripping blood, each chunk of flesh that made up the monster's body was suspended in the air by black threads, and only after a few seconds was it gently placed on the ground.

The black lines, centered on Oswald, spread wildly outwards, gradually covering a warning zone with a radius of fifty meters.

"Do you know how to get there?" Oswald leaned down and whispered in her ear.

Elena paused for a moment, then couldn't help touching her reddened earlobe. "My lady, haven't you made any plans for this?"

Oswald chuckled softly before revealing his true purpose.

"I'm actually here to clear out territory. Tell me, if we wipe out the monsters in the palace, then let Federico's group move in, and rely on the city walls for defense, can we establish a foothold?"