The Banshee

The doll was growing weary.

After felling 579 cockroaches, 1343 spiders, and nearly hundreds of hideously ugly monsters that would mar any cityscape, she finally felt a flicker of annoyance.

Her delicate brows furrowed as rampant magic surged from her Nightmare Scythe, utterly annihilating the grotesque aberrations charging at her, reducing them to mere ash.

Pallid, ethereal demonic flames, burning fiercely yet chilling to the bone, encircled her.

They made the doll appear as a devil monarch, descended from purgatory, slaughtering all in sight and surveying her dominion with disdain within a castle teeming with creatures of all kinds.

With a final, wretched shriek, the foul creatures drawn by the commotion in Cainhurst Castle were finally vanquished.

A brief silence settled over the library.

She exhaled slowly.

The heat generated within her body from the mana conduits channeling magical energy escaped through her mouth, forming a scorching mist that instantly condensed in the frigid, negative-energy-suffused air.

It enveloped the doll’s head, leaving only two points of crimson light visible.

“Um… Lady Sally, are you alright?”

Harriet, nestled in Alger’s embrace, timidly gazed at the crimson points representing the doll’s eyes beneath the swirling mist.

“Hmph… I’m fine. Just a little displeased. The abilities of these malevolent deities are truly disgusting. They lure and amplify the darkness within one’s heart to control the mind, then use their corrupted magic to influence the body. Especially their kin’s ability to spread their filth—it’s utterly… but it has little effect on me, merely a touch of negative emotion.”

The Saint’s unsullied nature activated.

The negative emotions, spreading from the vanquished monsters, melted away like snow, dispelled by the pure concept of a Saint before they could even touch the doll’s body.

A true Saint embodies the highest principles, a manifestation of cosmic rules, and a wielder of pure concepts.

Their mind and body are translucent, unblemished, and unyielding, impervious to any foreign contamination.

These corrupting emotions, which would profoundly infect others, were utterly negligible to the doll.

Shaking her head, the high-temperature steam shrouding her head slowly dissipated.

A pair of serene, elegant silver-grey eyes calmed Harriet’s agitated emotions once more.

Ah!!!!!!

Yet, just as the three were about to settle down for a rest, a sudden, piercing shriek from a woman echoed throughout the entire second-floor library!

Only the doll remained unaffected. The two within her barrier felt their scalps prickle and their vision swam with darkness.

Alger, the weakest among them, instantly had two trails of blood stream from his nostrils.

For a vampire, blood loss was an irreversible, severe injury.

That single shriek had actually gravely wounded a vampiric noble renowned for his strong regenerative abilities!

“Alger! Are you alright!!”

The girl with wine-red hair frantically helped her companion, whose legs had turned to jelly.

“It’s a Banshee’s Wail!”

Sally’s eyes sharpened.

With a wave of her hand, she instantly cast another comprehensive, pale green barrier—a Life Barrier—outside the pale blue shield already protecting the wine-red-haired girl who was supporting Alger.

“Your companion is mostly fine; his soul merely trembled, causing some minor physical injuries… Stay safely within the barrier! Don’t run around! Things are getting a bit troublesome now…”

Ignoring the girl’s flustered protest from within the barrier, Sally stared intently at the spiral staircase leading to the third floor of the library.

Countless translucent, pale blue specters swarmed down from the opening at the top of the stairs, some leaping, some walking, some flying.

In moments, the library, which had just been cleared, was occupied by a horde of Soul-Lost Banshees clad in tattered maid uniforms.

The dense negative energy emanating from the spectral forms instantly dropped the room’s temperature to freezing, and white frost began to spread.

The doll’s eyes, the only part visible through her black Demon Hunter’s attire, scanned the slowly approaching banshees.

Their translucent bodies, the maid uniforms they wore, the faces contorted with venomous despair beneath their tangled, disheveled hair, and the overwhelming negative energy they exuded—the doll finally understood the fate of the maidservants she hadn’t seen throughout the castle.

“Harriet, look closely at these banshees. Do you recognize any of them? Stay calm!”

It was clear. The expressions of disbelief and panic on the former Lady Princess’s personal maid’s face were enough to confirm the banshees’ identity: the original maidservants of Cainhurst Castle.

‘Just another reason to kill you,’ the doll thought, ‘you unknown malevolent deity.’

Soul-Lost Banshees, simply put, are undead creatures created by torturing living women to death, extracting their resentment-filled souls, and then crafting them with necromantic magic.

The more pain and despair they experienced before death, the stronger the banshee’s magical power.

Observing the magical fluctuations from these maidservants, and the bloodstains and tattered state of their uniforms…

A cold glint flickered in the doll’s eyes.

Regardless, you unknown malevolent deity, you are utterly doomed!

Roar! Roar! Roar!!!

The nearest maidservant’s revenant could no longer suppress its hunger for fresh souls.

It parted its torn mouth, let out a roar with a long tongue extended, then lunged at the doll with withered, deformed claws resembling gnarled wicker baskets.

One moved, all moved. Instantly, all the banshees surged forward.

Soul-shaking roars, terrifying claws rending flesh, and greyish-white cursed auras that drained life energy all assailed the doll and the two within her barrier.

The two hidden within the barrier turned ashen, staring blankly and helplessly at the malicious faces that instantly covered the shield.

Meanwhile, Sally, standing before them, remained as unyielding as a proud, black reef amidst a blue tide, enduring the continuous onslaught of the maidservant revenants without a single tremor.

Though every attack that connected with the doll was blocked by a thin, misty shield, her black Demon Hunter’s attire still fluttered and swayed from the impacts.

Just as the two within the barrier felt their hearts pound in their throats with worry, the doll, who had been silent until now, finally spoke.

“I… am annoyed. You lurking insect, do you find this entertaining?”

She slammed the massive, mist-shrouded scythe she held.

Its sharp hilt tip plunged into the opulent, decaying marble floor, and small white flowers began to sprout from the stone where it touched, spreading outward.

Dreamlike tendrils of mist moved with these tiny white blooms, slowly and inexorably.

Floors, walls, bookshelves, bas-reliefs—the white flowers spread like a pervasive virus, soon covering every surface.

The banshees, enveloped by their touch, froze instantly, either in place or mid-air, their eyes blank and vacant, like remote-controlled toy cars that had lost their signal.

As all the banshees stiffened, a roar of inhuman fury and alarm echoed in the minds of the three.

‘Finally, you can’t hide any longer… you lurking insect.’

The doll’s eyes were utterly frigid, like millennia-old ice.

“I was originally afraid you’d escape, intending to make my move gradually without alarming you, but… you’ve truly annoyed me.”

Space rippled. Five Soul-Guiding Lamps, burning with an eerie blue flame, appeared before the doll, arranged in a five-pointed star formation.

A pure white magical array, using them as mana nodes, began to slowly materialize.

“Especially this army of maidservants you’ve created… it truly displeases me. Are you enjoying toying with others’ souls so much?”

Even as a devil once highly skilled in luring and corrupting souls, the doll had never resorted to such twisted, insane acts against anyone.

She had always held an inexplicable reverence for the crystallization of will and emotion—the soul—which was the last vestige of her pride and self-discipline from her time as a human.

Therefore, now gazing at the banshees whose eyes still held despairing wails deep within, the doll’s killing intent toward the unknown malevolent deity had reached its peak.

The Soul-Guiding Lamps and the magical array began to spin, creating a powerful suction that instantly drew the uncontrolled banshees, like swallows returning to their nest, into the center of the rapidly rotating array.

“So what? Flee? Ah ha ha ha… How utterly laughable, you pathetic little insects! Who granted you the audacity to mock a great deity? Unforgivable!”

Accompanied by a supernatural ticking sound, words imbued with unspeakable shadows abruptly resounded in the three’s minds.

Whispers of ultimate malice and corruption filled the air, instilling immense terror while simultaneously conjuring the image of a colossal figure traversing the starry void.

A fusion of transparency and shadow, it was a grotesque amalgamation of countless tentacles and gaping maws, imbued with attributes of frenzied greed, devoid of any beauty, possessing only an overwhelming aura of terror and malevolence.

At that moment, it was at its zenith, scornfully mocking these three presumptuous insects.

The doll’s brows furrowed. Her vast, ocean-like spiritual power instantly surged like a tide, shattering the malevolent intent attempting to probe her mind.

Simultaneously, the mental defenses she had already placed on the two within the barrier activated autonomously, restoring clarity to their two pairs of blood-red eyes that had grown somewhat vacant.

“Oh ho ho ho, little insects, quite resourceful, aren’t you? But that’s what makes it fun!!! To enhance the amusement of this game… this is my boon! Accept it, then weep tears of gratitude!”

A subtle psychic assault from the void, carrying corrupt malevolence and an inexplicable aura, struck the doll!

Splish!

Like popping a small water balloon, viscous, crimson blood oozed from between the fingers of the doll’s left hand, tightly gripping her black-gloved palm.

“Ah!! You, you despicable wretch!! How dare you refuse the boon of a supreme existence like myself!!! You!”

The twisted, arrogant voice in their minds held a hint of disbelief and uncertainty, but it was predominantly filled with the fury of an insect daring to bite its finger.

The doll flicked away the liquid from her hand, her gaze cold and indifferent as she looked at the empty space above, as if someone were truly there.

“I respectfully decline your filthy gift imbued with corrupted divinity. A ‘boon’? More like malicious poison, wouldn’t you agree?”

Staring into the void, her eyes utterly frigid, the doll let out a scornful laugh.

“Silence your incessant chatter, unknown malevolent deity… are you prepared to be torn to shreds by me?”