Dasha, the dealer on the floor, and everyone else in the Moon Club were eerily still. The barrier remained visible as blood trailed down like a slipping, dying hand.
With a sharp breath, Dasha asked, "Your na?"
The dealer glanced at him, terrified, the smile on his face shaking. In spite of his fear, he climbed to his seat. He faked his confidence and ignored the death beside him. "I...my na is Liu Ch’ang-yu...I..." His gaze flickered, his mind struck by the headless body five feet away.
Dasha calmly rolled out the Geas of Service, a parchnt of light-yellow with an awaiting pen on top. "Try not to be surprised," he said. "You know who that is."
"Don’t talk about her, don’t speak about her, don’t ntion her, don’t talk about her, don’t speak about her, don’t ntion her," Li Ch’ang-yu muttered. "Haa...hahh..." He gulped the heavy stench of death, glancing at the corpse and then back to the parchnt. Nervously, the dealer began to write the terms and conditions, his left leg bouncing anxiously. "So, regarding terms..."
Writing by pen and not by the mind; it was an intentional action. A way to unsettle the dealer further, to get him to subtly bend to his will. The more he wrote, the more he pushed aside his fears and the more he failed. If it was not for Jack’s mask and the natural negativity it radiated, Dasha might have been in the sa condition. Thinking, reconsidering, and subconsciously lowering himself toward a god-like figure. Thinking over and over again that you were truly, wholly nothing. That your death ant nothing. It was the rational response to world-bending authority.
"Six months of deliveries," Dasha requested, cool as ever. To see his dealer shaken up like this was a huge advantage. He could practically hear the other man’s shrieking heart. "Ten thousand points per delivery once a week and a hundred kilos."
"Ten thousand." Li Ch’ang-yu whispered it like a ghost.
"Shall we bump it to twelve thousand?"
"S-sure..."
His leg continued bouncing. Dasha was pleased. The negotiations were going in his favour and the dealer himself was succumbing to every little suggestion, to his fear.
"You shouldn’t be so nervous," Dasha said. "If she wanted us dead, we wouldn’t be talking." Indeed, even with all his S-class weapons and Late Stage Foundation Establishnt, he and everyone else here were nothing but specks to those belonging to the peaks of the abyss. The backing of the Whispers ant nothing. Until he brought true results, he was but an ant at the bottom of the hierarchy. The chills lingering from her horrific display of power were addicting.
Dasha was equally chilled as he was excited.
"That’s..." Li Ch’ang-yu stopped writing and looked up at him, frantic. "I-I suppose..."
"Whether it’s the Dark Sector, the Underground, Earth, or the Heavenly Tower, power reigns supre. There is nothing we weaklings can do about it, hm? We can only live and help each other. Claw up a mountain that others can simply fly over." Dasha placed a finger on the parchnt and turned it over to his side. He politely took the pen from his shaking grasp and set up the contract in his stead.
"Does it look good?" Dasha turned the parchnt back over once he was done. He made sure to include so stipulations favourable to Dasha. Li Ch’ang-yu, eyes reading it in a hurry and mind swirling, nodded. The contract was set. From here, the dealer should have imdiately handed him his share of monster at. Li Ch’ang-yu was a second too slow and Dasha brought out a glass of pink crystals.
"Here," Dasha said, pushing the glass forward, "a token of goodwill."
"What...is this?" Li Ch’ang-yu’s confusion caused him to prolong the deal further. He picked up the glass, shaky and ek. "Pink crystals? So kind of material?"
"Monster at first, please."
"Ah, yes, of course." His free hand brought out a small wooden box. "Here’s the key," Li Ch’ang-yu said, handing a small silver key over. Dasha went with the flow and calmly slipped the key inside the small circular hole at the front of the wooden box. There was a click and the sudden ergence of magic circles all around the box. Opening it, he saw a tiny, condensed beating heart.
"This is it. The heart of a Chi," Li Ch’ang-yu declared, confident resurging. "The heart of a hornless dragon."
[ Transfer Details:
10,000 PP —> 1x Magical Box (Heart of Chi)
Accept? ]
Seeing the points hit his bank account, Li Ch’ang-yu’s confidence bolstered further. All this ti, he had been smiling, never letting a frown take over. His emotions were contingent on his eyes and other facial features. It was interesting and easy to understand. Put simply, he was the type to bottle up his fears and anxiety, putting up the façade of a kind, open rchant to pretend that he didn’t hate his standing in the world.
’A low-level mber of the Unorthodox group, a rchant in the Dark Sector, a servant to another man, and rational fear.’ Dasha took out another bottle of Dream th.
"May I know what this is, friend?" Li Ch’ang-yu asked, puzzled. Dasha put the wooden chest in his inventory and stood up.
"Consider it sothing to use to have your dreams temporarily realized." Dasha stood up. "A gesture of friendship."
"Friendship, eh?"
Beside him, on the glass that was the barrier ca deeper streaks of terrifying scarlet.
"After all..." The man in the white mask began to walk away. "They are all us weaklings can cling onto." The mont he touched the bloody barrier, the world shifted and Dasha was back inside an empty Victorian era house. The headless body and overflowing blood at the table beside him was the only sign of life. A snap had caused all this. A snap had defied the laws of the Moon Club and the White Abyss.
’Just what kind of magic does the Imperial Noble Consort possess?’
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