Leou looked at weird, seemingly expecting anyone but to co through the door to her office when she told to co in following my knocking. She raised her index finger before covering her mouth and whiskers with one hand.
“How… How are you here, exactly? I could have sworn that… You know… You should have been on the flying beast for a day or two, depending on the weather, and like… It’s been three days since you left, so…”
“Let’s just–ust say that I can be quite–te fast when it co–cos to returning”
“Is that so…? Mmh… What about Hulil?”
“He’s dead. I emp–tied the entire manor–nor and cave underneath–th it. The only li–li–livings things left should be r–rats and critter–tters”
“Really? You were able to clear the entire place in what… A day?”
“A night, actually–y. I won’t go–go into details, but I started the pur–purge after nightfall, and then–then, I returned and waited for the su–sun to rise”
Leou scratched her face using one of her claw-like nails, seemingly taking in the rather absurd things I was telling her. No doubt, from her perspective, what I was spouting was probably sounding highly suspicious. As lowly as Hulil Boorizar may be, and as crappy as his guards might be… It was still an abnormal feat to just wipe out the entire population of a noble’s residence in a single night.
She was probably wondering how I had even gotten past the gates, which weren’t just a physical obstacle, as they were doubly secured by an invisible barrier that should have alerted everyone to an intruder… Alas, I would rather not explain in detail how I had avoided the security asures–I had no problem explaining how I had slaughtered everyone once inside, though.
“...So you’re telling that you didn’t just kill everyone, you made them disappear without even leaving a single drop of blood behind?”
“Yup”
“Maya, that’s… That’s actually an incredible skill! I didn’t think that’s what you ant last ti when you talked about making Hulil disappear. Do you know if so remnant energies are left behind from this? I don’t doubt that their life force doesn’t have ti to turn into much death force if you just devour everything on the fly, but what about inner energies in general?”
Mmh, Nara?
Rember in the A.R.DL, and in the past, how no one seed capable of actually tracking you down as the culprit of anything you’ve done, even that halfling investigative mage? You naturally pollute your cri scenes with negative emotions that don’t directly tie back to you and eventually turn into negative energy. The sa thing is still happening now. When it cos to actually figuring anything about you or related to you, things end up naturally ssed up and pretty much impossible to investigate properly
As such, yes, the inner energies your victims leave behind end up getting covered up. Though I would like to comnt that this strange ability of yours has been getting stronger and stronger as you yourself have grown more powerful
Huh, I’ve had the ability since forever? Explains a lot, actually. It’s no wonder I’ve been able to get away with so much.
Well, you were always very careful as well, so that certainly helped. I don’t really have an explanation for why this particular ability has always been active, whilst the rest needed to be activated via stimulus, but I was never able to talk about it before the A.R.DL…
Don’t worry about it. As long as it’s just a passive ability that I had no idea about, it doesn’t really matter… If it does its thing, it does its thing.
The dialogue inside my head with Nara always went much faster than it seed, so I was able to respond to Leou without making her wait.
“It does also take ca–care of inner energies. In fa–fact, even specialised spells are pretty much un–un–unable to gleam at the truth–th”
The snow leopard smiled brightly.
“You should have told earlier. I’ll definitely need to hook you up with my allies now! You aren’t just an excellent assassin, you seem like the best possible cri scene cleaner as well! Have you ever worked as one before?”
“I did a bit–a bit, but it wasn’t really ‘work’ per se”
“I see, I see… Anyway! I don’t have confirmation yet, but I’ll trust you that Hulil has been dealt with. What exactly do you want as your regular weekly paynt and specific job completion rewards? Don’t hesitate to ask for anything you can think of. I am way richer than you might think, and I believe that you deserve to be properly remunerated, considering that you are an assassin, a corpse disposer, and a bodyguard for … Also, I think you’re quite the nice gal”
I slid a piece of paper over to Leou. Before coming to find her, I had gone ahead and written everything down… Well, I couldn’t write very well with my big, steel fingers, so it was actually Elowen who had written it–Turns out she has very pretty handwriting.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to for the genuine story.
The list contained the typical stuff. Steel in large quantities, diverse kinds of steel, and also so rarer ones… Flesh with the sa requirents as steel, but also things to please my curse and spirit sides. Of course, since I could absorb it, I also had containers filled with negative energy written down.
Ghostly Essence and Cursed Essence were also on the list, although a bit apart, since I knew that they were rather rare. More importantly, I wanted to have rooms made to allow to train certain of my upgradable upgrades.
‘Fla Resistance’, ‘Energy Resistance’, and ‘Crushing Bite’. It was a waste not to be actively trying to push them higher, as difficult and ti-consuming as it might be… And of course, I was also planning on asking for things that I believed could allow to acquire upgrades without having to rely on the accumulation of experience.
Frankly, it was a rather obvious one, and sothing that would actually seem like the real main way to acquire upgrades–If I had the full extent of my abilities, that is…
Nara had told that Leton’s chanical genius was actually sothing I was ant to have too, and although the circumstances that had led to my innate ability turning into the monster that I had beco had a lot to do with my quest to help my brother, it seed sensical that if I had had his genius as a steel monstrosity, that one of my first ideas would have been to engineer upgrades for myself without the direct intervention of the system.
Thus, I was going to try to add an upgrade that I was certain was available through the system, without actually using the system. Unfortunately, I was only a genius of machines when designing pre-final nightmares. The skills and knowledge did not carry over at all to right now. Despite the mories being in my head, it just didn’t work out at all. Almost as if the genius itself required sothing more to actually function.
The knowledge alone was useless.
Nonetheless, there were so upgrades that were simplistic enough that even without a mind geared toward the creation of machines, I felt confident I could pull off–Naly, the adding of new wires to my body.
I currently own two wire-thed upgrades. ‘Copper Wires’ and ‘Silver Wires’. The typical entertainnt automatons could use a whole array of different wires, each with different conductibility levels, general toughness, resistance to erosion, et cetera… All of these different kinds of wires have varying uses, though when it cos down to it, there are three types that are most common and considered the standard kinds.
The rest are mostly the cheaper options.
Copper and silver, which I already have, and golden wires.
I have no idea whether the ‘Wire ss Form’ only needs these three kinds of wires to be unlocked, but I feel confident that it does indeed have to do with acquiring more kinds of wires.
Relying on the ‘main’ way of acquiring upgrades was simply too slow, and did not guarantee that I would have the chance of actually picking sothing I wanted…
As far as I could tell, the wires that I already owned grew from my steel bones, and just sort of wrapped around my body as they continued to expand, like vines, so emulating this with golden wires myself should only require that I pluck out so of the existing wires and instead place golden ones in their place.
Or so I was thinking.
It would probably be more complicated than this, but as per usual, I was optimistic about my chances of success. This just seed like the most logical way of getting new upgrades outside of the one way I already knew.
Nara couldn’t confirm or deny whether I was correct or not, but I could just feel that she agreed with . It was subtle, but I could tell a little bit about how my little sister felt even when she wasn’t saying anything.
In any case, Leou looked at my list for a few minutes and then nodded.
“Well, a few of those items are rare, but most of it is actually quite easy for to get. I’ll make sure to get you a proper salary without fail! Is there anything that isn’t on the list that you would like to add, Maya?”
I slightly leaned on her desk.
“I wou–would like to know… Where–re, are you willing to let touch your fluff?”
Her tail hit the back of her chair as it suddenly moved.
“Ah… I… I guess it depends on affinity? J-Just the ears for now, alright?”
“Can I–I touch them whenever–ever?”
Leou looked to the side in thought for a mont, visibly quite embarrassed that I was so fixated on getting to touch her fur–But how could anyone sane of mind not be interested in getting up close and personal with a snow leopard? Leou is incredibly soft to the touch. You can tell just by looking, and even then, what the eyes tell is a different story from reality…
She cleared her throat.
“The rules are simple: You do not touch by surprise, and only when it’s just the two of us, alright? I don’t want to have to explain anything to anyone else…”
“Got it”
Hopefully, I’ll be able to graduate from the ears to the underside of her chin soon enough…
…Although Hulil Boorizar was mostly unknown to the general public, the fact that I made him and his entire staff disappear without a trace ended up making the whole thing a rather widespread story. Due to the chaotic events of the Nightmare Plague, as they called it, many infrastructure, cities, and towns were still sowhat lacking compared to what they once were.
As such, many imdiately assud that a dangerous monster had been let in deep into Heldinotian territory. After all, making absolutely everyone vanish without a trace wasn’t exactly common practice when the culprit was an assassin or a person in general. Especially since Hulil wasn’t exactly a good target. He didn’t have much money at the ready. He had no value as a hostage, and in general, no one cared about him or his existence.
Taking all of this into account, it seed more logical to believe that this was the work of so monstrous entity. Especially since the strange appearances of unusual creatures and beings that I had heard about a while back had never really stopped happening.
People were already assuming an Abyssal Creature, a Void Being, or sothing of the sort was to bla.
I an… They weren’t wrong that it was the work of a monster, but could they guess that it was the prettiest monster to ever walk this world that was responsible? Or that the monster was actually also a hired assassin? Without any way to gather any proof or evidence, speculations would be all that they would ever have.
In any case, I’ll just wait for my golden wires.
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