The red-light district was actually a rather short street.
Buildings hanging neon signs of various colors on both sides stood at uneven heights, and translucent screens interspersed on both sides of the street flickered with images full of temptation and suggestion. In front of every shop door, soft and dreamy lighting was used to create an ambiguous and sweet atmosphere.
The color tone of the entire street leaned toward being bright, the ground was cleaner, and there was a faint fragrance drifting in the air.
Amelia could even hear faint laughter drifting out from some of the half-open windows.
If the outside looked like a city that survived after suffering an artillery strike, this place looked like a city from before anything had happened, full of hidden and active vitality.
It certainly looked like a place that would make people happy.
The building seen earlier was located at the entrance of this street.
Amelia did not hesitate and walked straight into that building.
This floor was probably a place for drinking and making merry, and the smell of alcohol mixed with an unknown fragrance made people’s noses itch.
Amelia covered his nose and scanned the interior furnishings in a hurry.
The curved reception desk was empty, and behind it was a wall of liquor. Bottles of liquor were arranged in an orderly fashion, in varying colors, reflected by the orange-yellow lights suspended from the ceiling to create dazzling colors.
Behind the wall, twos and threes of people could be vaguely seen sitting on different sofas, separated by translucent light gauze and dim lighting into different spaces. Soft music played in the corner, not very distinct, easily covered up by wanton laughter and chatter.
It somewhat resembled the tavern environment in his hometown.
A succubus’s vision was not affected by the dim environment, but being too far away made it very difficult to clearly distinguish the emotions on human beings.
Amelia wanted to get closer to take a look, but before he had taken two steps, he was grabbed.
He felt no killing intent, but his recent vigilance truly needed polishing… he muttered to himself as he turned his head.
The one grabbing him this time was not a burly man, but a human female around twenty years old.
She wore her long hair down, had a tall figure, wore exquisite and beautiful makeup on her face, sported an out-of-season deep red off-the-shoulder dress and stiletto heels, and draped a white shawl over her shoulders.
She was very good-looking. She was the best-looking human Amelia had seen so far in the Abandoned District.
If she were not grabbing his arm to keep him from leaving and glaring at him the whole time, she would probably look even better.
“How did you get in?” She frowned, “This is not a place for a child like you to come.”
For a succubus’s age, he was already an adult.
No one would believe that right now.
Amelia did not want to answer such a meaningless question, so he stared at the arm the woman was gripping, hesitating slightly.
Breaking free with his strength was effortless, but if this woman got hurt and started shouting loudly, it might draw the tattooed man from the entrance.
The ten-minute hypnosis had already worn off, and the effect of hypnotizing him again would be reduced.
Would he have to do another hypnosis then?
Or should he hypnotize this woman first?
Rather than wasting magic power on hypnosis, knocking her out directly would be more convenient.
However, a human’s fragile body was troublesome, and if he did not control his strength when knocking her out, she might die.
If she died, he would have to go through the trouble of hiding the corpse…
In the time it took for this brief hesitation, the woman seemed to have already reached a logically self-consistent answer, released his arm, and pushed him toward the door, “No matter who brought you here, whatever they promised you is fake. This is not the wonderful place you imagine it to be. While there’s still time, hurry and leave this place.”
Amelia stood in place without moving and shook his head, “I am just here to find something to eat.” Once he was full, he would naturally leave.
“Something to eat?” The woman failed to push him, looked slightly surprised, withdrew her hand, and looked him up and down, “You have many other ways to get money, why on earth must you come to this kind of place?”
“The people here look happier than those outside, and they look like they can eat their fill.”
Amelia answered truthfully, but the woman sneered, “Happy? You really are a clueless little brat. If you enter this place, you will never be able to…”
“Freesia, who are you talking to?” A hoarse voice deliberately forced out a soft and seductive tone from upstairs.
The woman paused her words, took half a step back, lowered her eyelids, and her expression turned docile and calm as she called out toward the staircase, “Mother, you are here.”
Mother?
Amelia poked his head out to look.
The brisk footsteps on the stairs sounded one by one, approaching from afar. Soon, a person appeared at the top of the stairs.
Her hair was gathered up with an exquisite hair ornament, and she wore a pretty purplish-red long dress. There were gold-glinting jewelry on her fingertips, wrists, and ears, which looked quite expensive.
Probably to conceal the traces left by the years, her makeup was very heavy and drawn somewhat exaggeratedly. The unmasking flab and figure exposed her age.
This was a heavily made-up fifty-something… man.
Although he wore women’s clothes, applied feminine makeup, and his gait and demeanor were also like a woman’s, Amelia knew this was a man.
A succubus would never mistake a gender.
“Oh my, whose child is this?”
This “mother” casually glanced at Freesia, then her gaze landed on Amelia, the smile that had been hanging at the corners of her mouth expanding slightly, “Your guest, Freesia?”
“No, this child is just lost,” Freesia said softly and gently, “I do not know him.”
Amelia glanced at Freesia, who seemed like a completely different person, and remained silent.
“So that’s how it is. I was thinking, such a cute child if Freesia knew him, Mother would certainly have to treat him well.”
That “mother” smiled even more happily, while Freesia lowered her head without speaking.
He looked at Amelia again, appearing to want to show kindness as he curved his eyes, “Are you lost? How pitiful, you must be hungry, do you want to eat something before leaving?”
Edible things?
Amelia looked at this unnaturally smiling man, carefully identified the pitch-black emotions on him, and after a moment shook his head, “You cannot treat me. You do not have anything I can eat.”
All negative emotions, inedible.
Freesia’s brows furrowed slightly, then quickly returned to normal, her gaze remaining submissively downward.
“Mother’s” expression stiffened for a moment, and she blocked the lower half of her face with her hand, chuckled twice, and said again, “I don’t carry any on me, but it’s not like there is no food. It’s in my room, I’ll take you to eat some.”
Going to the room… that did not sound like a normal reception procedure.
Amelia glanced at the two figures who had followed behind “mother” and blended into the darkness like two shadows, then looked back at the crowd behind the bottle wall that could not be clearly seen, as well as the silent Freesia, and finally nodded, “Okay.”
He did not want to be crudely invited up.
“Good child.”
Like a matter-of-course routine, “mother” offered a word of praise with a beaming smile.
Amelia followed “mother” upstairs. He knew without looking back that those two figures were still following closely behind them at a not-far-not-near distance.
Out of curiosity, he still turned around and took a look.
Those two gazes indeed followed him tightly, carrying a vague sense of threat.
Unexpectedly, Freesia was also watching him.
What a strange person.
Clearly ever since “mother” appeared, she had not spared him a single glance, so why look at him at this time?
Was she afraid of “mother’s” scolding? Or was she watching where he was going?
Amelia did not understand. He only knew that everyone here, including Freesia’s emotions, were negative colors that could not be eaten from start to finish.
If it was negative emotions, how could good things happen?
Therefore, he was not very surprised when this happened after he entered that room, the two people who had been following behind “mother” immediately lunged over, grabbed him, and locked him inside a secret room within the room.
There were no windows in the secret room, no beds or tables, and no food. It was pitch black, enclosed by high iron bars to form a cell, holding a dozen or so wilted children.
Judging by their faces, most were around ten years old. This should have been a very lively age.
Yet they were either lying or sitting. Seeing Amelia being thrown in, whether panicked, fearful, or anxious, not a single one took the initiative to call for help, uniformly maintaining silence.
Seeing the opened barred door, they made no attempt to escape, as if they already knew the price of resistance and had given up on meaningless actions.
Until the secret room was closed, and the cell returned to terrifying darkness and silence, a few whimpers escaped. Even the crying sounds exuded an aura of weakness.
Why these children were locked here, and what “mother” locked them here for… to be honest, Amelia was not curious at all.
“After all, they are humans. Doing anything is not strange. Humans are much harder to understand than demons.”
Amelia muttered to himself.
The cell was relatively spacious, and he occupied a small space by himself, looking up and down at the iron bars in front of him, touching them twice to feel the texture, and finally squeezing with a slight force the straight bars were like plasticine, twisting into a large arc.
For a demon, it was not sturdy… After confirming this, Amelia twisted it back.
Having finished this little experiment, he looked around and caught sight of the extremely narrow line of light left at the entrance. That was the only ventilation spot here.
The ventilation environment was very poor, and the air easily became turbid.
He could only say fortunately, that “mother” had not yet made them resolve their bodily functions here. But for young children, there were always some irresistible forces.
Amelia held his breath, endured and endured, until he truly could not hold it anymore.
He walked over to the child curled up in the corner and called out to him, “Hey you, stand up.”
“Wuwu e…”
That child was probably seven or eight years old, crawling slowly up from the ground, revealing a face swollen red from crying, his eyes reduced to the size of slits.
He forced his eyes open, trembling as he looked at Amelia, lowering his head immediately without looking further, his hands skillfully shielding his head, half-bowing his waist, trying his best to hide his vulnerable parts inward, whimpering in his mouth without knowing what he was saying.
Amelia did not care what he was saying at all. Frowning, he slapped the child’s clothes with a palm.
The body under his hand trembled unceasingly, and feelings of disgust surged continuously in his heart. It took three full minutes before he withdrew his hand.
The child waited for a long while without encountering the familiar pain, and trembled as he raised his head, squinting through the gaps in his eyes to peek at the big brother who had just been thrown in.
Having adapted to the dark environment, he could see, so he knew this was a big brother with white hair.
The white-haired big brother looked fierce: “The last kid who wet his pants that I knew was eaten by a werewolf. Do you think the next one will be you?”
Wetting his pants… The child’s face flushed red, and he wanted to cry again.
He was disliked by everyone precisely because he wet his pants, and people always bullied him.
Whenever he was bullied, he easily wet his pants. Although that person had been taken away yesterday, if this big brother also got angry…
The more the child thought, the sadder he became, and just as he was about to wail out loud, he heard the footsteps of that big brother walking away.
Was he not going to hit him?
The child squinted to repeatedly confirm, let out a sob, held back his tears, and curled back into the corner.
After lying there for a while, he suddenly felt something was amiss… Why had that annoying smell on him disappeared?
He recalled what had happened just now… Could it be that the big brother came to—?
He secretly looked at the white-haired youth not far away, hesitating many times before finally making up his mind.
On the other side, Amelia had taken care of the source of polluted air and felt much better in mood.
Cleansing magic was indeed quite useful.
It was just that his stomach was a little empty, his magic power a little low, and he needed to consider when to get out of here.
If he was not mistaken, this place should be where humans did sex work, feeling very similar to what he saw in his hometown.
If that “mother” intended to sell them to other people doing sex work, it would not be a bad thing for him.
That way, he would have the opportunity to replenish magic.
Only with sufficient magic power could he restore his original appearance and have the ability to find those so-called ability users capable of destroying the world.
Otherwise, even if he found them, approaching rashly might lead to death.
It was precisely because he realized this point that he had not resisted and willingly allowed himself to be locked up in this kind of place.
“Bi-, Big…” A trembling voice came from beside him.
Amelia glanced sideways, recognizing from the emotional fluctuations who it was, “Pants-wetter.”
“I, I am not a pants-wetter. I am A-Mian.”
The courage A-Mian had mustered leaked out like a balloon the moment he met Amelia’s eyes.
He lowered his head, picking at the pattern on his clothes, “Big brother, I… I, um, thank you, my clothes are clean.” His voice grew smaller and smaller.
“Oh. Then what can you do for me?”
While listening to the movement outside the secret room, guessing when “mother” would come to take them away, Amelia chatted listlessly with the human child.
“I, I…”
A-Mian looked as if he had not expected to receive such a reaction, his face showing a blank expression formed by the overlap of confusion and panic.
Amelia sensed his helplessness and immediately took up the mindset of intimidation, “You don’t know? Receiving something from a demon requires returning it ten or a hundred times over.”
“Then I…”
A-Mian widened his eyes, his lips trembling for a long while before biting down hard, speaking with resounding force, “Then I will wash a hundred pairs of peed-in pants for big brother!”
Eh?
This fellow was probably an idiot.
Amelia felt the gazes secretly sizing him up from other children around him and decisively followed the fine tradition of demons, turning his face and denying anyone.
“No. Go away, don’t bother me.”
“—Wu.” The rejected child was heartbroken, squatting in a corner nearby and beginning to mutter to himself.
Amelia originally did not care, paying attention to the outside movement while closing his eyes to rest.
Until he inadvertently caught a few keywords, causing him to abruptly raise his head: “What did you just say?”
“What?” A-Mian looked at him with red eyes.
“You said, where are we going to be sent?” Amelia repeated word for word.
A-Mian sobbed and replied, “A, a laboratory.”