"What's going on?"
The first to react was the male beastman. As an experienced hunter, his instinct for danger far surpassed that of the two female beastmen beside him.
However, while his mind registered the threat, his body had no time to respond.
In an instant, he felt a cold, iron-like hand clamp down on the back of his neck. A freezing chill seeped into his skull through his spine.
"How… how is this possible?"
The male beastman stared in horror at his nearby companions, as if begging them for help.
But the scene before him only deepened his terror. Behind each of his two companions stood a shadowy figure wreathed in darkness. Both female beastmen's eyes had already rolled back—they were unconscious, or worse.
"My life… is over."
That was his final thought before his legs buckled, and he too collapsed into unconsciousness.
Hel gave the fallen male beastman a puzzled look. She couldn't shake the feeling that this guy rather enjoyed adding unnecessary drama to his own demise.
Shaking her head, she ignored him and walked straight to the nearest female beastman, extending a hand to pull the woman's soul from her body.
Through the Reincarnation Mainframe's analysis, Hel quickly grasped who these three were.
All three were direct descendants of the Aira royal family—though not from the same line as the old Aira King. Among the king's brothers, most were either dead or exiled; only the king himself and Nikki remained.
As for these three, they represented another branch of the royal bloodline—one that posed the greatest threat to the king's rule.
Within the royal court of Aira, aside from the five sixth-rank powerhouses of the royal line, only five others of that rank remained—and those five, save for the gravely wounded patriarch of the Wolffang clan, all belonged to the Supreme Church.
"Only this few sixth-ranks left?"
Hel frowned as she reviewed the Reincarnation Mainframe's findings.
For a kingdom as vast as Aira—its territory rivaling half the size of the Knight Empire—with a population of over fifty million, this number was pitiful.
Her own forces boasted more sixth-rank combatants than that.
It was safe to say—the Aira Royal Court had fallen into decline.
What Hel didn't know, however, was that most of those missing sixth-rank powerhouses had died because of her.
Of course, even if she knew, she wouldn't care—perhaps she'd only lament not having claimed their corpses as resources.
They weren't of her kind, after all. On the battlefield, they were enemies.
Why waste pity on them?
"The Church's five are hard to touch… but the remaining two royals can be handled."
After thinking it over, Hel modified the memories of the three beastmen before her.
In their new memories, Hel was now a distant orphaned member of the royal family, raised on royal stipends.
Thanks to her exceptional talent, she had managed to reach the third rank by the age of twelve.
However, when Hel was about to implant a Loyalty Sigil, she hesitated.
Loyalty sigils generally fell into two categories: magical control types and memory-induced devotion types.
The first kind—like Blood Thrall or Slave God's Mark—directly bound life and will, subtly reshaping a person's mind or outright enslaving their soul.
The second kind drew from others' existing loyalty toward Hel, automatically generating false memories that strengthened emotional attachment to her.
But hearts—especially those of sentient beings—were fickle.
Even magical control sigils weren't perfectly reliable—let alone those based purely on emotional fabrication.
The second type worked well on ordinary people, but anyone with a strong will could resist or even break free.
And the magical type had its own limits.
The stronger the effect, the harsher the constraints.
Those bound by Soul Enslavement shared a soul-link with the caster—something an experienced necromancer could trace back to the source.
Bloodline Enslavement only worked on those weaker than the caster.
And Slave God's Mark had a strict quantity limit.
"I can still use blood or memory manipulation on fifth-ranks… but sixth-ranks are trickier."
Hel thought about the loyalty sigils used on Niv and the others—all of them began with the same prefix: 'Hel's …'
That detail worried her.
If she used such sigils on these beastmen, her true identity might be exposed.
"Perhaps… I need an intermediary."
After pondering for a moment, Hel summoned the insectoid woman and copied her sigil—'Nikki's Dog'.
"Nikki herself already belongs to me," Hel mused. "Her forces might as well follow suit."
With that, she sent the sigil and a handwritten letter from Nikki, along with Nikki's official insignia, to her beastman avatar.
Then, Hel began "reconstructing" the three beastmen's minds and bodies.
Before long, the trio was neatly placed back in their original positions.
A gentle wave of mental energy rippled through their minds, and the three sixth-rank beastmen slowly awoke.
The male beastman blinked, disoriented, glancing around with a faint sense of dread.
It felt as if something terrible had just happened—yet his memory was blank.
He was about to speak when Hel cut him off.
"Alright. Since there are no outsiders present, let's get to business."
Hel handed Nikki's insignia and letter to the female mage.
"Nikki entrusted me with this before her… accident. She said you three were among her most trusted."
Upon hearing this, the female mage's expression remained calm, but the other two beastmen reacted sharply.
Especially the female warrior—she lunged forward, grabbed Hel by the collar, and lifted her off the ground.
"What did you just say? Say it again!"
Hel frowned, and the male beastman also stepped forward—though his concern was misplaced.
"How dare a brat like you address Lady Nikki by name? Who gave you that right?"
"Oh?"
Hel tilted her head slightly, looking at the two raging beastmen with utter disdain.
Her tone was cold and indifferent:
"Can't I?"
The next instant, an overwhelming psychic pressure swept across the room—like a storm of death rolling out of a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.
The two beastmen's minds went blank; their legs gave way, and they dropped to their knees.