Matriarch Valeria was doing her best not to tremble from head to toe right now, but though her daughter couldn’t feel what was happening, she could feel it all too clearly.
This was someone powerful. This was a C-Grade. This was the only sort of existence they could possibly send for something like this.
No, it wasn’t that a C-Grade was necessary to deal with the likes of Matriarch Valeria, but it just went to show how great a line she had somehow crossed.
If not for the fact that this was such a Taboo, any D-Grade from a more established branch would have been able to deal with her.
But it was the sight she saw as this figure became more solid that well and truly shook her to her core.
Those black eyes, without distinction between sclera and irises. That hand, almost dry to the touch, thin and brittle as straws, yet as dark as the night itself. That pale skin—almost to the point of sickliness—and those faintly greyed and blackened veins that pulsed across her body.
Matriarch Valeria wasn’t someone who could be said to be widely knowledgeable about the great scope of things throughout the universe, but she was better than most. She was the head of an information network, after all, even if it was just a branch.
There were certain things she was privy to that others wouldn’t know. And she knew how to fear this woman.
The Venom Clan.
The woman solidified, and it felt like the world had suddenly come to the verge of crumbling. It wasn’t that her aura was just so powerful, but instead that her presence itself was like a cancer to the Runes that formed the foundation of existence.
Her every movement, her every touch, her every slight shift was like another pulse of poison into the world—peeling away at its layers and forcing it into a state of perpetual decay.
And then she turned that gaze to Matriarch Valeria.
The Matriarch wanted to scream, her insides beginning to churn and her Will itself peeling away much like the layers of the world. Everything felt like it was slipping away.
Not too far away, Soryntha trembled from head to toe, wanting to say something, but not having the strength or fortitude to do so. Even if she somehow picked up that courage to say something, the pressure would probably kill her immediately.
“Hm?”
The Venom Clan woman turned to Soryntha, and then her head slowly tilted to the side. Veins in her forehead flickered and split to form a second pair of eyes, and then a third pair, each one just as dark as the first.
Matriarch Valeria’s shuddering became more prominent when she saw this. This was no normal member of the Venom Clan. This was a true monster of the Clan.
This was more serious than she had thought—more serious by measures she couldn’t even fathom.
“What is this?” she spoke in an almost gravelly voice. If not for the pitch, it would have been hard to fathom that it came from a woman at all.
She seemed genuinely confused as she looked to Soryntha, not understanding why such an inferior woman and talent would have so much luck concentrated onto her.
Then she sensed the state of the overall galaxy and became even more confused. Why did the system feel so far away here, and yet so present at the same time?
She could tell that if she tried to ignore one of the rules of the system right this moment, she would suffer for it. It would most definitely descend.
So why did it feel so… broken at the same time?
The Venom Clan woman looked toward Matriarch Valeria again, suddenly feeling that there was more to the story. This had to be the case, because according to the rewinding of events here—the report she had been given on how the Matriarch was exposed—it didn’t make much sense either.
The Matriarch had been exposed by… trying to contact them?
Logically, that meant that though the Taboo was most definitely broken, it wasn’t to an egregious degree, nor did it reach a threshold where other failsafes would trigger.
Despite these thoughts, the aggressiveness of the woman didn’t fade completely. This was a Taboo for a reason. It couldn’t just be casually swept under the rug.
“I asked a question,” she said coldly. Rather than looking at the Matriarch, though, she was looking at Soryntha.
Soryntha suddenly found that she had regained the ability to speak, but she also didn’t have the words to say. She didn’t even know what was going on.
“Speak.”
The words flooded out of Soryntha before she could stop them. She even said things that she had no intention of saying, even going as far as admitting that she had killed Nosphaleen for the True Chosen mark.
She felt horrified as she was speaking, but there was nothing she could do to stop it no matter how hard she tried. The gap between her Will and that of the Venom Clan woman was so vast that there wasn’t even a chance for her to resist.
There was no need for a special technique or method—she was simply squeezed until her consciousness had nothing left to do but pour out what it had been asked.
“I see,” the woman said calmly. Not a single word Soryntha spoke had to do with her mother’s Taboo, which at the very least meant that none of these things had spread. “Speak.”
Matriarch Valeria’s suppression weakened just the slightest bit.
“Your esteemed Venom Clan Noble, I cannot say much about these matters because I do not understand them. I understand what Taboo I have crossed, but I have no explanation for how.”
“Is that so? So here, there is a daughter that flouts the rules of my Petals of the Seeing Thorn for the sake of her own personal gain, and a mother who has clearly done the same but has no recollection?”
BANG!
Both Soryntha and the Matriarch fell to their knees so heavily that their legs fractured to near pieces.