Extraordinary Rise: Starting Contract with the Silver Dragon Countess

Jialin gazed at the orb of light and said softly:
"Before Gaius died, he had a strong tendency to destroy his own will."

The soul almost self-destructed, and very few memory fragments could be forcibly extracted and preserved.

Moreover, most of them are fragmented. Try to find anything of value among these remaining fragments of memory.

Cohen nodded solemnly and reached out to take the warm, golden orb.

The moment his fingertips touched the sphere of light, the magic power that had been contained within him surged forth like a torrent awakening.

With his eyes closed, his powerful mental energy flowed seamlessly into the depths of the sphere of light.

The next moment, countless chaotic and blurry images and emotional torrents, sometimes clear and sometimes fragmented, rushed into Cohen's perception like a flood bursting its banks.

Those were the lingering marks of Gaius Cromwell's life—the greed for power, the despair of defeat, the hidden fears, the twisted ambitions…

Countless fragments of memories flashed before his eyes like pages of a book swept up by a whirlwind.

From struggling in the shadow of the palace in his childhood, to feeling triumphant when he first gained power in his youth, and then to making illicit deals with certain mysterious figures in the dead of night...

Cohen's soul was like a small boat, struggling to navigate the turbulent sea of ​​time made up of the memories of others.

They were desperately trying to find any clues that might be related to Thrall, the Lost Lands, or the potential demonic invasion.

Each glimpse of a crucial memory gave Cohen a deeper understanding of the late king's madness and the perilous nature of the entire situation.

It took Cohen quite a while to pull his mind away from Gaius's memory crystallization, his face showing undisguised exhaustion.

Upon being greeted by four stunningly beautiful women, all of whom wore expressions of concern, Cohen shook his head:

Gaius was very cautious.

Or rather, he had already foreseen the possible defeat.

All memories involving core secrets, especially the key parts related to the Lost Lands.

They all resembled a desolate wasteland shrouded in thick fog, indistinct and fragmented.

It's likely that before his final self-annihilation and soul disintegration, he had already consciously used some secret method to cleanse himself.

Freya's expression was unusually solemn:
"This is a bit tricky. Gaius's hidden danger is quite significant."

Cohen smiled calmly:
"However, it's not entirely impossible to trace her. Freya is on the list of officials who surrendered to the Kingdom of Ceylon this time."

Is there a person named Keith Stevens?
His previous position was likely the Deputy Commander of the Palace Guard.

Upon hearing this, Freya did not hesitate at all and immediately summoned Lucia, who was waiting outside the door.

Lucia frowned slightly and pondered for a moment, then nodded firmly in response:
"Yes, Your Majesty."

There was indeed a Baron Keith Stevens.

However, he did not surrender voluntarily; rather, he was captured by us at the last moment when the capital fell and the palace was putting up a desperate resistance.

He was one of the die-hards who swore allegiance to Gaius, and was currently being held deep within the highest-security Special Military Prison No. 1.

Upon hearing this information, a sharp glint flashed in Cohen's eyes, and he immediately gave a deep, resonant order:

"Bring him out for questioning immediately; I want to see him in person."

Then he turned to Freya, Grace, and the others who looked puzzled, and explained with certainty:
"This seemingly unremarkable Baron Stevens is actually Gaius's exclusive envoy for secret communication with Thrall, the Demon Lord of the Lost Lands."

Over the past few years, Thrall has purchased all the weapons, slaves, and forbidden supernatural materials from Ceylon.

All of this was orchestrated secretly by this baron.

He must possess details of many dirty deals that even Gaius might not be fully aware of. The answers we need may very well lie within him!

Not long after, the heavy dragging of shackles grew louder as two stern-faced elite military intelligence officers escorted a tall, thin, and pale-faced man into the room.

The prison uniform hung loosely on his bony frame, and his exposed skin bore several unhealed torture wounds.

When he raised his cloudy eyes and saw the figures sitting in the shadows in front of him.

Especially when his gaze swept over Cohen Corleone's ambiguous smile, Baron Stevens' pupils suddenly contracted to pinpoints, and a hint of barely concealed horror flashed across his eyes.

Logically speaking, given his current rank, it would be absolutely impossible for him to meet the supreme ruler of Efein.

Now that we've seen it, it can only mean one thing.

My true identity and mission have been exposed!
Almost instinctively, he lowered his head, covering his face with his disheveled, greasy hair to avoid Cohen's piercing gaze that seemed to penetrate his very soul.

Cohen, however, paid no attention to his reaction and leisurely flipped through the file that Lucia had just handed him.

The document contains detailed records of the prisoner's life.

Cohen spoke casually, as if he were chatting:

"Keith Stevens, born into a working-class family in a small border town in the southern provinces, had no connections or support."

However, with his extraordinary ruthlessness and talent, he managed to break into the top ten at the National Extraordinary People Conference.

It was this outstanding performance that caught the eye of Gaius Cromwell, who was then the Crown Prince, and he was promoted to the position of personal bodyguard.

Later, he personally issued an edict granting your family a hereditary title of 'honorary baron,' allowing your family, which had been farmers for generations, to leap into the ranks of nobility.

This kindness in recognizing your talent, this profound friendship that has lifted you from the dust to the clouds, truly deserves your sacrifice—your entire family's future, even your life—to uphold Gaius's rule, until death do you part, right?

Baron Stevens remained frozen in place, his face as if wearing a lifeless plaster mask.

He didn't react to Cohen's words at all, as if he had truly become a deaf puppet.

Only his fingers, hanging at his sides, twitched almost imperceptibly.

Cohen calmly placed the document recording the other person's life story on the table.

He raised his eyes, his gaze calm and unwavering as it fell upon Baron Stevens's bloodless face, and spoke in a detached tone:
"Perhaps you are not aware of this, but the lady standing next to me is a rare soul singer."

Even if you grit your teeth and don't utter a single word, she still has ways to find what we want to know from the depths of your chaotic memories.

Your silence and your resistance are doomed to failure in the face of such power.

The reason we didn't use this method from the beginning was because we considered that you still had some loyalty to your former master, and we wanted to leave you and your family a dignified way to survive.

I have always held true respect for those who are genuinely loyal, and I'm willing to make exceptions for them.

Baron Stevens' body trembled almost imperceptibly, and his face turned as white as if it had been coated with lime.

His lips were pressed into a pale line, and he stubbornly remained silent, like a lifeless stone sculpture.

Seeing this, Cohen's lips curled into a half-smile, and he said with a hint of regret:

“I understand that you are a person who values ​​relationships.”

Therefore, I am unwilling to resort to despicable means, such as threatening you with your wife in Oakwood, South City, and your two lovely children.

That would be far too undignified.

Seeing Stevens's slightly trembling arm, Cohen's voice suddenly turned cold:
"But if you insist on fighting to the bitter end for a dynasty that has already fallen, risking the lives and future of your entire family."

Then I have no choice but to hand you over to my subordinates in the Military Intelligence Bureau.

They always had a knack for dealing with uncooperative key prisoners.

The words "Military Intelligence Bureau" were like a red-hot branding iron, burning deeply into Baron Stevens's nerves.

He shuddered violently, and finally managed to lift his head, which had been hanging low.

He scrutinized the man before him, who, with a few words and a laugh, had dragged his king down from his glorious throne and crushed him and his entire kingdom into dust.

A deathly silence filled the air, with only his heavy, suppressed breathing clearly audible.

A suffocating silence filled the cold interrogation room.

Baron Stevens' withered lips trembled violently a few times, and finally, a broken sound squeezed out from deep in his throat:

"You...kill me."

Upon hearing this, Cohen smiled, leaned forward leisurely, and calmly said:
Before you bravely face death, you might as well hear a piece of news.

The monarch to whom you swore to serve with your life and soul, Gaius Cromwell.

He's dead!

Baron Stevens's lips twitched violently, then he forced an extremely ugly, twisted smile, as if he thought it was nothing more than a clumsy attempt to manipulate the other party's mind.

He snorted coldly, turned his head away, and looked indifferent.

Cohen was not surprised by his reaction, but simply recited a precise set of coordinates consisting of numbers and runes in a softer voice.

The moment the coordinates reached his ears, Baron Stevens felt as if he had been struck by an invisible bolt of lightning.

He turned around abruptly, his previously lifeless eyes widening instantly, his pupils shrinking to pinpoints with extreme fear.

All the numbness and contempt on his face shattered in an instant.

It was replaced by an unmasked horror that came from the depths of the soul.

His whole body began to tremble violently and uncontrollably, and the shackles made a piercing "click-clack" sound as he trembled.

It felt as if even the bones were about to fall apart under this terrifying pressure.

Cohen calmly watched his utterly devastated reaction, as if surveying prey that had fallen into a trap.

Slowly he said:

"Baron Keith Stevens, your last hope is gone. Now, you are ordered to go to the 'Lost Lands' to secretly negotiate with the Demon Lord Sal Ignarion, and to discuss all the details."

Tell me everything in detail.

Perhaps you and your former master still don't understand what you are doing.

I can tell you definitively that the dirty deals you made for Gaius in the past are enough to condemn you and all your blood relatives to the pillory of history in the future.

Bearing an indelible and eternal infamy!
Your foolish actions will not only destroy Ceylon, but will also drag all of humanity into an unprecedented and devastating catastrophe!
"At that time, you, Keith Stevens, will no longer be merely a blind loyalist of a fallen dynasty, but a sinner for the entire race!"

Baron Stevens's chapped lips moved slightly, a harsh, sandpaper-like sound emanating from his throat:

"However...it's just some normal arms deals, at most...at most it involves some transactions involving death row inmates and slaves."

These things are shady, but what country doesn't have its share of dirty secrets?
What's the point of Your Majesty trying to scare me with such a colossal charge as 'a sinner against all humanity'?
It's nothing more than... nothing more than trying to extract information to pave the way for your own interests in the 'Lost Land'!

Cohen's lips curled up almost imperceptibly.

He didn't care about the other party's rebuttals and counterattacks; as long as they were willing to speak, it meant that their strong psychological defenses had already cracked.

He didn't waste his breath explaining or refuting; he simply took out a palm-sized photographic stone from his pocket.

A wisp of magic was infused into it, and a vivid, breathtakingly clear dynamic image was immediately projected onto the stone.

It was the scene of that astonishingly large secret military camp that was recorded when they found Mavis.

In the scene, countless well-built soldiers are undergoing brutal, uniform training, driven by whips and incantations.

“Take a closer look. You’ve sent so many slaves and death row inmates to Sal. See if there are any you recognize among them.”

Baron Stevens subconsciously raised his head, his cloudy gaze falling on the floating image, initially somewhat indifferent.

But soon, his pupils contracted sharply, and his breathing became rapid.

As Cohen said, he did indeed recognize several faces among the soldiers in uniform dark red armor undergoing killing training, faces that he had personally counted and handed over.

Those who should have died in cruel magical experiments or become the lowest-class slaves were now fully armed and had become members of a disciplined army.

A huge question arose.

Sal had sworn that demanding these living people was only for conducting some forbidden magical experiments, but what he saw before him was clearly a regular army undergoing rigorous training.

What exactly does the Demon Lord Thrall want to do?
Training an army would have been a more reasonable excuse, but Thrall insisted on using the dark and sordid pretext of "subjects for magical experiments" to demand living people.

This is highly illogical and must be hiding an even more sinister purpose.

Why would he tell such a flawed lie?

Could it be that I... have unknowingly become an accomplice to some terrible conspiracy?
Fear and anger at being thoroughly exploited and deceived began to grow wildly in his heart.

Just as Stevens was being tormented by this terrible conjecture, Cohen's calm voice slowly broke through his chaotic thoughts:

"Do you see those eerie stone pillars standing deep within the barracks, covered with evil runes?"
In a few months, these pillars will be fully activated, becoming a stable passage connecting the Abyss and the Prime Material Plane, and a medium for the descent of demons!

And you, Baron Keith Stevens, personally selected and escorted those death row inmates and slaves.

Their bodies will be possessed by the filthy souls of the abyss, transforming them into perfect vessels for the return of the demon legions from the depths of the underworld, who crave slaughter and destruction, to the human world.

Yes, you heard right. It was you who, with your laughable loyalty to your former master, opened the gates of the prison for the demon sealed in endless darkness by the gods.

You will help the demon legions that once brought mountains of corpses and seas of blood to the Demon Tide Continent, causing everything to wither and die, to descend upon this land once more.

Once this disaster breaks out, the hatred accumulated over millions of years will be ignited instantly, and the entire world will be dragged into the flames of war.

The second war between gods and demons may well have been ignited!

Baron Stevens, shouldn't you be proud of the key role you played in this cataclysmic event?

Baron Stevens' eyes widened instantly, almost bulging out of their sockets. His mouth opened wide uncontrollably, but he couldn't make a sound, only a strange hoarse noise coming from his throat.

Details he had previously overlooked suddenly came flooding back to him.

The eerie look in the messenger's eyes, the strange atmosphere during the transaction, and the unusually strict selection criteria for those "experimental subjects."

All of these elements now come together to form a clear truth.

A chill, originating from the deepest part of his soul and enough to freeze his blood, surged up his spine and instantly swept over his entire body.

Seeing that the time was right and the prodding had gone far enough, Cohen stopped beating around the bush and went straight to the core issue:
"Judging from your appearance, it seems that your late monarch Gaius has also been kept in the dark all along."

It is unclear what conspiracy lies behind the seemingly mutually beneficial deal between the Demon Lord Thrall and the Demon Lord.

So now you tell me, besides your Ceylon constantly sending living people, weapons, and supplies to that cursed 'Lost Land'.

Has the Demon Lord Thrall, or his subordinates, secretly transported anything into your Kingdom of Ceylon?
Or, were any 'snails' planted?

Upon hearing this, Baron Stevens shuddered violently as if struck by an invisible bolt of lightning.

His already pale face instantly contorted into a state of extreme terror, his muscles spasming uncontrollably, and even his lips turned bluish-purple.

A strange "clucking" sound came from his throat, as if he were suffocating, and he managed to squeeze out a few broken syllables through his teeth with all his might:

"Lionheart Manor! It's Lionheart Manor!"
On the western outskirts of the capital, there lies Lionheart Manor, a former royal hunting ground!

That area was fenced off and redeveloped by Victor for over a year!

Cohen's eyes suddenly turned cold and sharp as he pressed on:
“Victor? Who is he?”

Baron Stevens seemed to be awakened by a deeper fear by the name; his body trembled violently, and his voice was choked with sobs:

“Victor, he is the most trusted core subordinate of the Demon Lord Thrall.”

He was the person I dealt with every time I went there to conduct a transaction.

All the negotiations, inventory of supplies, and handover were handled by him!
About two years ago, after a transaction was completed, Victor contacted me privately.

He said he wanted to acquire a property near the capital of Ceylon, and that this needed to be kept absolutely secret.

I didn't think much of it at the time. In order to maintain the relationship, I used my authority to allocate the vacant Lionheart Estate under the royal family to him.

After that, he sent people to completely seal off the area, claiming it was for a complete renovation and prohibiting anyone from entering or leaving.

For over a year, nobody knew exactly what was going on inside.

The manor has never been open to the public…

His voice grew softer and softer, filled with belated despair and fear.

Clearly, it was only now that he truly realized that the seemingly ordinary manor might be hiding a massive conspiracy capable of overturning everything.

What if, what if that place is set up as some kind of spatial teleportation endpoint, becoming the location where the demon legion descends?

Baron Stevens shuddered, his eyes turning ashen.

Cohen nodded slowly, a barely perceptible glint of cold light flashing in his eyes.

After a moment's thought, gazing at the baron before him whose will had already crumbled, he spoke calmly:

"Very good, your cooperation was timely."

This gave you and your family a chance to survive.

So, if I allow you to redeem yourself by once again serving as an envoy of Ceylon, or rather, as a former subordinate of Gaius.

Are you willing to return to the 'Lost Lands' and negotiate with Viktor, the envoy of the Demon Lord Thrall?

The key issue now is not Lionheart Manor in the Kingdom of Ceylon, nor is it the collusion between Gaius and the Demon Lord Thrall.

Rather, it's about how many people like Gaius are left across the entire Demon Tide Continent.

How many other countries on the mainland have similar agreements with Sarr?

Most importantly, does Thrall also operate similar businesses to Lionheart Manor in various countries across the human continent?

If it really exists, it would be an absolute catastrophe for humanity.

Even if Effie didn't have one, just imagining the spatial coordinates of a few demon legions descending upon Effie's neighboring countries would be enough to create immense pressure.

To understand this, Viktor, one of Sal's men, is the key figure.

Only through him can we find out exactly which other monarchs Thrall has been colluding with!

Baron Stevens clearly understood Cohen's intention, and abruptly raised his head, asking in a hoarse voice:

"Demon Lord Thrall... does he... does he really dare to collude with the Abyss and lead the demon legions sealed by the gods back to the Demon Tide Continent?"

Cohen sneered:
"The truth is often more brutal than speculation."

Perhaps, before you face Victor, you should see him for yourself.

What kind of state have those visitors from the abyss turned the Lionheart Manor, which you personally presented to us, into?

I believe that what's hidden inside will tell you the answer!

Baron Stevens slowly closed his eyes in despair, his face filled with remorse:

“I…I never intended to betray humanity, and His Majesty Gaius would never have willingly brought demons into our homeland.”

We were really just being used.

They were completely deceived by the Demon Lord Sal…

At this moment, all his perseverance and loyalty turned into endless bitterness and despair in the face of the cruel truth. (End of Chapter)