Season 3 chapter 10
The Five-Day Failure
Exactly five days had passed since Kniya and Malesh had rescued the young
Yatsua priestess and her little brother from the highway. Five entire days since
they had sworn a dramatic, heavily funded oath to uncover the federal
government's darkest secrets and exact revenge for the military massacre of the
holy town.
Currently, inside the sprawling, incredibly expensive executive suite of the Seistain
Main Hub, the two most powerful corporate warlords in the Republic of DI were
doing absolutely nothing of value.
The heavy mahogany desks were covered in stacks of unread intelligence reports,
empty coffee cups, and scattered newspapers.
Malesh was sitting on the leather sofa, his legs crossed, intently staring at a
broadsheet newspaper. He slowly lowered the paper, his face a perfect mask of
deadpan disappointment.
"Kniya," Malesh stated flatly, breaking the silence. "I have not found a single piece
of information related to the military incidents in the daily media. The state press is
completely silent."
Kniya, who was lounging in his massive executive chair with his feet kicked up on
the desk, narrowed his eyes. He leaned forward, squinting to read the large, bold
headline printed on the back of Malesh's newspaper.
Kniya's face instantly twisted into pure, unfiltered rage.
"Malesh!" Kniya yelled, slamming his hands on the desk. "You are reading fucking
fart articles! How the fuck are you going to know about the government and their
military plans?! You are literally reading weekly market updates on fart cylinders!"
Malesh didn't even flinch. He just calmly folded the newspaper.
"And I told you!" Kniya screamed, aggressively pointing a finger at him. "No fart
articles related to the fart cylinders are allowed in my fucking office! I am literally
tired of this shit! Why are you always so obsessed with that?!"
The Demon Lord Defense
Malesh placed the newspaper down on the glass coffee table, completely
unbothered by Kniya's outburst. He adjusted his dragon-themed tie and looked
directly at the brightly colored, heavily illustrated comic book resting on Kniya's
lap.
"Kniya," Malesh replied smoothly, his voice devoid of any emotion. "You are also
currently reading about the Demon Lord's novel. You are just reading a useless,
wasteful comic. It has absolutely nothing to do with gathering federal intelligence."
"It is literature!" Kniya defended loudly, quickly trying to hide the comic book
under a stack of blank corporate ledgers.
"How are you gaining actionable research from this?" Malesh pressed, his tone
dripping with cold sarcasm. "Are you getting research that shows how the Demon
Lord and the federal government are mixed up with each other? Are you reading
about those things to uncover the President's dark magic?"
"Shut up!" Kniya snapped, his cheeks flushing slightly. "I have actually done my
research regarding the situation! While you were reading about pressurized gas, I
was doing deep-dive financial analysis regarding the statues of the Yatsua God!"
Malesh raised an eyebrow. "And what profound intelligence did you gather?"
"I have logically noticed that the price of these specific rare-earth statues is
increasing day by day in the private collector's market," Kniya declared, puffing
out his chest with absolute capitalist pride. "It is a massive spike!"
Malesh stared at him. The sheer, terrifying greed of his best friend was sometimes
too much to process.
"You are literally wasting your fucking time on knowing that the fucking price of
the statues is priced high in the market," Malesh criticized harshly. "Are you
literally an illegal dealer now? Do you want to make profits with this tragedy? Or do
you just want to secure the holy land for your own benefit so that you can sell the
statues at a highly inflated price back to the corrupt government itself?!"
The Holy Investment
"It is not like that!" Kniya argued, looking genuinely offended.
"Yes, it is," Malesh countered bluntly. "I think so. You are not doing research to
save the innocent people of KDC. You are doing research just to sell the artifacts
at a high price, you fucking idiot. You are trying to monopolize a religious tragedy."
"I am not!" Kniya yelled, pacing behind his desk. "The prices are aggressively
increasing, and I realized that I do not have a personal statue of the God for
myself! As a devout follower of the faith, I felt an empty void in my spiritual
portfolio!"
Malesh's eyes narrowed into tiny, highly judgmental slits. "Get to the point, Kniya."
Kniya stopped pacing. He cleared his throat and looked at the ceiling. "So... yeah. I
recently acquired one statue for myself through an anonymous black-market
broker. Just one. For my desk."
Malesh let out a long, deeply exhausted sigh. He rubbed the bridge of his nose,
feeling a massive headache forming behind his eyes.
"Okay," Malesh said, his voice entirely deadpan. "So, definitely, you are doing this
research just to get the inside information, just so you can turn around and sell
that specific statue at a high fucking price. You are a corporate parasite."
Kniya gasped, his hand flying to his chest in pure, dramatic outrage.
"Please, Malesh!" Kniya scolded, his voice suddenly thick with fake, highly
exaggerated religious sanctity. "You should be ashamed! You are not aware of
spiritual burdens! I know that you are a complete atheist, but do not ever use the
word 'fucking' with the word 'God'! It is really, really not allowed! And you are also
using the word 'fucking' right next to the 'statues of God'! I am absolutely not
allowing you to do that in my presence!"
Malesh stared at him, completely baffled by the sudden moral high ground from a
man who regularly extorted politicians.
"Please be respectful in this case!" Kniya continued to preach loudly, wagging a
finger at Malesh. "As I know you are basically racist against believers, and you are
entirely not believing in God! You are a shithole full of atheist feelings! Just keep
those filthy atheist feelings away from myself!"
A Deeply Emotional Crisis
"Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck the hell," Malesh groaned, throwing his hands up in defeat.
"Okay! I am not talking about this thing anymore. You are impossible to debate."
Malesh stood up from the sofa, his expression finally dropping its completely
deadpan shell to reveal a rare glimmer of genuine, frustrated anxiety.
"Let's talk about something else," Malesh demanded, pacing across the expensive
rug. "Because this is literally devastating, Kniya! You are literally doing intensive
research about the fucking statue prices instead of the actual crisis! Why is the
government doing everything?! Why is the federal army attacking innocent
people?! What does it have to do with clearing the religious city?!"
Malesh stopped and glared at Kniya, pointing an accusing finger at him.
"You are not doing that research!" Malesh yelled. "And basically, it is a disaster!
Five entire days have been passed! We didn't gain a single amount of useful
information in that entire period of time! What are we literally doing here?! Some
kind of shithole thing! It literally does not matter what we promised that girl,
because we are completely failing! We are not taking it seriously!"
Kniya rolled his eyes, waving his hand dismissively as he sank back into his
luxurious chair.
"You are taking it way too seriously, bro," Kniya sighed, picking up a gold-plated
pen and spinning it between his fingers. "Relax. We can tackle this down. We have
infinite money. We will just bribe a General tomorrow."
"You are not taking this seriously," Malesh shot back, crossing his arms tight
against his chest. "You are completely distracted by your own greed."
"And you are completely distracted by your own weird obsessions!" Kniya
snapped back, pointing his gold pen at the discarded newspaper on the table.
"You are also not taking this seriously because you are sitting in a corporate
headquarters reading the fart articles! Do not act like you are the responsible one
here!"
Malesh stiffened. He looked down at the newspaper, then back up at Kniya. His
eyes grew incredibly dark, entirely serious, and deeply intense.
"Kniya," Malesh whispered, his voice dropping into a register of profound,
emotional vulnerability. "I know that you hate it because of the smell. You really
hate the biological reality of it. But the thing is... the supply chain is crumbling."
"Malesh, do not do this right now," Kniya warned, his eye twitching.
"There are only exactly two massive companies that produce industrial fart
cylinders in this entire world," Malesh continued, his voice trembling ever so
slightly with genuine distress. "And you know the recent, violent changes in the
price of the fart cylinders? The massive inflation?"
Malesh placed a hand firmly over his own chest, right over his heart, looking at
Kniya with a completely straight, sorrowful face.
"It has affected me deeply from my heart, Kniya," Malesh confessed softly.
Kniya stared at his best friend. He stared at the man who was completely unfazed
by military massacres, regime changes, and billion-credit corporate frauds, but
who was now practically on the verge of tears over the global pricing of
weaponized flatulence.
Kniya grabbed the heavy ceramic coffee cup off his desk and aggressively hurled
it at the wall.
"Stop the fucking shit, you idiot!" Kniya screamed at the top of his lungs.