thefictionvixens Chapter 107: Perhaps only a demon can defeat a demon.
Chapter 107: Perhaps only a demon can defeat a demon.
Chapter 108: Perhaps only a demon can defeat a demon.
The three women got out of bed. Toma was already dressed, while Osa and Shaki needed to change.
They opened the wardrobe in the room and found that clothes of their size had been prepared inside. It must have been prepared by Gails.
After tidying up, the three left the room and walked down the castle corridor to the basement.
The castle is located on a cliff in Elbaf and is large in scale and complex in structure.
Huge tapestries depicting epic battles and myths of the giants hang on the walls on both sides of the corridor, and torches burn on wrought iron lamp stands, casting dancing light and shadow.
They descended, passing through several heavy stone gates.
The basement was much larger than they had imagined, almost half the size of a castle.
This place was originally intended to be a storage room or wine cellar, but it has now been completely transformed.
A huge golden sphere floats in the center of the room.
The sphere was over ten meters in diameter and its surface was covered with liquid gold.
The sphere rotated slowly, emitting a low hum, and bathed the entire basement in a golden light.
Directly below the sphere was a set of tables and chairs, and around the tables and chairs were several stacks of books piled up like small mountains.
Oro sat there, golden light flowing from his body and connecting with the sphere above his head.
Lingling sat on the steps not far away, holding a large axe tightly in her right hand and a large piece of honey cake in her left hand, eating it in small bites.
When she saw Osa and the other two enter, her eyes lit up, and she waved but didn't say anything, clearly not wanting to disturb Oro.
The Osa sisters tiptoed over and sat down next to Lingling. Thomas whispered to Lingling, "Lingling, what is this big golden ball? I remember the one we found in that ruin wasn't like this."
Lingling stuffed the last bite of cake into her mouth, licked her fingers, and then lowered her voice to answer, "The thing we took out of the ruins is inside the golden ball. It's covered in symbols I can't understand, and Oro is deciphering it."
"Decryption? It takes that long?"
Xia Qi also came over, her eyes fixed on the golden sphere.
Lingling nodded: "Auro said those symbols are not ancient writing, or rather, they are not human writing at all."
"Reading it directly is meaningless; you can only understand it intuitively. He's been sitting there for three days now; it should be done soon."
Osa rested her chin on her hands, watching Oro's retreating figure.
Three days. He sat there for three days, motionless, trying to decipher this symbol.
What secrets do those symbols hold? Are they worth all that trouble for him?
The four women waited quietly, watching Oro work.
Time passed second by second.
The golden sphere rotated faster and faster, the gold on its surface flowed faster and faster, and the light became increasingly dazzling.
The temperature in the basement began to rise, and a strange energy fluctuation permeated the air, as if something ancient was awakening.
Finally, at a certain moment, the golden sphere suddenly stopped spinning.
Then, amidst a piercing cracking sound, countless cracks appeared on the surface of the sphere.
The cracks spread rapidly, covering the entire sphere in the blink of an eye.
The sphere exploded.
But no fragments flew; it was like melting ice and snow, turning into countless golden specks of light that dissipated in the air.
After the light dissipated, the contents inside the sphere were revealed.
Osa finally saw what they had painstakingly brought out of the ruins: a board whose material was unidentifiable.
A long, black board, about two meters long, one meter wide, and about twenty centimeters thick.
The board was as smooth as a mirror. Ousha didn't see any symbols; it just floated in mid-air, silent and quiet.
Oro stood up and stretched his stiff limbs.
He raised his hand and waved it lightly, and the black board actually floated gently to his front.
Oro reached out and gently touched the surface of the board.
The color of the stone slab began to change the moment it touched your fingertip.
It changed from pitch black to deep red, then to dark gold, and finally settled on an indescribable chaotic color, a color that seemed to be a mixture of all colors, yet each color remained independent.
After the color changed, text symbols appeared on the surface of the board, just as Lingling said, they were not any known text.
The characters were distorted and bizarre; some even moved and rearranged on the board, forming a regular pattern.
Oro stared at the words and began to read them in a low voice. He read them fluently, as if he had memorized them perfectly. He knew what the next word would be before he had even finished reading the previous one.
The four girls listened attentively to Oro's reading, but unfortunately, after listening for a long time, they couldn't understand what Oro was reading at all.
When they were getting dizzy and their ears were ringing from listening, Auro finally stopped reading.
"Found it."
He whispered, "Finally found it."
Osa couldn't help but stand up, walk to his side, and look at the stone slab as well.
She couldn't understand the writing, but she could sense the ancient aura emanating from it.
Osha had seen stone tablets inscribed with Poneglyphs, but this aura was even more ancient and primal than the Poneglyphs themselves.
"What is this?" she asked.
Oro turned his head and smiled at her and Shakky, Toma and Lingling who were walking over, before finally landing back on the black board.
"This is only half of the contract."
His voice was very soft: "This contract was signed in a very, very ancient time, so long ago that paper hadn't even been invented yet."
"An era before even paper?"
Shakky raised an eyebrow, touching her smooth chin. "800 years ago—paper should have existed, right? So, it has nothing to do with the World Government?"
"Yes and no, this contract can be signed more than once. 800 years ago, the Celestial Dragon King, who led the twenty nations to establish the World Government, signed his name on this contract."
"And the other party to the contract—is the devil."
Oro stopped, and the chaotic color of the stone slab began to subside, the wandering characters gradually disappeared, and the stone slab returned to its original pitch black.
Thomas blinked. "Demons? So demons really exist? When I grew up, I thought they were just lies adults told children to go home early."
"Demons, devils, evil spirits, etc., are just code names. No one knows what they really are except for those things themselves."
Oro shook his head slightly: "This clay tablet specifies the obligations that the trader must fulfill to the demon after the transaction, as well as some of the abilities the demon bestows upon the trader."
"Ability? It can't be the immortality that's always written in storybooks, can it? Is that king from 800 years ago still alive?"
Lingling's bold and accurate guess surprised Auro. He ran his finger along the edge of the mud tablet: "Immortality is indeed one of the abilities bestowed by demons. The guy who made a deal with a demon 800 years ago was called Im."
He finally uttered the name: "The victor from eight hundred years ago signed his name after obtaining this contract and gained true demonic power."
"However, although the losers were defeated by Im in the great war 800 years ago, they also successfully seized this contract."
"The losers split into two factions and also divided the contract in two. One faction brazenly sealed half of the contract in the Red Earth."
He stroked the black mud tablet and patted off non-existent dust: "Besides the above information, it also records the whereabouts of the other half of the contract. We need to find it."
"To truly overthrow the World Government, we must defeat Im—perhaps only a demon can defeat a demon."
Lingling said "Oh," and touched her firm belly, looking at Auro with pleading eyes: "Auro, I'm hungry, I've finished the cake."
Oro paused for a moment, then chuckled, "Okay, we'll think about it the day after tomorrow. Let's eat first."