"I'm really amazing!"

With the job done and the cleanup finished, Ariel smugly patted her hands. She was just about to show off—reservedly and without making it obvious—to Miss An about how outstanding she was... when she turned her head and saw An stabbing the thirty-seventh steel bar into another flayer.

After the thirty-eighth steel bar went in, that demonman—whose body was clearly extremely tough—had already lost a shocking amount of blood. He finally, gradually, swallowed his last breath, but on his dead-unblinking face, clear terror still remained.

The first steel bar had pierced straight through his throat, so up to now, he hadn’t even managed to let out a single scream.

"Gulp..."

Ariel couldn’t help swallowing.

Even though it was the same Divine Favor, why did Miss An’s Divine Favor feel more oppressive?

Was it because steel just looked scarier?

"So amazing..."

"Too kind. It’s not as amazing as you think. It’s just because the demonfolk are too poor—even what this guy was wearing was only ordinary armor—so I could control it easily."

An’s tone was cold.

"That’s still amazing. This power feels basically invincible on the battlefield!"

Ariel praised her sincerely.

Controlling metal.

Just imagining countless weapons on the battlefield falling under Miss An’s control and instantly turning into blades that harvested lives...

That was the real meat grinder. Killing people would be as easy as chopping up filling.

Of course, weapons and armor infused with magic power and battle aura wouldn’t be so easy to control. But on the Abyss border battlefield right now, the overwhelming majority were low-ranking demonmen with low intelligence who only knew how to use brute force.

So if An were on that battlefield, how many demonmen she could kill would probably depend entirely on her stamina.

If no powerhouse stopped her, it probably wouldn’t be hard for her alone to carve straight through the demonfolk army formation.

"I won’t go to the battlefield."

An lifted a hand and beckoned, drawing back the liquid metal.

"Why?"

"Because if I go to the battlefield, it’ll only let them achieve their purpose faster."

"Achieve... their purpose? What purpose?"

"You’ll find out later."

An stopped talking with Ariel. She shoved open the door Gowilt had just left through.

The heavy door was as light as nothing in An’s hand—there wasn’t even a sound. It was completely different from the way it had felt when Gowilt and the other demonman came out, when it had seemed like the whole ground was shaking.

"As expected..."

An lightly brushed the patterns carved on the door.

"Has too much time passed, to the point that the original array engraved on it has completely fallen into disuse?"

"An array?"

Ariel leaned in curiously.

"Since it’s abandoned, why not maintain it again?"

Very quickly, Ariel understood why it hadn’t been maintained.

With only a slight probe of her senses, she discovered that extremely complex arrays were engraved within these two gray-black, heavy doors.

Even though more than ninety percent of it was incomplete, Ariel could still feel the grandeur and power it must have had when whole—like countless overlapping spider webs, dense but not redundant. Every line of magical power had its purpose, and they were connected together with exquisite precision.

It was magical engineering that even made Ariel feel compelled to admire it.

"This is an array engraved by at least a Truth-Rank grand mage!"

In Ariel’s mind, even her teacher’s voice sounded a little surprised.

That made Ariel even more shaken. An array engraved by a dignified Truth-Rank grand mage was only being used as a doorkeeper? 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

And wasn’t it agreed that the demonfolk were completely bad at magic—just muscle-brained brutes?

What was this?

Ariel looked at An in confusion, but An only shook her head again.

"Let’s go."

She stepped forward, walking behind the door.

Behind the door was a winding staircase that spiraled upward.

An walked in front. Ariel curled a finger and flicked—flames floated up, lighting the surroundings.

"These walls are something else too."

On both sides of the stairs were old, worn walls. The traces of brickwork were clearly visible, covered in mottled patterns.

Yet within that mottling, no one knew how many magic stones had been set in, stretching all the way to the end of the walls.

Just like the arrays in the doors earlier, these magic stones had long since exhausted their power—some were even completely shattered. But just from ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) these discarded stones, you could imagine how spectacular it must have looked when this place had been fully lit.

And this was only a stair corridor going upward.

"What the hell... did the demonfolk ancestors really used to be rich? This is terrifying."

As Ariel stared at the magic stones and clicked her tongue in wonder, she couldn’t help feeling a pang in her heart.

Magic stones, magic stones—sure, they were just ordinary magic stones for lighting, but there were so many. If you pried them off and sold them, how much money would that be?

How many chicken legs could she trade for? How many extra meals? How many times could she avoid eating black bread?

Too bad there wasn’t a single good one left.

While lamenting, she followed An upward.

The stairs were even longer than Ariel had imagined.

"Why is it so far?"

"The straight-line distance is only about a kilometer, but it’s a spiral staircase, so it looks farther."

"A kilometer is far enough, okay? And you mean the height, right?"

A height of a kilometer—what kind of structure in Gutongs Castle needed a thousand meters of height?

Could it be...

In her mind, Ariel recalled the scenes she’d vaguely seen back when she’d been locked in the carriage.

"Those high towers?"

"Yes."

An answered.

"This is the tallest one. It’s also the core of all Gutongs Castle. The ancient relic that keeps all of Gutongs Castle running is naturally up there as well."

"A tower... I remember there being a lot of towers like that."

"In this city, there are over a hundred towers."

"That’s really strange. Are these towers also the demonfolk’s style?"

Ariel fell into thought.

When you said “tower,” the first thing you thought of was a mage’s tower.

On the continent, nobody loved building towers more than those old antiques who spent all year doing nothing but studying magic and never did any real work.

The largest mage organization on the continent was called the Origin Tower.

Origin referred to the highest peak on a mage’s path—the ultimate summit that only one person on the entire continent currently stood upon.

As for “tower”... the Origin Tower itself was a tower.

But in the entire Abyss—forget grand mages—Ariel hadn’t even seen a single demonman who could cast a lighting spell.

And when she recalled her travels in the Abyss during this period, aside from Gutongs Castle, she really hadn’t seen any other demonfolk tribes with any habit of building towers.

Was it because they were too poor to build towers?

No.

It wasn’t about height. The sharp, spired shape of these towers was too easy to recognize and too distinct in style. It wasn’t something you could fail to notice just because the demonfolk were too impoverished.

The demonfolk’s current general architectural style and these high towers were completely different.

"Or... in the past, did the demonfolk revere these towers?"

Ariel offered a guess.

"..."

An’s steps suddenly stopped.

"No. You’re wrong."

She turned back, staring at Ariel seriously.

"On the contrary—what the demonfolk hated most were these towers."

"Hated?"

Ariel raised an eyebrow. That answer was completely outside what she’d expected.

"Yes. Hated. No one hated these cloud-piercing towers more than the demonfolk of the past. All their lives, they wanted to topple these towers."

An’s eyes flickered.

Firelight illuminated the mottled stone walls. Those ancient traces were like murals that recorded time.

But even flames this bright couldn’t light the entire staircase.

Farther up, higher and farther away, it was still nothing but darkness.

"Then why are the towers still here?"

Ariel rapped her knuckles against the stone wall.

This tower was majestic, but a building like this—already almost completely rotted away in the river of time, hollowly grand on the outside—wouldn’t be hard for today’s demonfolk to destroy.

"This city is different. And this tower is different."

An kept walking forward.

"There are always exceptions, aren’t there? And what the demonfolk of the past hated was only what existed on the towers, not the towers themselves. Now that these towers are empty, even if you destroy them, so what?"

"And besides... the demonfolk of today have probably already forgotten."

A distant sigh, light as a feather, echoed through the stair corridor where the flames swayed.

Ariel was slightly stunned, because she hadn’t expected Miss An—who was always cold—to let out such a complicated sigh.

"The demonfolk of today..."

Ariel scratched her head.

"That phrasing just feels kind of weird."

"Teacher, do you know anything about these towers?"

Knowing An wouldn’t answer her much, Ariel simply went back to bothering her teacher.

"Towers... if we’re talking about who likes towers, all I can think of are mages."

"Even in your era, mages liked towers?"

"This has nothing to do with era. High towers connect to the sky above and the waters and soil below. For anyone studying magic, towers are the best. Otherwise, what, you think those old fossils all live in underground basements with no sunlight? The only ones who bury themselves in the dirt all day are dried corpses and dead shut-ins."

"Fair point... But mages... demonfolk... Today’s demonfolk don’t have mages. So what they used to hate—could it have been the mages up on the towers?"

Ariel made wild guesses, until she even blanked out a little herself.

"The names sound so similar, but they hate each other?"

"The ‘demon’ in demonfolk isn’t the ‘demon’ of magic. It’s the ‘demon’ of Demon God."

Her teacher’s tone was a little helpless, like Ariel could practically see her rolling her eyes.

"It’s said they all used to be worshipers of a Demon God and were polluted by the Demon God, so—ugh, wait."

"What?"

"Demonfolk... Demon God... high towers... and this familiar feeling that never went away from the beginning... I think I’m about to catch some thread and remember something."

Her teacher’s tone turned heavy.

"Remember what?"

Ariel’s eyes lit up.

"I... I still need to think. Don’t bother me. Let me be quiet for a moment, and think it through..."

After saying that, Ariel’s teacher completely fell silent.

"..."

Ariel went speechless for a moment, then she couldn’t help grinding her teeth.

Miss An too, and her teacher too—why were they both so obsessed with talking halfway and acting like some cryptic riddle-maker?

Couldn’t everyone be more honest?

Whether physically or mentally, being honest with each other was the best way for beautiful girls to get along, wasn’t it?

Damn it!

If Muen were here right now, he would definitely empathize with Ariel, because after being toyed with countless times by some old loli, he hated riddle-makers just as much.

Too bad Ariel didn’t know that the one who could empathize with her now was actually that dead yellow-haired bastard she hated most—otherwise, she’d probably declare on the spot that actually, what she loved most was the feeling of guessing riddles.

They walked on in silence, winding forward.

Finally, they reached the end of the stairs.

"We’re here."

An paused for the moment, so that the firelight Ariel had conjured could illuminate a farther distance in front of her.

"The location of that ancient relic."