Chapter 2454: Sin

"Sin?" Moon repeated, looking at Lex as if he were unfamiliar to her.

Lex immediately picked up on what she was sensing and thought of a way to explain.

"If the one being kidnapped was you or me, and Belle was the one who rescued us, what do you think she would do once she saved us?"

The question wasn’t necessarily the best comparison for Belle had spent most of her youth trying her best to protect and save her younger siblings, largely unsuccessfully. It wasn’t her fault - she was just too weak, and her enemies too strong.

But assuming she was strong enough to save them from someone, what would she likely do? A scene flashed in Moon’s mind: Belle, with a neutral expression, killing everyone responsible while talking to them calmly as if to soothe their emotions.

It wasn’t like Belle was a genocidal maniac. It wasn’t as if she were a bloodthirsty demon either. She was just an extremely protective woman who didn’t know how to express her emotions and protective instincts in any way other than anger.

That, however, also made it very easy to imagine the kinds of things she might have done if she really did have the strength to save them.

Moon looked in Lex’s eyes to see if he really had it in him to do the kind of thing he was insinuating. She saw not an ounce of hesitation.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" she asked, unsure about how she felt about it. On one hand, these people had really provoked them. On the other hand, it wasn’t the people but their leader.

Lex shook his head, as if Moon was misunderstanding him.

"This is not about revenge, or about venting my anger, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s about establishing a fact - and the fact is that there will always be consequences of messing with the Midnight Inn. Besides, this realm really is steeped in sin - you just can’t see what I see."

Lex disappeared, leaving Moon standing there with Velma, though she didn’t brood for long. It wasn’t that she misunderstood Lex, but that Lex had misunderstood her. Would she care about the deaths of people who kidnapped Z?

No, she just found it hard to believe that Lex intended to use this entire realm as fertiliser. Since when had he become so strong? She really was wasting a lot of time just sleeping and processing her own realm.

But if Lex were now powerful enough that entire immature realms were things he could do with as he wished, maybe he could wake up her body as well.

Lex flew to the highest point of the realm and slowly began to unleash his Sovereign realm, overlapping it with the Conquest realm. His own realm wasn’t nearly large enough that it could encompass the entire Conquest realm, but he didn’t need it to be.

Everyone looked up and saw a red moon appear in the sky, and a feeling of bone-chilling dread spread to anyone and everyone who looked at it.

Lex had given Velma an hour to evacuate everyone because that is how long it would take him to completely deploy the Sovereign realm to its maximum without being interrupted. The extent of the realm at that point would be far beyond what he had managed to release in his fight with Daekol.

The full extent of the Sovereign realm deployed, utilised now that Lex was a Celestial Immortal... even Lex himself could not imagine what that would be like. He would need to find out.

Velma looked up at the red moon, and read through the information leaking from it, and could not help but look at Lex oddly. Here, she thought her powers at the Celestial Immortal realm were unusual. She should have known better than to compare herself to Lex.

She gave the order, and the Midnight Battalions began to retreat back to the Midnight Inn. They didn’t particularly go out of their way to loot dogs or grab any valuable resources. They weren’t lacking in such things, and more importantly, any loot they would steal would be less for themselves and more for the Midnight Inn.

Velma had informed them that Lex intended to kidnap the whole realm itself, so at that point, was there even a need to loot something as insignificant as individual resources?

They didn’t even need to question whether such a thing was even possible - there was a well-documented instance of Lex kidnapping a realm before.

Over the next hour, all of the battalion members evacuated, and the devils made countless deals, considering Velma hadn’t hidden Lex’s intentions from them. As allies, it wouldn’t do to withhold such critical information. She wouldn’t want them to think the Inn was stealing from them.

Thus, during this one hour, they made all the deals they wanted and harvested anything and everything they wished.

In fact, following up on Lex’s statement about sin, Velma even provided a list of residents of the realm who weren’t really stained by the sins of most of the realm’s residents, and told the, Devils that they would be ideal partners for deals. Even if they wanted to leave the realm, the Inn wouldn’t interfere.

However, the devils were expressly forbidden from taking any native of the realm outside if their name wasn’t on Velma’s list.

Velma herself used this time to extract as much information from Mathew as possible.

Unfortunately, there was a tremendous amount of useless information, not a single piece of useful information could be found.

Clearly he had other defences or mechanisms in place to protect critical information. Either he needed to be interrogated properly, or they needed more time to search his memories, thus Velma could only take the stunned Mathew back to the Midnight Inn with her.

Before leaving, she turned to take a look up at the blood-red moon once more. The path Lex was walking...would be far more difficult than her own. If he succeeded, however, then she could not even imagine what he would become.