Check out advanced chapters on P@treon: [email protected]/CosmicKaminari
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Crack!
"Keep up! You're slowing me down, you useless wretch. I think it's time I found a replacement."
The whip came down again. Saint Smulet was a heavyset man in a glass-helmeted spacesuit, his face pocked and unpleasant, his expression the permanent one of someone who had never been told no. The slave carrying him stumbled but kept moving.
The suited Security Force flanking the procession kept their eyes forward. None of them reacted. They had long since stopped seeing it.
Today was just a whipping, after all. There had been worse days.
"Saint Smulet, the auction house is just ahead. I'm confident you'll find exactly what you're looking for today."
The butler walked alongside with a practiced smile, hands folded neatly.
"I should have gotten rid of this one sooner. Completely useless. I'll have him executed when we get back."
The slave heard every word. The expression that passed across his face was not fear. If anything, it looked like relief.
Crack!
"Faster! I'm sick of seeing these commoners. They're an eyesore."
He swept a contemptuous look across the ordinary people kneeling along both sides of the road, the way someone might glance at something unpleasant on the bottom of their shoe.
"All of you! Lower your heads further!"
The butler relayed the command loudly, and the people on both sides pressed themselves even closer to the ground.
At the roadside, one man kept his face down and his voice to barely a whisper. "Why is there no one out there who will just kill them?" His wife had been taken by a Celestial Dragon not long ago. The hatred had nowhere to go.
His friend stiffened beside him. "Are you trying to get us all killed? Stay quiet."
"I know. I have a daughter to raise. I'm not going to do anything." He said it steadily enough. His hands were pressed flat against the ground, and blood was seeping slowly from where his nails had cut into his palms.
The procession slowed.
Smulet had spotted something ahead.
A group of people who were not kneeling. Who were not looking away. They were standing in the middle of the street watching him go by with the relaxed curiosity of visitors at a zoo who had found the most interesting exhibit.
"How dare they stand in my presence? Guards, kill them. All of them."
The Security Force raised their weapons without hesitation. The shots rang out.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Not a single one connected.
Every bullet was deflected, effortlessly, by a single figure with a short blade.
"I told you he would shoot the moment he saw us! Nobody believed me!" Kaito reached over and plucked the lollipops straight out of Ririka's and Midori Fuse's hands, unwrapped both in one motion, and stuck them in his mouth. "Pay up."
"Kaito-nii, you're going to get cavities eating two at once!"
"That's right!"
The two girls puffed their cheeks at him indignantly.
"Too bad. Already in my mouth. You two get nothing."
"Mm mm mm..."
Across the street, Smulet had gone an alarming shade of red.
"What are you all standing there staring for?! Kill them! Kill them right now, or I swear I will have every single one of you executed!"
The Security Force dropped their guns, drew their blades, and charged.
"Nobody lays a hand on a Celestial Dragon and lives!"
"[Finger Pistol!]"
Clang... Swoosh...
They didn't get far.
The figure with the short blade was already moving through them before they could close the distance. One clean swing, and invisible sword energy swept out from the tip of the blade. Five suited Security Force members were cut cleanly in two. They fell in a heap, expressions frozen somewhere between confusion and disbelief.
Pfft. Pfft. Pfft.
"It's a monster! Someone call for Marine backup!"
The blade moved faster. Within moments, the entire Security Force lay scattered across the ground.
Only two remained standing: the butler, and the CP0 agent who had been assigned to keep Smulet alive. Both of them were watching the figure standing among the fallen bodies with very measured expressions.
"Excellent. I want that one." Smulet surveyed the carnage with something approaching delight. "He'll make me unbeatable in the dueling circuit. Go and subdue him for me. I want to ride him back."
The CP0 agent looked at the figure with the short blade and made a quiet, honest assessment of his own chances.
"Saint Smulet, I strongly recommend we withdraw. This person is extraordinarily dangerous. Remaining here puts your safety at genuine risk."
"How dare you suggest retreat after Saint Smulet has given you a direct order!" The butler spun on the CP0 agent with barely contained fury. "No one in this world would dare lay a hand on a Celestial Dragon. Do your job!"
"Don't talk to me like that."
The CP0 agent didn't soften it. He would take a reprimand from a Celestial Dragon. That was expected. But he was not a household servant, and he had no intention of being spoken to like one by a butler.
CP0 answered to the Celestial Dragons as an institution, not to the personal staff of any individual among them. Whatever consequences came his way for this would be handled through proper channels.
"You know, watching these two argue with each other while the pig on top gives the orders... that's almost poetic."
"Hahahaha!"
"Kaito-nii, that description is completely accurate!"
Even Sakuya let out a quiet laugh.
That was what did it. The laugh. Smulet's head turned toward the sound, and something in his expression changed entirely.
He had never seen a woman like that. The maid uniform was not helping him think clearly. The part of his brain responsible for judgment quietly powered down.
He was going to have her. That was simply how it was going to go.
Whatever the CP0 agent had been saying became completely irrelevant.
"You." He composed his face into what he clearly believed was a compelling expression. "You should consider yourself fortunate. I've decided to take you as my personal slave. You'll be the envy of everyone around me."
He laughed at his own generosity.
He kept talking.
He did not notice Kaito, who was standing directly in front of Sakuya, very still, the two lollipops he had been eating dropping from his mouth and hitting the ground.
The look on Kaito's face was quiet. Completely quiet. The kind of quiet that made even Zegion, who had never been unsettled by anything, go instinctively still.
"Hey."
His voice came out low and even.
"You disgusting creature. You're not even worth the trouble of rendering down." A pause. "Have you decided how you want to die?"
He let that sit for a moment.
"Actually, I take that back. You won't be dying." His eyes didn't move from Smulet's face. "You'll just spend a long time wishing you could."