Chapter 665 Sneaky
Wolfe noticed that the three bodyguards had been pulled to the sides of the room, and that nobody else he knew was near him, all distracted by someone among the Nobles, a situation that seemed strangely suspicious to him. Most of them didn't know anyone else here either, and they weren't together.
Then he felt the surge of mana through the [Kind Intentions] spell as a passing Nobleman bumped into him and his armour spell flared with energy.
The Demon Froze, restrained by the spell, and Wolfe turned to face him.
"So, that's how it is. Let me guess, it will look bad for the Queen if her guest is injured, and you think your people can take her on in the chaos." Wolfe whispered, while the Demon glared at him, unable to finish the attack that had been stopped a centimetre from Wolfe's body.
The flare of magic from the statues caught all the Nobles' attention, and the restrained Demon was incredibly suspicious.
Then he turned to run, making it out the door and down the hallway with the Palace Guards right behind him.
Risa and the twins came running over and checked Wolfe for injuries.
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇt"How did he manage to get so far? I felt your armour spell flare." Risa demanded as she turned Wolfe back and forth to check him for injuries.
"He is Rank Eight, and he didn't intend to harm me with his actions until the last moment. The spell takes an instant to restrain someone like him, so the Nobles should likely still be careful of someone that powerful, but he was forced to stop before he could damage my outfit."
Risa nodded and looked around the room to see where everyone else had gone, making a mental note of who they were standing with. All of those people were concerns for them, as the women were with Wolfe, and that made them a secondary target for protection.
There was a good chance that this had just been a test of the bodyguard's skills, but if it was an attack on Wolfe for personal reasons, or an attempt to discredit Queen Jasmine, it could be a real problem.
That wasn't really his problem, though, as long as the guards managed to catch the attacker before he got out of the Palace and vanished. This whole place was full of wrath Demons, so it was possible that the veneer of civility didn't run very deep, and they would snap if given anything resembling a decent reason.
Queen Jasmine was at his side now, checking Wolfe over with satisfaction that he wasn't injured.
"Don't worry about it too much. We will take care of it, we already know who it is, and he's not going to go far even if he makes it out of the Palace." She informed him with her trademark amused smile.
The momentary violence was completely normal to the Nobles, and this level of casual interaction was as close as the Wrath Demons could get to formal. Wolfe hadn't been outside the Palaces much, but the Demon Nobles put on their very best facades to come see the Royals, and away from the Palace cities, they were much more like what every other plane expected Demons to be.
Even the loveable succubi were known to drain people to death for annoying them, or just for sport. It just wasn't an effective long-term strategy, as there were still laws against public murder designed to make the realm a bit more civilized.
Not only that, but most of the Incubus Kingdom survived on tourism. If they kept killing visitors, they would lose their livelihood. Even the most feral of Demons knew that you didn't hunt where you slept, unless you wanted to be the next prey.
Now that there had been an attack, the guards were no longer willing to leave Wolfe unattended, so everyone who wanted to talk to them had to come over, which caused a bit of a traffic jam in the room, much to Wolfe's amusement.
At one point, a server was pinned against him by the crowd, and nearly dropped her tray when she felt the overflowing mana in his proximity. Wolfe let a bit more flow through her, saturating her body with mana and allowing her to break through to the Second Rank.
He caught her tray as she shuddered and went weak in the knees, then handed it back as she flushed and ran out of the room.
"You really are incorrigible, aren't you?" Risa asked.
"Sometimes it's just too tempting not to. She was right at the verge of Rank Two, so all it took was a little extra mana to push her over the brink." Wolfe agreed.
"Why the fuck is my daughter not getting a free advancement, then?" Someone yelled, having overheard Wolfe's conversation.
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏm"Well, where is she, send her to Patriarch Wolfe, and I'll help her out." Wolfe shot back.
The way he said the word 'Patriarch' made the Succubi in the room burst into laughter, and the man who had been shouting blush.
It didn't stop him though, and the man ran out of the room to go get his child, who must have been somewhere nearby.
"So, it's a daughter's exclusive option?" One of the Wrathbringers, a crimson demon nearly five metres in height, asked.
"No, it works on men as well, but differently. But Wrathbringers don't usually need it, since you break the bottlenecks as you mature, and doing the process before the body is grown enough is dangerous for the recipient."
The demon sighed and Wolfe smiled at him.
"You were imagining a Rank Three Toddler, weren't you?" He asked.
"It would be glorious. The chaos, the wrath, the tiny flying creature. You know, we rely on magical power to fly, so we can't actually do it until we've ranked up at least once." The Wrathbringer agreed.
Given their adult size, their children likely weren't all that tiny, but the image was still amusing.
"Well, perhaps there are other small creatures that could be made to fly without throwing them." Wolfe shrugged.