Void Beetle Evolution Guide

"No!" Lux shouted firmly in denial. "He helped me gain control of my powers. He shouldn't be punished because of his origins. No one should be like that."

Now Katarina understood the relationship between Lux and Sylas; they were in the same boat. But this girl was too naive. Someone taught her how to control her powers, and she dared to gamble her future to help the other side. She's probably still feeling guilty for causing Sylas's execution, which is why she's so determined to storm the execution ground.

But does she really understand what kind of person he is?

Katarina stood up, put her hands on her hips, and leaned over to ask, "What about your country? What about your family? This could hurt them."

“I cannot pretend to be blind to these things, nor can I hide when others are suffering,” Lux replied firmly. “I will fight for Demacia, the land I believe in.”

Meeting the girl's determined gaze, Katarina fell into deep thought. She too had once fought for Noxus, the land she believed in, but the waters there were far too deep.

Lux was unlike any Demacian she knew; aside from her annoying stubbornness, she was more like a Noxian.

She is principled, determined, powerful... and also a challenge and threat to the Demacian system.

To put it simply, this person is a complete liability to Demacia. Killing her here would actually help them.

That's settled then. Without warning, Katarina swung her dagger, breaking the magic-suppressing stone shackles on Lux's hands.

She won't kill Lux here, because the girl can help distract her and allow her to infiltrate the palace smoothly. Nor will she kidnap Lux now; she'll return to take Lux away after completing the assassination mission.

According to the trailer for Wild Hunt, this incident escalated rapidly and became quite significant. Clearly, the Crown Guardian ultimately made a mistake, saving the wrong person and causing a tragedy.

"Uh, thank you, but I have to..." Lux shook off her shackles and chased after Katarina to thank her. The naive girl thought Katarina was her savior, unaware that Katarina saved her so that she could cause a tragedy.

“Go and rescue your prisoners,” Katarina interrupted her. Talking to a fool takes patience, and her patience was running out.

"They're going to publicly execute Sylas, and I absolutely cannot let that happen," Lux continued, seemingly recognizing that her actions were a challenge to the law and trying to convince herself otherwise.

"Public execution? Will the king attend?" Seeing her reaction, Katarina casually tried to elicit some information, and unexpectedly, she actually got some useful information out of her.

“Uh…no. Due to the turmoil among the mages, King Jarvan will be observing from the palace's safe house. I had to stop the execution. Thank you, Deline. Or…some other name. You saved my life.”

Lux blushed and thanked Katarina again before fleeing the scene in a great hurry. Katarina, on the other hand, stood there, covering her forehead, and gradually burst into laughter.

"A safe house in the palace?"

It was truly an unexpected stroke of luck; the naive Miss Crown Guard probably had no idea that her good intentions were about to kill the king, as she had revealed the king's position to an assassin.

The king never appeared in public, and if there was any sign of trouble, the soldiers would completely lock him up.

But what if she first infiltrates the safe house and waits for her prey?

"I can't take it anymore, it's just too funny!"

The thought of the guards handing the king over to their own blades made Katarina slap her thigh and laugh uncontrollably.

She suddenly realized why the Wild Hunt wanted her to capture Lux alive.

Miss Mianwei, who meant well but caused trouble, was the root cause of everything. Her stupid actions were infuriating, so stupid that even her enemy couldn't stand it.

The fact that such people can mess everything up and still live well without paying any price is the greatest injustice to others.

Therefore, the Wild Hunt must act on behalf of Heaven, capture this scourge of the nation, Lux, and teach her a lesson, making her pay for her actions.

Chapter 509 Murder to Silence

Katarina continued to follow Lux and arrived at the execution ground.

The timing was extremely tight. When she arrived, Silas's head was already on the guillotine, and the executioner, with a sack over his head, had even raised his execution sword high.

"Wait! Spare his life!" Lux pushed through the crowd and walked towards the stage. The moment she appeared, Sylas, who had resigned himself to his fate, had his eyes light up.

After stopping the executioner, Lux began explaining to the crowd, defending Sylas and saying that the rumors were incomplete truths. Being born a mage wasn't wrong; what was wrong was Demacia's treatment of mages, which turned them into monsters.

She pleaded desperately, her words filled with emotion, as if she had put herself in the shoes of the victim, even going so far as to reveal her own identity. When the people learned that Lux was actually a noblewoman, they were enraged, condemning her as shameless and a pro-democracy figure.

“Miss Crownguard, your compassion is touching. But the law is impartial, and we will continue with the execution.” The old abbot of the Demon Hunters gave Lux some face by not making things difficult for her, because her uncle, who had married into the family, was the leader of the Demon Hunters.

Even so, Lux still didn't come to her senses. As the guards pushed her away, she stomped heavily on one of their feet, then turned around and knelt down in front of the guillotine, holding Sylas's hand and tearfully apologizing.

"Silas... I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry... my glimmer of light."

Lux didn't understand why Sylas was apologizing. When she looked up, she saw that his arms, which were handcuffed with anti-magic stones, were glowing!

Sylas never told Lux ​​that his magical talent was actually stealing other people's magic and then releasing it, using their own methods against them.

The forbidden book he tricked Lacus into showing him was an original work by the great sculptor Durand, which detailed the principles and applications of the anti-magic stone—the anti-magic stone does not suppress magic, but rather absorbs and seals energy.

Normally, the magic he stole would not be able to be retained in his body and would be released uncontrollably on the spot. However, with the help of the magic-suppressing stone shackles as a container, he was able to freely control the release of magic.

So when Lux touched him, Sylas stole her powerful magic and poured it into the magic-suppressing shackles, then broke free of his restraints.

With a loud crash, the guillotine beneath him crumbled into flying rubble, while the shackles and chains flashed white light.

"what--"

"Run!"

"Run. Taste what it's like to run away." As the onlookers scattered and fled in panic, Silas's eyes revealed a cruel glint, the rage he had felt during his fifteen years of imprisonment in the dark dungeon.

"Sylas, no!" Lux tried to stop Sylas, but it was too late.

“You know very well that they will never accept me. There is only one way to deal with them… and you showed me that way.”

Sylas didn't even glance at Lux. He reached out to the fleeing people, letting the surging beams of light engulf them. The outlines of their bodies were stretched under the bombardment of the high-energy rays, and finally they were submerged in the white light and lost all movement.

Katarina, standing in the crowd, was astonished that Lux, seemingly naive and innocent, possessed such powerful innate magic; a mere touch had granted Sylas such immense magical power. Taking advantage of the moment before the beam swept towards her, she flipped and jumped into the window of the nearest building.

"Whoosh!" Sylas raised both hands and fired beams of light simultaneously, then turned and swept them across the crowd. The next moment, the beams pierced through the crowd and reached the building where Katarina was hiding, easily breaking through the walls.

The building collapsed with a deafening roar, forcing Katarina to use her innate magic to teleport away from the crumbling wall. Silas, in the execution ground, seemed to sense something; he was extremely sensitive to the presence of magic, which allowed him to draw upon the magical power stored in the anti-magic stone.

It was precisely because of this skill that he was taken in as an apprentice by the Demon Hunters to find mages hidden among the people. Fate played a cruel trick; if that incident hadn't happened, he might have become an excellent Demon Hunter, not a prisoner.

Sylas paid little attention to the escaped Katarina, firing wildly until he ran out of the mana he had stolen from Lux. When he stopped, of the hundreds of people present, only Lux and the escaped Katarina remained alive.

What a clever way to silence a witness! Now no one will spread the news that Lux is a mage.

After doing all this, Silas closed his eyes, raised his head, and felt the pervasive smoke. For a prisoner who had been sentenced to life imprisonment before he was even an adult, this was the breath of freedom.

Lux burst into tears, collapsed to the ground, and clutched a corpse, demanding to know why Sylas had done this.

Silas showed no remorse for his atrocities, turning to her with what he thought was a kind gesture and extending his hand: "Don't cry, girl. From now on, people like us will never shed tears again."

Lux didn't reach out, but instead rejected him with a strange look in her eyes. After Sylas revealed his true colors, this Crown Guardian had realized what kind of monster she had unleashed.

Silas had no time to comfort an injured little girl. He turned and walked towards the black dungeon, releasing the mages imprisoned inside.

He avoided taking action whenever possible, instead inciting the mages to retaliate against the jailers, activating their bloodlust and causing them to lose their minds, turning them into monsters driven by hatred.

Soon, Silas led a large group of mage prisoners through the prison walls. (The remaining text appears to be gibberish and unrelated to the preceding sentences.)

"Brothers and sisters, welcome to the new Demacia!" Sylas raised his arms, drawing everyone's attention.

"Behold, this cage turns to ashes, and the jailers become corpses. But this is only the first battle. These worthless bastards will surely scream in agony before they die. We must bleed them dry, starting with the biggest and fattest master!"

Silas placed her hand on one of the mages' shoulders and used her magic to break through the wall, then arranged for the prisoners to be transferred through the royal city's sewers.

Garen arrived late and stopped Sylas at the rear, but he was unaware that his sword contained magic. Sylas seized the opportunity to kill him. In the end, it was only after Lux pleaded for him that Sylas spared his life.

Thus, Katarina witnessed firsthand how the enemy crumbled from within.

Lux's well-intentioned but misguided act of kindness sparked a mage uprising that spread like wildfire throughout the Demacian capital.

She thought it was incredibly stupid. The probability of Demacians awakening magical talent was much higher than that of Noxus, and some even fled to the enemy country to escape the magic seekers.

She couldn't even imagine the threat that a dedicated mage legion would pose to Noxus if they were trained.

Unfortunately, these people are stupid. Instead of making the best use of such talented people, they waste manpower and resources to suppress them, which only increases internal friction.

Chapter 510 The Uprising of the Monks

On

Some time later, Katarina infiltrated the palace.

Taking advantage of the fact that the group of mages who were causing an uprising were distracted, she easily sneaked into the most heavily guarded place in all of Demacia and went straight to the king's study.

Inside the palace forged from anti-magic stones, her teleportation ability was unusable. However, thanks to the armor bestowed upon her by the Wild Hunt, she could move freely within it using her invisibility.

She now admires Wild Hunt immensely; before this, she had never imagined that she could approach her mission target so easily.

The old king, his forehead deeply furrowed and his hair and beard long since turned gray, was writing an urgent letter right under her nose, while his personal steward stood guard to the side.

Each stroke of the quill pen was a stab born of fury; his brushstrokes were like fierce artillery fire, and his outward expression of emotion made one wonder what he was writing.

“We are too fixated on what we fear,” the king said, still not looking up, but pausing his furious writing. “We are foolish. I am foolish. In our attempt to protect ourselves, we have created the enemy we fear most.”

“Forgive my ignorance, Your Majesty,” Zhao Xin said.

“I am filled with remorse,” King Jarvan said, his eyes drifting into the empty distance. “I gave them too much power. I have always had my doubts about this matter, but they argued their case and had the support of the council. Now I see my mistake; it was my oversight. I will issue a decree ordering the Witchers to cease their search.”

The king lowered his head and read his letter. He let out a painful sigh.

"If I had been braver earlier, perhaps today's disaster could have been avoided," he said.

He signed his name on the letter, then dripped melted royal orchid wax onto the side and stamped it with his seal.

He blew on the seal, then picked up the letter and shook it gently to cool the candle wax as quickly as possible.

Once the wax seal was solidified, the king rolled up the edict, placed it in a white leather tube, sealed the lid tightly, and handed the tube to his steward.

He instructed Steward Zhao Xin to personally deliver the letter to the commander of the Demon Hunter Corps, and forbade any servants from receiving it on his behalf.

However, Zhao Xin hesitated because he had been the king's personal bodyguard for twenty years. Now that the fugitive was missing and could storm the palace at any time, he should not leave the king at this time, but should stay by his side every step of the way.

The two argued vehemently, and after a brief scuffle, Jarvan III had to invoke his royal authority to force the dutiful Zhao Xin to leave.

Zhao Xin had a premonition from the king's unusual behavior that this departure might be their last, but he still felt obligated to deliver the urgent letter.

After he left, the king slumped into his chair, looking utterly exhausted, like an old man waiting to die.

Katarina didn't kill on the spot; she planned to stage the assassination and have Sylas and his group of mages take the blame for her.

Leaving the study, she was still filled with confusion about what she had just witnessed.

"Why would the king send his personal guard away at a time like this?" That personal guard was an Ionian, highly skilled in martial arts. If he had stayed by the king's side, Katarina wouldn't have been able to get away with it so easily.

"Jarvan III was shrewd and calculating. He had actually sensed from various signs that the real enemy had infiltrated his side."

"The conflicts arising from the ban on magic in Demacia are escalating because the system is flawed and no longer suitable for this era."

"Therefore, he planned to use his death to make the whole country re-examine the anti-magic system, and dying in the mage uprising was the best choice."

"Did he deliberately leave a weakness for me to kill?"

Wild Hunt's answer filled Katarina with awe for the old king, but at the same time, it also stirred a deep sense of irritation in her being on the enemy's side.

Should she kill him or not? Killing him might allow Demacia to rise from the ashes, but keeping such a clever person alive would be another disaster.

In addition, Katarina also enjoys challenging tasks, and she was immediately discouraged when she learned that the old king was waiting for her to kill him.

"It's not just you. In fact, the Black Rose has wanted to kill Jarvan III for a long time. They sent spies to infiltrate the palace long ago, which is why the king asked Zhao Xin to personally deliver the letter to the legion commander. If it were intercepted en route, they would definitely tamper with the contents of the letter, causing the demon hunters to crack down on mages even more severely, completely escalating the conflict... However, even so, the letter was ultimately not delivered."

"Is the Black Rose really that powerful?" Katarina tried hard to recall the guards she had encountered along the way, attempting to identify the spy among them.

"Don't even think about it. If you could find her, she wouldn't be called the Faceless Woman."

"The leader of the Black Rose personally took action?" Katarina was relieved. If it was that person, then the old king's paranoia would make sense.

The assassination mission proceeded as planned. Following the route map her father had given her, the stealthy Katarina infiltrated the safe house and lay in wait.

Once this safe house is closed, no lock can be opened from the outside; only the king himself can open it from the inside. To force its way in would require an entire army or a powerful mage.

Soon, Silas's mage legion stormed the palace through the sewers. A squad of fully armed guards escorted the old king to the safe house in an impenetrable formation, where they personally pushed him to his death.

"This is the last time I will fight for Noxus." Katarina swiftly brought down her blade, and the old king died before he could utter a sound.

She actually had many questions for the king, but to avoid any unforeseen complications, it was best to end the discussion as soon as possible.

Some time later, Sylas led his men to the safe house. The Demacian prince went to stop them, but was no match for the mage group and was taken hostage.

When the door opened, the scene inside stunned everyone—the old king lay dead on a blood-stained blanket.

The perfect conditions for a murder in a locked room meant that the enraged prince wouldn't even suspect that an assassin had infiltrated the palace beforehand; instead, he would directly pin the blame on Silas.

Silas had no choice but to accept it; he had come for the king in the first place. Although things had taken an unexpected turn, they were generally still under control.

The imprisoned mages needed an explanation. Since the king was dead, they had no choice but to use a prince in his place and drag him to the grand square to be judged by the prisoners. The square was large enough to hold ten thousand people, while the onlookers crowded at the back.

The murderer, Katarina, mingled among the crowd, watching indifferently as Sylas humiliated the prince and fed him live rats, a specialty of the Black Prison.

It was at this moment that Lux arrived all alone, determined to undo all the trouble she had caused.

To prevent Silas from stealing her magic, she actually drank the anti-magic stone powder potion in advance, and despite the cramping pain in her stomach, she grabbed a crossbow and rushed into the mage's sight.