Devouring Dragon Heir-Chapter 41: Ch Demon’s apostle clan

"System," Klaus immediately called out, his voice hoarse.

[Host.] the System replied, its voice calm and steady, a grounding presence.

"How long since I was sleeping?" Klaus demanded, pushing himself up to a sitting position on the bed.

[Host, it’s been roughly 24 hours since you fell asleep.]

"Shit! It seems like sleep debt is real," Klaus muttered, rubbing his temples.

Even though, at his current S-rank, he theoretically possessed the physical endurance to go sleepless for months, he had been battling continuously for five intense days, pushing his mana and stamina reserves to their absolute limits.

In the crux, it all depended on accumulated exhaustion and the own internal limits for his physical body.

"So, it was a dream," Klaus said, taking a moment to fully realize that the vivid, bizarre dream he had just experienced was not part of reality. The relief was palpable.

"What a crybaby," Klaus chuckled, a genuine, amused sound, as he remembered Julie and their childish antics.

The innocence and simplicity of the dream, despite its oddity, was a stark contrast to his brutal reality.

"Thank God I am not a pedo," he added, a self-deprecating thought that brought another small chuckle.

Klaus pushed himself out of bed and walked to the small bathroom.

He splashed ice-cold water on his face, feeling the invigorating shock as it washed away the last vestiges of sleep and the lingering strangeness of the dream.

He then changed his clothes, discarding the loose boxers he had slept in for his military-grade trousers and a fresh, black skin-fit shirt.

"Let’s greet our guest who has been living without giving rent," he said, a cold, predatory glint entering his eyes as he thought of Karl, the cultist.

He was ready to resume his interrogation. With a silent command, he disappeared from the room, only to reappear instantly in Iceworld_1, where he had imprisoned Karl.

Klaus was now standing inside the desolate, icy realm of Iceworld_1.

Before him, on the frigid, crystalline ground, knelt Karl.

The cultist was shivering uncontrollably, his body trembling, not just from the bone-deep cold of the ice realm, but from a profound, debilitating fear.

His face was pale, his eyes wide and bloodshot, fixed on Klaus with an expression of desperate supplication.

Klaus looked at him with ice-cold eyes, his gaze devoid of any warmth or mercy.

His voice, when he spoke, was flat and emotionless, cutting through the silence of the dimension.

"Able to speak now?" Klaus asked.

"Y-y-yess...!!" Karl stammered out in a hurried, desperate whisper, his voice barely audible.

He no longer possessed the will to resist, no longer wanted to face the endless, agonizing torture of this dungeon. Five days of ceaseless torment had broken his spirit completely.

At a distance, visible to Karl from his kneeling position, were several jagged ice spikes. Dumped haphazardly upon them was a gruesome, congealed mass of dried blood, smeared thickly across the ice.

Coiling around the base of the spikes were various internal organs, intestines, and other visceral matter, creating a truly gory, grotesque garbage dump.

This horrifying tableau was deliberately kept within Karl’s line of sight, to remind him of what he had endured over the past five days.

Every fiber of his being had been meticulously fleshed out, piece by agonizing piece.

The worst part was that the entire realm, seemingly imbued with a malicious sentience, had somehow delayed his death, prolonging the torture experience to its absolute maximum.

Even when his body finally gave out and he succumbed to death, he was immediately brought back to life, resurrected not by divine intervention, but by the golems of the realm.

They would sew and poke his body every time he regenerated, they would try new forms of torture and would often try putting the spikes inside different orifices of his body.

Karl had understood one crucial thing in these five days, the cult he followed, the one he had believed in so fervently, was not truly evil in the face of this.

This man, Klaus, was. This man represented a level of calculated, efficient cruelty that transcended anything his cult had ever preached or practiced.

Klaus didn’t even have to start the interrogation. Karl, broken and desperate for respite, had already started speaking before any question was asked.

His words tumbled out in a frantic, almost unintelligible rush.

"My name is Karl.

I am from the Demon’s Apostle cult. We believe in the Demon God as the supreme being, and demons as the supreme race, destined to rule over all others.

Our goal is to make this world ready for their smooth descent"

Klaus listened to Karl’s desperate confession, a bitter expression on his face. He remembered the cliche tropes of almost every novelkiss.

Then, Karl heard a nonchalant voice in his ears, a voice that carried an undertone of dismissal.

"Cliche." Klaus was referring to the strikingly similar plotlines and power structures he had read about in various web novels from his previous life.

He had encountered countless stories with "demon cults" and "supreme demon gods."

Karl, however, understood something entirely different from Klaus’s single word. He thought, "Demonic cults are ’cliche’ for this man.

He talks about them as if he has disposed of quite a few such powers in the past.

As if a millennia-old organization of fanatics is just a common, tiresome trope for him." The thought deepened his terror.

Klaus then asked, his voice still calm, "Who’s the strongest among you all, and what rank?"

Karl immediately replied, "The cult leader. He is an SS-rank." freewebnσvel.cøm

Klaus pressed, "Anything else about him? Specific powers? Weaknesses?"

Karl, eager to please and survive, continued, "His main power lies in demonic magic, which is extremely rare and largely unheard of in conventional circles.

It’s a dark, corrupting energy unlike anything found among human practitioners.

He also has direct contacts with the demon race itself. He communes with them, brokers deals."

"Another cliche," Klaus murmured under his breath, thinking of the typical ’pact with demons’ storyline.

Then, he asked, shifting the subject, "Who do they deal with among the humans? What are their external connections?"

Karl, recalling his cult’s extensive network, answered,

"There are many guilds that the cult has direct dealings with. They funnel resources, provide information, and even receive protection from certain powerful factions.

There are also some high-ranking officials within the Adventurer’s Association itself who are secretly affiliated with us, or at least turn a blind eye for a price."

Klaus asked a few other, more specific questions about the cult’s purpose in this region, their immediate goals, and their interest in him.

He was surprised, though not entirely shocked, to learn that they were after a specific treasure, an orb. Of course, Klaus knew precisely what it was the very orb that had granted him the System.

But Klaus acted as if he did not care, maintaining his detached demeanor.

He simply took out a physical pen and a few sheets of paper his inventory.

"Make a comprehensive list about them," Klaus commanded, gesturing to the writing materials.

"Write all the locations where the cult operates across the world, every single one, and detail where they have dealings with other organizations or influential individuals.

Also, write about any strange powers they might have, any unusual rituals, or anything else that makes them distinct. I want everything. You have two hours. Take all these notebooks,"

he said, summoning a small stack of blank notebooks, "and wash off all your memories into them, with every single detail, no matter how small."

Karl’s eyes lit up with a flicker of desperate hope.

The possibility of him escaping this personal hell, of being released from this relentless torment, spurred him into action.

He scrambled forward, seizing the pen and paper, his trembling fingers immediately starting to write.

He would write everything, every piece of information he possessed, to buy his freedom.

"Then you are free to go," Klaus stated, his voice unchanging. "Oh, and leave your storage ring here."

Karl hesitated for a split second, but the terror of the ice spikes and the thought of continued torture quickly outweighed the value of his ring.

He removed it and placed it on the ground. Klaus then leaned forward to pick up the ring.

he also marked karl using his skill omniscent tracker.

This tracker would ensure Karl’s location would be updated to Klaus whenever he came within a 5-kilometer range.

Klaus had analyzed the situation thoroughly. He understood a few critical things.

The cult, for all their power, did not know his true identity. Karl himself did not know who Klaus was beyond being a powerful, mysterious individual who could absorb dungeons.

They had simply used a death tracker artifact to find him down, believing him to be an ordinary hunter who had stumbled upon ghost and killed him.

So, if he let Karl go now, Karl would surely return to the cult.

He would undoubtedly fabricate a story, framing it in a way that would save himself from the cult’s wrath.

There were two primary possibilities that could arise from Karl’s lies:

The first possibility was that Karl would successfully convince his cult leaders that he had indeed killed Klaus, or at least rendered him harmless,

but had simply failed to recover the artifact they were looking for as the ob was not in his posession.

If this came to fruition, Klaus could simply continue living his life peacefully, leveling up and absorbing dungeons as he had been doing, until he reached EX-rank, a level of power that would make him effectively invincible on this planet.

At that point, he could just wipe out everyone he didn’t like, including the cult, without any significant effort or risk. This was the most appealing outcome for Klaus.

The second and, in Klaus’s assessment, most probable possibility, was that Karl would either fail to convince them, or his fabricated story would raise enough suspicion that the cult would eventually come after Klaus directly.

If this happened, then Klaus would simply have a few more "dogs to kill." He was confident in his abilities.

After all, he now commanded a formidable army of monsters, including six S-ranked bosses he could summon at will.

And if push came to shove, if he were somehow overwhelmed by their combined forces, he could always resort to using his dragon’s might , even though the backlash from forcefully awakening it would be immensely painful. At least his life would be saved.

Klaus didn’t want to actively go after them. That would just be equivalent to distracting himself from his chosen path of rapid power up.

His goal was clear, reach the pinnacle of power, and then address any minor annoyances.

If he killed Karl now, the cult would most probably find him through various other means anyway, especially if they possessed other trackers or divination methods.

Then he would have no choice but to attend to those dogs.

This way, by letting Karl go, he had a chance, however slim, of avoiding immediate confrontation and letting the problem solve itself, or at least delay it until he was even stronger.

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