NOVEL NEXT Chapter 116: Intoxicated State
When Caroline received the request from Leonard to use her array to safeguard the female dancers, her expression turned unsightly.
She narrowed her eyes and hissed, "You've been eyeing my flags for quite a while."
"How could that be?" Leonard appeared to be shocked by the accusation. "I'm only worried about their safety. If you don't want to protect them, then so be it. I'll just have to use myself as bait."
"..."
Caroline was rendered speechless.
She had never seen such a shameless noble at that kind of level before.
He was the Crown Prince of Aldros, someone who could easily obtain anything as long as he desired.
Yet such a person was vying for her treasures!
Amidst the silent tension between the two, Shirley pursed her lips and said, "There's no need to worry about our safety, Sir. We will do our best to keep up and not become a burden."
With Shirley taking the lead, Sirena and Sophie glanced at each other before nodding.
They swiftly followed along and said, "We know how to survive. There's no need to waste any resources on us."
Only Cheryl and Claudia remained silent, albeit for a different reason. Cheryl had no right to speak, considering her circumstances. As for Claudia, she didn't require any protection, even if she might be magic circleless now.
Despite their intention to not burden Leonard, they failed to realize he was merely using them as a pretext to snatch the Fivefold Isolation Array.
He wanted to study them and possibly reverse engineer them to produce many more of such arrays.
'Whatever, it's not good to idle here for long.' He shook his head and ultimately dropped the matter. Instead, he started pacing his way to where Mirelle had gone.
Up ahead was the original blissful atmosphere in the street of Velastra, which was now replaced by a grim scenery. City guards were doing their best to confront the berserk slaves, and corpses lay everywhere.
The majority of the corpses belonged to commoners or people without much status.
Their bodies were all dried up, their blood being drained completely, essentially creating the appearance of some dried tree-like plants.
'How have things changed so drastically?' Mirelle frowned at the numerous dried corpses scattered across the street.
As Mirelle hastened her pace, she soon arrived at the source of the earlier cry.
She expanded her magical perception and quickly spotted a towering man with chain-marked wrists staggering forward.
He had foam trailing from the corner of his mouth. His eyes were bloodshot and veined with streaks of black darting wildly, his breath coming out in ragged and beastlike snarls.
"The berserk slave is human this time…" Mirelle muttered. The previous time was of the werewolf and other monster races. She didn't anticipate that even the human slaves would turn berserk in such a crazed state.
While Mirelle was confused by the ordeal, the situation turned weirder.
"More… more human blood!" The slave roared, his voice breaking into a guttural laugh. His words were slurred, almost as if their consciousness had been devoured by an unknown substance.
While the berserk human slave appeared agitated from not having enough blood, there were a few crates of boxes from afar. Behind the crates of boxes were three women who had taken cover to hide from the scene.
The three of them were dressed in simple linen, with each of them holding baskets that had long since spilled their fruits across the cobblestones.
They were quiet and tried their best to wait until the berserk human slave exited the vicinity.
Unfortunately, their quietness couldn't possibly conceal their fragrance.
In the blink of an eye, the berserk human's gaze had darted upon them after sniffing their presence.
"Hehehe, there you are!" The man grinned wildly, but it was no longer the grin of anything human.
Upon spotting the long-desired prey, his skin began to stretch unnaturally tight over his face, with veins crawling beneath like writhing worms.
One of his eyes bulged grotesquely, the other shrank into a pinprick of yellow madness. As he moved, the sounds of bones grinding against each other echoed faintly, his spine extending out at rough angles as though it might tear through his back at any moment.
There was saliva dripping from his cracked lips in thick ropes. His teeth were splintered into sharp shards. The stench of sweat, blood, and whatever foul substance coursed through his veins radiated from him in a suffocating wave.
He was now in an intoxicated state!
"Don't be afraid, people. It'll be over soon. I'll just need your precious blood to sustain." He wanted to convince them that the process would be painless, but their expression depicted the opposite.
When the women saw his appearance and his advancement toward them.
They froze like startled deer as the berserk slave stomped closer. The dangling sounds of chains from one of his arms, where the shackle had broken, haunted them at each passing second.
"No…please, someone help us!" one woman cried, clutching her basket closer to her chest. The basket offered little to no protection, but that was the best they could do.
In response to their screams, the man's grin widened.
"Hehe, keep screaming!" He lunged forward with the erratic speed of a predator.
What excited him was the screams of tears. It was like a beautiful melody being played in his ears.
As the man closed the gap between them, he opened his mouth to an unbelievable wideness that no human should be possible.
The woman trembled in fright, incapable of moving even a muscle. The only thing they saw was the darkness of the mouth that threatened to consume them whole.
One of them directly fainted, their mouth leaking white foam. Another woman kept trembling, covering their head with the basket. Only the final woman attempted to throw some of her fruit at the man's mouth in hopes of stopping the process.
Their desperate struggles and reaction caused the man to be energized.
They bit down, believing that a gush of delicious blood would run down their dried throat.
However, they didn't actually feel the sensation of human flesh.
Confused, the man opened his eyes, only to notice that his teeth were being trapped between a transparent barrier.
"Berserk-like state… constant craving for blood… and a disgusting desire to witness their opponents' struggle. This is surely one unsightly event." Mirelle emerged from behind. Her barrier had effectively safeguarded the three women from death.