World Keeper - Chapter 1272: Tying Up Loose Ends

Lifre sat atop the mountain of corpses, having piled them atop one another once they were all dead. She had a relaxed expression on her face as she recalled the previous battle, though there was no hiding the disappointment that she felt from the enemies being unable to push her to her third and final stage.

The Demon Queen persona was one that she had created decades ago, devoting a full five years of streaming to its story. Originally, when her chat voted for her to be evil, she asked them to give her some form of debuff. Something that would make it more interesting to play the villain, whether it was a phylactery, an elemental weakness, or anything like that.

In the end, the chat donated to ‘curse’ her with mortality. No matter how strong she became, she would never be able to shed her mortal body. Even if she became a goddess herself, she would still be flesh and blood. That way, any challenger who approached her would simply need to be her equal in skill, and they would have a significant advantage in survivability.

Later on, this became the central theme of the Demon Queen, the pinnacle of mortality. Her viewers decided to give her the ability to obtain the powers of anything whose blood hit her body. However, this became almost redundant after the first year, when the enemies challenging her were all gods or other energy-evolved beings.

That was when one viewer decided to donate to expand her mortality, and turn her curse into an area effect. That way, her previous gift would still be applicable even at the late stages. At the same time, other viewers began to give her more blood-themed abilities to compliment this change.

However, it was ultimately this change that started making her fights too easy for her. Even when she broke her fighting style into three stages, the fact that she could force an opponent to suddenly adapt to a far weaker body made it so that they weren’t able to fight on the same level as her anymore. In order to keep things interesting, Lifre had to go out and take a far more active role as the Demon Queen, launching assaults against entire worlds.

Ultimately, Lifre’s fights were broken into three basic stages. The first stage, which served as a roadblock for many people, was with Lifre personally attacking, using nothing but her basic energies and whatever abilities she gained from those she killed. In the first stage, she preferred to take a sadistic, theatrical approach, toying with her prey.

If someone managed to inflict a wound on Lifre, she would enter the second stage. In this stage, the blood of those she had attacked would turn them into puppets, even reanimating corpses and turning them against her allies. For the second stage, Lifre didn’t directly participate in the fight as much, mostly directing her minions while dodging.

If anyone actually managed to inflict a serious injury on her, that’s when she would enter the third stage, her final form. All of the blood that had been shed on the battlefield would turn into bombs, exploding at the slightest touch. At this point, Lifre became serious, fighting with her full power, as it meant that anyone who reached this stage had proven that they could properly fight with their body reduced to a mortal state.

In her five years of streaming as the Demon Queen, nobody managed to defeat her. Even in the very end, she was not killed by an enemy attack. Instead, the end of the Demon Queen’s story came when she had conquered every known world, becoming the Mortal Monarch. That was when Lifre finally decided to retire the character, having no more stories to tell with her.

Lifre was glad that, after so long, she finally had a reason to use this persona again. Furthermore, the area of her mortality aura had expanded drastically, becoming akin to a world law when empowered by her Origin-level strength. Still, at the same time, she lamented that she hadn’t even been able to reach the third stage of her boss fight.

Once she hit the second stage, the enemy’s ranks were thrown into disarray. Because there were so many of them, the numbers of her soldiers rapidly grew, while the remaining fighters were unable to focus their attention on her, even if she was not taking the initiative to attack. The only ways to kill her blood puppets were to either destroy all of their blood or to kill Lifre herself, and neither of these options were exactly easy.

Are you done now? The voice of Terra’s incarnation spoke into Lifre’s mind, and she nodded her head.

“Yeah, might as well be! Thanks for setting this up, Lil Terra!” Lifre said, hopping off of the corpse mountain and shifting back into her default form, the blood dissolving from her body.

The world around Lifre shimmered, and she soon found herself standing in an identical clearing. However, there were no signs of battle, no corpses, and the heartbeat of the planet had ceased. Nearby, Terra’s incarnation sat calmly on the ground, holding a dungeon core in her hands. “Everything taken care of?” She asked.

“Yup!” Lifre smile innocently. “No escapes, no survivors, no witnesses! Perfect assassination, if I do say so myself!”

“…How was that an assassination?” The incarnation asked in concern, recalling the scene from the start of the battle. Due to how visceral it was, she chose to stop watching after only a few moments.

“Well, obviously, if there’s no witnesses or evidence, it’s an assassination!” Lifre proclaimed proudly. “Anyways, is there anything else that we need to deal with, now that they’re out of the way?”

Terra’s incarnation let out a low sigh, shaking her head. “I’ve already tasked Lena with the last steps. We should be hearing the results soon.”

Creta sat alone in her room, clutching her trembling arms. Unlike Terra’s incarnation, she didn’t have the option of looking away from the fight. That battle… no, that massacre had presented a significant threat to her guild. As such, her prophecy divine abilities were automatically activated, forcing her to watch every moment of the fight, right up until the demoness returned to her slime form.

Creta had seen her share of monsters over the years. Beings who derived pleasure from tormenting those weaker than them. However, the sadistic glee that could be seen on the demon’s face as she ripped apart a human body with her bare hands, showering in their blood even when outnumbered so heavily… it sent chills down her spine.

Just then, Creta heard a knock on her door, and yelped audibly, looking at it shakily. “W-Who’s there?” She asked, and all color drained from her face when she heard the response.

“It’s me, King.” The person on the other end said in King’s voice. However, Creta knew that wasn’t true. She had watched King die. She saw his ribcage ripped open by his own subordinates, his still-beating heart crushed in his chest as he screamed for mercy.

And if that wasn’t King… Creta’s mind went to the faceless fox. The one who came and went from the Tower as if it was her own home. Slowly, the door opened, and ‘King’ stepped inside. He had a smile on his face, but Creta kept seeing the twisted expression of agony that she had seen in her vision.

“W-What do you want with me? I-I did my job.” Creta said in a defensive tone, curling up on herself against the bed.

When King spoke again, his voice became dual-toned, as if two people were speaking at once. One voice was the same King that she had always known, while the other was that of a young girl. “I know, and you did your part splendidly. I just came to inform you of what’s going to happen next.”

“A-Are you here to kill me?” Creta asked, and the being in front of her blinked for a moment, before laughing. Its laugh sounded especially eerie when coming from those mixed voices.

“Kill you? No, don’t worry. As long as you don’t go around telling anyone what happened, I see no reason to do that. And, you’re not going to tell anyone, are you?” The thing wearing King’s face asked with a smile that was all too calm.

Creta rapidly shook her head. “N-No! I won’t tell anyone, I promise!” She knew better than to try to reveal this secret. She had seen the horrors that could be unleashed when Olympus marked someone as an enemy. “B-But, what are you going to do about others? The Master of Secrets will definitely be able to find out…”

“Don’t worry about that.” The figure said with that same smile. “Terra has already twisted the fate of this encounter, and spun a new tale. Anyone who attempts to peer into what happened to those fighters will find that they were dispatched to deal with giant monsters, and were sadly lost in battle. As for the guild leaders, ‘we’ will begin merging with one of the top twenty guilds for safety, with the old guild leaders fading into obscurity. So long as you never mention this event again, there won’t be a problem.”

Creta gulped thickly, before nodding her head in agreement. “I-I have one more question… if that is alright?”

“Of course, Creta!” ‘King’ spoke, the dual-toned nature of his voice fading away into a single voice again. “I’ll help you however I can.”

“How… how are you able to perfectly mimic King? Even to the point that my friends list believes that he is alive…” That was one of the things that truly horrified Creta. Those of Hal Tua had long ago learned to believe that the system was absolute. No power or entity existed that could deceive it. Only Masters had a faint chance of influencing the system, but only in ways related to their domains. And the faceless fox, while an Extreme God, was no Master.

“I’m just that good.” King said with a toothy grin. “One of my avatars was there on the scene when they attacked, serving as both bait and the target for your teleportation. As soon as they appeared, I locked onto the souls of each of the guild leaders, and created avatars to copy them, right down to the system’s influences on their souls. Whenever one of the originals died, the system just latched onto the avatar I made. As far as its concerned, I am King.”

Creta’s eyes widened further, horror etched on her features. If that was true, she didn’t know who or what she could trust anymore. Her visions of fate could be twisted by Terra at any moment. Those she passed on the street could be avatars of the faceless fox hiding in disguise.

As if reading her mind, King chuckled. “By the way. Just a warning for the future, but… I prefer people to use my real name. I don’t really care if ‘faceless fox’ is just a codename that you use to avoid being locked onto via divination or other supernatural senses. I know that you know my name, so I expect you to use it in the future if you need to refer to me.”

Naturally, Lena had obtained King’s memories when she impersonated her, as she did with every undercover job she performed. Thus, she was aware of Creta’s past reports, and how she had labeled everyone in Olympus. While it wasn’t really that big of a deal… Lena had always been very particular about people using her name properly.

“I-I understand. I’m sorry.” Creta said, coming to her own conclusion that Lena had read her thoughts. Was her own mind not even safe now? Did she need to police her thoughts, for fear of Olympus finding them offensive?

“Don’t worry so much.” King  said with a playful smile, before turning and heading for the door again. “Just sit back and relax. We don’t need you anymore.”

That’s not helping! Creta shouted mentally at King’s departing words.

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