Chapter 104: First Encounter with the Empress, A Fire in Mary Geoise
To be honest, Roy knew this outcome was only possible because the CP0 agent had been so obsessed with shielding the Celestial Dragon. One careless underestimation, one wrong step, and the fight was over.
Thump.
CP0, whose head had just been blown apart by his own mistake, dropped to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.
Roy snatched his longsword back, saw the Celestial Dragon trying to bolt, and sprinted after him. His blade came down in a clean arc.
Pffft.
Blood sprayed. The fat, pig like Celestial Dragon did not even have time to squeal before Roy leapt up and took his head in one stroke.
"There are more. We finish this fast." Roy flicked his eyes toward the remaining guards, then charged straight at them.
What followed was almost ridiculous.
A pack of trained, heavily armed guards ended up being chased all over the courtyard by one fair skinned little kid with a sword. Panic beat discipline. Courage tripped over itself. One by one, they fell.
Before long, the courtyard was silent again.
Roy shook the blood from his blade and looked ahead.
Three sisters stood there, chained together with ordinary iron links, and beside them were a few female slaves whose dull eyes had started to stir.
Roy hurried over. Hancock stepped in front of her sisters, staring at the fierce red haired boy with wary, trembling pride.
He had just killed a Celestial Dragon. That alone made Hancock feel, in her own confused way, that this boy was probably not an enemy.
"You are… victims?" Roy almost said slaves, but the word felt wrong in his mouth, so he swallowed it.
Hancock nodded quickly, lashes fluttering. She still did not dare speak. The nightmare she had lived through since leaving Amazon Lily had taught her to distrust everything that breathed.
She was terrified. That was all there was to it.
She's really pretty…
That was Roy's first honest thought. The girl was beautiful, shockingly so.
Cute, too.
Cough. No, stop it, you idiot.
Roy crushed the stray thought and reached out without another word.
Hancock jolted and reflexively stepped back, but Roy caught her hand anyway. Her whole body went stiff.
Was this ruthless little devil… interested in her?
Crack crack crack, boom!
Roy flexed his grip and snapped the chains around Hancock's wrists, then reached for Sandersonia and Marigold.
Good timing. He had arrived before the guards could swap them into sea stone cuffs. Otherwise, this would have been a mess.
Two more sharp pops rang out, and the chains binding all three Boa sisters fell apart.
It was not elegant. It was not clever. It was just raw strength, simple and brutal.
Even with the strange pull she carried, the Love Love Fruit plus her natural beauty, making his mind wobble for a heartbeat, Roy still knew what mattered. Getting them out came first.
"This…" Hancock froze. Her mouth formed a tiny O as she stared at him.
One punch had killed CP0, right through Iron Body.
He had carved through a Celestial Dragon and chased trained guards like rabbits.
Now he had broken iron chains with his bare hands.
Was he really a child?
"Quit staring. If you do not want to die, if you do not want to end up chained by Celestial Dragons again, come with me." Roy grabbed the pretty girl's hand with his left, lifted his sword with the other, and ran.
Hancock stumbled after him in a daze. Then she snapped her head back. Her sisters were right behind her, struggling but keeping up.
Even stranger, the female slaves who had seemed numb a moment ago were now trembling, alive with fear, and following them too.
Numbness was a mask. The second they smelled a way out, it cracked.
Hancock did not even have time to feel disgust. Roy was holding her hand too tightly to ignore, and his words made sense. She nodded at him now and then, trying to match his pace.
She had tried to yank free earlier, but this boy was absurdly strong. She could not budge his grip at all.
Roy said he could not stand watching little girls die here, so he decided to save them.
That left Hancock too embarrassed to say anything like, I do not like boys.
After everything she had suffered, she really had grown sick of men.
Still, Roy's arrival was so unreal. A bit dramatic, sure, but to Hancock it felt exactly like a hero bursting out of nowhere at the darkest moment of her life.
"Th thank you," she blurted, cheeks burning. Saying it felt clumsy and fragile.
"It is nothing," Roy replied, eyes still scanning through the narrow crack of the back door.
At the rear entrance of the mansion, Roy pulled a cloth over his forehead and wrapped himself tightly. Hancock was bundled in another cloth he had found, covered up even more than a village girl. The two younger sisters were wrapped the same way.
A few escaping female slaves had done likewise.
Roy expected that even if he killed everyone here, the sight of him crashing out of the sky would still draw attention. People from the main gate would come snooping soon.
To leave cleanly, they needed to move quietly and slip out of Mary Geoise before the alarms found a voice.
Roy tightened his grip on Hancock's hand and gave her a warm smile that could melt winter itself. Hancock's heart skipped so hard it hurt.
She hurriedly shoved that sudden flutter down into the pit of her stomach.
Men were liars. All men were liars. Big, horrible liars.
Then she lifted her free hand, palm up, and looked at Roy with a serious, steady gaze.
"How are we supposed to avoid every patrol? That is impossible," she said, voice small but sharp. "Especially with this many people."
Her current little girl voice was… really nice.
Ptooey. Focus.
Roy sobered instantly. She had a point.
In the original timeline, Fisher Tiger had burned Mary Geoise to create chaos, forcing the defenders to scramble for their masters instead of hunting him.
So, in the end…
It looked like he might be the one to light the first fire here.
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