Leave a comment

The Demoness Abode, since its inception, had always been the best refuge for orphans and women in distress. Over the years, Ancarin and Regine were unceasing in their grooming of these future faithful.

Those who came to the Demoness Abode were all desperate women and children. Every so often, Regine would patrol the nearby human cities, recruiting fresh blood for the Abode, and also cleaning the streets of people who did not sit right with her.

While her actions might not seem like the actions of a demoness, and more like a wandering heroine, her intentions were to recruit more faithful for Mo Ke.

Mo Ke was a devil with three Original Sins, and was even blessed with the bloodline of Lucifer. Even if he might not be aware of this yet, his noble bloodline had afforded him some degree of divinity, like being able to bestow his grace upon his faithful.

Naturally, such mundane matters had always been handled by the freeloader in Mo Ke’s body, Ferti’nier. In truth, Mo Ke did not even know how strong his bestowed grace actually was. He merely knew that, under certain circumstances, those who believed in him were afforded power… and that was it.

The reason for the Abode’s existence was to recruit and groom new demonesses who worshiped Mo Ke, and were willing to offer up their lives and soul for him. Thanks to that, most of its inhabitants had been blessed with power.

For the vast majority of deities, the power they bestow followed a theme that had to do with the domain they governed. The Goddess of Life would bestow healing powers onto her faithful, so on and so forth.

However, Mo Ke was different in that he had three Original Sins on him. His innate ability, Consciousness Impartment, could be said to be the closest ability to the primal source of the world. Thanks to that, the powers the inhabitants of the Abode received were varied. Basically every ability under the sun, barring Light-related ones, and the truly obscure ones. Dimensional abilities were manifested; elemental abilities, even psychic ones.

The Abode had been slowly expanding in its native region, and with the power it held, became a faction in its own right, not yet major, but not minor either.

Thanks to how discrete the Abode’s operations had been, the major factions within Tarnia had only managed to glean the most basic of information on the Abode. They had tried multiple times to rectify this lack of information, but each time, they were the ones who had suffered losses instead. After all, the core of the Abode were females, meaning the spies that could be sent were only females. However, these spies would eventually become brainwashed, leading to a change in allegiances.

While Ferti’nier was still a body-less soul, she was no pushover either. Putting aside her inordinately long life, she herself had managed to dissect the laws of the world on Gaia. Her abilities weren’t something that these mortals could ever hope to comprehend.

For the most part, the Abode had laid low. There weren’t any large actions by them, so rather than being an upcoming major power, they were more like hermits.

With time, most people lost interest in this mysterious faction. Other than the odd noble fool who heard rumors of how many beautiful women there were in the Abode, but they were prone to mysterious disappearances. Given that these were fools to begin with, not much fuss was kicked up after their disappearances either..

Yet not all was rainbows and sunshine for the Abode. There existed a weak link in this chain of solidarity. And its name was Ann. The same little girl who Mo Ke rescued during his last trip to the Western Human Realms. The sole survivor he and Nicole rescued from that doomed village.

The unfortunate truth was that the girl he rescued had already been possessed by that evil witch, having sensed her own demise some time in advance. She split her soul in two, hiding one half in Ann’s body.

Ever since assuming control of little Ann, she had kept quiet, all because of that single knowing look that Ferti’nier gave her when she was in charge of Mo Ke’s body.

Two years of laying low. Two years spent currying favor with Regine and Ancarin. Two years spent befriending little Nari and Hayley. As proof of her efforts, her status within the Abode was quite substantial, despite her young age. Those two little scamps were basically the equivalent of the crown prince in the Abode, thus her identity as their playmates had some spillover effects as well.

Mo Ke hadn’t shown himself in the past two years. Neither Ancarin nor Regine had received a single message from him, as if he had completely vanished from the face of this world.

Under such circumstances, little Ann started to act up. She was planning to cause a stir, and a big one at that!

Taking out the communication crystal she kept hidden in her room, her lips parted into a devious grin, completely at odds with her child-like appearance. “Let’s see if you have really disappeared…”

—City of Mo Ke’s Trail—

Ever since that fateful separation with Mo Ke, the ragtag band of devils he led through the Prison of the Dead had banded together in the mysterious Abaddon, founding a city known as Mo Ke’s Trail.

Their main objective, as the name would suggest, was to find Mo Ke. He was the string tying these disparate clans together, so searching for him was of the utmost importance.

Right now, the head of the three harpy witches, Numila Blaze was chairing a meeting within the city. At attendance were her two sisters, Elena Frost and Eugenia Tempest. Not only that, the other heads of the city were present as well. Like the stern-but-absolutely-not-threatening Violet Snow, who still had the body of a tiny newborn puppy, and thus could only sit atop the stone roundtable, lest she was ignored due to being too small.

She was a mixed-blood, born of both the Gehenna Ice Wolves and the Hellhounds clan. With an innately strong talent in Ice magicks, plus the recognition of the Hellhound clan, she was the alpha wolf of the hellhounds within the city… perhaps, alpha puppy would have been more accurate.

LINK HERE