Oath Kingdom - Dented strength

“What have you done?” yelled Iris hysterically, kneeling in front of the second prince’s decapitated head.

Elise looked completely indifferent as she said: “I warned you already, little girl. Don’t you know actions have consequences? I wonder how many academy teachers, students, or royals I must kill before you learn that.”

Iris gritted her teeth, the sound especially clear in her tiny office, as her eyes got fixed on Elise, a wave of seething anger contained inside.

“I’m going to kill you.”, said Iris as a tide of fire energy exploded from her body, encompassing the entire office. The fire kept burning until the marble started turning red, even on the outside.

Once Iris stopped, nothing was left inside her cozy office except an ashen-haired beauty with a ridiculing smile on her lips, standing up in the same place her office used to be.

“You ruined my chair.” She muttered teasingly as he started walking forward.

Iris’s face contorted in fear as she fell on her back. Her attack had burned away all her clothes, leaving her completely exposed. Her meaty breasts bounced with her fall. Her legs kept shaking as she looked at the beautiful but terrifying woman in front of her.

Elise’s eyes were also attracted by Iris’s perfect body, her eyebrows raising in surprise as she exclaimed: “No wonder he kept tip-toeing around you.”

Iris was too terrified to understand the meaning behind her words as she crawled backward with each step Elise took toward her. A silent muttering, “don’t come any closer,” kept escaping her lips on repeat, but Elise acted like she didn’t hear it, backing Iris against the still-burning marble.

A sizzling sound followed when Iris’s back touched the wall, but she felt no pain, her sources protecting her body from the intensive burn.

Bending forward, Elise ignored the small rivet that left Iris’s vagina and said: “Over 200 years, and you’re still nothing more than a little girl. You know why you’re not dead yet?”

Iris shook her head, too terrified to even form words. Elise’s crimson eyes reminded her of another pair of deep red eyes, and her heart kept struggling to escape the boundaries of her chest.

“Because I know he wants you alive. You’re only alive because he allowed you to, so think carefully about your little oath to the royals. How many times has he spared your life until now?” Looking at the bruise on her shoulder, Elise smiled widely as she continued: “What did the royals give you that is worthy of your loyalty, I wonder? Bruises when things don’t work like they intended?”

Iris followed her sight and summoned a small flame to cover her bruise.

Elise looked like she had lost interest all of a sudden, the smile disappearing from her face as she righted her posture. “Go tell that king that he’ll lose everyone he cares about if he doesn’t pull on his leash. I’m not Seth, and I hold no interest in fucking you or considering your feelings. The second prince was just a small warning.”

Elise looked at the pee dripping from Iris’s vagina and shook her head: “What a trump card of the kingdom…”.

Elise disappeared into a bloody fog, leaving only Iris alone inside the barren office. She remained stuck to the wall, her sky-blue eyes shaking in their sockets. Her entire soul was still reeling from everything that had happened once more.

She didn’t even feel like cleaning herself from all the filth. Tonight was the most disgraceful night of her life. Even when Seth unleashed his divinity on her, at least she didn’t disgrace herself like this.

Elise’s words also kept ringing in her mind, remnants of a ghost that kept haunting her ceaselessly.

Deep under the city, in a simple office carved into the ground, a blood mist covered a dead-looking male body. Its male features changed as the blood took a fleshy texture, and a beautiful ashen-haired woman remained in its stead.

Her face was pale, and the bright crimson in her eyes lost some of its brilliance. Her breathing was a bit labored as her hand extended and gripped the neck of the kneeling man beside her.

Necros didn’t offer any resistance as the pores in his body opened, and blood started flowing up Elise’s fingers, covering her entire body. It took over ten minutes until the blood permeated her body and the paleness disappeared from her skin. Her eyes also seemed to have recovered their luster as they fixed themselves on the now pale-looking Necros.

“Quite the gift he left me.”, muttered Elise before standing up and licking her lips. She looked at her hands for a moment, noticing the slight pulsation inside them; she knew she had to rest for a while.

“Xendar, don’t go close to the woman. She might try to bite again. Continue wiping out spies just as before, and wait for me to recover. Seth was right; going against a sixth shell ascended is pure suicide.”

Once her words ended, a bloody mist covered her entire body, and Xendar was the one left standing in the room.

Two days passed in the capital, with Xendar cleaning up more and more people suspected of being enemy spies. He took no risks and would kill anyone that seemed even slightly suspect.

While the city’s people were growing more anxious each day, neither of their support pillars showed up to ease their worries. The king has still not appeared to give a speech, even if he woke up, and Iris has also mysteriously disappeared over the last two days.

Inside the royal palace, the high-ranked nobles and the king met to deal with the serial murders in the capital.

“Your highness, we must do something. People have already started leaving the Capital. If this continues, the capital will soon turn into a ghost city.”, said one of the nobles inside the meeting room.

The king remained silent atop his throne, his face a mask of indifference to the thoughts passing through his mind.

A few more nobles agreed to the first one, but the king still didn’t make any statement. As the hall fell silent, all eyes on the king, he shook his head and turned towards a dark corner of the room: “Any news on Iris?”

A masked man appeared from the shadows, kneeling before the king: “Reporting to Your Majesty, Iris has remained locked inside her office for the past two days. We don’t know what she’s doing in there. Since the last shadow to walk in was killed by her, we don’t dare go in anymore.”

The king’s fist hit the arm of his throne, startling the kneeling shadow: “What is your use then? You and Iris are all useless. I don’t care how many of you have to die; bring her here.”

The shadow’s body shook, but it still nodded and disappeared to fulfill the order it had received.

The king turned towards the nobles inside the room and said: “As for you all, feel free to stop the killings yourselves. The one who brings me Ghost’s head will get a noble rank promotion and 10 000 gold coins from the treasury.”

The eyes of the nobles brightened, and they quickly left the throne room. Some of them went to hire mercenaries, and others went to gather their own armies. Some were even going to the academy, willing to hire an ascended to hunt down Ghost.

With the end of the meeting and all the nobles running around to hire help hunting down Ghost, the killer’s identity also reached the ears of the common people. Due to their fear, even a small citizen mob was formed, heading towards the Slumbering Grave Inn, asking for Ghost’s surrender.

A new wave of chaos ensued in the city above while Xendar was sitting in Necros’ office underground. All the hunting going on outside came slightly unexpected to him.

Necros tunneled out of the ground and fell on his knees: “I found the reason for the hunt. Iris has locked herself in her office and had probably not informed the king of master’s threat.”

Xendar’s eyes flashed red, and he stood up from his chair. “Can’t rely on the king’s dog to even bark back to her master. Guess I must do things myself.”

He took a step to walk out when his body shook, and he asked with a frown: “Anything wrong, Elise?”

His body got covered in a bloody mist, and Elise came out. “I’ll handle it using a blood wraith.”

The king was in a round office, going through a stack of papers. They were mostly complaints and reports that came when he was unconscious. He kept going through them for the last few days.

Just as he lifted the corner of a page, a gust of wind ruffled it up, and the king raised his eyes to look towards the door. A blood mist started entering the office, making the king stand up, and two shadows walked out of the corner of the room.

The mist gathered and formed a sexy silhouette before materializing into the form of Elise, her face covered by a blood-red mask. The two assassins grabbed their daggers tightly, ready to pounce on the intruder at a moment’s notice.

The king’s heart started pounding in his chest, but he still raised his hand to tell the assassins to not attack.

“You must be Ghost.”

Elise smiled behind the mask and replied: “I see my reputation precedes me. Why don’t you send your two pets away so we can talk in peace, your majesty?” There was a mocking tone in her sensual voice as she called the king ‘your majesty.’

The king frowned and shook her head: “Do you think I’m crazy?”

Elise shook her head. “Crazy? I don’t know, but what I know is that you’re an idiot. Do you really think that after Iris failed to kill me, your two little assassins could do it?” her words barely ended, and two blood knives left her sleeves, aiming for the assassins’ necks.

The two assassins moved back, raising their daggers to parry the attack, but as soon as the blood knives came into contact with the steel ones, they broke into a puddle of blood that splattered onto their faces.

“ARGH!” two bloodcurdling screeches followed as the two assassins fell to their knees, scratching their faces like mad. They kept rubbing under the king’s horrified eyes until they even gorged out their eyes and reached the bones of their skulls before falling lifelessly on the ground.

Elise didn’t even spare them another look, her eyes fixed on the horrified king’s face: “How many times you must get beaten up before you finally - “

Elise’s words didn’t get to end as a fiery spear pierced her head from the top, nailing her entire body to the floor beneath. A sizzling sound followed by an iron smell permeated the room.

Ignoring the flaming spear penetrating her body, Elise looked up, seeing Iris covered in flames gazing at her through the hole in the ceiling her fire spear created.

Another explosion ensued as Iris burned the office’s ceiling and stepped in front of Elise. Flames kept dancing around her body, covering her womanly parts and her eyes were firm and strong, nothing compared to the terrified puppy Elise left a few days ago.

“I didn’t expect you to come. Did you finish licking your wounds?” asked Elise, mist leaving her body and repairing the damage caused by Iris’s attack.

The king stood behind Iris, trying to get as much space as possible from the two forces of nature. Iris frowned once she noticed Elise healing the damage she caused with ease and said: “Go back.”

Elise remained silent as she looked into Iris’s eyes before a magnificent smile appeared on her lips. Too bad her mask denied the world the chance to notice the splendor of her smile.

“I see. Fine, but what I said before still stands. Don’t push me.”

Iris nodded, and Elise disappeared from the room.

“Thank you, protector. It’s good to see you.” Said the king, a fawning look in his eyes as he started approaching Iris.

As she shook her head, Iris remained with her back towards the king. “Pull back the bounty on Ghost and stop trying to hunt her down. I can’t beat her.”

“But - “The king didn’t get to say too much as Iris flew out of the same hole she used to come in, leaving the king alone.

After flying back to her office, Iris curled her body into a small corner and hugged her knees close to her body, closing her eyes.