Chapter 235: The Queen of Atlantis Has Drawn Her Blade

Erza looked down at the white sheet resting between her fingers before a faint smile slowly appeared across her face.

To everyone else inside the interrogation room, there was absolutely nothing unusual about it. It was simply a clean piece of paper taken from the Agency’s supplies, yet the Salesman Demon’s reaction couldn’t have been more different.

His black eyes remained fixed upon the sheet as though Erza were holding something capable of destroying him.

Sara noticed immediately.

Her gaze moved between Erza and the restrained demon several times, becoming increasingly curious about what could possibly make him so frightened.

Only moments ago, the Salesman Demon had confidently laughed about surviving torture and boasted about his regeneration.

Now a simple piece of white paper had silenced him completely.

"Your Highness," Sara finally spoke, carefully lowering her head.

"Forgive this servant’s ignorance, but I fail to understand Your Majesty’s intention. What exactly do you intend to do with such an ordinary sheet of paper?"

Erza glanced toward her before looking back at the sheet. Rather than becoming irritated by the question, she seemed almost amused. Humanity had spent centuries fighting demons, yet there were still fundamental things about their enemy they had never discovered. The realization made the strange systems created by demonkind slightly more interesting to her.

"Tell me, Sara," Erza said.

"How do you believe demons communicate with one another? When they need to send reports, receive orders, or coordinate operations across great distances, what method do you think they use?"

Sara paused.

She had no answer.

That realization bothered her more than she expected.

The Agency possessed some of the most advanced surveillance technology humanity had ever created.

Electronic transmissions could be intercepted, unusual frequencies could be traced, unknown devices could be analyzed, and suspicious signals could be followed across entire countries.

If demons were coordinating large operations through ordinary communication technology, Liebus should have discovered traces of it years ago.

Yet they never had.

Even when demons were captured alive, the Agency recovered almost nothing from them. No phones, no radios, no hidden transmitters, no communication equipment and no identifiable signals leading back toward their commanders.

Until yesterday, they hadn’t even properly understood how deeply the recent disappearances of children were connected to demonic rituals.

Sara slowly shook her head.

"I am afraid this servant does not know, Your Highness. We have searched for their communication network for centuries, but we have never discovered anything that could explain how their orders are transmitted."

Erza’s smile became slightly more noticeable.

"There is nothing to forgive."

She raised the white sheet between two fingers.

"In fact, I suspect what you are about to witness will answer several questions your people have been asking for a very long time."

Sara lifted her gaze slightly.

"Observe carefully."

Fiona, Lily, and the elite agents surrounding the interrogation room immediately focused upon Erza. None of them knew what she intended to demonstrate, but after witnessing her extract memories directly from an Upper Blood Demon, nobody dared assume the piece of paper was meaningless anymore.

Erza turned back toward the Salesman Demon.

His body immediately stiffened.

Before anyone could understand her intention, Erza’s hand moved toward him. The demon recoiled instinctively as her fingers struck into his abdomen, causing the holy chains around his body to rattle violently. His face twisted from the sudden pain, but what appeared within his eyes wasn’t merely suffering.

It was fear.

The first time Erza had injured him, he had been surprised by her strength. This time was different. He knew she wasn’t attacking randomly.

She had already searched his memories, mentioned the Devil Scripture, spoken about the Gospel Call, and now she had deliberately requested a white sheet.

He knew exactly what she was preparing.

Erza withdrew her hand and allowed several drops of demonic blood to fall onto the paper.

The Salesman Demon became completely silent.

Erza calmly lowered the sheet onto the interrogation table before using the blood to begin forming an unfamiliar symbol across its surface. Her movements were deliberate, recreating the strange pattern she had witnessed within the demon’s memories.

Curved markings gradually connected with one another until the design began resembling a distorted draconic formation surrounded by unfamiliar demonic characters.

Sara watched every movement carefully.

So did Fiona.

Nobody spoke.

The room had become so silent that the faint movement of Erza’s fingers across the paper seemed unnaturally loud.

The Salesman Demon no longer struggled against his restraints.

His black eyes remained fixed upon the growing symbol as the last remnants of confidence disappeared from his face.

He had spent the entire interrogation believing there were secrets humanity could never uncover, knowledge protected not by encryption or technology but by the hidden laws and traditions of demonkind.

Yet now a Dragon Queen was recreating one of those secrets directly in front of him.

Sara slowly began understanding the implication.

The Agency had spent centuries searching for a communication network that left behind no electronic signal because perhaps there had never been an electronic network to discover in the first place.

Erza continued drawing.

The blood-red formation gradually approached completion.

And for the first time since his capture, the Salesman Demon looked genuinely terrified of what would happen when she finished.

Erza continued moving her blood-covered finger across the white sheet, completing one line after another with absolute confidence. Sara watched from beside her as the strange formation gradually became clearer, and after several seconds she finally recognized the shape hidden beneath the surrounding markings.

It was a dragon.

There was no doubt about it. The creature had been drawn with its body curved around the center of the formation, while unfamiliar symbols surrounded it in several circular patterns.

Sara had seen countless magical formations throughout her long life in Nova, including rituals far more complicated than the one Erza was drawing now, but these particular markings were completely unfamiliar to her.

That was what bothered her.

The blood being used as a medium wasn’t unusual. Neither was the formation itself. What Sara couldn’t understand was why a secret demonic communication method would use the image of a dragon as its central symbol, especially when everything Erza had revealed so far appeared connected to the Nefarions.

"Your Highness," Sara spoke carefully while studying the completed formation. "This servant recognizes the use of blood as a medium, but these markings are unfamiliar to me. And the formation itself appears to represent a dragon. What purpose does it serve?"

Erza lifted the sheet from the table and examined it briefly.

"Wait and see."

Sara lowered her head slightly and fell silent.

Fiona, Lily, and the elite agents remained equally focused upon Erza, although their curiosity came from a different place. Sara had centuries of experience with Nova’s supernatural systems, while most of those surrounding her had spent their lives understanding such things through the knowledge available on Earth. The Salesman Demon, however, needed no explanation whatsoever.

He knew exactly what Erza had drawn.

And judging by the growing horror within his black eyes, he knew exactly what would happen next.

Erza held the sheet before her and calmly began reciting the words she had taken directly from his memories.

"Gospel of Communion. Chapter III, Verse 7."

The Salesman Demon’s chains suddenly rattled as his body instinctively moved.

Sara immediately noticed.

"By blood given, let blood answer. By the Abyss beneath, let distance perish. Let neither earth, sea, nor sealed realm silence these words."

Something changed within the paper.

A faint crimson glow appeared beneath Erza’s fingers, beginning from the demonic blood before slowly spreading through every line she had drawn. The dragon-shaped formation illuminated first, followed by the unfamiliar symbols surrounding it until the entire sheet radiated an eerie red light.

Sara’s eyes narrowed.

Now she could feel it.

Something was responding to the formation.

It wasn’t the existence of supernatural energy that surprised her. Sara had witnessed blood arts, spatial communication, soul-based techniques, magical contracts, and countless other supernatural systems throughout her life in Nova. What caught her attention was that she couldn’t immediately identify the principles behind this one.

The formation was using the demon’s blood, certainly, but blood alone wasn’t responsible for what she was sensing.

The spoken words mattered.

The symbols mattered.

And somehow, the Gospel itself appeared to serve as part of the connection.

Erza continued without interruption.

"I offer blood as the path, my voice as the vessel, and the Gospel as witness."

The paper slowly left her hand.

Fiona’s eyes widened as the sheet began floating by itself, remaining perfectly suspended several feet above the interrogation table. Captain Lily stared just as intensely while the crimson light spread across the room, reflecting against the metallic walls and painting everyone’s faces in a faint red glow.

Sara didn’t step back.

She remained where she was, studying the phenomenon with increasing concentration.

The blood-written dragon seemed almost alive now. Its crimson lines pulsed gently with every word leaving Erza’s mouth, while the unfamiliar energy surrounding the sheet continued changing. Sara searched through centuries of knowledge, comparing what she was witnessing against every magical communication method she remembered from Nova.

Nothing matched perfectly.

And then the truth finally began settling into place.

So this is how they communicate.

Sara’s expression became serious.

For seven hundred years, she had known that demons were somehow exchanging information without leaving behind anything their enemies could reliably trace. After arriving on Earth, the mystery had only become more frustrating. Liebus possessed technology capable of intercepting electronic transmissions, while Sara herself knew enough about supernatural communication to recognize many magical methods demons might have used.

Yet they had found nothing.

No reliable magical trail.

No communication artifacts.

No consistent spatial disturbance.

No electronic network.

Even captured demons rarely carried anything that could connect them directly to those commanding them.

Sara had assumed there was simply another method she hadn’t discovered.

Now that method was floating directly before her.

The Gospel Call.

It wasn’t merely a communication spell. It appeared to be an entire system belonging specifically to demonkind, operating through principles Sara had never been given the opportunity to study.

Fiona and Lily were reaching a similar conclusion from a different perspective. The Agency had spent years searching for hidden frequencies, secret networks, unknown devices, magical transmissions, and anything else that could explain how coordinated demonic operations occurred without exposing their command structure.

Yet the answer had never been hidden inside some advanced device.

It had been hidden within demonic culture itself.

A blood medium.

A written formation.

A spoken Gospel.

The Salesman Demon understood the significance of this discovery better than anyone else.

His breathing became increasingly frantic as he stared at Erza. She hadn’t merely discovered one of their secrets. She was actively using it. Something carefully protected from humanity and apparently unknown even to powerful beings like Sara had been reconstructed inside the heart of Liebus headquarters after Erza spent only minutes inside his memories.

There was no longer any way for him to convince himself that she had been bluffing.

She saw everything.

That thought terrified him more than the holy chains around his body.

Erza’s voice continued flowing calmly through the interrogation room.

"Carry my words beyond the veil. Carry them before the Black Throne. Let the King of Demons hear my voice."

The crimson light intensified.

The floating sheet suddenly began vibrating as though something impossibly distant had noticed the call. Sara immediately sensed the shift. The connection was no longer merely forming within the room; something on the other side had begun responding to it.

Her eyes sharpened.

So there really is another end.

The blood-written dragon glowed brighter and brighter until its crimson light reflected across every face surrounding it. Even the air around the paper seemed heavier now, carrying a faint presence that hadn’t existed moments earlier.

Then Erza stopped.

The final words remained deliberately unspoken.

Nobody interrupted her.

Sara watched silently, already realizing that Erza’s pause was intentional. Fiona and Lily remained equally quiet, while the elite agents simply waited for whatever was supposed to happen next.

Erza slowly turned her head toward the Salesman Demon.

Their eyes met.

And the demon understood immediately.

She was mocking him.

Erza wanted him to know that she understood the ritual completely. She wanted him to have these few precious seconds to realize that one of demonkind’s hidden secrets was about to become known to the very people they had spent centuries keeping ignorant.

The Salesman Demon pulled against the chains.

This time, there was no confidence behind the movement.

"Don’t..."

Erza’s smile widened.

"Gospel Call..."

The blood-written dragon pulsed violently, and the surrounding symbols awakened one after another.

"...Open."

The crimson light filling the interrogation room suddenly darkened.

Sara’s eyes narrowed as the white sheet suspended before Erza began changing. The clean surface gradually turned black from the edges inward, while veins of deep crimson spread across it like cracks beneath burnt stone. The dragon formation disappeared beneath the darkness, replaced by another symbol slowly emerging at the center.

Erza immediately recognized it.

The symbol of the God of Shadows.

The moment the formation completed itself, something leaked through.

It wasn’t merely aura.

A rotten, corrupted presence poured from the floating sheet and spread throughout the interrogation room, causing the atmosphere to become unbearably heavy within seconds. The elites stationed near the walls stiffened immediately, while Fiona and Lily felt an instinctive chill run through their bodies. Even agents standing farther outside the interrogation chamber could feel something wrong spreading through the surrounding corridors.

Sara’s reaction was different.

She knew aura.

She knew demonic energy.

She had lived in Nova, fought supernatural beings for centuries, and encountered powers that most humans on Earth couldn’t even imagine. What made her expression change wasn’t simply the corruption itself.

It was what she sensed behind it.

Sara stared at the floating sheet as the pressure continued leaking through the connection. The Gospel Call had opened something incredibly small, barely enough to carry a voice across whatever distance separated them, yet even through that tiny connection she could feel countless overlapping demonic presences buried somewhere beyond it.

Her fingers slowly tightened.

How many...

Sara had always known the Demonic World possessed forces humanity hadn’t fully discovered, but this was different. The corruption pouring through the Gospel Call felt less like the presence of an organization and more like someone had opened a crack into an entire world filled with demons.

For the first time, Sara understood the scale of what they might actually be fighting.

Erza, however, merely smiled.

She stood patiently before the floating formation, completely unaffected by the corrupted aura spreading throughout the room. Her violet eyes remained fixed upon the black-and-crimson sheet as she waited for whoever existed on the other side to answer.

Then a voice came through.

"Tell me, Salemand. Why have you disturbed me?"

The voice was deep.

Heavy.

Dominating.

It didn’t come from any speaker inside the room. It emerged directly through the Gospel formation, carrying enough authority that several elites unconsciously stiffened upon hearing it.

The Salesman Demon Salemand went completely pale.

Erza said nothing.

The voice continued.

"I believe you acquired the origin of the Aesthor Stone’s aura."

Sara’s eyes widened.

Fiona froze.

Around them, several Agency elites exchanged startled glances. The moment those words echoed through the interrogation room, Fiona felt her stomach tighten. Of all the things she expected to hear from the other side of the Gospel Call, she hadn’t expected the unknown Demon King to immediately mention the Aesthor Stone.

Sara’s mind moved even faster.

Suddenly, something about Salemand’s capture no longer made sense.

Upper Blood Demons were extraordinarily difficult to capture alive. Even killing one could result in catastrophic damage, and bringing one into Liebus headquarters without suffering devastating casualties should have been an extraordinary achievement. Raven and her Shadow Unit were powerful, certainly, but Sara had quietly wondered how they had managed to capture this particular demon with comparatively limited losses.

Now the answer was beginning to reveal itself.

Perhaps they hadn’t captured him because Raven had simply been fortunate.

Perhaps Salemand had allowed himself to come close.

Sara’s expression darkened.

The Demon King had just asked whether Salemand had acquired the origin of the Aesthor Stone’s aura.

That meant they knew about it.

More importantly, they wanted its source.

Fiona’s Amber eyes widened as she reached the same conclusion. She knew exactly whose aura had once been stored within the Aesthor Stone, and she remembered how violently demons reacted when exposed to it. The mysterious aura had weakened them, disrupted their power, and driven some of them into complete madness.

They weren’t only kidnapping children...

Fiona stared at Salemand.

They were searching for the source of the aura.

The implications spread throughout the room.

The Agency had believed it was hunting demons.

Yet the demons had apparently been investigating them as well.

The voice coming through the Gospel formation became noticeably impatient.

"Why are you silent, Salemand?"

The demon remained frozen in his restraints.

"I am speaking to you."

The authority within the voice became heavier.

"I don’t have time for your games, and you already know the reason...."

"Yes."

The unfamiliar voice stopped.

Everyone inside the interrogation room became completely still.

Erza’s smile widened.

"I know."

Sara slowly turned toward her.

Salemand’s black eyes widened in absolute horror.

Erza calmly stepped closer to the floating Gospel formation, her violet eyes carrying unmistakable amusement as she finally addressed the ruler waiting on the other side.

"Little demon."

Silence swallowed the interrogation room.

For several long seconds, nothing came through the Gospel Call. The black-and-crimson formation continued floating above the table, corrupted aura leaking from it in slow waves, but the commanding voice on the other side had completely disappeared.

Sara remained perfectly still.

Fiona, Lily, and the surrounding elites didn’t dare interrupt either. Even Salemand had forgotten about the holy chains restraining him. Every pair of eyes remained fixed upon the floating Gospel formation, waiting to see how the mysterious ruler on the other side would respond after being called a little demon directly to his face.

Eventually, the voice returned.

"So..."

The Demon King’s tone had changed. The irritation from earlier was gone, replaced by something far more attentive.

"So... another Superior being from nova has crossed my path."

"What an unexpected surprise."

Erza’s violet eyes narrowed slightly with amusement. Unlike everyone else inside the room, she appeared completely relaxed. The corrupted presence leaking from the Gospel Call didn’t bother her in the slightest.

"Yes, puny demon," Erza replied.

"Consider yourself fortunate. I have decided to enter this mortal war."

Another silence followed.

Then laughter emerged from the Gospel Call.

The Demon King’s deep laughter carried through the interrogation room, vibrating faintly against the walls. There was no panic behind it. Whatever surprise Erza’s presence had caused him, he quickly buried it beneath the confidence of someone who had spent centuries operating without humanity ever discovering what he truly was.

"I know what you are, Miss Dragon."

Erza’s smile slowly disappeared.

"And I know enough to understand how powerful your kind can be," the Demon King continued. "But strength means very little when you don’t understand your enemy. To this world, I am a mystery. My armies, my origin, my kingdom... humanity has spent centuries fighting us and still understands almost nothing."

The corrupted aura around the Gospel formation pulsed.

"So tell me, Dragon. How exactly do you intend to stop something you don’t even understand?"

Erza stared at the floating formation.

"Oh, really?"

The Demon King chuckled.

Erza’s expression became colder.

"You seem rather confident for someone whose identity I already know."

The laughter stopped for half a second before returning.

"My identity?"

There was unmistakable mockery in his voice now.

"Very well. Entertain me."

The formation pulsed again.

"Who am I?"

Sara’s attention immediately sharpened.

This was the question she wanted answered as well. Seven hundred years ago, she had fought these creatures without ever understanding what they truly were. Even now, after hearing the name Nefarion, she possessed only fragments of knowledge.

Erza answered without hesitation.

"You are followers of the God of Shadows."

The atmosphere changed.

The smile disappeared from Salemand’s face.

Erza continued.

"A bloodline descended from the sacred lineage of that deity, carrying the origin of the Primal Demons."

The Gospel formation suddenly became unnaturally still.

Erza’s violet eyes hardened.

"Nefarions."

No voice answered.

Sara immediately noticed the difference. The corrupted aura was still present, the connection remained open, yet whoever stood on the other side had gone completely silent.

Then his voice finally returned.

"How..."

The confidence was gone.

"How do you know that?"

The Gospel formation trembled.

"HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?!"

The sudden roar shook the interrogation room, but Erza didn’t move.

"You are a dragon!" the Demon King continued, disbelief replacing every trace of his earlier amusement. "A young one at that! You haven’t even spent a year on this planet. How could you possibly know my origin?!"

"We haven’t even encounter each other...HOW."

Erza stared at the formation for a moment.

Then she laughed.

It wasn’t the gentle laugh Yuuta occasionally managed to draw from her, nor the amused chuckle she gave whenever Elena did something ridiculous. This laughter carried something ancient beneath it, something that immediately reminded Sara that the woman standing before them wasn’t merely Yuuta’s wife.

She was a Dragon Queen.

"Oh my..."

Erza covered part of her smile with one hand.

"Did you truly believe I was some ordinary dragon wandering around this insignificant little world?"

The Demon King didn’t answer.

Erza’s laughter gradually faded.

And with it, everything about her changed.

Her playful amusement disappeared first. The smile vanished from her lips, followed by the casualness within her violet eyes. Her posture straightened while an invisible authority slowly settled throughout the interrogation room.

Sara instinctively lowered her head.

Salemand stopped breathing for a moment.

Even Fiona and Lily felt the atmosphere become strangely heavy, not because Erza had unleashed her aura, but because of the absolute seriousness that had entered her expression.

Erza stepped toward the floating Gospel formation.

For a moment, it almost felt as though the entire room had become silent merely to hear what she was about to say.

Her violet eyes stared directly into the glowing symbol as though she could see the Demon King standing beyond it.

"Then listen carefully, puny demon."

Her voice was calm.

There was no need to shout.

No need to threaten.

What came next wasn’t a warning.

It was a declaration.

"Behold."

Sara’s eyes slowly widened.

Erza raised her chin, the pride of Atlantis returning completely to her voice as she delivered the words that would cross the Gospel Call and reach the Black Throne itself.

"The Queen of Atlantis..."

The corrupted formation trembled.

"...has drawn her blade."

To Be Continued...