This necromancer is going to seduce the beautiful girls who are already dead.

Only puppets filled with genuine desire will be guided by the unseen force to the Lord of Delusion. The Lord of Delusion knows that his abilities allow him to automatically select suitable puppets.

This Hollik, even the Lord of Delusion remembers him.

Hollik was among the first members of the Council of the Dead to be converted when the Lord of Delusions began his search for the Abyss. He still remembered the anger and humiliation Hollik displayed when He turned Hollik into His puppet in His sleep.

Only those with such strong convictions can better utilize the power of the Lord of Delusion.

Although Hollick should have arrived two days earlier and was already two days late today, the Lord of Delusion was still very happy.

He was just waiting for this guy to come and become his most ruthless assassin.

Hollik reached out his trembling hand and grasped the crown.

“Very good, that’s it, mortal. I will now transfer my power to you. Just stay still.” The Lord of Delusion was very satisfied. “Once I give you my power, you can go and take revenge on the Abyss. Don’t disappoint me then.”

Hollick's breathing became more rapid, and the greed in his eyes grew stronger.

The power of the Lord of Delusion began to slowly flow from Hollik's hand, which was holding the crown, into Hollik.

"By the way... after I give you the power, go and see the place I told you to go... I set a trap there, and I don't know why the Abyss hasn't destroyed it while I'm away..."

The Lord of Delusion gave instructions while transferring power to Hollik.

But halfway through his speech, He suddenly realized something was amiss.

After transferring his divine power to Hollik, he did not feel that the connection between him and Hollik had strengthened. Instead, he felt that the power he had transferred had disappeared as if it had vanished into thin air.

How is this going……

At that moment, a dagger suddenly appeared in Hollick's other hand.

At the same time, the Lord of Delusion also sensed something unusual about the power fluctuations emanating from the churning black mud on Holick's body.

"No, you're not Holick!" The Lord of Delusions exclaimed in shock.

However, it was too late by then; Hollick, wielding a dagger, slashed at the crown.

The crown was originally very hard. Even Starr, whose fighting spirit was comparable to Leona's back then, needed to be beaten down like a storm to temporarily destroy it.

However, that last strike effortlessly cleaved the crown in two.

Half of it was captured by Hollick, while the other half vanished and escaped amidst the Lord of Delusions's shocked and furious cries.

Boom!

As the crown was severed in two, a powerful surge of energy erupted from the broken edge, bringing with it a terrifying pressure. An extremely powerful shockwave swept out instantly, shattering the warehouse shelves and everything inside them. Hollik, who was holding part of the crown, was the first to be hit and suffered the enormous impact.

The impact completely ripped Hollick's clothes and skin apart—but it wasn't clothes and skin at all; it was a huge lump of black mud!

After the black mud was peeled away by the shockwave, purplish-red skin was revealed underneath.

It was the appearance of a short, dark elf, and judging from her face, it was Sophia.

This is certainly not Hollik. How could Hollik possibly pull out an indestructible dagger to assassinate the Lord of Delusions?

There is only one person on the entire continent who can assassinate even a god, and that is Sophia, the most outstanding assassin in the history of the Shadow Sisters!

She had already disguised herself as Hollik. With the help of Agnes and Carol, she removed the excess flesh from her body, used Rebecca's potion to mold her body into the size of a halfling, and then used the artificial soul of the Abyss to replicate Hollik's soul fluctuations.

The black mud on her body wasn't from the puppet body of the Lord of Delusions; it was from a high-ranking shadow demon attached to her! This high-ranking shadow demon, under the orders of the Abyss, used its mimicry ability to transform Sophia into Hollik's likeness.

In addition, Flora had also cast a divine spell on Sophia beforehand to conceal her presence—although the power of the Nine Gods was not very strong, they were still the local tyrants of the world of Hay Tver, and their divine power was equally effective.

With everyone's help and her own superb acting skills, Sophia almost perfectly impersonated Holick, and even fooled the Lord of Delusion for a few seconds after getting close to him!

This was the second plan that Abis prepared during the meeting in Helheim.

He had long suspected that the magic bomb was fake, and that the Lord of Delusion intended to use this method to lure the Abyss into using its stored divine power to destroy it—thereby triggering some mechanism within the bomb.

Abyss's new deduction is that the magical bomb was not intended to bombard the continent at all; its purpose was actually to reopen the spatial rift above the Shadowfall.

Yes, the Lord of Delusion had no intention of invading Hay-Terviel. On the contrary, He wanted to escape Hay-Terviel after severely damaging the Abyss!

Chapter 338 The Mystery in the Bomb

The tool Sophia used to cut off the crown of the Lord of Delusion was naturally the dagger passed down from her ancestors, which she obtained from the system and which possessed the power of the creator god.

This dagger proved extremely effective in attacking the crown of the Lord of Delusion.

Originally, the crown was incredibly sturdy and indestructible; even if it were destroyed, it would only be superficially damaged. But when faced with the dagger of the creator god, it was as fragile as a piece of paper.

The Lord of Delusion was transferring power when he was suddenly struck by a blade from Sophia, which severed a portion of him, while the rest escaped.

After doing all this, Sofia didn't say anything. She quickly took a small steel bottle from her belt, then deftly opened the cap with one hand and poured the liquid inside onto the crown.

The potions had rather peculiar properties; once poured onto the crown, they quickly spread along it, perfectly enveloping it without leaving a single gap.

Sophia nodded. Her clothes had been torn apart by the impact, but she didn't care about that now.

She clutched the crown fragments to her chest, and her figure swiftly vanished into thin air.

At that moment, the necromancers' panicked clamor came from the warehouse entrance; they had just recovered from the explosion.

……

"This thing is definitely not a magic bomb."

Abyss was now aware of Sophia's progress and was sharing his observations with his other relatives.

"It looks like a bomb, and the magic circle on it seems to be for detonating it, but I found a layer inside this bomb..."

"So it really was a trap within a trap?" Rebecca sounded relieved. "Luckily we found it—tell me about this bomb."

“Of course,” Abyss replied with a smile. “This bomb is enough to demonstrate the genius of the Council of the Dead’s chief array master. On the surface, all its nodes are designed to detonate, and if I don’t destroy them in time, they will automatically take off and detonate.”

This magic array is not meant to fool laymen; on the contrary, it is quite deceptive even to experienced practitioners.

The more someone understands how magic circles work, the easier it is for them to see the function of the magic circle on this magic bomb.

If the Abyss were as impatient as Leona, it would probably have tried to forcefully open a spatial rift in Helheim on the spot, drawing out the power of the Lord of Bullying to destroy the bomb and detonate it in the Shadowfall, so as not to harm the people on the continent.

But Abis had thought one step further beforehand.

He went on to recount what he had learned while observing the magic bomb:

After inspecting the magic bomb, he actually channeled his own magic power into it.

This was a rather daring move, but for someone of Abyss's caliber, it wouldn't have been a problem even if the bomb had actually exploded—and of course, the bomb didn't explode.

After Abyss infused his magic into the magic bomb, he sensed that something was wrong with it.

His magic did not flow exactly according to the magic circle depicted on the outside, but instead took many detours that could not be seen from the surface. When the flow of magic was altered, the function of the magic circle would also change, and the Abyss discovered the special nature of this magic circle.

This magic circle will not explode, nor will it count down automatically. Instead, it will automatically resist any destructive magical intrusion, while simultaneously absorbing some kind of power—which the Abyss believes should be divine power—into the circle.

Once divine power is injected and reaches a certain amount, this magic will flow according to a circuit that the Abyss has never seen before, achieving a special effect.

Considering the unique nature of this location—the already closed spatial rift overhead—it becomes clear what the three Venerables wanted to do by deceiving the Abyss's divine power.

They wanted to use the divine power held by the Abyss to open this spatial rift.

Abyss believes that the three Venerables are not the ones who need this spatial rift the most—no matter how powerful they are, they are still just mortals, and it would be foolish for them to try to travel directly to other worlds through such a spatial rift.

Therefore, it must be the Lord of Delusion who wants this spatial rift to open.

He wanted to leave.

"These are my findings and some of my conjectures. What do you think?" Abis said after finishing his statement.

“I think your guess is quite reasonable. Now we need some evidence to confirm it,” Rebecca replied seriously. “What do you plan to do?”

“I think we’re not far from the truth,” Abis said. “Sophia is already coming back with our evidence, isn’t she? If I still had any feelings, I might be laughing with excitement.”

“Alright, then you and Flora should join us as soon as possible. We need to see what the part of the Lord of Delusion that Sophia brought back looks like.” Rebecca smiled.

After ending the call with the other members of the family, Abyss patted the device, which was nominally a magical bomb but was actually likely a trap, and said to Flora:

"Alright, let's prepare to leave then. This operation has been incredibly fruitful. Sophia actually managed to cut off a piece of the Lord of Delusion. I really didn't underestimate her strength."

"What should we do with this thing?" Flora asked, looking at the magic bomb.

“I’ve decided not to study this thing,” Abis said. “Studying it could easily lead to unpredictable consequences, so I’m going to just seal it away…that’s all.”

Abyss summoned a magical catfish, took a large jar from its mouth, unscrewed the lid, and poured out all the liquid inside.

It was obvious that the potion in this jar was the same as the potion in Sophia's bottle. The liquid quickly enveloped the magic bomb—this was a brand-new upgraded version of the potion that Rebecca developed to isolate divine power. They were more effective and could automatically envelop objects. Moreover, thanks to Little Gaja's help, Flora's underwear was no longer needed as one of the basic materials.

Then, Abyss shoved the magic bomb directly into the mouth of the magic catfish.

“That’s good. Now no one can get this thing.” Abyss nodded, turned to look at Flora, and took her hand. “Let’s hurry up and leave. The Three Venerables will definitely not let this go. Staying here any longer might be a bit dangerous.”

Chapter 339 The Second Plan of Abyss

"I'm back!"

Sofia suddenly appeared among the crowd, holding a broken piece of the crown in her hand.

“Welcome back.” Abyss went to greet him quite naturally.

"Don't look!" Leona suddenly pounced on him from behind, wrapping her legs around Abyss's waist and covering his eyes with her hands.

"Huh? What happened? Oh, so all my clothes are torn to shreds."

Sophia glanced at herself somewhat belatedly and found that her clothes had been reduced to tattered strips by the previous divine explosion, and now her purplish-red skin was exposed to the air like that of a glorious druid.

However, this didn't matter much to the female dark elves.

A man saw her body? Isn't that a situation where one side gains a small profit while the other side suffers a huge loss?

“Sophia, put your clothes on so I can see the pieces you just cut off the Lord of Delusion.”

Abyss remained remarkably calm, even with Leona covering his eyes.

“Oh, sure, sure.” Sophia held the fragments of the crown in one hand and used the other to put on one of Rebecca’s coats that she had handed her.

Rebecca's coat might have looked a bit small on Sofia normally, but now that Sofia has altered her body to the size of a half-human, the coat simply becomes a long gown when draped over her.

The decision to impersonate Holick was actually made by Sofia on short notice when she returned to the Shadowlands from Helheim.

Abyss's original plan was to make Hollik hate the high-profile "Anita" and "Spin," and then cause trouble so that he could also be removed from the Intermediate Council to make room for the two of them to join the Intermediate Council at the same time.