"My, my, look who's finally here..." Sophia said with an even voice as she pursued her lips while glancing at Ghislaine, who still walked quite awkwardly from the first mating she just experienced this morning.
"..." The Sword King, who just came inside the manager's office of the Blood Fund, grunted quietly before she walked to the couch and sat down without looking at the visibly displeased concubine. What could she even say to Sophia when Kars seduced her and she ended up falling into his arms?
The feline woman had just rested for a couple of hours, so she was not yet 100% recovered from the aftermath. She really didn't want to listen to Sophia's passive-aggressive comment...
"Haaa... and I had some hope for you to last for at least a little while longer too..." Sophia sighed with disappointment as she picked up the quilt and signed her name on the report about the result of the indenture census of Kars Domain. It was taking quite a while before the information was finally gathered.
Currently the number of indentured workers who got taken in now reached up to 28,000 people, with all kinds of professions now available for their faction to exploit. It was an army sitting quietly in the city without the council ever noticing...
"..." After the feline woman heard Sophia make a jab at her, she just pretended she didn't hear anything from the bitching concubine like Kars usually did. Ghislaine just looked out of the window while playing with her cat tail like an... an innocent big muscular kitten.
"Hmph..." Seeing her target dedicated herself to becoming an ostrich with her head buried in the sand, Sophia could only huff as she changed her target and glanced to the other side of her desk, where another wooden desk was occupied by her half-sister Louise, who was busy reviewing some papers with a groan escaping from her lips.
"Uuuuuh... this scene is too complicated to write... why did I make this butt stuff again...? Ahhh... whatever!" The young woman was whining before she suddenly scattered the papers all over the desk in frustration while some even fell off her desk.
And that was her mistake in attracting the aggression from the concubine...
"And what do you think you're doing?" Sophia's pale blue eyes immediately turned green as they glowed while her telekinesis grip firmly grabbed on her half-sister's cheeks and squeezed her face.
"Ahh! I didn't do anything!" Louise cried out by reflex with a muffled voice. "Please don't mess up my makeup!"
"That's the problem! You should be doing your work right now and not doing your hobby!" Sophia hissed as she shook her half-sister's head around with her telekinesis grip like she was trying to fix a broken device. "What are you even doing anyway?!"
"But—But there's no work for me yet...! I finished everything...!" Louise reasonably protested, but her sister was unfortunately not in a reasonable mood right now.
"Just pretend you are busy then!" Sophia huffed as she finally let Louise off the hook while the young woman was muttering complaints to her unreasonable big sister.
"Hmph, just because Mr. Kars got another woman..." Louise pouted and began gathering her papers to arrange them neatly on her desk. She didn't say it for her sister to hear, of course... she was smart, not stupid.
"Uhh... I'm here..." Then a young girl's voice was drawing the women's attention to Juri, who just came inside the room looking around the place with a bit of a lost expression.
"Ah! Juri, you are here." Sophia immediately stood up with a gentle smile, like what happened earlier was just an illusion, and walked toward the girl, who she told to come to meet her in the office.
"Come here and sit with me." Sophia said as she held the confused girl's shoulder and led her to the couch next to the one Ghislaine was sitting on. "We should talk about how you've been doing recently..."
"Uh... um." Juri now found herself stuck on Sophia's side as she was being asked this and that about herself and how she spent time doing what. It felt weird to Juri that Sophia suddenly became more interested in her than usual...
"What is this blatant difference in treatment?" Louise looked at her older half-sister, who acted so caring towards Juri with an aggravated look. "Is this discrimination? A double standard?"
"..." Ghislaine, on the other hand, just felt relieved that the atmosphere was now calm down somewhat...
÷×÷×÷×÷×÷
In the alleyway somewhere in the outer district of Jinkai City, two people, a man and a woman in brown cloaks with hoods, could be seen sneaking around as they were moving fast in the desolate alleyway while constantly keeping looking backward to see if anyone was following them.
The two of them were quite paranoid and had good reason to, as they were trying to run away from the infamous Kars' blood debt. A futile attempt, as Kars could just find them anywhere on this planet with his blood sorcery.
"This is definitely not a good idea..." The woman muttered as she followed the man in front of her nervously. They had been walking for an hour now, and she started to feel like they were being followed even though she didn't see anyone...
"Be quiet...! We will be out of the city soon..." The man turned around and looked at the woman briefly with irritation in his gaze. She had been whining constantly, and it was grating on his nerves, distracting him.
"But..." The woman still tried to say something, but the man just grunted in annoyance and cut her off without listening to her anymore.
"..." The woman could only be quiet as she followed after him.
Unbeknownst to the two of them, the group of dark hands were stalking them from the rooftops as they stayed out of the man's and woman's line of sight while following them.
The dark hands were moving with so much grace that they barely disturbed the soot-covered tiles of the rooftops or made any noise.
Fortunately for the pair, their stalkers were merely observers for now as they gradually surrounded their targets while they were all on the move.
If it was the usual cleanup crew that was known as the blood hounds of Kars in the underworld, then the man and woman were just going to "disappear," like those who tried to flee their blood debt or those who got purged with Kars' orders...
"...?" As the pair was moving, the man in front of the woman suddenly stopped before his head swiftly turned around as he cautiously looked all over the alleyway for something.
"What is..." The man didn't turn around to face the woman who muttered behind him, his shoulders were tense, and his breath grew quick without seemingly any explanation.
"It is too quiet..." The woman muttered with anxiety in her tone as the two of them noticed the sounds of the city around them were now oddly muted. It was not an absence of sound, but it was like there was a invisible presence... a heavy, suffocating blanket that dampened the space around them.
"Did you hear that?" The woman whispered, her voice trembling as she spun around, her eyes darting toward the rooftops of the buildings around them. There was nothing up there, but the air still felt thick, as if the city itself was holding its breath.
Then a footstep echoed from a distance...
It wasn't the light, skittering sound of a small critter or the distant shuffle of some people in the building. The footsteps were a heavy, deliberate thud that seemed oddly loud to the pair of men's and women's ears.
"...!" The sound repeated again as the pair's hearts skipped a beat. Slow but oppressive, like an ominous countdown, with each step carrying something dangerous closer to their location.
But the two of them couldn't even manage to move, like something was holding them in place...
"There you are..." Then from behind the pair of a man and woman, a tall silhouette emerged unhurriedly, with his deep voice making them so tense as they moved like a rusted machine while turning to see the person behind them.
Finally, they saw the infamous Kars Aloha simply walk toward them amidst the gloom of the alleyway, with each step of him making their breath difficult.
"Going somewhere?" Kars' voice drifted through the alley, sounding less like a question and more mocking to them. He then stopped ten meters from the pair, his amber eyes glowing with a predatory gaze that made the man grip tight on his knife with a shaky hand and the woman freeze in fear.
As the tension rose, the man didn't say anything, and with a grim, suicidal determination, he decided to lung toward Kars' direction with his knife in a desperate attempt to sacrifice himself for the woman to escape.
Kars' face didn't even twitch at the man's action. He simply reached out his hand and caught the man's wrist with a blurred speed and an inhuman grip strength that made the man's bones crack while he was still thrusting the knife forward.
"Argh...!" The man grunted in pain as his motion was suddenly stopped forcefully. Then with a casual swing of his arm Kars sent the man flying fast into a stack of wooden crates, which shattered them upon impact.
"Are you stupid or something?" Kars snorted, looking down at the man who was now groaning amidst the wreckage of the crates. "You think a little knife can stop me? I guess someone didn't cherish their life..."
Kars didn't bother looking at the man in the crates, as his attention had already shifted to the woman who he came to collect.
He saw her trembling like a small animal with her eyes wide with terror. To Kars, she wasn't someone special, just another poor daughter from a poor family that got sold to him. Although she seemed like a pretty woman with mature and motherly air around her.
"As you likely knew, I'm here for what your father owes me." He didn't raise his voice, but the words carried a weight that seemed to press the woman down. Kars stepped close to the woman, with amber eyes locked onto her dark purple ones.
"And what he only has left is you, whom he decided to exchange for his freedom," Kars continued, his voice sounding casual yet devoid of warmth. He stopped just inches from the woman, his towering presence making her even more aware of their differences.
"Don't touch her...!" A voice screamed from behind Kars as he glanced back at the man who was struggling to get up from the wreckage of the crates. The man's face was twisted in a mixture of desperation and agony. His arm that Kars used to throw him was hanging loosely as his shoulder was now dislocated.
"You are free to try to stop me..." Kars hummed with a smirk as he turned toward the man. "But the consequences for such bravery are pretty expensive, just like this."
Kars didn't wait for the man to respond. In a movement too fast for the ordinary human eye to track, he delivered a steel-like knee deep into the man's ribs with his hands pulling the man toward him by his neck. There was an audible crack, followed by the sound of air being violently forced out of a set of lungs.
"Ughkk...?!" The man collapsed to the ground instantly, his desperate bravado replaced by a ragged, wheezing gasp for air.
"Please stop...!" The woman finally regained some of her wit, though her voice was trembling with fear. She threw herself over the injured man, her arms spreading wide as she tried to shield him with her own body. "I-I can work! I'll do anything...! Just please don't kill him!"
"Is that so?" Kars looked down at the display of this touching sacrifice and felt a sense of boredom. He didn't particularly enjoy bullying anyone without any way for them to fight back, but he did appreciate their willingness to give up when they knew the difference in power between him and them.
"Come with me then." He stepped back, granting them a breathing room, and crossed his arms over his broad chest.
"Y-Yes..." The woman muttered as she looked down at the wheezing man, who still looked unwilling to give up but couldn't do anything.
"Please stop... you must not hurt yourself anymore." She whispered to the man before she stood up and walked toward Kars with her head down while the man was reaching out desperately to her with a cough and wheeze coming out from him.
"Follow me," Kars huffed as he turned around and walked toward where he was coming from earlier as the woman obediently followed him while she gave the struggling man she left on the ground one last glance before she turned back to look at Kars' broad back.
"Hmm?" Kars ignored whatever was going on behind him as he saw a crow swooping down and dropping a letter for him from above. He used his telekinesis magic and brought the letter to his hand before he opened it up and read quickly.
"Mei Mei was visiting now, huh?" he hummed to himself with a small smile before he turned around and beckoned the woman to come stand next to his side.
"Yes...?" She obediently came to Kars' side cluelessly before he suddenly scooped her up over his shoulder as she yelped in surprise. "Ahhh...?! What are you—"
Kars didn't let her finish as he opened up the portal and lunged inside it, while the woman was screaming in surprise...