Chapter 447: Chapter-447
She let out a long, highly dissatisfied sigh, tying her hair up into a tight, aggressive bun. "I hate relying on your shop. Every single item looks flashy but has a dozen hidden conditions. No. Close the screen. We are doing this the old-fashioned, brutal way."
[But Host, the Regressor is coming in less than an hour! We don’t have time to build a massive, complex mechanical trap!]
"Who said anything about complex?" Heena muttered, her eyes narrowing as she looked back at the empty, massive hall. "The best traps aren’t the ones that try to fight the enemy. The best traps are the ones that use the enemy’s own arrogance against them.
Heena snapped her attention back to the battalion commander, who was still waiting like an immovable statue of black iron.
"Commander," Heena said, her voice dropping to a low, authoritative whisper. "I am going to personally oversee the setup of the main hall. I need your absolute best structural engineers and trapsmiths. We are going to rig the entrance. When he steps through that doorway, he won’t just find a graveyard—he is going to walk straight into a meat grinder."
"It shall be done exactly as you command, My Lady," the commander replied, his eyes burning with a terrifying, dark anticipation. "The men are ready to play their parts. They will look like a battalion of corpses until you give the signal to strike."
Fifty minutes flew by in a blur of chaotic preparation.
The massive, torch-lit central hall of the fortress was transformed into a macabre theater. Two hundred and fifty elite soldiers, completely armored but stripped of their helmets, lay scattered across the stone floor in terrifyingly realistic positions of agony. Some were slumped over benches, others lay sprawled across the long dining tables, and dozens were curled on the ground, their faces smeared with a specialized gray ash paste to give them the hollow, lifeless look of victims of ’Viper’s Sigh’.
Up in the shadows of the high, vaulted stone rafters, the remaining fifty soldiers hung silently, their heavy, armor-piercing crossbows loaded and aimed directly at the kill zone.
Heena herself stood behind a massive stone pillar near the dais at the far end of the hall, concealed by a heavy velvet tapestry. She checked the countdown timer floating in the corner of her vision.
Fourteen minutes left.
The heavy, suffocating silence inside the fortress was deafening. The only sound was the crackle of a few deliberate torches left burning low to cast long, eerie shadows across the "corpses" of the battalion.
Suddenly, a sharp, icy chill swept through the underground caverns. The temperature in the room dropped instantly, causing Heena’s breath to form a faint mist in the air.
’[Host!]’ the System whispered in her mind, its digital voice trembling with an unprecedented level of urgency. ’[He’s here. He just breached the outer perimeter wards. He didn’t even use a key—he just walked right through the defensive barriers. His energy signature is... it’s completely off the charts. He’s moving toward the main hall right now!]’
Heena tightened her grip on the hilt of her hidden dagger, her heart hammering against her ribs. She took a slow, deep breath, silencing her own presence.
’Thud.’
’Thud.’
A slow, unhurried, echoing footstep echoed from the long, dark corridor outside the main hall. The footsteps didn’t sound like those of an infiltrator; they sounded like a conqueror walking into his own domain.
The heavy, iron-reinforced doors at the end of the hall didn’t just open—they exploded inward, the massive iron hinges snapping like toothpicks. A thick cloud of dust and debris rolled into the room, and standing right in the center of the ruined doorway was a tall, shadowed silhouette.
The Regressor had arrived.
Heena looked away from the shattered doorway for a split second to scan the main hall one last time. The sight almost made her lips twitch. The soldiers were sprawled over the long tables, collapsed on the cold stone floor, with dark, un-coagulated blood smeared realistically near their mouths. Half-eaten food and overturned chalices were scattered everywhere in a perfect simulation of sudden, violent chaos.
A few of the veterans lay perfectly still with their eyes wide open, staring fixedly toward the entrance without so much as a single blink. It was a genuinely macabre, unsettling sight.
’If these men ever get bored of the military,’ Heena thought bitterly, ’they could easily conquer the theater industry. What a waste of raw dramatic talent.’
But the dark humor vanished from her mind the exact moment the heavy dust cleared from the threshold.
Heena was currently perched high above the ground, hidden tightly within the shadows of a sloping roof beam. From her vantage point, she had a perfect, unobstructed view of the intruder. She braced herself to see the face of the monstrous Regressor she had spent hours calculating against—but when her eyes landed on him, her breath caught entirely in her throat.
The man was dressed in dark, unassuming night clothes, clearly meant for stealth. But that wasn’t what froze the blood in Heena’s veins. It was the intricate, silver-threaded embroidery shimmering faintly under the dim torchlight on his chest.
The Imperial crest. The unmistakable insignia of the Royal Family.
A fierce, white-hot rage blazed in Heena’s eyes, her knuckles turning stark white as she gripped the wooden beam. She forced her breathing to remain shallow and silent, deliberately forcing down the spike of adrenaline. She focused her vision, sharpening her gaze to pierce through the gloom.
The man’s face was largely obscured, but as he tilted his head to look down at the "massacred" battalion, the light caught his eyes.
They were a piercing, vibrant, crystalline blue.
A wave of cold clarity washed over Heena. She didn’t need to see the rest of his face. In the entire history of the current dynasty, there was only one royal prince born with those exact, striking blue eyes: the Seventh Prince.
’Are you kidding me?’ Heena thought, her heart hammering against her ribs, not out of fear, but from sheer, unadulterated fury.
Even though she was relatively new to the political landscape of the capital, she had made it a point to study the imperial roster. The rumors surrounding the Seventh Prince were textbook tragic royal drama—he was the son of a low-born concubine, a woman who had conveniently died a long time ago under the "mysterious" circumstances usually orchestrated by the reigning Empress. Because of his lack of backing, the Seventh Prince was widely reported to be a frail, sickly non-threat who spent ninety percent of his life confined to his bedchambers, coughing up blood.
Yet here he was. Standing completely upright, exuding a suffocating, monstrous aura, and stepping over the "corpses" of her grandfather’s elite soldiers.
The sickly, bedridden prince was the Regressor.
The sheer audacity of the deception made Heena’s chest tighten with a burning, volatile anger. This bastard wasn’t just rewriting timelines; he was playing the ultimate victim in the capital while acting as a cold-blooded executioner in the dark.
Down below, the Seventh Prince sneered, his blue eyes completely devoid of interest or remorse as he surveyed the silent, poisoned hall. He took another slow, arrogant step forward, entirely convinced that his future knowledge had delivered him another effortless victory.
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