"Prove it."
The man then moved faster than any player in the first ten floors could've done, even without the suppression from the tower.
"Ack!!"
His hand reached Blasius' collar and slammed him against the wall. The bunny mask trembled with force but stayed in place, magically.Blasius shook his hands and feet back and forth frenetically, suspended in the air. The frog towered over him dangerously.
"Tsk. Tsk."
"This unsightly behavior…"
"What a waste of time…"
The crowd, freed from its previous stupor, voiced complaints; some even left the place, exclaiming that they had been tricked. As such, the dozen figures behind Psyche's crouched figure were reduced to half a dozen or so.
However, these only happened because those people who left were representatives of the human world. Druglords, mafias, and mobsters with no real foothold in the world inside the tower. They had no intention of staying to witness the brawl, especially because the Demetriou family could intervene at any moment.
They decided to wait for the family head's successor, Adolphe, to solve this issue, even if it took some time. After all, the man who usually took care of this stuff in the outside world was him, but the eldest son was said to have taken a month off and was currently resting in Thailand.
Thinking about whether to solve this matter directly with the family head, they quickly left, fuming.
The families from earth believed themselves to be better than the jailed brutes from the tower.
They were respected on earth, so why would someone, especially a family such as the Demetriou, dare to scam them and create this whole fiasco? Of course, someone had to take responsibility and make up for their losses.
The tutorial messengers left to quickly inform their respective families, thinking about how high the monetary compensation would be.
The few who stayed were different. They recognized the half-circle symbols printed on the man's robe.
'The Purificatio guild, huh?'
Looking from a safe distance, there was a woman dressed in wine-red robes with a black chain tied around her waist.
When watched closely, sparks spilled from her occasionally as much as they did from the rest of the crowd, an obvious sign of causality restraining their abilities.
All of the people here had used multiple artifacts and skills to hide their real identities. Such items were also restrained by the System's power, but they were highly talented people nonetheless.
As such, not only her but also all of the representatives left behind could clearly gauge the frog man's level.
'A 30th floor- no, 40th floor player?'
Of course, they had a hard time believing this and attributed the man's skills to an item, as they continued to observe the scene unfold.
The woman had also believed that, at first.
She watched silently as the man used his free hand to rummage through the host's pockets. Then, he slowly pulled out a small remote control.
Still using one of his hands to hold the host up in the air, the frog's eyes went back to the pale half naked man.
-Flinch!
The guy with white hair cringed once more.
He smiled again, wondering just how much more sensible the man could be without the obstruction of the cell.
He pressed a button on the controller.
Suddenly, the man wriggled in pain, the bands on both of his wrists tightening with terrifying force. Sweat quickly appeared on his neck, nape, and back. And his pale skin flushed furiously, bright red.
The man adjusted the level on the remote, raising it to the maximum.
The hands on the other side of the crystal lost all of their color and fell pathetically, almost as if the belts were about to split them in half.
"Arg…Agh!"
Some time passed like this. He complained, growled, and wriggled for a while under the pressing gaze of the yellow porcelain eyes. All of that time, the guy cried pitifully, but he didn't turn around even once, not even to beg him to stop.
The frog tilted his head.
Why wouldn't he just look at him?
-Coughcoughcough!
"Ack— A-Are…you…?! Cough! mad?! The family… won't let this go…"
At the same time, Blasius parted his lips to speak again. He had been suspended and choked for so long that a sickly purple color could be seen in the lower half of his face that the mask didn't cover.Saliva accompanied every word, his throat closing and his eyes blurring with each passing moment.
"This… wasn't part of… the deal… cough!"
"The… deal…?"
The frog man had actually forgotten about anything but Psyche; however, the words seemed to bring some sense back to him.
He straightened his head again and moved his gaze to look at Blasius from the corner of his eye. The movement was almost imperceptible to those who were 20th-floor players, but three or four of them could discern it perfectly. Some 30th-floor players, carefully hidden amongst the crowd.
"The deal you just broke?"
The frog mask's unnerving gaze seemed to be looking at both Blasius and Psyche at the same time.
"The deal where you would provide us with an A-Class appetizer for The Black Gala?"
The words provoked gasps throughout the crowd. And it prompted the rest of the watchers to turn around and leave as fast as they could. Being 20th and 30th-floor players themselves, this didn't take long.
'The Black Gala?'
Even the woman in the red robes was surprised, and her serene face crumbled under her fish mask.
She no longer had any doubts about the man's identity; she was sure he was a 40th-floor player. Someone who could completely overpower her if she dared to intervene.
Like her, most of the attendees only waited to watch the situation unfold, waiting for an opportunity to strike and perhaps take the alleged angel or maybe a kill or two to farm experience points.
However, this changed things drastically.
Now, they were certain that that man was far more dangerous than they could imagine.
Sure enough, leaving was the correct choice. Their respective masters had spent an impressive amount of resources to make sure they could level up and go back down when needed; it would be foolish to risk getting killed by a 40th-floor player, or worse, getting on the bad side of a Black Gala guest.
The woman didn't take longer than the rest, and she turned around and walked in the direction of the opposite corridor from where the others left.
She walked down two more empty cells before completely coming to a halt.
While it may have been logical for low-level players to leave once they realized they didn't stand a chance, she was different. Of course, she was a 35th-floor player, and the difference between her and a 40th-floor player was massive, with or without constraints.
She didn't stay to take the failed item or to seek revenge.
For her, an "opportunity" wasn't merely taking an item or eliminating an enemy player.
It was gathering intel.
Very slowly, she took off her mask and chain.
And went back to the place she had just come from.
* * *
Back in the previous room, Psyche still wallowed around the bed in pain.
So very lighly, he saw a dark blob shift within the shadows from the corner of his eye. But his mind was too distracted by the sensation of his hands being severed by the hot leather to notice.
The same was true for the masked frog.
-Buzzbuzzbuzzbuzz.
At some point, the hand holding the remote had gone back to its place against the crystal.
He belatedly replied to Blasius again, in a drunken state even he couldn't understand. He had been completely sober when he first arrived.
But now, only frenetic thoughts occupied his mind.
For some reason, he kept thinking back to the purple color.
'Was it lighter? Or greenish? Maybe they were half purple, half black. Or perhaps violet?'
Under the mask, his pupils were unfocused and unrestrained, like those of a madman; they got bigger and then smaller, and one of them would ocassionally freeze alternately.
In such a short time, he had been consumed by the mere glint of a color he couldn't properly catch.
The fact that the white-haired guy didn't cooperate made him rage inside, and he took it out on both the remote and the host.
He tightened his grip around the man's neck and toyed with the regulator on the controller at the same time.
"Do you think the other guests won't retaliate?"
Blasius didn't back down, despite being on the verge of passing out.
He ground his teeth and bit his lips, a thin thread of blood coming down his lower lip as he spoke.
"… What… makes you believe… we will be the ones… punished for this?"
-Cough. Cough. Cough!
-Buzzzzzzzzzzz. Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Causality spilled around the man with the frog mask, as if about to activate a skill. But he quickly regained control of himself.
The more you leveled up, the worse causality would recoil once you went back to your proper floor. There were whole 30th floors of difference between them, and the consequences would definitely slow down his climbing speed for several months.
But he wasn't thinking clearly.
'Violet? A punishment for killing a lower-level scum would not be too bad. Magenta? Pink? I can handle it. Brownish?'
However, Blasius' next words made him rethink.
"You think… Cough! your guild master… Cough! was the only wild card… of this year? Cough! Cough!"
"Haha… What nonsense are you saying right now?"
Blasius smiled, showing all of his teeth under the bunny mask. The portion of it that was blacked out seemed to move dangerously under the red lights.
"We are guests too."
"Our youngest was personally invited by the Black Gala's host."