Winter Lord: Starting with Daily Intelligence

Chapter 445 The Round Table of Villains

The council chamber on the top floor of Skull Castle resembles a deep well overturned on a reef.

The heavy granite walls completely sealed off the surrounding area, with only a narrow vent opening in the center of the dome.

The moonlight leaked down from there, like a long, thin silver needle, lifelessly piercing the ground.

A round table was placed in the center, with three sea monster oil lamps lit on it. The flames did not flicker but rose straight up, burning an eerie, ghastly green color.

The lamplight stretched out infinitely, casting shadows on the wall and distorting the figures of those present into grotesque, menacing shapes.

Rosa sat at one of the seats, his one eye coldly sweeping across the round table.

Kahn, the Bonebreaker, was the first to enter her field of vision.

The beast placed its spiked boots directly on the table, clutching a raw, bleeding leg of lamb, tearing at the meat and bone.

Blood dripped down his unkempt beard, making a clear and irritating sound as it tapped on the table.

Tick, tick.

Rosa sneered inwardly. A brainless idiot who knows nothing but eating and killing. Once they get the Venom formula, this beast will be the first to be eliminated.

Her gaze shifted away; Viper Sanders was huddled in his chair, like a sick snake coiled up.

He meticulously wiped the poisoned dagger with deerskin, but his eyes kept wandering, glancing back every few seconds at a dark corner of the hall as if an assassin might jump out at any moment.

Rosa scoffed. If something really happened, what could that little knife possibly stop?
Beside him, the old charlatan Moro was muttering prayers that no one could understand.

He rubbed several yellowed divination shells between his fingers, occasionally bringing them up to the light of the oil lamp to examine the patterns on the shells.

He's always been rambling on and on, and in Rosa's eyes he's nothing more than a good-for-nothing who makes a living by spouting nonsense.

Rosa glanced to the right at the few empty chairs on the round table. Besides the dead ones, there were two cowards who hadn't come over.

…………

Time ticked by, and the damp, cold stillness was slowly wearing down her patience.

Rosa suddenly stood up and drew the rapier with the jeweled hilt from her waist.

Boom——!
The sword tip slammed into the table, sending wood chips flying. The blade was still vibrating and humming.

She looked around, her voice sharp and sarcastic, echoing repeatedly between the enclosed stone walls:
"This place is as cold as a morgue, and there isn't even a maid to pour drinks?"

“That old bastard Balk had better get out here soon.” Rosa sneered, her fingers tightening on the hilt of her sword. “If I find out he’s playing me, or doesn’t even have the poison to melt an iron ship…”

The voice just fell.

The old charlatan Moro, who had been hiding at the back of the table, suddenly let out a sharp, strange cry.

"what--!!"

The sound wasn't a cry of alarm, but rather a wail forced out of the chest by something.

He suddenly scattered the divination shells he was holding all over the table.

“No…no…” His voice trembled, as if something cold and wet was choking him. “There’s no money up there…no poison…and no road…”

Moro suddenly stood up, knocking over a chair, his voice rising abruptly to a point of uncontrollable roar:
"It's all water!! Water below, water above! We're underwater! Inside a fish's belly! Run!! This isn't a banquet...this is a sacrifice!!"

After he finished speaking, the council chamber fell silent for a brief moment.

Immediately, laughter erupted.

Kahn grinned, his mouth stained with blood, and pointed at Moro with a leg of lamb: "Is the old man having another episode? Does the smell of my lamb start giving you nightmares?"

Sanders raised an eyelid, his tone cold and impatient: "Stop with your bluffing, Moro. If you could really predict things this way, you wouldn't be sitting at the bottom of the table."

A few dry laughs echoed between the stone walls, forcefully suppressing the eerie aftertaste.

Moro, however, could no longer hear anything.

He felt the ground beneath his feet undulating slowly, like the abdomen of some enormous creature breathing.

He pushed aside the chair blocking his way like a madman and stumbled toward the tightly closed oak door.

Just as his hand was about to touch the doorknob.

The door slid open silently inward.

Moro lost his footing and crashed directly into a stiff and cold embrace.

Balk finally made his appearance.

He stood at the door, steadily supporting the old charlatan's shoulder with one hand, as if he were helping a drunken old friend.

Rosa narrowed her one eye slightly; the person in front of her was in such good condition that it was unsettling.

The old man who needed a cane, whose face was covered in age spots, and who looked like he could die at any moment, was gone.

At this moment, Balk stood upright, wearing a well-tailored scarlet suit.

His hair was jet black and thick, with an excessively neat hairline. His face was rosy and his skin was so firm that it didn't look like someone his age.

Moro shivered suddenly in his arms.

He froze instantly, unable to even scream out.

Balk was smiling, his lips stretched into an excessively wide arc, but his eyes hadn't blinked once in over a minute.

With his other hand, he was holding a woman who was covered by a thick black veil. She walked silently, her skirt sliding along the ground, completely obscuring her toes.

Balk gently pressed Moro back into the chair, his movements excessively gentle, yet leaving obvious bruises on the other's arm.

"Why are you running, Moro? The feast has only just begun. Sorry, my friends, it's been so long since we started preparing for this..."

Balk paused for a moment, his smile unchanged: "A feast. I spent some time carefully selecting the ingredients."

The pale green light flickered behind him, making his face appear excessively young.

That kind of smooth skin is not due to proper care, but rather like a corpse that has been soaking in cold water for a long time, swollen to the limit, stretching out all the wrinkles.

All eyes around the round table fell on Balk.

Viper Sanders squinted, the dagger between his fingers spinning rapidly, its blade leaving a trail of afterimages in the pale green light.

As a high-ranking extraordinary knight, he could clearly sense that the old man opposite him was surging with life force in a way that defied common sense.

That wasn't a miraculous recovery. It was more like something foreign had been forcibly injected into the body.

Sanders licked his dry lips, his voice cold and sticky: "Hey, old Balk."

"Looks like you not only found a weapon to deal with the iron ship, but also managed to snag a bucket of succubus bathwater?"

He laughed without restraint, his gaze sweeping across Balk's face like a knife.

"This skin is so tender... I'd love to peel it off completely and make myself a new pair of gloves."

As soon as he finished speaking, several low chuckles echoed in the council hall, and murderous intent flowed unchecked in the air.

Balk seemed completely oblivious to the malicious stares directed at him.

He picked up the silver fork, pierced the tip into the plate, and speared a piece of raw offal that was still trembling slightly.

Dark red juice dripped down the gleaming silver fork tines and landed on the pristine white napkin, resembling a blooming flower of blood.

He put the thing in his mouth, his jaw only slightly open, his Adam's apple moving up and down, making a slippery swallowing sound.

"Gudu."

That was the sound of a mollusc sliding down its esophagus, swallowed whole.

He then looked up, revealing that unchanging smile, the one that never wavered, not even in the curve of his lips. “This is the blessing of the deep sea, Sanders,” his voice echoing with a murky hue. “If you all behave, everyone can… be transformed.”

When those words were spoken, the air seemed to freeze instantly.

Suddenly, Kahn, the Bonebreaker, stood up abruptly.

As a half-step peak knight who has roamed this sea for thirty years, his patience has reached its limit.

He was never good at listening to riddles, and he couldn't stand being made a fool of.

"Enough!" The roar was like a thunderclap.

The ground beneath his feet emitted a muffled groan, and spiderweb-like cracks spread wildly outwards from the center of his combat boots.

A yellowish-brown battle aura erupted from his body, like a volcano that had been suppressed for too long.

That was pure power-type battle aura, heavy and violent, carrying brute force capable of crushing rocks, instantly filling the entire council hall.

He kicked the edge of the round table.

"boom--!"

The heavy, solid round table was overturned.

Broth, offal, and grease splashed through the air, splattering and crackling onto the stone walls and lamp bases, causing the pale green flames to flicker violently.

Kahn roared, his voice exploding under the dome, making everyone's eardrums ache: "To hell with your transformation!! I didn't come all this way to see your wax-coated dead face!"

He stepped forward, raising his enormous fist high.

The fighting spirit was forcibly compressed in front of the fist, and the air was squeezed out with a piercing popping sound.

This punch, imbued with his life's worth of skill, would have smashed even a heavily armored rhinoceros into a bloody pulp on the spot.

"Hand over the stuff! Or I'll crush your childish head!"

A fist came down.

The wind pressure was like an invisible battering ram, crashing down on the main seat.

However, Balk did not flinch, nor did he even blink through his thin eyelids.

That excessively young face still wore a perfect yet stiff smile, as if what was falling on him was not a deadly iron fist, but a trivial breeze.

Just as the force of the punch was about to touch the tip of his nose.

He simply raised his swollen left hand, which had been hidden in his sleeve.

boom--!
Fists and palms meet.

The shockwave exploded in the closed council chamber, like a muffled thunderclap compressed to its limit.

The pale green light was instantly distorted into a twisted beam. The already decaying tapestries around them could not withstand the impact; the fabric was torn apart, and mold and stone chips scattered like a rainstorm.

But Kahn's powerful punch, which carried the full fighting spirit of a half-step peak knight and was enough to shatter the city gate, stopped.

It stopped an inch in front of Balk's swollen left palm, as if it had hit an invisible wall.

Balk's arm was chillingly steady, without a single muscle tremor.

The air between the two was squeezed together, emitting a low, mournful sound.

In the chaotic air currents created by the impact, Balk's large captain's tricorn hat was completely blown off his head.

The hat tumbled through the air a few times, lost its way, and landed with a "thud" in a dark corner.

Kahn paused for a moment, and in a life-or-death struggle, that moment could be fatal.

A deathly silence descended upon the council chamber.

All eyes involuntarily rose and stared intently at the exposed top of Balk's head.

There was no hair there, not even... no scalp.

The upper half of his skull looked as if it had been neatly cut off by some kind of sophisticated alchemical tool, forming an open bone bowl.

Inside that hollow bone bowl, a pink, soft-bodied creature was pulsating.

It is translucent, moist, and has a sickly, oily sheen.

It resembles a giant, mutated brain exposed to the air, or a soft-bodied octopus forcibly stuffed into the skull.

Countless tiny, translucent tentacles extended from its edges, like plant roots, deeply penetrating Balk's cerebral cortex, even piercing the base of his skull and disappearing behind his eyeballs.

With each breath, the mass of flesh would gently contract, emitting a viscous and clear watery sound.

"Gurgle, gurgle."

Rosa gasped, her stomach churning, and acid reflux rising to her throat.

That wasn't some miracle of rejuvenation at all. It was living parasitism.

This body, known as Balk, was nothing more than a meticulously maintained shell, a fresh petri dish maintaining basic functions.

Kahn was closest; he could even smell the sweet, fishy odor emanating from the lump of flesh and see the trembling of every tiny blood vessel on it.

In that instant, the rage in the bandit's eyes was abruptly drained, leaving only primal fear.

Balk tilted his head. The movement was somewhat stiff, causing the fleshy mass on his head to sway slightly.

“Oh dear…” his voice rang out, tinged with a hint of feigned regret: “My hat has fallen off, and I’m disheveled in front of the guests… that’s very impolite.”

Before he finished speaking, the left hand that caught Kahn's fist suddenly clenched its five fingers.

"Crack!"

Without any warning, a sickeningly loud cracking sound rang out.

Kahn's prized aura armor crumbled like thin, brittle glass.

Immediately afterwards, his fist, that iron fist honed over thirty years, was crushed into pieces in Balk's palm like a rotten tomato.

“Ahhhhh——!!”

The piercing scream had barely escaped its throat when it abruptly stopped.

Because Balk's right hand was as fast as a red lightning bolt, he grabbed Kahn's screaming face, his five fingers digging deep into the other's facial bones.

“It’s too noisy.” Balk smiled, his fingers gently closing together.

"Pfft!"

It's like crushing a ripe watermelon, with red and white substances spraying out instantly.

Thick blood splattered on Balk's face and also splashed onto the pink parasitic brain on his head.

The previously listless mollusc trembled with excitement the moment it came into contact with the scalding hot blood.

Countless tiny tentacles danced wildly, greedily sucking up the nutrients that splashed onto them.

Moist blood flowed down the tentacles, making the thing look more vibrant and fuller, and it even made a pleasant "gurgling" sound.

Amidst that nauseating sucking sound.

The headless corpse twitched twice and then slumped to its knees at Balk's feet.

The hall was deathly silent.

(End of this chapter)