Chapter 630 – The Nightmare Demon

The first Demon arrived far earlier than Mo Lan had anticipated.

She hadn’t even finished organizing the Demons’ true names in the contract book when there was already movement inside the Radiant Prison.

Lilith, Vasida, and Sylph, who had been monitoring public opinion in Valen through their Dawn Society Management Cards, all turned to look at the flickering pointed tent in Mo Lan’s courtyard. “Is that… a Demon has arrived?”

“Mm!” Mo Lan set aside the contract book and pulled out her Communication Card.

【Agnes: Just obtained a Demon from the Elves. Extremely skilled at seducing women using his body, gaze, or voice. All the Elf girls fell for it. If his identity as a Demon hadn’t been exposed, he would have already tricked someone into eloping with him. Be careful, Moira.】

Mo Lan showed Agnes’s message to her companions. “Looks like it’s a incubus.”

Dark magic and soul harvesting were universal abilities shared by all Demons, but beyond those, some possessed unique abilities that only certain Demons had. For the sake of easy classification, Demons were categorized by these distinctive abilities.

Those skilled at seducing women were called incubi.

“A incubus? The crème de la crème described in the《Body Structure Atlas》?” Lilith looked over.

“It’s not that exaggerated, is it? I looked at the body structure diagrams Helena drew of incubi—the non-human features are way too obvious. They’re nowhere near as handsome as the legends say.” Sylph offered a dissenting opinion.

“But there’s a line of small text noted beneath the illustration! ‘A real incubus is a hundred times more beautiful than depicted!'” Vasida summoned her Grimoire and quickly flipped to a certain page, pointing at a passage. “See! I remembered correctly.”

“…” Mo Lan watched the three of them operate with such practiced ease and began to question her own reality. “When did you all become such experts on the《Body Structure Atlas》?”

“My mother told me to read it,” Vasida said matter-of-factly. “She said it also works well as a reference book for creating undead servants.”

“Well… I saw some Elf couples picking fruit from the Tree of Life to hatch little Elves, and I got curious about whether they actually have reproductive organs, so I started reading…” Sylph said.

As for why one look had led to reading volume after volume, all the way through to the Demon editions, she couldn’t quite explain.

Lilith declared, “It’s required reading for adult Witches! Of course you have to study it thoroughly. Moira, don’t tell me you haven’t read it!”

“Uh… I have.” Mo Lan had finished reading the entire series before she’d even left the Wilds after graduation. The memories were still fresh.

“I knew it!” Lilith urged, “Come on, come on! Let’s go see the incubus—see if he’s really as gorgeous as Helena said!”

Vasida and Sylph stood up too, their eyes brimming with curiosity.

“Wait!” Mo Lan called out to them. “Prepare your psychic defenses and mental defenses before going to look. A incubus’s charm ability is not to be underestimated.”

A Witch’s Mind Ward and a mage’s mental defense could only be cast on oneself. Lilith, Vasida, and Sylph’s Psychic Magic was mediocre at best, and they hadn’t studied a mage’s Psychic Magic at all. However, the Witch edition of the Card Shop carried Magic Cards for psychic defense and mental defense.

Only after watching the three of them each redeem two of the highest-grade psychic defense and mental defense Magic Cards, and activate them, did Mo Lan lead them toward the Radiant Prison.

In the center of Cell 7 lay a blood-soaked burlap sack, still faintly rising and falling. Mo Lan channeled the prison’s radiant flames to burn away the sack, revealing the Demon within.

His skin was pale with a bluish tinge, his build slender, his muscle definition as perfect as a sculpture’s. Silver-white hair moved as if alive, stirring without wind, clinging to his sharply chiseled face.

His entire body was bound tightly by a thick Crimson Serpent Thorn, its blood-colored barbs driven deep into his flesh, his body twisted into an immobile, contorted posture.

His beautiful face was pressed against the ground, scorched by the sacred-flame glass bricks until white smoke rose from his skin. His pitch-black slit pupils had grown slightly unfocused, gazing pitifully through the bars. His lips parted as if to say something, but the thorns had already pierced his throat, and all that escaped was a muffled groan.

“It really is a incubus!” Lilith said.

“Truly the crème de la crème—way more striking than the illustrations,” Vasida commented.

Sylph nodded as well. “Helena’s taste is absolutely impeccable! His non-human features are so obvious, yet somehow the more you look, the more pleasing to the eye he becomes.”

Mo Lan gazed at the wretched yet ceaselessly charm-radiating incubus in the cell, and found herself very much in agreement with her companions’ assessment.

However, having read an Angel’s memories and being well-versed in both Psychic Magic and mental magic, her appreciation of the incubus’s beauty ran considerably deeper.

Her management of her own psychic state and mental cognition had never faltered. Even now she maintained both her psychic and mental defenses, yet they hadn’t fully blocked the incubus’s charm interference. While one part of her mind could rationally analyze the situation, another part still generated thoughts like “he’s so pitiable and endearing” and “he’s completely my ideal type.”

This meant the incubus’s charm ability didn’t operate purely on a psychic or mental level.

The sensation was remarkably similar to the emotional and affective energy that Angels used to forge the Ring of Faith.

Mo Lan was decidedly not the type to lose her head over romance. She had only ever coveted the magical knowledge inside Demons’ heads. No matter how handsome one was, his body shouldn’t have provoked any reaction—just like when she’d viewed those illustrations of beautiful males in the《Body Structure Atlas》.

In fact, those non-human features held not the slightest appeal for her; if anything, she found them rather ugly.

Yet now, looking at this incubus with his clearly non-human features, she inexplicably felt an urge—”he’s really beautiful” and “I want to do things with him”—as if even her aesthetic sense had been warped.

Though such impulses were, for her, easily crushed into nothingness with psychic power or psychic force, their very appearance was clearly abnormal.

Looking again at Lilith, Vasida, and Sylph—while they hadn’t truly been seduced into losing their reason, their words betrayed a favorable impression of this incubus.

How absurd! Witches developing a favorable impression of a Demon that coveted them!

Mo Lan thought briefly and understood. “He must be manipulating emotions like ‘lust’ and ‘adoration’ to make everyone perceive him as beautiful.”

Only emotional power would overlap somewhat with Psychic Magic and mental magic without being a direct, professional match—which was why they were still slightly affected.

Mo Lan’s words snapped Lilith, Vasida, and Sylph out of it. The three of them quickly turned around, refusing to look at the incubus any longer, and blocked out the muffled groans and moans he was emitting.