The Villain Princess survived the Imperial Riot

But this woman, how dare she!

"What are you doing, Stein? Don't you want the Scepter of Judgment anymore?"

“…” Stein silently looked at the prisoner who had been fighting with him for ten years. In these ten years, he had never seen him so panicked.

What's the problem? Isn't this a die-hard Tailan fan?

"Your Highness will handle this man as he pleases." Stein said.

"Your Highness..." The elf blinked, "Are you a Celestial Dragon?"

“There’s no reward for guessing correctly.”

"Wait wait wait wait, let's talk it over, I know--" The elf was anxious. He knew that the Celestial Dragons were gods of killing who would kill anyone they wanted. Stein might be tempted by the benefits, but the Celestial Dragons might not.

He really couldn't bear to accept that ten years of enduring humiliation would result in such an outcome.

"The Scepter of Judgment is buried in a dragon tomb in Still Bay, right?" Hestia shrugged. "This is a well-known instance. I hope you can die more unwillingly. That way I will be happier."

"what?"

Stein and the Elf crashed at the same time.

How did she know about the Scepter of Judgment, a ceremonial artifact left behind when the Knight of Judgment, one of the Twenty-Eight Generals of Danube, ascended to mythology?

"Wait—" The elf was completely at a loss.

But there was no chance anymore. Whether this happened or not, Hestia wanted to give him a ride.

The mechanic had been sitting there for ten years, and his spiritual energy was almost gone. He was also bound by the tower and didn't even have the chance to use his secret skills. He just stared with his eyes wide open, and a drop of sticky blood flowed from his brow.

Proficient in esoteric cultivation, he traveled through three layers of illusion in his dreams. Under the guidance of invisible techniques, he was on the verge of the Sea of ​​Origin and received the infusion of the Origin. His skin and bone marrow had transformed from the appearance of a mortal. The extraordinary vitality and mystery directly acted on his appearance. His body was immortal and his heart was as hard as iron.

But that's about it.

"Boom."

Gunshots rang out and people died.

Volume 27: Dreamer: . Celestial Dragon Technique

As the Elf Mechanic lost the light in his eyes, a vast spiritual power beyond Hestia's imagination poured into the Witch's Book.

Even if one absorbs the spiritual energy of hundreds of people in the black market, it is still not as profound as that of a well-versed esoteric practitioner.

It was at this moment that Hestia's vision became hazy and dislocated. She was observing the material world, but at the same time, she "saw" a door to her dreams opening at the intersection of the dimensions beyond reality.

The soul of the mechanic was about to return to the embrace of the Sea of ​​Origin, when suddenly, the Witch's Book stretched out thousands of bare arms and pulled the soul, which had already separated from its mortal nature, back to the border area.

This scene took place in Hestia's consciousness. The movement was so violent that it made her entire brain collapse, but no one else present knew what had just happened.

After the Fat Inquisitor was devoured by the Witch's Book, only a mark was left on the paper. However, the Mechanic contributed his soul beyond mortals, and actually caused a stone tablet to be erected in the world of the Witch's Book.

"Spirit: All Knowing, Felarin Sheffield."

“Worship: Creating the Path.”

"Beacon: The way to forge hidden treasures, the iron hand that can break free from form."

"Secret Techniques: Eye of Truth, Seal of Decomposition, Heterogeneous Assembly."

"Ritual vessel: invalid."

"—Before the death of the furnace punishment, the maker once served the secret treasure."

"The Road to Deconstruction: 2%."

Hestia peered into the deepest recesses of her consciousness in astonishment. This wasn't some lowly magical mark, but a fragmented soul. Part of it had returned to its dream home, while the majority had been plundered by the Witch's Book.

She vaguely felt that this stone tablet symbolized the door to Mengsu and could directly lead to the beacon left by Felarin Sheffield in Mengsu.

The three secret techniques she obtained after her soul was analyzed by the Witch's Book can still be used by her by consuming only spiritual power.

As for the last sentence on the stele, Hestia did not understand why it appeared.

"By devouring the spirits of mystical cultivators above the level of proficiency, one can learn some of the secrets of the Dao?"

Hestia pondered this, then glanced at Felarin Sheffield's corpse with a strange smile. "The corpse of someone who's well versed in esoteric cultivation should still have some remaining power and be of considerable value. You can do with it as you please."

"As you command, Your Highness." Stein bowed deeply.

When the gunshots rang out, the corridor was no longer as noisy as before, but through the gaps in the iron bars, there were still pairs of hateful eyes staring at Stein and the cold and indifferent silver-haired girl.

"You seem very dissatisfied?" Hestia suddenly looked at the iron window of a prison cell, and the pupils behind the slits looked like snake eyes.

"..." The gaze behind the window was filled with resentment. After a long moment, the man uttered an indistinct curse, "Scum."

"Shut up, you filthy lizard pirate!" Stein yelled.

He was not really angry, but when the princess was humiliated, even if it was just a scolding, he had to show enough attitude, just like when he asked the princess to deal with the elf criminal as she pleased.

"Why don't the pirates execute them?" Hestia asked curiously.

"He knows of a treasure trove containing countless rare treasures, and the Investigating Office is using his blood essence to locate the possible location."

"Can you find it?"

"Still looking..." Stein was a little embarrassed.

"Then kill him." Hestia said without turning her head.

Even if the treasure can be found through this lizard in ten or eight years, it will not be of much value to the current princess.

"Yes."

"Bastard, bald monkey, scaleless bastard, butcher—"

The prison door opened, and the lizardman's shrill voice echoed in the corridor. But facing an investigative chief of the realm of understanding, he had no room for resistance.

"Hmm?" Hestia frowned. "Only spirituality? It's roughly equivalent to the spiritual strength of a hundred mortals. Why aren't there any other marks?"

When Stein caught up, the princess asked, "What realm was that secret cultivator at just now?"

"It's almost past the threshold of peeping into the secrets. Before going out to sea, that reptile was a priest of a certain Lizardmen clan, and could be considered a rebel against the Empire's rule..."

"Ah."

There are no secret techniques, that is, only the secret practitioners she killed personally can unlock their skills. Otherwise, the dead within the range can only provide spiritual power.

Hestia temporarily put aside the idea of ​​killing people and went straight to her last target in the forest prison - the rebels who attacked the statue of the God-Emperor and were to be executed publicly in the square in a week.

There were originally three arrested rebels, but one of them accidentally died during the previous interrogation, and the remaining two were imprisoned in a cell.

If it weren't for the great feat of attacking the statue, with their abilities, they wouldn't be qualified to occupy a place at the bottom of the forest prison lake.

In fact, Stein had dealt with at least eighty of these stubborn free-will rebels. They had already been interrogated at the police station and had confessed everything they needed to. No more useful information could be obtained from them. Considering that they would be executed in a week, the chief prosecutor was too lazy to spend more time on these dying people. He only acted busy when the princess asked about them.

Hestia clearly had other ideas.

Through the window he observed the two rebels in the cell, passionate young men of eighty or nine. Although several days of detention and torture had worn out their spirits, their tired eyes still revealed their determination to face death without fear.

"what?"

Chloe, who had been silent all the time, suddenly looked at the moth at her fingertips. White fluff was falling from its smooth white wings. The fluff was tearing the moth's body apart as it flapped its wings. In a trance, the moth split into two and then into three.

"Give me their files," Hestia said. "Also, come out two rooms away. I want to question them privately."

Stein naturally agreed to the princess's request. He didn't care if he could get any information out of her. After all, the Governor's Office was responsible for the attack on the statue, and at the very least, it was the High Knights and Iron Army who controlled the Upper City, not the Inquisition.

The empty interrogation room, with its crimson stone walls emitting a lingering smell of blood, contained two chairs, a stone table, torture instruments that could be named and those that could not be named. The wall tiles were engraved with secret characters of the Tower, serving the purpose of suppressing evil spirits and villains.

When Gros Lier woke up, he found himself tied to a chair. He remembered that he was discussing with Crete how to attack the jailer when the door opened next time. The next second, the jailer opened the door, and then he lost all perception.

Mystery drug, or something else?

Gros Lier's head drooped weakly, and he strained to twist his neck and look around, but he didn't scream. He knew he was doomed; the severed little finger, plucked nails, and whip marks on his face and body all betrayed brutal torture, yet he endured it all.

He didn't know how he held on. When he was on the verge of collapse, he would sometimes think of his parents, the shop owner, who had been persecuted and killed by the tax officials, sometimes of his free-will companions who had died in the arrest, and sometimes of the neighbor girl, a vibrant sixteen-year-old who worked in the match factory.

In the end, all emotions converged into a raging fire of unwillingness, and were all directed at those filthy, cruel, disgusting nobles, bureaucrats, goblin merchants, and the imperial belief in the God-Emperor, whom they had never met but was the root of all evil.

Am I going to die? Not bad.

Gros Lier smiled bitterly. He was barely breathing and didn't even have the strength to raise his head.

It's just a pity that until the end, I still haven't become a qualified freedom fighter——

Secret cultivation.

Gros Lier knew the title, and he was only one step away from becoming a secret practitioner.

He once walked into a dream, visualizing the boundless sea of ​​roots, letting his drifting soul fall on a road covered with thorns and sharp blades. There was no one around him, and no sound, only endless trauma and his gritted teeth to persevere.

He prayed for the favor of the invisible arts, like those independent warriors of free will.

The instructor said that he had a talent for fighting, but he just lacked a ceremony to transform himself from a cocoon into a butterfly and be reborn.

Grosse Riel also knew the rituals, the path of honor every warrior walked, the practices that demonstrated their courage and will.

In a sense, the attack on the Divine Emperor statue was a ritual. As the fragments shattered, he could feel his soul, in a moment, grow closer to the Dream. Yet, it seemed as if something was missing, preventing his soul from being fully accepted by the Dream. It was like the ritual vessel the warriors had mentioned, or perhaps the sacrificial implements required for the ritual.

But he has no regrets. Gros Lier believes that even a hundred years later, there will be people who remember the heroic deeds of that day, who will remember those who waved their fists against the empire and raised the banner of resistance.

"Let me die faster." Gros Lier thought.

He felt that he could still hold on, but such persistence was meaningless.

Then, Gros Lill saw a graceful figure who looked out of place in the prison walk in. Her beauty was the most beautiful he had ever seen in his life, which made him subconsciously ignore the woman behind the silver-haired girl.

Hestia took one look at the miserable Gros Lill and sighed.

What else do those idiots in the police station know besides corporal punishment? Don't they know that Free Will and his gang are "rebels" who get more excited the more they're tortured and the more they resist?

Gros Lier was stunned, not understanding why the girl sighed.

Is it regret and sorrow, or pity and compassion?

The girl's temperament is very cold and indifferent, but compared with the remnant of the prison, the plum blossoms in the cold and snowy sky are the most gentle scenery in the world.

"Gross Lill, eighteen years old, a fisherman on the fishing boat Vallis at Genting Harbor. He was actually one of the planners and participants in the Rongguan Square terrorist incident, the brutal murderer who caused four deaths and thirteen injuries. He's a traitor to the Free Will Party, correct?"

Gros Lill's face flushed red upon hearing the girl's words. Holding on to his last breath, as if a flash of life had returned, he stiffened his neck and argued, "I'm not the murderer! The dead Imperial lackeys all deserved it!"