Chapter 218: Exposure
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When the royal guards took the 'criminals' away, they placed a royal seal on the door that could only be opened by someone of sufficient authority.
This seal wasn't something that a normal person could break into without alerting the person who set it up, but it was far from being an obstruction to someone with sufficient knowledge of arrays.
Of course, there was no need for Evelyn to decipher or break it when she had the 'key' thanks to the third princess, and she easily walked in after making sure that all the guards had left.
Evelyn only had a limited amount of this 'spirit mould', and while it wasn't reusable, she still wanted to keep these two 'samples' in her inventory in case they could be useful later.
After all, the ones she had given to the third princess were unlikely to return back to her hands. Not to mention, she didn't want to leave behind any clues for her enemies, no matter how small and unrelated they might appear.
She simply couldn't take the chance before the matter of her family was dealt with.
The spirit mould still remained in the 'state' it had taken, and Evelyn quickly put away the two dead bodies into her inventory under Cecilia's unsettled eyes.
"Is it okay really to keep dead bodies in your space?"
Evelyn paused, recalling all the dead bodies she had in her inventory. "T-There's nothing wrong with it, right? Everyone keeps materials from monsters in their storage artifacts, after all."
The ash blonde rubbed her nose in embarrassment. "Y-Yeah, but you also keep food in there, a-and we eat it, s-soo…."
Evelyn coughed. "Don't worry, since everything is stored in complete stasis, there's no way any of the food will be contaminated or anything."
In fact, the pink-haired girl felt that she was quite wronged. After all, she kept the food and corpses in entirely different zones! Even if a corpse could move in her inventory, it would still take a long time for it to be able to reach the food.
'No way, what am I thinking?!'
Evelyn quickly shook her head and picked up the discarded 'array disk' from the floor.
She hadn't had any expectations of this thing when she first heard about it from that thug she caught near her carriage, nor did she feel anything strange when she heard their leader discuss how miraculous and wonderful it was.
After all, for insignificant people like them, almost any minor item from her inventory could be considered worthy of being able to change their fate.
When she really saw it in action, however, she realized that something wasn't right.
This wasn't just an array disk, not even a broken one, but just a fragment!
Although it had been embedded in a disk, and someone clearly tried to come up with the rest of the array to make it work, most of its core functionality still came from this tiny fragment.
Evelyn didn't even think about it as she turned the rest of the disk into powder with a wave of spirit power, leaving only a tiny piece of a broken array in her hand.
Cecilia couldn't help but tilt her head curiously. "What is this?"
She could tell that Evelyn had applied the same amount of power to the whole disk, so how could one small part remain unscathed while the rest completely turned to powder?
Evelyn smiled. "It's part of a strange disk I found earlier in the hands of the Terran Prince."
Looking at the ominous pattern on the fragment, how could she fail to recognize it?
Cecilia blinked in surprise. "Ah!"
Naturally, she understood that the prince must have died at her hands, though she wasn't sure when it happened.
Thinking about it this way… her adorable little Eve was quite terrifying, wasn't she?
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Meanwhile, the city lord's mansion was in chaos.
The rotund leader of the city almost tripped on his own stubby feet as he rushed into the luxurious chamber he had set aside for the 'honored guest'. "L-Lord Deacon, hurry, we have to get out of here!"
The yellow-robed deacon was momentarily stunned as he saw the utter terror on the usually arrogant man's face. "What's going on?"
The panting man used his already soaked silk handkerchief in a vain attempt to wipe his face, only to make it worse. Nothing seemed to go his way at all!
"L-Leave! W-We have to leave!"
The deacon frowned before he sent a wave of yellow spirit power into the anxious man's body, and he soon calmed down, though his panic seemed ready to set in again within moments.
"T-The princess! S-She just caught the old innkeeper at the Riham's inn, and she's headed our way! Y-You must have a way for us to get out of here, right? There's no way someone like you doesn't have a way out!"
The words seemed to have taken all his willpower, and the exhausted man collapsed on his knees. "P-Please! You have to take me with you too, or I'll die!"
Knowing the conflict between Lavinia's royalty and the Temple of Shinra, as long as the association between the deacon and the leader of their tiny border town was discovered, he had no doubt at all that his head would be on a spike!
The only question that remained was how much that perverse third princess would torture him before finally letting him die.
Of course, the deacon naturally didn't think the situation was quite so dire. Even if the Lavinian Empire was able to find out about what he was doing and make an accusation, would they really dare lay their hands on a deacon of the Temple of Shinra?
Just one glance from his Lord was enough to completely shatter their royal palace! Who would have the guts?! Even that arrogant ancient academy was almost down on its knees with just a casual wave of his Lord's hand.
And even if the third princess was utterly insane, the deacon still had to teach her a lesson for daring to threaten the dignity of his Lord.
He chuckled. "Heh, do you think I need to run away from some backwater country's third princess? Let her come."
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