Chapter 62: The Nobles

Becoming a familiar?

Hearing Alex's words, Mireille raised her head.

Though her mind was currently in chaos, filled with fear and anxiety, she still clearly caught those two words: "familiar."

"You mean you want to make me your slave, is that it?"

Mireille tried to calm the terror raging within her, speaking slowly.

"Pretty much."

Alex smiled.

Mireille looked toward the distant alley entrance. Red light had already blanketed the town's sky, and the second stage of the Domain expansion was nearly complete.

She lowered her gaze to the hand Alex was holding. The intense, agonizing pain still thrummed through her entire body, and the fear in her heart had not yet completely dissipated.

She seemed to understand Alex's intention—he wanted to bind her with a slave contract and then take her with him to stop this Slime Domain manifestation.

No wonder she could faintly hear the lingering sounds of battle from the eastern entrance all the way outside the western gate of the town. At first, she had thought the Knights Templar were being foolish and putting up resistance, wondering what organization the knights could have allied with to hold out for so long. She had even suspected those necromancers who loved tailing dead bodies, having long since heard rumors that those scavengers planned to come here to pick up corpses and harvest souls.

Yet she never expected that the man right before her was the mastermind behind all of this.

It seemed she had no choice.

"I have no choice."

When Mireille spoke these words, they sounded more like a deep sigh, as if uttering them had exhausted every last ounce of strength in her body.

The light in her eyes dimmed.

Yet deep down, a sliver of hope remained.

She prayed that Alex did not possess any high-grade enslavement equipment. If that were the case, there would always be hope of breaking the bond later on; the Knights Templar would never allow their vice-commander to become someone else's slave.

There was still room to maneuver, no matter what.

To her utter astonishment, however, Alex directly reached out and pressed his palm against her forehead, magical power surging.

What is this?

The universal skill [Enslave]?

Mireille looked at Alex's actions with a strange gaze, a renewed sense of joy welling up inside her.

The enslavement effect produced by such a low-tier skill was practically negligible to her. At first, she had been guessing what high-grade artifacts Alex might possess, never expecting that this man would be arrogant enough to cast only such a minor restraint upon her.

This undoubtedly gave her ample room to maneuver.

She immediately and readily accepted the effect of [Enslave].

The very next second, however, her inner joy came to an abrupt halt.

Thump!

It felt as though a hand had gripped her heart.

In her vision, Alex's figure suddenly rose from the ground, growing taller and larger. Light and shadow intertwined upon him, transforming him into a supreme entity whose head seemed to pierce the firmament.

His once-clear face vanished into the clouds, becoming blurred and indistinguishable.

Yet the oppressive might radiating from his body was enough to make anyone tremble, too terrified to even look him in the eye.

Mireille's breath hitched, and the fear that she had managed to suppress slightly moments before rushed back into her heart with frantic intensity.

She could no longer hold it back; her whole body shook uncontrollably, and her heart felt as if it were about to burst out of her chest.

She felt something choking her throat, and if she did not voice it aloud, her soul would be obliterated in the next second, plunging her into a near-eternal torment beyond the bounds of time:

"Mas... ter."

Having forced the word "master" past her lips, Mireille suddenly let out a long breath. Lying on the ground, she panted heavily, just like someone who had just been rescued from drowning.

Terrifying. Utterly terrifying.

The scene she had just witnessed was something she never wished to experience a second time in her life.

Alex nodded, released his grip, and cast a healing spell.

A warm, therapeutic white light enveloped Mireille. The wounds caused by being repeatedly slammed into the ground slowly healed, and Mireille rose to her feet.

Her expression was unimaginably complex—a jarring sensation brought on by a faith that had just collapsed only to be forcibly rebuilt in a short span of time.

"Let's go. Move quickly."

Alex spoke to Mireille and Tasanya, who stood beside her:

"I have some instructions for the road, and I expect you both to follow them."

"Tasanya, you don't need to take part in what comes next."

...

It hadn't taken Alex very long to subdue Mireille. When they hurried back to the Slime Plain, the battlefield didn't look drastically different from when he had left, but it was already apparent that the Wheel Town side was losing ground.

Old White and the summoned Sorensen were locked in intense combat with those two Tier 4 slimes.

Old White was surrounded by countless gray-white wraiths.

Compared to the wraiths summoned by other necromancers, these appeared much more tangible.

Every single specter bore a clearly visible, ferocious expression, radiating a chilling gray-white light and emitting piercing screeches, their grievances soaring to the heavens.

They swirled and circled, forming an upward-spiraling storm of wraiths around Old White.

Two giant gray-white eyes shifted in tandem with the staff waving in Old White's hands, repeatedly blocking the relentless charges and laser attacks unleashed by the Tier 4 slimes.

Sorensen was clashing continuously with the other Tier 4 slime.

His body could be seen growing increasingly translucent, gradually appearing strained amidst the collisions—a clear sign that the wraith power drawn from the Vulture members was beginning to run dry.

The situation of the Knights Templar was equally grim.

Even with the triple defense maintained by Eclaus, the black-robed woman, and Leila, the knights looked overmatched in the face of the relentless bombardment by over a dozen Tier 3 slimes.

Some wounded soldiers had completely lost their combat capability and were carried to the very rear of the formation, unconscious.

The entire knight detachment was slowly being pushed back under the relentless advance of the slime tide.

Compared to before Alex left, the entire battlefield had clearly shifted a noticeable distance closer to Wheel Town.

Alex's gaze darkened as he took the lead, plunging directly into the thick of the fray—charging straight toward those slimes!

Meanwhile, Mireille circled around from another direction toward the nobles who were still tied up in front of the camp, wailing and lamenting.

When the nobles caught sight of Mireille, they became wildly excited:

"Your Excellency Mireille!! You've come!!"

"Quick! Save us!!"

"Your Excellency Mireille, we've finally waited for you!!! It was that red dragon! She colluded with the Vulture people and tied all of us up!!"

The nobles poured out their grievances all at once, their joy overflowing. In their eyes, with the battlefield locked in a fierce struggle, as long as Mireille intervened, they would be saved.

Yet the words Mireille spoke plunged them into an icy abyss:

"The second stage is already complete. The entire town and the surrounding region are now sealed off, and no one can leave this area beyond a hundred meters at present."

"I saw that you hadn't come out, but I was worried someone might take the opportunity to escape if I left, so I waited a bit longer. When I came in to rescue you, I found that the red dragon and the Vulture people intercepted me."

"By the time I killed the red dragon, the containment had already finished."

Hearing Mireille's words, despair washed over the nobles. The stark contrast between catching a fleeting glimpse of hope and immediately plunging back into despair was more than they could bear.

Several noblewomen and young ladies broke down in weeping once more. Miserable cries echoed through the air, and the gathering of nobles fell into an oppressive, suffocating silence.

One person, possessed of a fiery temper, could no longer restrain themselves and burst out in furious curses:

"This is all your fault! You just had to guard the town entrance!! Did you not know to come in and rescue us from the start?! You useless piece of trash!!!"

Swish!

A dark purple dagger pressed against the man's throat, the razor-sharp blade leaving a thin trail of blood upon his neck.

A dangerous, lethal aura permeated the air.

The man's face instantly drained of color, his entire body trembling like a sieve as his trousers grew wet.

Mireille spoke coldly:

"For a baron to show such disrespect to the vice-commander of the Knights, even if I killed you, the Knight Assembly would at most sentence me to three months of confinement. Care to test that?"

Mireille's displeased gaze swept across the crowd, and the nobles instantly fell silent.

The crying and arguing vanished without a trace.

"The situation right now is quite clear. Since I have come in, I will do my utmost to get everyone out. I have temporarily agreed to work with these Vulture people to stop this Domain."

"Please wait patiently!"

The confidence in Mireille's tone reignited a glimmer of light in the nobles' eyes.

What they did not know, however, was that Mireille had actually desperately wanted to use the blade in her hand to slice open the neck of that insolent baron just then.

The annoyance she had accumulated in her heart today was already higher than the heavens.

Besides, as Alex had said, very few of these nobles would likely make it back alive.

Yet she ultimately reined herself in.

Even if only a few managed to return, what if one or two actually did?

She did not want to leave behind any loose ends; she had always been the kind of person who could endure absolutely anything for the sake of her career.