Chapter 111: The Mad Shrike (Part 12)

Inside the Crimson Castle, a young man sat perched high atop an ornate, vintage chandelier, casually swinging his long legs over the edge. He repeatedly tossed and caught a gleaming golden wine cup, the metallic clink echoing softly in the cavernous hall. Directly beneath his makeshift throne, a small, white feline figure—Rosmontis—stood proudly on a heavy oak table. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, surrendering all tactical judgment and spatial awareness entirely to the commander looming above her.

‘Cool, but very ill-mannered,’ the Doctor mused inwardly, watching the chaotic skirmish below.

He had no choice but to micromanage this. If those floating balloons popped and fell, the resulting area-of-effect damage would absolutely chunk their health bars.

“Rosmontis, there are no rules in this castle,” the Doctor called out, his voice echoing with an eerie, commanding calm. “Everything here is nothing but the broken history of losers. So… ‘as you wish.’ I shouldn’t need to direct your every strike this time, right?”

The golden wine cup he was casually tossing around was something he jokingly referred to as his ‘two-hundred-yuan gold cup.’ To anyone else on Terra, however, it was an utterly absurd, reality-bending high-tech black box!

Down on the floor, Steward was rapidly approaching a state of total, mind-blanking numbness. He swung his staff so fast it left glowing blue afterimages in the air, his movements looking almost glitchy as countless small magic orbs poured incessantly from the tip of his casting unit like a broken faucet.

Legend had it that the ancient Revenants of Laterano could fire their arrows in a single, unbroken, continuous line. Right now, Steward couldn’t get that ridiculous myth out of his head—because his own casting unit was literally firing Originium Arts in a continuous, blinding stream!

‘This is completely unscientific!’Steward screamed internally.’It is not supposed to be like this… It is not like this anywhere else in the barren wastes of Terra! I should be pushing my physical potential to the absolute limit, struggling to connect with the casting unit, desperately recalling the complex casting equations I spent half my life learning at university, and finally taking half a minute just to squeeze out a single magic orb the size of a fingertip! What on earth is the underlying principle behind that golden cup? Is it really just clap your hands and get whatever you shout for?’

While grumbling inwardly at the sheer absurdity of his newfound power, Steward decided to do something he would normally never dare attempt. During his next frantic swing of the casting unit, he tried to replace the complex, multi-syllabic magic orb command with a simple, generic ray command. Having been away from his university studies for years, his mind went completely blank the second he opened his mouth. In a sudden, desperate flash of inspiration, he simply shouted in Columbian: “Ray!”

There was no reaction from the staff. Yet, even without the proper activation command, the next barrage of magic orbs was released with terrifying, perfect stability.

‘It can activate even without a command?!’Steward’s eyes widened in sheer disbelief.’How could it be this sinister? No, I have to try again.’

Meanwhile, Yato felt as though she had entered the absolute peak condition of her entire life. The thunderous, blinding flashes of her blade, the weightless agility of her body, the seamless, wordless understanding she shared with Rosmontis… The stubborn bottlenecks in her swordsmanship that had troubled her for years were finally beginning to loosen and shatter. It was as if, channeled through that mysterious golden device in the Doctor’s hand, she had caught a fleeting, deep glimpse of a higher martial realm.

Swinging her blade once more, amidst the howling, whistling wind of descending spectral swords and shields, she easily and gracefully sliced through a grinning, masked, blood-colored figure, reducing it to dissipating mist.

This exhilarating combat style, one that completely transcended her original physical limits, was a miraculous opportunity that could never be simulated in the sterile training rooms of Rhodes Island. Yato swung her blade down through the air in a cleansing arc and turned her head, wanting to look back and see just how much Steward had learned from this enlightenment.

Instead, she saw the Vulpo caster not even bothering to recite his commands. He was spinning his staff wildly like a pair of nunchucks, while both ends of the weapon leaked a torrential downpour of magic orbs like a punctured, dripping bladder. He was already completely immersed in the brain-dead art of the fully automatic casting unit, entirely oblivious to the chaotic world around him.

“—Caster Steward!!”

Yato sneered, her voice cutting through the din of battle. “When we return to Rhodes Island, you had better be confident enough to march right up to Dobermann and tell her that you successfully mastered this ‘double-ended leaking’ combat technique during our mission.”

She was a highly respected, senior operator at Rhodes Island and had even taught Steward’s introductory combat classes in the past.

Steward froze, his staff slipping. “˚▱˚!”

‘Think, brain, think! I can still salvage this—’

Just then, the Doctor, still sitting casually on the chandelier, suddenly snapped his gaze upward, looking toward the far end of the shadowed corridor.

In that instant, the world went completely still.

Bullets hung suspended in mid-air, frantic movements froze into statuesque poses, and the chaotic surroundings suddenly plunged into a deathly, absolute silence. Rosmontis remained frozen with her hands clasped together and her eyes closed, a peaceful, undisturbed expression locked on her young face.

For a fleeting moment, only one person remained in the grand hall who could move freely and retain their consciousness.

The Doctor looked down, clinically gauged the distance between the chandelier and the marble floor, grabbed the ornate base with both hands, extended his legs, and dropped down with a soft thud.

“Doctor, I know you are always unwilling to share your grand designs with small, insignificant animals like us, but I have been injured for so many years for your sake and haven’t even managed to put myself back together yet. And you won’t even tell me that you’ve hidden yourself away in my own castle… How truly heartless~”

A man with wavy pink hair, draped in an incredibly ornate, theatrical costume, pushed open the heavy mahogany doors and strolled in. However, his lower body was clearly lacking physical substance, trailing off into a translucent, spectral ghost form.

“I even missed your grand awakening! It’s an absolute tragedy, like missing the opening overture of the greatest play in all of history…”

The “Doctor” suddenly spoke, his voice devoid of its usual inflection. “Stop testing me. I am not him. There is no need to be nervous.”

“I am merely a pre-set program.”

The big pink leopard’s eyes instantly lit up with theatrical sorrow, and he reached up to sincerely wipe away a single, glistening tear from the corner of his eye. “What a pity… Actually, it wouldn’t matter even if you really were resurrected. I would still follow you faithfully, to the very end. This is the grandest, most intoxicating story I have witnessed in these thousands of years.”

The “Doctor” remained completely silent.

‘A dead male ghost is the best kind of male ghost,’ Bacchus thought to himself.

The master of the Crimson Castle, the legendary Bacchus, felt a pang of genuine, melancholic sadness in his heart, but physiologically, his spectral form was truly, overwhelmingly relieved to survive another day.

Rationally, he could clearly see that if he were ever dragged back into this terrifying man’s orbit, he would eventually be played to death on some grand, bloody stage. But emotionally…

Damn it, if the man himself really returned in the flesh and casually asked him to take the stage once more and help set the world ablaze, he wouldn’t be able to control himself at all! Just thinking about that hypothetical invitation made him feel as though his long-lost hot blood was about to surge right out of these few pathetic scraps of a spiritual body!

Every single day when he opened his eyes, he had to firmly remind himself: ‘Oh, Lucian, stop being so obsessed with that life-or-death acting career under the Doctor’s direction. Plays will always be there waiting to be performed, but following him really will get you permanently killed!’

Unfortunately, however, he was not Lucian.

The “Doctor” completely ignored the ghost’s complex, shifting expression—a messy blend of theatrical disappointment mixed heavily with the raw relief of a desperate survivor—and continued in his flat, mechanical tone. “My time is short. This program was only activated to calibrate the storyline. Come, Bacchus, tell me… what exactly has happened during the time since my death?”

‘This feels so strange… Like someone is secretly plotting against me in the dark… By the way, will I still have time to keep playing Integrated Strategies when I get back?’

Far away, the incompetent wraith who had been unceremoniously tossed back to the Babel era suddenly felt a cold shiver run down his spine. He had a sudden, sinking intuition that he was being backstabbed again.

Meanwhile, back in the past, Closure was already smiling warmly as she clinked her glass against Theresis’s cup. “Worried you’ll regret it and try to kill me? No, Theresis. Most people fear risk simply because they cannot see the future. But for me, this is merely choosing the branch with the most abundant fruit among the foreseeable paths of the future.”

Nearby, Theresa, who was currently busy repairing a broken door, suddenly looked up. She happened to run into the mercenary trio being escorted toward the temporary surveillance station. “It’s Hoederer and Ines? Why have you two been arrested?”

Theresa instinctively offered them a gentle, welcoming smile, and W almost jumped out of her skin in sheer fright—

Just moments ago, she had been ruthlessly scammed by that exact same gentle smile!

While Closure and Theresis shared their grand, ambitious ideals over drinks, Theresa began using the natural, soothing charm of the Lord of Fiends to comfort the despondent, terrified W.

This ruthless, multi-layered social maneuvering… was a textbook double NTR!

[Rhodes’s Note:

Enjoying the operation so far, Doctor?

(This daily grind literally pays the landship’s rent! 🙇‍♂️):

Massive thanks for reading and supporting the operation!]