The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

#Chapter 331 Boss Quan (12) - Identity The actress evil spirit's course of action was remarkably simple and clear. To the extent that most people involved could grasp the cause-and-effect relationship just by checking a few videos and news articles circulating on the internet. The evil spirit was going after those who had insulted and ridiculed her one by one, intending to kill them. In other words, if malicious trolls were 'secured', there was a high likelihood that the evil spirit would come find them on her own. For riffraff, there was no sweeter setup than this. If the fragment were hidden like treasure in a specific location, one would inevitably have to compete in a grueling struggle against the big players who would gather there. But this time? If you secured the trolls who were the evil spirit's targets in advance, the evil spirit would come on her own. It meant you could lay all manner of traps on your pre-seized home ground, and fight the evil spirit in a fully prepared state after thorough preparation. On top of this, if you succeeded in quickly dealing with the evil spirit and disappearing right after, there would be no need to waste energy clashing with other factions. As a result. A nationwide comedy show began to unfold. "C-can you really protect my son from that ghost?" "Risk management is guaranteed, client. Starting tonight, our elite personnel will be conducting 24-hour tactical escort, so please leave it to us." Bastards who took escort fees from terrified victims, and intended to snatch up the fragment while they were at it. "Wh-why are you doing this!! We don't have money!!" "We don't need money or anything like that. Just stay in the room we designated. The bathroom is inside too, so don't worry. We'll put in some fried dumplings for food." Bastards who, escort be damned, simply kidnapped people, crammed them into a room, and planned to use them as bait. "Shit, am I the only one who's going to end up screwed here?" "Don't worry, idiot. It's just an evil spirit, what's there to be scared of. And write some more juicy trolling comments. Make that evil spirit bitch rage the moment she sees them and come flying here." There were even bastards who, since the bigger players had swept up all the trolls and there were none left to find, simply decided to insult the evil spirit themselves to draw her aggro. Those who had been trembling in fear of the evil spirit's revenge found themselves suddenly becoming premium tickets for underworld operatives, dragged around in all directions. Even though a certain degree of anonymity was guaranteed in internet article or video comments, it was rare for professionals who set out to expose someone to fail. "If the evil spirit's purpose is revenge against those who insulted her, then by this point she's roughly halfway accomplished it." Quan let out a hollow laugh as he watched the situation unfolding everywhere. Fortunately, Quan's group didn't need to work themselves up over securing trolls like those people did. Because on their side, there existed a specialized detector more accurate than any oracle, precognition, or detection-type sorcery. "Over there, that direction. If we drive straight at this speed, roughly about 40 minutes." At Qiana's words, Quan, who was holding the steering wheel with one hand and checking the map app with the other, spoke. "That's where there's a multi-purpose shopping building. Though it's a place that was abandoned before it could be completed." "Is that also a place that was ruined because of anomalies?" "No, the CEO of the company leading the construction ran off overseas with the money midway through." "......" Perhaps the human world is a sufficiently ugly place whether anomalies exist or not. Whether or not he knew Qiana's thoughts on that, Quan's car, which had been racing along smoothly, stopped when it was about 10 minutes away from the destination. The reason for stopping more than 10 minutes away was simple. Because otherwise the car would have been smashed to pieces. Bang! Boom boom bang! Ear-splitting explosions and screams shattered the night sky into pieces and scattered in all directions. The incomplete five-story multi-purpose shopping building and its front yard were already a scene of complete chaos where all sense and order had been entirely erased. Werewolves with muscles so swollen their skin seemed ready to tear let out bizarre roars as they crossed the front yard. Facing off against the beasts baring their savage teeth were exorcists dressed in white and black. Half of the talismans they threw attached to the werewolves' bodies and burst into flame, while the other half touched the ground and built up massive earth walls. Tengu, striking with their massive crow wings and red masks, stirred up blade winds with their fans, while those clad in dark blue fish-scale armor gripped ring-pommel sabers and leaped into the air. "Hah." A single sound that was hard to tell between a sigh and a gasp of amazement escaped Qiana's lips. At this point, it was meaningless to figure out which bastards had first attempted the 'fishing' and which others had barged in midway. Probably even those fighting didn't know well enough. "Wow, what a spectacular mess. No, this is beyond a mess — even those dogs deserve more respect than this." "Do we have to get involved in that? What if we just wait until they've worn each other out a bit before going in?" "Normally I'd praise that as a good idea, but right now it's not an option. Competitors are spread all over the city right now. The bastards who sense that this is the jackpot and come flying here will probably be five times more numerous than everyone here combined." At Quan's words, Qiana frowned as she recalled all the miscellaneous groups she had seen on the way here. "Don't try to fight unnecessarily — change your appearance as you go, make contact with the evil spirit, retrieve only the fragment, and get out." "By myself? What about you?" "Normally, in situations like this, the underlings do the legwork while the superiors receive reports at their leisure." "You have quite the silver tongue. You manage to say 'I'm going to smoke in the back and take it easy' in such an elegant way." Despite grumbling like this, Qiana didn't consider Quan's instructions to be unreasonable. Quan's combat power was certainly formidable, but what was needed right now was not something like combat power. If he had planned to resolve this situation by force from the start, he would have forcibly woken everyone up and brought them all, whether the employees were drunk or not. The key to this incident was stealth and speed, and that was the field where Qiana was most confident. Ssss. As Qiana lightly breathed in, her appearance began to grotesquely distort and change. Her silver eyes instantly turned a murky brown that looked soaked in drugs, and her clothing also changed to a leather jacket stained with blood and dust. The first place she slipped into was the gaps among the third-rate thugs on the outskirts who were screaming and unable to advance or retreat. Their plan to slip through the alleyways while the major factions clashed and reap the benefits was quite plausible, and precisely because of that, it was easily countered. No matter how much the esper industry had been collectively downgraded because of the Queen, not all of their brains had turned to mush. Hiding among the thugs who were literally paying in blood for their baseless confidence that 'I can make it work somehow!!', Qiana quietly approached the group of exorcists. In the dust cloud generated when the exorcists' earth walls collided with vehicles thrown by the werewolves, Qiana changed her appearance once more. Ssssk. The leather jacket that had wrapped her body instantly spread into white and black ritual garments, and the murky spiritual energy smoothly transformed into the refined ripples of sorcery. Having perfectly mimicked an exorcist who had run up from the rear to maintain the front line, Qiana naturally walked into the interior of the exorcists' formation while pretending to throw talismans over the earth wall. "Reinforce the Domain support at the rear! The formation is being pushed back!" In the chaotic melee where everything was mixed together fighting in all directions, carefully checking each other's faces was a difficult task. The surrounding exorcists shouted and passed by her, convinced she was an ally. Before long, she reached the point where the group of exorcists and the warriors wearing dark blue fish-scale armor were clashing with each other. Checking the corpse of a warrior who had fallen in a corner, she copied the person's face and then replicated even the clothing exactly. "Push back those exorcist bastards! The Domain belongs to our clan!" Qiana nonchalantly swung the ring-pommel saber, slicing through the air, and joined the group of the clan's warriors. With each step she advanced inward, new enemies revealed themselves, but none of them recognized Qiana as an enemy, and therefore none of them could stop her. The heart of it she finally reached. The half-crumbled fifth-floor hall of the shopping building was nothing less than a slaughterhouse of hell. What caught her attention first were the 'bait' inside the circular Domain located in the center of the hall. Forty-four people tied to chairs with all manner of unidentifiable fluids inserted into their arms and legs, recovery-effect talismans plastered all over their bodies, unable to flee, lose consciousness, or die. Bang! Bang! Bang! The state of the evil spirit, who was earnestly pounding the Domain with her fists as if trying to smash it, was also far from normal. Her shoulder was half torn away by claws with bones fully exposed, a ring-pommel saber was lodged diagonally in her side, and traces of all manner of sorcery covered her body. The state of the surroundings was even more of a spectacle. Dozens of corpses with bodies entirely torn, crushed, burning, and pierced through — it seemed faster to find what wasn't the cause of death rather than what was. Just from the traces of battle, Qiana could roughly guess what had happened here. 'They worked together first to inflict critical wounds, then backstabbed each other.' Since they would have to fight over the fragment's ownership anyway, in some sense it could be called wise. In the sense that they all got taken down by the evil spirit who had recovered her strength while they were fighting amongst themselves, it was nothing short of foolishness. The fact that there were still plenty of forces outside, yet they were too busy fighting each other and had left the evil spirit — their actual target — completely unattended, was comedy in and of itself. Bang! Bang! Crack! Crackle! Perhaps because the Domain had lost the caster maintaining it and was now sustained only by pre-installed devices and talismans, it was in a precarious state that looked ready to break at any moment. If that Domain broke and the humans inside died, the evil spirit, having completed her revenge, would disappear from this place and transfer to a new target. Since that was the worst outcome for Qiana as well, she transformed her fingers into long blades right then and swung at the evil spirit. But the evil spirit was not a helpless sacrifice who would simply scream. The evil spirit, having perceived the threat from behind, bent her waist backward and twisted her body, then in one swift motion pulled out the ring-pommel saber that had been lodged in her side and hurled it. Qiana reflexively deflected it using her finger blades, but was startled to feel two of the blades snap in reverse. "What kind of evil spirit fights so physically like this!?" 《Uuuuuuaaaargh!》 Letting out a bizarre screech, the evil spirit leaped toward Qiana in one swift motion. Qiana spun her body and transformed her other hand into a blade, attempting to cut the evil spirit apart, but the evil spirit sacrificed her own right arm and burrowed into Qiana's embrace, viciously biting into her side. A suppressed scream leaked from Qiana's lips. If she were a perfect anomaly, she could easily ignore her own pain as the evil spirit was doing now, but Qiana's body was still far too close to 'human'. Even though she could utilize transformation abilities, it was still the case. But because of that, her fighting spirit surged all the more. Qiana generated thorn-like blades on the inside of her forearms, then embraced the evil spirit with all her strength. Every time the evil spirit thrashed violently, Qiana's body took impacts here and there and blood seeped from her lips, but even so, Qiana's blades rummaged through the interior of the evil spirit's body, searching for the Queen's fragment. And finally, the blade made contact with the fragment. Qiana, who had been about to absorb the fragment with elation, suddenly shuddered at a chilling instinct. The moment Qiana's fingertips touched the core of the fragment, which rippled strangely near the evil spirit's heart, she felt a cold instinct climbing up her spine. The fragments were naturally trying to become one. The problem was that they were trying to become one centered around the evil spirit, not Qiana. It was a matter of efficiency. The fragment the evil spirit possessed was larger than Qiana's fragment. Therefore, less time would be required for reconstruction. Furthermore, in terms of hardware, the 'evil spirit' — capable of spirit form transformation, spatial teleportation, and bold self-destruction — was superior to Qiana, who had constraints in utilizing the Queen's distinctive transformation abilities due to being born with a half-human body. The evil spirit had the disadvantage of lacking identity as the Queen, but that was a problem that could be solved by bringing in Qiana's mind. In other words, for the 'Queen', the most advantageous approach was to take only Qiana's mind as the operating system, centered around the evil spirit's body. Qiana understood this as efficiency. But as ■■, she was disgusted by it. "Don't talk nonsense...!!" Almost instinctively, Qiana created dozens of blades in her grip and shattered the fragment as if grinding it apart. The fragment, having been reduced to near sand granules, was then quietly absorbed into Qiana. The spot where the evil spirit, having lost her core, disappeared like dust. Qiana, who had sunk to the floor, drew ragged breaths. The physical condition of her body, having freshly absorbed the fragment, was close to peak, but her mind was in the opposite state — very confused. This was the second time. Something she should not do as the 'Queen', something that was inefficiency itself for the 'Queen' — she had once again chosen it. Why? How? I was certain I despised things like a human life, wasn't I? Click. The sensation of cold metal touching the back of her head snapped Qiana's mind back to reality. Just as she thought 'oh no' and was about to urgently react, the gun barrel moved away from the back of her head with a light tap. "Bang. If it weren't for me, that just now would have been the end. What are you spacing out for?" At Quan's words, having appeared by her side before she knew it, Qiana simultaneously felt irritation and an inexplicable sense of relief. And at the fact that she had felt relief, she felt doubly irritated — which combined with the existing amount made it triple — and shouted. "Who said I was spacing out!! And you said you'd wait at the rear. What about the car — why are you crawling in here like that?" "Well, that couldn't be helped. If we don't get out of here right now, it's over." "Ha! I've gathered quite a few fragments now, you know? I can handle any amount of riffraff." "It's not riffraff. It's the Bald Unit." "......? Sorry, I think I have a momentary hearing problem from battle aftershocks. Say that again." "The Bald Unit is coming." Qiana thought. Give me back my serious moment.