Myths Reawakened

Saint Lazar Station, late night.

A mysterious woman appeared like a phantom. Her long black dress seemed cut out from the darkness of the night, swaying as she sauntered elegantly. She had a unique, dark allure to her.

She wore a wide-brimmed sun hat tilted slightly forward to cover half of her face. The parts of her slim arms that were not covered by black long-sleeved gloves were fair like snow, seemingly glowing like her fair face.

She was an undeniable beauty. Her appearance, figure, and temperament were all flawless and uniquely captivating.

It would be better if she weren’t a demon.

Mattea the Abyssal Spider Queen sat down on a bench under a street lamp. Her long, shapely legs crossed under her black dress, with only parts of her calves revealed, but even that was enough to make an onlooker salivate.

Opening her purse, she took out a cigarette case and lit a long, slim cigarette.

Under the night sky, the enchanting beauty sat beside the street lamp like a beautiful black rose slowly blooming at night. The stunning picture had a gravity that drew all attention.

The one she was waiting for hadn’t arrived. Mattea remained patient. Her purple lips closed around the cigarette and left a rim of faint purple. Then she elegantly breathed out white smoke.

She was one of the three leading figures of the demon alliance. Aside from the Seven Demon Lords, they were one of the most powerful demons. Someone like her was more than qualified to call herself a demon lord.

Indeed, the most powerful seventy-two demons in Hell were known as the Seventy-two Demon Lords.

Sixty-five demons had lumped themselves together with the Seven Demon Lords and boasted the power of the seventy-two of them. The Seven Demon Lords objected. Who do you think you are, calling yourselves demon lords after us?

Therefore, the Seven Demon Lords had another title exclusive to them: the Seven Demon Gods!

There was no god in Hell, so the Seven Demon Lords could call themselves the Seven Demon Gods without anyone objecting. They were powerful enough to convince all other demons.

Hell followed the Law of the Seven Deadly Sins. It was the origin of all things in Hell, and the Seven Demon Lords divided and shared the Seven Deadly Sins. All creatures in Hell were directly or indirectly connected to the Seven Demon Lords. They were either their creations, their familiars, or the descendants between their creations and familiars...

Mattea had once been the Lord of Lust’s familiar. She was loyal and ambitious. Out of her appreciation, the Lord of Lust had divided a part of her territory to Mattea to let her go independent.

Mattea wasn’t a creation of Lust. She wasn’t a succubus like Lust, but a combination of the upper body of a human female and a spider, with her own evolution path.

After acquiring a territory, her ambition grew along with her power. She gradually distanced herself from the Lord of Lust and called herself the Abyssal Spider Queen, having earned a reputation in Hell, where power was king.

As a demon, she had defiance running in her blood. Everything she did was aligned with Hell’s way and Hell’s culture. None of the other demons found any of her actions disagreeable. In fact, her growth was considered an inspiration.

Mattea was an original inhabitant of the Abyss, just like Solsknar, the Abyssal Python. After Hell conquered the Abyss, the Seven Demon Lords had divided it and cruelly massacred the inhabitants.

Reasonable as they were, the Seven Demon Lords had given the inhabitants a choice: either surrender and become their lapdogs, or become food served on their table. They respected free will.

Solsknar had chosen the third way: since he couldn’t defeat the demon lords, but he didn’t want to serve them, he escaped from the Abyss and became the Goddess of Darkness’s lapdog.

Mattea wasn’t lucky enough to escape the Abyss like Solsknar. Unwilling to be consumed, she chose to offer her loyalty to the Lord of Lust.

She worked hard to improve herself and showed her competence and beauty, earning her promotion over all the other wenches. She won her own territory from the Lord of Lust.

To outsiders, it seemed like Mattea had endured humiliation as she gained power until she was able to separate herself fully from her once master, gaining a foothold in Hell. Only Mattea knew that she still served the Lord of Lust. She had only distanced herself under Lust’s order.

Aside from the territories of the Seven Demon Lords, all of Hell had been in constant war. Backstabbing and getting backstabbed were everyday occurrences. Mattea was ordered to join the other demons and collect firsthand information for the Lord of Lust.

It worked very well, so much so that Lord of Lust got a chance to descend to the human world.

Enguema, the Lord of Blood and a son of the Lord of Greed, had had enough of being subservient to other demon lords. He wanted to become a demon lord himself. He sought out Stolas, the Lord of Night, since they shared an ambition. Together, they had both the brains and the brawn. The distance between them and success could be bridged with a lusty demon and a group of cannon fodder.

Within the demon alliance, Stolas handled intelligence work, Enguema handled the fights, and Mattea handled human resources.

Stolas was resourceful enough to collect information wherever he went. Enguema had enough raw power that no demon aside from the Seven Demon Lords could rival him. Mattea was stunning and had received higher education at the College of Succubi, so no one would object to her taking on the role of HR head.

They each had their own strengths and divided the work wisely between themselves. They just needed one chance.

The Seven Demon Lords were too strong. Even though the lesser demons had formed an alliance, they couldn’t defeat any of the seven. Only by opening the Gate of Hell and turning the human world into another hell to expand their territories could they fight back to Hell and replace the Seven Demon Lords.

Now was their chance!

Stolas had gotten the information from some source and managed to reach a deal with the three subordinate gods in the Underworld, fooling the Death Knight into entering Hell. The demon alliance rushed the knight, succeeding in taking down the monster at the price of half of their members being critically injured.

They might lose if they hadn’t been on their home turf, and if Sizorn, the Wings of Winter, one of Death’s subordinate gods, hadn’t sneaked up on the Death Knight.

With Heaven’s seal on Hell, it was difficult for demons to fully descend to the human world. The more powerful a demon was, the more difficult it was. Even after a successful descent, the demon would still be unable to unleash their full power due to the restriction.

A perfect descent would require the opening of the Gate of Hell.

While the demon alliance couldn’t descend fully to the human world, Rognes the Death Knight existed in the human world at his full power. With the underground catacombs’ unique landscapes, they would be able to open the gate to connect the two worlds.

They had fulfilled all the prerequisites.

As a spy planted by the Lord of Lust, Mattea had relayed the information to her master immediately. She would keep an eye on the opening of the gate. Once the time was right, the Lord of Lust would descend to the human world first, claiming her territory there before fighting her way back to Hell, becoming the one and only demon god.

The thought excited her.

Unfortunately, her excitement wouldn’t last. While she had been working overtime for her master, her master had been a filthy slacker.

The Lord of Lust had been lost in carnal desires lately. She picked up a boy toy somewhere and never went a day without getting him to irrigate her garden. She had forgotten work altogether.

While her master was unreliable, Mattea still dreamed of becoming the general manager of Hell, so she found her master a good vessel.

Also, the Gate of Hell had already opened.

Though it wasn’t fully open, there was an opening. The three heads of the demon alliance were thus able to descend with significant power.

Another long, slim cigarette was lit. Mattea narrowed her eyes and savored the scents of the human world. Through the slits of her eyes, she saw a beautiful woman slowly approach.

She had large, blonde curls and wore red lipstick, dressed in a long black dress that reached below her knees, paired with a fascinator hat and black stockings. She was holding a purse before her as she walked with elegance and grace. Like a firefly in the dark, her charm demanded attention.

It was difficult to describe her allure. Hers wasn’t the lethal temptation Mattea exuded, nor was it the sacred dignity of an angel. It was something in between.

She sat down beside Mattea, her back straight from nerves. Her face had been Wayne’s dream—the original Wayne who had been her fellow spy. For her, the original Wayne had written a diary detailing their relationship from the dating phase to marriage. Every night, he would read it and get off from it.

William had read the diary before. It was quite scandalous, and it might just be the culprit that had exhausted the original Wayne to death.

She was Lily Haworth, a singer, a movie star, and a Francan secret agent. She was also Wayne’s colleague.

As a spy trained by the Francan intelligence agency, Lily had undying loyalty to Franc, but because of her lack of magical talent, she never amounted to much. After training her, the agency sent her to Windsor as a spy, attracting the old nobles of Londan through her expertise in singing and dancing for information about business, politics, and military.

Lily was in charge of intelligence collection, while Wayne was in charge of sending the information back home. That was why there was a radio in Wayne’s detective agency.

After a series of coincidences, Lily sacrificed her artistic pursuit to support Wayne’s image of a man of few desires, helping him infiltrate the Lando family.

Offending Auston, the great capitalist, she was unable to stay in the showbiz in Londan. While she had failed to bed Auston, Wayne had slept with Auston’s daughter. Her superiors considered her mission somewhat successful and transferred her back to Palis.

In Palis, Lily continued to be an active player in showbiz. The success of the movie King Kong made her a star, and the intelligence agency came to value her more. The targets she was tasked to approach had become increasingly important.

It was quite nice that she no longer had to play up her allure. She only had to maintain her image as a goddess on earth.

Later, Wayne continued to climb up the social ladder, to the point that the Francan intelligence agency couldn’t believe how far he had come. The nobody had become a contributor to Auston’s successful rebellion.

Further investigation revealed that Wayne had easily infiltrated the Lando family, not because he had slept with Auston’s daughter. That was a baseless rumor. The truth was that Wayne was Auston’s biological son, conceived in Palis. He had stumbled his way to success.

Auston’s daughter, through the intelligence agency’s thorough investigation, was revealed to be adopted. In other words, the relationship between Wayne and Veronica wasn’t incest between a brother and his half-sister with the same father, but incest with an extra step between a biological son and an adoptive daughter.

Incest that wasn’t pure wasn’t the noble way.

Wayne’s increased value lifted Lily’s importance. She no longer had to take on missions outside the office. Like a real goddess, she became an honorary senior clerk at the agency, without the actual workload.

Promotion was always a good thing, but the international landscape was dire. Externally, Franc was a coward subject to Prussia’s one-sided abuse and Windsor’s exploitation, and all their effort was wasted on internal conflicts.

Lily watched the opportunists slowly destroy the country, but couldn’t do anything.

She could tell that Franc wouldn’t be able to block Prussia’s tide of steel, and even if Franc didn’t fall, Franc would still suffer such a great loss that she became Windsor’s subordinate.

Since the promotion, Lily had learned about the real world and the mysterious existence of mages. Goddesses weren’t just esoteric faiths, and Heaven and Hell existed. She, despite her beauty, artistic expertise, and intelligence skills, had been kept away from important work because she had no magical talent.

Training elites required a great amount of resources. Training her was a gamble with no guarantee of return. Still, at least the eye candy could draw funds to the intelligence agency. It was better to keep her around.

Even so, Lily had never once resented her home country. The only ones she hated were the treacherous opportunists. She started looking into the arcane for a way to save Franc.

Her hard work wasn’t in vain. She was first noticed by the Black Axiom Sect and then chosen by Mattea.

Mattea’s vessel was also a secret agent and an acquaintance of Lily. She easily figured out what Lily craved by analyzing the information at hand.

Lily craved power, power that could save her country!