Everyone in the hall was relaxed, not even a single worry was in any mind of the upper-class officials.

Except for the two, the Grand Noble and the saintess, after the saintess accepted his invitation, they both smiled at each other and processed to slowly walked together, they greeted everyone in their way, until they finally arrived at the peaceful garden.

The two leisurely sat down on the chairs, each using their own mean to protected themselves from getting spied on.

After a little bit of chatting about their everyday life, they both told their servants to go and rest.

The servants knew the meaning behind their words, they quickly expressed their gratitude and walked away while chatting with their friends.

They sat quietly, admiring the scenery before them.

"Your Highness, how is my daughter doing?"

Aceros was the first person who spoke.

No ripple of emotion could be detected on his face.

The saintess' face tensed up, but she hid it perfectly.

"She is doing well, sir Aceros, she will grow to be the wonderful priest."

The saintess smiled subtly, enough for him to notice.

She will be ours.

"Also, sir Aceros, please call me by my name, Alita."

There was a hint of sadness in her beautiful voice when she said her name.

You want everyone to know that we are close to other?

I must not yield to her provocation.

"Miss Alita, for you to personally help my miserable daughter and properly taught her, I must thank you."

Aceros said casually, not minding about his daughter at all.

The mistress was astonished, how could someone be so heartless.

"I must warn you, there are many demi-humans roaming around the empire, please be cautious when your next family head went out to the wildness."

She decided to threaten the stability of Grand Noble's family.

Work with us, or there will be next victim.

The Grand Noble sneered, he took a sip of his tea gently.

"I will keep your advice in mind, miss Alita."

You could try.

After archiving his goals, he tapped his blue ring lightly, the faint light shone from the ring.

The maid of Manedis family quickly walked in, she elegantly picked both of the saintess and Grand Noble's cup and refilled them again with nicely done tea.

She then processed to stand right behind her master without doing anything else.

Her act signified the end of this ominous meeting.

But the two continued to talk for quite some time, the tropics of their conversation were relaxing, no one mentioned anything about their previous discussion.

Unbeknownst to the relaxed Alita, a tiny red orb had been placed on her uniform when the professional assassin handed the teacup to her.

The Grand Noble's scheme had only just begun.

After the saintess excused herself to leave, the vicious Aceros laid himself back, allowing the sense of amusement to overwhelm him while thinking about the unavoidable downfall of the evil maiden.

...

After an unknown amount of time had been wasted, the Blood Emperor, the Grand Archmage, the first prince and the second princess stood in the middle of the Storage of Disaster.

"Father, there are too many artefacts, we must spend at least a day to completely check all of them."

The second princess said to her father.

She felt sad, she couldn't even help her father.

"Lord Mage, how is your progress on the Book of Learning?"

The first prince instead asked the old mage who was immersed in his world.

"This thing is marvellous, within it contained the truth of nature, not even the ruin of Great Sages from the Ancient Era had this amount of knowledge."

The mage urge to study the book was uncontrollable.

As the Grand Archmage continued to immerse in his world, the Blood Emperor walked toward him, he stood in front of the crazed mage.

"Do you still remember the promise?"

With only one vague sentence, the mage instantly stopped studying the book.

His eyes were clouded by the memory of the past, his hands were trembling.

He gazed toward the emperor.

"Sorry, old friend, I may have lost my mind back then, but I will not lose it again."

He smiled at the emperor, feeling thankful for his warning.

The mage closed his book and shook his head.

"There was nothing that could turn the tide of the war in this book, they are impossible to accomplish, at the moment, I am too weak."

Although they were prepared, they still surprised at the power of thing from the myth.

Surely that in the myth, the Grand Archmage was nothing special, but they couldn't imagine the impossible world beyond the Ancient Era.

"However, when I break through to the next rank, I will be able to learn more about this book, a lot of its knowledge had been sealed away."

The mage felt regretful.

I need more power to become stronger quickly.

The mage shook his head slightly, trying to get the obsessive thought out of his head.

"So, is there anything that could potentially help us?"

The three then looked at the emperor.

"We could use the Withered Ghost to control and influence their important figures' decisions, but, we have no way to get near them.

"The Rainstorm is also useful on the battlefield, being able to transform the landscape freely will let us win the battle, again, this strategy could only be used once, with them prepared, this artefact will become useless.

"In the end, there was nothing that could help us turn the tide, it could either be used once, or we couldn't meet the requirement to use it."

The emperor explained some of the artefacts to the three.

"But the biggest issues are that we have too few people that are qualified to be here."

There are only four figures that could be in here, all of them could be trust and will never let this secret out.

But four wasn't the big number, for the empire to rise again, four figures were definitely not enough.

Only the being with intellectual that rivalled the Great Emperors of the past could archive this miracle.

After the discussion ended, everyone gazed toward the colourful gate that presumably will lead them toward the next Wonder.

There was the unimaginable aura leaked out of the gate, everyone who felt the aura would think that the thing before them was the Gate toward the deepest Hell.

The Blood Emperor was the first one to walk toward the gate, he was followed closely by the Grand Archmage.

The prince and princess stood there silently, they were intimidated by the sinister gate.

But soon they remembered that only the mage could protect them from the corruption of the soul, they quickly ran toward the mage.

Each step toward the Gate felt like an eternity would have passed, with every step taken, one would see the countless life extinguished, see the ancient civilization crumbled to their doom, see the greatest men fallen to their demise.

Every time they took a step, the whispers in their head would become louder, telling them their darkest secrets, telling them about their suffering, the voices would sometimes become lovely, enticing those who heard it and seducing them to their death, sometimes become fiendish, twisted their sense of self and turned them into the lifeless monstrosity.

When a step had been taken, the world around them slowly lost its colour and liveliness, turning into the greyish world of the death, the crystals that were originally colourful dimmed down, they faintly unleashed the blood-red light.

As everyone was absent-mind, slowly losing all their senses and quietly engulfed in the devilish illusion, the Book of Learning within the mage grasped shone the golden light brightly, the Blood Emperor and the Grand Archmage were the first to regain their sanity, they soon realised what they had been through, with their trembling hands and pale face, they quickly walked over to check the first prince and princess.

Seeing that the two were only unconscious, both the emperor and the mage collapsed onto the ground, looking suspiciously toward the Book of Learning.

"Is there anything mentioned this in that book?"

The emperor then turned to the mage, hoping for something.

The mage shook his head.

"Although there is nothing like this mentioned in the book, this should be the same type as Whisper of the Dark."

"You mean the curse within the Record of Unusual Curse?"

The Whisper of the Dark, the unknown curse that was recorded as the Destroyer of the Nation ranking, the Record of Unusual Curse itself was found within the vault of the ancient ruin, stated to be the legend within the said era.

The curse will corrupt those unfortunate ones and will keep spreading to another person, effectively corrupt the entire nation, transformed them all into the monsters.

"Anything could happen within the Forbidden Palace, if we didn't have the Book of Learning, we would have doomed our nation already."

With such notion in their mind, the two decided to wait for their descendants to wake up before doing anything.

It didn't take too long before the first prince and the second princess regain their consciousness, but the two needed some adjustment from the previous encounter with the curse.

"Father, what should we do now?"

The first prince asked their father for the solution.

"We will risk for the final time and opened the next gate."

The emperor said seriously.

Everyone was determined to do everything for the empire already, even if it meant that they will suffer the wicked torture.

A sentence was constructed by the random runes again, but this time, the symbols were distorted, they shook violently for some time, then abruptly stopped as if nothing had happened.

The blood-red sentence could barely be translated.

A soul as a key,

A soul for the empire,

A misfortune came with a fortune,

A suffering as a key,

A pain for the peace,

The second princess then stepped forward, she was willing to sacrifice herself for the empire, but mostly to impress her father.

The first prince tried to stop her, but she shook her head, determined to do it herself.

She pulled out a short dagger, cut herself and let her blood dropped down into the dark hole that appeared below the distorted sentence.

The Storage of Disaster shook violently.