Baator Hell Promotion

The familiar name alerted Hopper, and she couldn't help but say, "I'm sorry, I didn't hear clearly. What master?"

"Master Oha, he was Master Corbylio's former apprentice, and he came all the way from out of town specifically to attend Master Corbylio's funeral. Thanks to him and Maester Brown, otherwise the monastery might have been shut down for a long time due to Master Corbylio's sudden death."

Hopper and the other two looked at each other. It seemed that they had not heard wrong. This Master Oha was probably the sorcerer they knew.

The sudden news of Ronnie's death made most of the drinkers lose their appetite and they said goodbye to Ronnie and left the hotel.

"Mr. Ronnie, it's getting late and I'm very tired from the journey. How much do you charge for accommodation here?"

Speaking of accommodation, Ronnie's eyes lit up. He rubbed his hands and said, "A place by the fireplace is only fifty coppers, but you have to use your own bedding. If you want something more suitable for your status, we have several very warm and comfortable rooms on the second floor. It only takes one silver moon a night, and I will also provide an absolutely hearty breakfast. As for your servants, the straw in our stable is also clean, and it only costs ten coppers."

"Two rooms," Hopper gestured to Ziz, asking him to pay.

Ronnie took the silver coin from Zis, smiled so much that his eyes formed two crescent moons, and bowed happily.

"You are truly wealthy and generous, young lady," he flattered her. "It's rare these days to find a master willing to provide a room for his servants. In gratitude for your generosity, I will provide you with a superb breakfast and a breakfast for each of your attendants."

Hopper smiled and nodded to him, as well as Lancelot and the bearded man who were still drinking, then called Ziz and Lightning and followed Christine upstairs.

"This is the room you'll stay in, miss," Christine said, holding a handheld candlestick as she opened the door to the room at the end of the second-floor hallway. A patch of moonlight shone through the window, casting a square pattern on the patched bedsheets. "It's away from the stairs, so the other residents won't disturb you."

"What about them?"

"The room next to you is a utility room. The room next to it is already occupied. Your servant lives in the third room from the front."

"Then you all go get some rest," Hopper ordered, turning around and glancing at Lightning, who seemed to be bitten by lice and was scratching his arm. He was glad that he didn't share the same room with him.

After everyone left, the succubus took off his heavy armor, sat on the bed sheets, looked at the full moon peeking out from the edge of the dark clouds for a while, and then covered his face with the quilt.

Chapter 222 Night Attack

Three o'clock in the morning is the time when magic is purest, and it is also the time when most people fall into sweet dreams.

Because the window was at just the right angle, the setting moon made Hopper's room even brighter than it had been when he fell asleep. For the same reason, the areas not illuminated by the moonlight seemed even darker.

In the pitch-black shadows, the door silently opened a crack. A rather tall figure slipped in with unexpected agility and closed the door behind him. His footsteps were as light as the wind blowing across the ground.

When he reached the window, the moonlight illuminated the thick beard on the lower half of the man's face.

The bearded man paused. He could hear the long breathing sounds under the sheets. The woman must be sleeping soundly. He raised the scimitar in his hand high and stabbed it down.

Suddenly, the patched bed sheet suddenly flew up and wrapped around his head. The person under the bed sheet lunged forward and clashed with the bearded man, with too much strength to be a woman.

The bearded man's head was covered by the bed sheet, but his right hand did not stop and stabbed towards his intended target.

At the same time as he felt a piercing sensation in his flesh, he also felt a sharp pain in his left shoulder. The huge teeth were deeply embedded in his flesh and kept tearing, and blood splattered into the air with the smell of rust.

The severe pain and the threat of death made the bearded man burst out with supernatural power. He hugged the other's slender waist tightly and then slammed it against the wall.

The opponent relaxed slightly in pain, and he quickly kicked him, separating himself from the enemy. After getting rid of the entanglement of the sheets, he could see the enemy's green eyes, light gray fur, and claws that reflected the moonlight in the darkness.

A werewolf.

The bearded man didn't care about why the woman turned into a werewolf. He only knew that his plan had failed, but he also knew that werewolves were not allowed to appear in the town. He still had a chance to escape.

The werewolf licked the blood from his teeth, gave him a ferocious smile, and pounced straight at him.

The bearded man was waiting for this opportunity. He threw a glass ball and jumped towards the window with all his might.

He knew that the glass ball would create a huge smoke screen that would confuse the werewolf's vision and sense of smell. As long as he jumped out of the window, the werewolf would not dare to risk being discovered and chase him out.

Along with the sound of glass breaking, there was also the sound of a string. The bearded man felt a chill in his throat and fell into endless darkness.

Hopper shook his hand, his fingers already red from pulling the bow. The human body was indeed unsuitable for wielding such a heavy bow. Someone opened a window, letting in the evening breeze, and the thick smoke quickly dissipated.

The bearded man was gone, leaving behind a grotesque corpse. It was at least eight feet tall, like a four-armed gargoyle the size of an ogre, its body covered in green scales. The corpse was now rapidly liquefying with a hissing sound. Before the smoke from the room had cleared, only a pool of black tar remained on the ground.

Like the belated arrival of an army in all the stories, there was a knock on the door, and Ronnie's loud voice came from outside:

"Miss Hopper, what happened? I heard a loud noise."

Just as Ronnie was still hesitating whether to ask Christine to unlock the door and go in together to take a look, the door opened and a man's head popped out.

"What's going on?" the muscular man asked impatiently. Although the door was not open very wide, Ronnie could still see that his thighs and shoulders were bare. The man seemed to be Miss Hopper's... servant.

He glanced at the man's forearm with prominent veins, swallowed his saliva, and tried hard to fulfill his duties as an innkeeper: "I seem to hear a loud noise, I'm afraid something has happened..."

Before Ronnie could finish his words, Ms. Hopper's reply came from inside the room. Her voice was lazy and hoarse: "I'm so sorry, Mr. Ronnie. My servant and I are playing a game. I promise to be quieter next time."

"I'm glad you're okay." The young boss was very embarrassed. He had a rough idea of ​​what kind of game was being played at three o'clock in the morning that made such a loud noise.

The man slammed the door in front of Ronnie's nose. The boss, feeling unlucky, wiped his nose and left.

"Are you okay with your wound?" Hopper looked at Lightning who had closed the door. The knife that the bearded man had just stabbed had pierced his left waist.

"It's okay. His knife wasn't coated with silver paste. A werewolf's body can heal quickly." He turned around, and there was only a shallow bloodstain on the skin of his abdomen, which was almost completely healed.

"If I'm not mistaken, that's Nikaros?" Zis just crawled out from under the bed, covered in dust. He had been waiting for an opportunity to launch a surprise attack, but the battle ended so quickly that he didn't have time to do anything.

"Nikaroths, some people also call them Conquering Ros. The knights and generals among the Yugoloths." Hopper answered while folding her shadow cloak. She just relied on the cloak to hide in the shadow where the moon could not find her.

At this point, she glanced at Lightnin and said, "This is the result of doing business with Yugoloth. They betray you faster than you can blink."

"I'm more curious about how you predicted his attack than Yugoloth's betrayal."

Ziz also turned to look at Hopper, and it was obvious that he was also interested.

"I'm just guessing," Hopper shrugged. "Didn't the Spellweaver say someone else was repairing the map? I tend to prepare for the worst, always planning my actions under the assumption that our competitors are ahead. Under that premise, Mr. Bearded's outsider identity is all too obvious. If I were him, I'd also choose to act on the first night, because tonight we might not have figured out the rules of this plane, nor have we adapted to our weakened human bodies."

"Do you think he has accomplices?"

"No. If there were, there would have been movement in your room. His accomplices couldn't have slept and left him to work alone."

Lightning was silent for a while, then finally said, "Those of you who are responsible for signing the contract are really cunning."

"This dimension helped us today. If he hadn't been trapped in a human body and his strength had been greatly reduced, it wouldn't have been so easy for us to deal with him." Hopper still felt a little scared. Fortunately, Lightning had become a werewolf instead of an ordinary human.

At this moment, she happened to catch a glimpse of Lightning sitting on the bed scratching his back, and kicked him down.

"Although it's not a full moon, you should stay away from the moonlight," she warned. "We are lucky that you were transformed into a werewolf by the will of the plane, but we cannot take our enemies lightly. Aside from the bearded man, we still don't know what the attitudes of the other two spellcasters are."

Hopper had originally planned to call the two over to discuss the news he had heard tonight, but Lightning, irritated by the moonlight in the room, began to transform right in front of them. Hopper had to use a truth understood by most creatures: violence to calm him down.

Fortunately, Lightning had good control over himself and was able to transform quickly. This also allowed Hopper to make a plan to ambush the bearded man. Originally, she planned to let Ziz lie under the sheets and pretend to be asleep.

"This can be considered a kind of luck," Hopper concluded. "Look at our unfortunate attacker. He was killed by a single arrow. Ziz and I are not physically stronger than him."

"Speaking of the attacker, Miss Hopper. After being killed by you, he still turned back to his original form. Does this mean that this transformation can still be undone?" Zis said.

Hopper turned to look at Ziz in surprise. She had never expected that the seemingly stubborn soldier could actually think on his own.

"You really surprise me, dear Zis." She held the boy's head with both hands, squeezing his blushing face out of shape. "Can I finally have a creature with strong will and quick thinking among my companions?"

"Hey! I'm still here."

"Shut up, your tail has grown back."

Chapter 223: The Rebellious Devils

"Okay, let's get back to the point," Hellcat angrily grabbed the canine tail he had emerged from, trying to force himself back to his original form. "What do you think caused me to become a werewolf and you to become humans?"

Hopper let go of his hand, and Ziz quickly stepped aside, staring at the corner of the wall.

The Devil rested his chin on one hand, pondering the question before hesitatingly saying, "I don't know. I'm not a mage, so I can only guess."

"I originally thought this plane rejected all non-humans, so we were turned into humans. But when we entered the city, I felt something was wrong."

"That wolf howl?" Lightning gave up fiddling with his tail and frowned. "It didn't seem like anything special, except that it was incredibly loud."

"Mr. Lightning, that's not true." Ziz was obviously more natural when facing a man. He shook his head slowly and said, "I learned during my training that wolves basically live in groups. Their howls are mainly for communication. It's rare to hear a solitary howl."

"Yes, so I've doubted my own judgment since then. After hearing the story of the three fairies at dinner, I was completely convinced. A seemingly fair transaction, a debtor's unexplained death, and a witch living alone in the forest—these are all common tricks of old hags."

"I speculate that before Jinfa Town was drawn into this dimension, there were other intelligent life forms. It's just that their presence was so rare that humans here dominated. And you, my dear friend, may be the devil that was spotted by the goddess of luck and assigned a non-human identity."

Lightning grunted, whether in agreement or disagreement. However, none of Baatezu's demons lacked a reverence for strength, so Hopper guessed that he might be more receptive to being a lycanthrope than a weak human.

"Now, we have a basic understanding of this plane and have dealt with the competitor who is ahead in progress."

The temperature in Blonde Town wasn't very high at night. After transforming into a human, Hopper felt a little cold sitting barefoot on the bed. She casually wrapped herself in a blanket and comfortably counted her progress on her fingers.

"So, now we only need to complete two more things. One is to find what you need - considering the forced deformation characteristics of the plane, I think it should not be difficult to find. The other is how to get out of here. This is more troublesome, I know basically nothing about it."

"No, there's a third thing."

Hopper looked at Lightning, who was squatting on the ground to avoid the moonlight, with a puzzled look on his face. Lightning grinned at her, his sharp teeth gleaming in the dark.

"Complete your small goals," he said.

Hopper tensed her back, then relaxed after a moment and said helplessly, "When did you know?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Lightning instinctively wanted to lie flat on the ground, but the cold floor immediately reminded him that he was no longer hairy. "I've known you for many years. If this matter had no profit, you wouldn't take the initiative to think about it. Let alone take the responsibility and initiative of leading the team."

"Then, for the sake of strategic mutual trust, shouldn't you also briefly reveal your purpose to your old friend?"

Hellcat had asked this question before, and Hopper had brushed it off. It wasn't that Hopper's mission was so secretive, but the succubus's cautious nature made her compulsively willing to provide as little information as possible.

"Okay." After some thought, Hopper decided to tell them the details of his mission. Before, when there were no clues, it was not prudent to say the least, but now that there was a clue, withholding the information would be mutually detrimental.

Zisi stood up consciously and wanted to stand guard outside the door.

"No, you can sit down too," Hopper rubbed his forehead. "If the innkeeper sees this, the whole town will probably know tomorrow that the new female knight is insatiable."

"So, this is your mission? An oracle?" Lightning asked in shock after listening to Hopper's brief introduction. "You accepted it without even knowing the goal?"

Hopper shrugged and said nonchalantly, "Even if I don't accept it, Gracia will still murder me anyway. At least the Inescapable is more magnanimous than the Devil Queen."

"No, you're not telling the truth." Hellcat stared at Hopper's face, as if trying to see through her mind. "Wait, are you having another attack? Are you tinkering with that delusion that makes you unique?"

The succubus sat on the bed, her back to the window, the silver moonlight shimmering around her. Lightning stared at her as if looking into a well, feeling only the unpredictable strangeness and danger brought on by this demon.

"I'm determined to get my family back to the Hell Steps. Even Lady Biste thinks I'm crazy," Hellcat shook his head. "I really should let them see you, a devil trying to maintain his own independence in Baator. You're simply the most arrogant lunatic I've ever met."

"I think this is why we can become partners, isn't it? Think about it, I have relied on my arrogance and uniqueness to gain opportunities along the way. If I had always followed the rules, I would probably still be honestly paying tribute to Charlotte."

"You see, the great Baator has always been fond of rewarding those devils who dare to rebel against their superiors, especially those devils who can escape unscathed after the rebellion. The Great Reckoning is an example. The loyal Ge Yinyong was exiled by the King of the Nine Hells, even though he had done nothing wrong. And what was Gracia's punishment for rebelling against her father? A crown of the sixth layer! The order of Hell will benefit the devils within it, it's just a matter of how much. So why can't we be the ones who benefit the most?"

After hearing this, Lightning's face full of disbelief gradually turned into a smile that was slightly crazy.

"It sounds extremely unethical, but I like it. Order and power have always served the foxes who use them, not the chickens who bow down to them."

Zis listened to the crazy talk of the two devils. It was completely different from the training he received in the military camp, but it had its own logic, which confused him.

Hopper saw the confusion on his face, patted his head and said, "You don't have to think about this yet, kid. You are not a devil, and you don't need to participate in the struggle for power in hell."

Zis thought about it and nodded, only to see Lightning laugh mockingly.

"Little friend, when you realize there's something wrong with what she said, when you want to refute it, you've taken the first step."

Ziz instinctively retorted, "My contract and my loyalty belong to Ms. Hopper. This is the soldier's creed and the orders I have received. How could I possibly think of going against your words?"

Now both devils laughed.

"No, you will." Hopper smiled and reached out to touch his head. "The power of hell depends on strength. When you have the power to bear the consequences of violating the contract, you will oppose the contract."

Chapter 224 Prince Piper's Banquet

Five nights later, after that thrilling night, Hopper led the two on the road to Prince Piper's Castle. The reason was simple: today was Lady Natalie's coming-of-age ceremony.

Prince Pipe's castle was built on the outermost cliffs of Jinfa Town. Carriages could only reach the foot of the mountain; visitors had to walk the rest of the way. When they reached the mountainside and looked back, they could see the gray stone steps appearing and disappearing among the tangled branches. It must be early spring, and tender green buds had already appeared on the treetops, but the wind was still biting, rustling the branches.

"This atmosphere is as sad as a funeral," Hopper thought. She stopped and took out a handkerchief to wipe her forehead. She found this handkerchief among the small things that Knight Yaron gave her. It was originally just a small prop to disguise herself as a human, but she didn't expect it to come in handy here.

She couldn't help but glance at Ziz with envy. Though both had become human, her physical fitness was clearly no match for the soldiers who had undergone years of training. Ziz wore only a simple inner lining, a leather breastplate, and bare arms, seemingly unaffected by the cold. Hopper, on the other hand, had added a fur-trimmed cloak, but it still couldn't keep out the chill of the mountain wind.

"Do you really think we'll run into those two today?" Lightning asked casually when she stopped. He was wearing a new leather jacket, which was understated and simple, but perfectly suited to a servant's status. "We've tried several times but haven't been able to stop them."

"If they're willing to give up understanding the secrets of this plane just to avoid us, I don't think there's any point in stopping them." Hopper straightened his hair to clear his mind. "I'm inclined to believe they're not deliberately avoiding us. The monastery itself doesn't allow women to enter, and they have the unique advantage of obtaining as much information as possible from the monastery's library."

"The Demiplane of Dread is different from Baator. It's not one or several vast, boundless planes. The Demiplane of Dread is like a bunch of grapes of varying sizes, each one a prison cell for the plane's lords. Those lords favored by the plane's will are both prisoners and rulers here."

"Although we don't know the purpose of those two yet, it's definitely related to the lord. Then they wouldn't miss the banquet Prince Pipe is holding for his daughter."

As they talked, they had already walked the short mountain road and arrived at the wind-whistling lawn and the shadow of the castle. Only then did they notice the towering castle, like a giant beast crouching on the peak, which was enough to make them feel awe even without saying a word.

A group of soldiers dressed in purple-black battle robes and shining chain mail shouted upon seeing the arrival of the newcomer, "Welcome, Lady Hopper of the Sassen family. The honorable Prince Piper has received news of your arrival and is delighted that you have taken the time to come. Please allow me to lead the way. However, before doing so, please lay down your weapons, you and your entourage. We will defend you at the cost of our lives in Bright Castle."

Hopper remained silent, motioning for Ziz to hand over her weapon. Her bow was in her space bag, and Lightning wasn't used to her human body yet. If they really wanted to fight, she might as well transform into a werewolf and bite him.

The guard who had spoken opened the door for them. Against the chill of early spring, the prince's hall seemed dark and warm. The scent of precious spices mixed with the scent of applewood greeted them, like a beautiful woman who had hurriedly passed by and then glanced back with a smile.

Once their eyes adjusted to the dimness, they discovered that the hall was constructed of gray-blue marble. The curtains, paintings, and furniture all used varying shades of blue. Even the lamps hanging overhead had transparent blue crystal lampshades. It was daytime, and the lights hadn't been turned on yet. Imagine, at night, when the lights flickered, the entire hall would shimmer like the sea.