noveldepot Chapter 321: Echoes Of The Third World
Chapter 321: Echoes Of The Third World
The gargantuan Demon Maw, a manifestation of pure, gluttonous dark energy, snapped its jaws shut with a sickening crunch. The once-mighty draconic gatekeeper was reduced to nothing but raw essence. The maw opened its mouth one final time, as a brilliantly glowing, prismatic gemstone flew out, trailing residual spatial energy, and landed lightly on the Demon girl’s waiting palm.
She rushed towards Mirabella, her tail swishing in sheer excitement as the demon maw vanished in the air behind her, dissolving back into energy.
"Master, I think you need this." She said, stretching the gemstone towards Mirabella with the eager reverence of a zealot offering tribute to a living god.
"Thank you, I indeed need this." Mirabella said, taking the stone. She could feel the dense, concentrated energy vibrating within the crystalline surface—a vital key to destroying the gateways. She moved her gaze, assessing the terrifying new asset kneeling before her. She looked intently on the demon girl, whose aura was practically overflowing with freshly consumed vitality, and then at the four subservient draconic realm bosses hovering silently behind her.
"You will be the second General of my Realm Bosses force. Do you accept this?" She asked, her voice echoing with absolute authority.
"Really?!" The demon girl’s glowing red eyes widened in profound surprised and disbelief. To be instantly elevated to a General rank under her new master was an honor beyond her wildest expectations, and Mirabella slowly nodded her head.
"I promised! I won’t fail the Master!!" The demoness said with a deep, dramatic bow, her crimson hair spilling over her shoulders.
"Okay, from now on, you will be Vespina, do you accept the name." Mirabella declared, forging the pact. Naming a monster permanently sealed their loyalty.
"Yes! Whatever Master call me, even if it’s shit, I will accept!" She quickly said, nodding her head vigorously, discarding all pride for absolute devotion.
"I will be Master’s blade, just tell me who you want dead, and I will get it settled! Anything at all! Just let me know, I can do a lot, even realm Bosses aren’t my opponent!" She kept on blabbering, her chaotic, bloodthirsty nature spilling out so fast that it even stunned Mirabella, Cupcake, and Adira.
The sheer volume of Vespina’s brown-nosing instantly triggered the territorial instincts of the original familiars.
"Hey, watch your position! In this family, I am the second after Master... You should call me big Sister." Cupcake said, her pride wounded. She immediately began shrinking in size from her towering twenty-meter frame, and landed on Mirabella’s shoulder to assert her physical closeness to their master.
"Oh! Big Sister, are you the first general?" Vespina asked, staring at Cupcake, her red eyes gleaming with a mix of respect and competitive calculation.
"Well---"
"--She isn’t." Mirabella cut Cupcake off, her tone flat and uncompromising, shattering the tiger’s ego instantly.
"Ehh?" Cupcake was completely dumbfounded, her fluffy ears dropping in shock.
"...?!"
Adira, floating nearby, and the other four colossal realm Bosses were dumbfounded. If the winged tiger who stood by the master’s side wasn’t the first, who was?
"Then it must be me!" Shesha said with a confident smirk, the massive fifty-meter, two-headed cobra rearing its dual hoods proudly.
"You aren’t the first, you are the guardian of the fire domain, don’t forget that." Mirabella stated, putting the territorial beast firmly in its place, and the crestfallen two-headed Cobra slowly nodded its heads in submission.
"Is it Adira?" Cupcake asked, turning to the supreme fairy, desperately trying to map out the power structure of the Beast Empress’s forces.
"No, it’s also not Adira."
"Then who is the first general?" They all asked in unison, their curiosity completely overwhelming their monstrous instincts.
Mirabella moved her piercing gaze on the Eight Creatures before her. Each of these entities possessed the catastrophic strength to destroy a whole empire, yet they bickered like siblings over rank.
"Are you all forgetting Luigi? She is the first general." Mirabella finally revealed, her voice carrying the undeniable weight of her first, most ruthless creature.
"Luigi? I know that name." Vespina muttered. The playful, chaotic energy around the demoness instantly evaporated, as a thick, suffocating killing intent spread out from her body, chilling the air.
".....?!"
Mirabella turned towards the small demon girl, raising an eyebrow at her sudden shift from fanatic subservience to lethal hostility.
"How?" She asked, her mind rapidly piecing together the possibility of cross-dimensional grudges.
"Well, her previous master and my previous Master are both enemies. We were both generals of our Masters; so I always encountered her in battle, that Blood angel is really cunning." She said, clenching her fist as centuries of battlefield trauma and bitter rivalries flared in her memories.
"But her psychic abilities are way stronger than anything in the Third World." She said, a grudging note of respect bleeding into her animosity.
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"Third world, so you’re from the Third World. Who was your previous Master?" Mirabella asked, her interest instantly piqued. Information regarding the geopolitical landscape of the higher realms was far more valuable than the gemstone she had just acquired.
"My previous Master is the great emperor spirit creature, Marriott. He is now a King stage spirit creature." She said, holding her jaw as she reflected on the monstrous entity that once held her leash.
"Oh, you are this powerful, why would he let you go?" Cupcake asked with deep suspicion, unable to fathom a sovereign discarding a Nine-Star asset.
"Well, he kind of restricted my actions, saying they already signed an NAP (Non-Aggression Pact) with the other factions. But I can’t just sit still without doing anything, so I got punished. He kicked me out as punishment, and I have to fend for myself in that dangerous world." She said with gritted teeth; a treaty of peace was essentially a starvation sentence for her.
"Although I was a Nine Stars Cultivator, there are a lot of Nine stars in the Third World." She sighed deeply, the grim reality of the higher realms settling over the group. In the Third World of Galaxy Fall, a Nine-Star was close to a god; in the fourth, they were merely foot soldiers in a much larger game.
"I was hunting for food, because I haven’t eaten any vitality for days, then this gateway appeared before me... I entered out of curiosity. That’s how I ended up here." She explained, her red eyes dropping slightly in shame at having been reduced to a starving stray drawn to a dimensional scrap heap.
Mirabella slowly nodded her head, rapidly updating her internal threat matrix. ’Seems the Third World is more dangerous than I thought; even Nine stars can’t move around freely.’ She looked up at Vespina, analyzing the psychological scars beneath the demoness’s bravado.
’Maybe it’s because she made a lot of enemies, so when she was kicked out, she was tossed into a lion den. She had to hide and try to survive. Oh well, she is now my second general, I should take care of her.’ She exhaled, and nodded her head, finalizing her decree.
"Okay, Vespina. You and Luigi will have to be friends... I don’t care what happened between you two in the past." She stared at her seriously, her Beast Empress bloodline ensuring her word was absolute law, impossible to disobey.
"I need discipline in my force. If you show your worth, I will reward you... Come on, let’s go after the third gateway." She said, took all the thousands of loots, and flew away, leaving a trail of golden light as her newly formed legion of apocalypses followed silently in her wake.