Evolution: From Little Devil to Devil Empress

"Not much has taken place over the past week. The riot of the beasts continues, and the beasts' attacks on the city have never stopped."

"However, following the Duchess's orders, no noble has stepped forward so far. The strategy has remained the same: to use the lives of ordinary soldiers to kill the strongest of the beasts."

Alpha's voice echoed in Liora's ears as she gave a general report of what had happened recently.

"But Miss Eleanor seems very unwilling. There were a couple of times that she was ready to take action. Fortunately, the other Black Tulip members managed to stop her in time."

While Liora nodded her head from time to time to show that she understood, her two hands moved mechanically, continuously grabbing objects from the side and placing them in front of her.

If anyone else were here to take a look, they would discover that Liora was currently standing in front of a white metal table.

On the table, the body of a dead True Knight could be seen lying, with his eyes closed.

Liora's hands moved with precision as she opened the corpse's skin with a thin scalpel.

Then, just when Alpha had finished giving her report, she took a drop of blood out of the Space Orb and brought it to reality.

With a flick of her fingers, the blood shot onto the wound, merging with the corpse and fully integrating into it.

Immediately, the aura of the corpse began growing stronger.

From an ordinary True Knight, it quickly jumped to the peak of that rank and showed no signs of stopping.

However, Liora didn't show much excitement.

She knew that the hard part was only now coming. Most likely, the experiment would fail next.

Indeed, just when it seemed that the corpse would undergo a transformation and become a Great Knight, a switch seemed to have been turned on.

The lifeless body began elongating like a rubber balloon.

The next moment, a bang—the corpse exploded.

Blood and body parts flew everywhere, ready to make a mess out of the room.

Liora waved her hand just in time and manipulated her demonic energy to suppress the explosion.

As if time itself was turning back, the blood and other parts returned to the operating table, one stacked neatly on top of each other.

Liora was neither happy nor sad about the experiment's failure.

Reaching to the side, she picked up a small notebook and, using an ink pen, she began writing.

...

"Experiment No. 28. The process went as predicted at the start. But the subject's body had an intense reaction when integrating the beasts' blood. Like fire meeting water, it was unable to withstand the impact."

...

There were many similar records above this one, numbering from one to twenty-seven.

Clearly, Liora had not been idle over the past week.

Although she had not participated in the ongoing war—only coming out from time to time to collect souls—she had been quite busy.

And her goal was clear—to find a way to become a King of Knights.

"I can be certain that my theory is correct. Just like Knights accommodate the Bloodline Seed to undergo a transformation and thus advance, they can also accommodate the blood of beasts. However, it seems that a link is missing."

"The blood of beasts is too corrosive. Ordinary humans cannot withstand its impact upon integrating. That holds true even for Knights.", Liora thought as she placed the instruments aside.

"Perhaps it's because of my lack of knowledge regarding the rank itself. If I had the experience of reaching the King of Knights rank, I would be able to understand what went wrong."

But this created a paradox.

To become a King of Knights, Liora had to understand what was wrong and complete her experiments.

But to understand what was wrong, she had to first become a King of Knights.

"The only other way I can think of to enrich my knowledge is to observe the process of someone else becoming a King of Knights."

However, this was also nearly impossible.

The people who were qualified to advance were very rare.

The only such person that she could come into contact with at the moment was Duchess Lobelia.

Thinking of this, Liora had the impulse to go and kidnap the Duchess before putting her on the operating table and turning her into an experimental subject.

But she eventually suppressed that impulse.

She might not be afraid of the Duchess, but behind her stood the Iron Armor Empire.

If the Duchess went missing, the beasts would flatten the city sooner or later and would then invade the Empire's mainland.

This was bound to alarm the highest levels of the Empire.

Most likely, a King of Knights would personally step forward and investigate what had happened. At that time, Liora's life would be in danger.

"It seems that I can only wait for now..."

"Such is life. Sometimes, you have to wait for a suitable opportunity...", Liora sighed and shook her head.

After she gave a couple more instructions to Alpha and ordered her to keep paying attention and search for any news, Liora entered the Space Orb.

As soon as she appeared in the wide expanse, the many corpses hidden within it were revealed.

Unlike last time, the corpses now had all reached the Great Knight rank and were incredibly powerful.

Although Liora's experiments had not gone as well as she wanted, the rest of her plans had gone smoothly.

Over the past week, she had entered the Ancient Beast Wilderness many times to hunt, and these corpses were the spoils of her battles.

Unfortunately, Liora had not completely let go and conducted a massacre.

The threat brought by the unknown person who had previously targeted her was still fresh in her mind.

Thus, she didn't dare to go too deep into the wilderness.

Most of the time, she only entered the forest for a couple of hours, slaughtering a Great Knight beast and escaping quickly.

"But this is good enough for now.", Liora thought, and, with a wave of her hand, the corpses scattered all over the demi-plane exploded.

Their essence gathered and floated towards her, soon turning into pure energy that enhanced her strength.

Liora could sense that her strength had taken another step forward.

If the Great Knight rank was divided into four stages—Early, Middle, Late, and Peak—then she would have reached the Late Stage and was rapidly approaching the Peak.

Of course, ranks were not divided like that in this world.

This was merely a concept created by Liora in order to better keep track of her progress.