Chapter 277 Independence -6
Chapter 277 Independence -6
Afternoon.
Jiha had spread a blueprint across his office desk and was studying it.
It was the floor plan of Alex's residence, the mansion where the party would be held.
He'd obtained it through Teroma, the architect he'd previously saved from Shade's attack.
He was studying the overall layout of what would become the battlefield, formulating his plans step by step.
Knock, knock.
Barjet entered when called.
Wearing a navy-blue robe with a slightly plunging neckline, Barjet was visibly on edge.
She had no idea what business Jiha had called her for.
"Did they drag you to a slaughterhouse? What are you so scared of?"
"......I-I'll scream."
Barjet gripped her staff with both hands and tried to raise her voice.
Her face was tense, terrified she might end up in Jiha's arms again.
Jiha asked incredulously.
"You think whether I do it depends on you screaming?"
"......"
Barjet was struck dumb.
Jiha let out a derisive chuckle.
"Women screaming is an everyday thing."
"......I-I'm not going to just take it this time either!"
"Enough. Strip."
Jiha cut her off and spoke flatly.
Despite the explicit words, his tone was utterly bored. Barjet looked horrified and immediately spun around to flee.
Jiha, finding this absurd, extended his shadow and summoned a Shadow Hand.
Barjet, who had just grabbed the doorknob, recoiled in terror as the Shadow Hand surged up and scrambled backward.
"Oh, mommy!! What is that thing!!"
"......"
This really isn't the behavior of a Unique.
Jiha sighed.
"Lift up your skirt before I actually tear it all off. Don't piss me off."
"I-I'm already wearing something with a low neckline!!"
"And your underwear?"
Barjet's eyes went wide with shock, and she forced herself to glare at him.
"Th-that's none of your business! What right do you have to concern yourself with the underwear of an unmarried maiden..."
"You're not a maiden anymore."
"......"
At Jiha's remark, Barjet's face flushed crimson.
She glared at him with a look steeped in resentment and fury, lowering her voice.
"Y-you just did whatever you wanted..."
"You talk too much."
Jiha tsked and summoned the Shadow Hand again, using it to roll up Barjet's skirt.
When the hem of her robe, which usually covered her ankles, was rolled up, Barjet panicked and hurriedly pressed down on her skirt.
"Eek! Kyaaak!! Wh-what are you doing! I'll report you to the Magistrate's Office!"
"Come on, you're stronger than all the security officers in this city combined."
Jiha tsked again and walked toward Barjet.
The Shadow Hand was holding the rolled-up hem of her skirt, so Barjet could do nothing but look like she was about to cry.
Watching her try to keep her skirt in place while wanting to flee from Jiha's approach was equal parts unbelievable, exasperating, and just a little funny.
"How can someone be this much of a scatterbrain? How the hell did you even become a Unique?"
"I-I didn't become one because I liked it!!"
Even as Barjet yelled at Jiha, she was frantic to stop the Shadow Hand from rising any further.
Wondering how she would react, Jiha abruptly reached out and grabbed Barjet's breast.
"Ah, kyaaaaak!!"
Barjet let out a frantic scream and shoved Jiha's chest with both arms.
It was a struggle infused with Mana, so Jiha was pushed back a step, but the Shadow Hand had fully lifted Barjet's long skirt in the process...
"......"
Jiha looked at her exposed underwear and let out a despairing sigh.
This time it was yellow drawers.
Baggy, old-fashioned bloomers without so much as a single common ribbon decoration and not a trace of sexiness to be found.
"......A grandmother would dress better than you."
"Y-you looked, didn't you? You bastard!!"
"......"
Jiha looked up at the ceiling and lamented.
If he only saw her as a woman—just a means to relieve his lust—he wouldn't care about what she wore.
'But the fact that she's a Unique is too valuable to waste. And it's not like her temperament is completely unusable. If I push her a little more, it feels like I could make use of her.'
Jiha got his inner thoughts under control.
"I really feel like I have to make her into a real total chump..."
"W-would you stop saying 'chump'? It's really offensive!"
"The fact that you only snap back with words when I'm doing this is exactly why I'm calling you a chump, you chump. Where in the world is there a Unique like you? Any other bitch would've tried to smash my skull in five times by now."
The women Jiha had tamed would never do such a thing, but a normal reaction would be something like that.
Barjet was the type who possessed immense power but lacked the will or mental fortitude to wield it.
"Did Yura tell you to wear crap like that? I highly doubt it."
Yura would know that Jiha had a specific idea in mind when he assigned her to look after Barjet.
The reason Jiha was paying attention to Barjet's attire was part of an effort to fix her personality.
Despite having both power and beauty, Barjet was timid and cowed.
She read the room not just for Jiha but for everyone, always trying to avoid conflict.
'She's not a pacifist. She just has no will to fight.'
Pacifism, moderation—those described someone like Asira.
Asira was the type who knew her own strength, knew how to lead, but chose restraint and dealt with others sincerely.
That was why so many were captivated by her character...
"You're just scared. You don't want to fight. You want to hide away and turn your back on the world, right?"
"Wh-who says that? I-I have things to do too."
"Shut up..."
Should he just rip it all off?
The time invested in Barjet was starting to feel like a waste.
As Jiha's expression grew fierce, Barjet's face became even more frightened.
"M-Miss Yura did tell me to wear something else, but I refused. How could I go around wearing nothing but something embarrassing like a string! My butt and everything would be showing!"
"Say that in front of Enril and you'll lose your head."
This wasn't a joke; Enril would genuinely take offense.
Enril's usual outfit clearly exposed her buttocks, but she dismissed it as dark elf combat attire and paid it no mind.
And there was no one with the nerve to openly stare.
If Enril judged that a man she disliked was looking at her offensively, she'd at least gouge out his eyes, and if it came down to it, she'd take his head.
The other Uniques Jiha had tamed only varied in degree, but they all dealt with that kind of response without hesitation.
"If someone harassed a Unique for showing a little skin, they'd be risking their life... and you're scared to wear it for that reason? You really are a Unique in name only."
"I-I am not! I really am a Unique!!"
Barjet snapped indignantly, but to Jiha it just looked like pouting.
She had to prove it with actions, not words.
"Still, you did change your clothes. Fine. Well..."
When Jiha strode toward her, Barjet flinched backward and covered her chest with both arms.
But she only had two hands, and Jiha's avenues of attack were many.
When Jiha reached his hand out as if to touch her breasts, her attention concentrated on her upper body.
At that, Jiha summoned the Shadow Hand again and flipped her skirt up sharply.
"Kyaaak!!"
Her underwear exposed once more, Barjet floundered, completely at a loss.
Above her was Jiha's hand; below her, a shadowy hand had left her bare skin exposed to the world.
While she was still figuring out which side to defend, the Shadow Hand lightly sliced the side of Barjet's drawers and vanished.
'So it is possible to do it without touching skin.'
It was a task requiring precision, cutting only the side while she was wearing the underwear, but his long training with Shadow Hand had made it possible.
Whoosh.
"Th-this..."
Barjet, her underwear slipping down, glared at Jiha with tears welling in her eyes.
It was the face of someone whose patience had finally run dry. Even as he saw Mana gathering at her staff, Jiha stared right back at her.
If she actually had the nerve to attack, then that would be a relief.
"......Th-this was an expensive one!! It cost 30,000 Rel!"
"......"
Jiha buried his face in his hand.
A lament.
Jiha looked so utterly defeated that even the indignant Barjet paused.
"......Wh-why are you acting like that? Why are you making me feel bad?"
"Ah, seriously, how can such a total chump even exist. A once-in-a-lifetime case, seriously."
Jiha shook his head.
He had planned to use Barjet for the Independence Plan he'd prepared, but at this rate, it was absolutely impossible.
He had to forcefully rebuild her mindset in a short time.
Today, right now.
Having made up his mind, Jiha nodded.
"Fine. I was wrong. I'm sorry."
"......Huh? Really?"
"I was foolish to expect anything from you. I'll change my approach."
Barjet, who had been on high alert, relaxed a little.
She thought this ignorant, frightening man had finally come around.
Jiha organized his thoughts while reworking his plan.
"Let's go. Right now."
"Huh? Where to?"
"To buy you some underwear."
"N-no. It's embarrassing to go underwear shopping with a man..."
"Should I get angry?"
Jiha let out a deep sigh and looked at Barjet.
An expression of weariness and exhaustion.
A chill ran down Barjet's spine.
Just because a carnivore yawns, can the herbivore relax?
"......Uh, we-well, if you just give me money, I'll go buy it myself."
"Don't think and don't talk back. If you tire me out even more, you'll regret it."
"......"
Barjet flinched, then slowly nodded.
As timid as she was, she was sensitive to danger, and she had sensed that Jiha's patience was teetering on a knife's edge.
Enduring a bit of embarrassment was better than pissing Jiha off.
"......A-alright. I'll go. Just give me a moment first."
"What for?"
"......I'll go put on a different pair of underwear. Is that okay?"
Barjet asked uneasily.
Surely he wasn't suggesting she go to a lingerie store without panties?
Jiha was about to simply nod but paused.
"Hey, just in case... is it the same kind?"
"It was 3 for 30,000 Rel."
"......Ah, I see. So you bought a tacky three-pack of bloomers in red, yellow, and blue for 30,000, and you were whining about that being a waste?"
"A-a waste is a waste. And..."
"I told you not to wear a burlap sack, and you ignored me. You thought you'd just wear the dress and I wouldn't actually inspect anything, so you could skimp on the underwear? That way you could salvage your pride and still try to weasel your way around me?"
As Jiha calmly and quietly laid it out, Barjet froze in fear.
Like a squirrel facing a tiger.
Jiha nodded.
"I've gotten a clear grasp of your petty resolve, so get ready to head out now. I'm going to fix that head of yours today."
Blin, the lingerie boutique in Waris.
In Warsland, a world of female superiority, where the majority of the Rare Grade upper class were women, all kinds of women's goods were especially well-developed.
Blin, a high-end lingerie store that handled various sizes for humanoid female bodies, was doing particularly well among them.
But the looks Jiha was getting were uniformly strange.
From the female clerks to the female customers browsing the underwear, they were all staring at Jiha as if he were some kind of lunatic.
Was it because he was the only man in the shop right now?
How dare a lowly male creep into a women's lingerie store and ruin the mood?
Scanning the reactions around him, Jiha understood the situation.
'They don't know I'm Jiha. That makes sense; there are no photographs or internet in Warsland. Even though I've shown my face in the Summoning War and other places, they would've only seen me from a distance. They've heard rumors about me, but they can't recognize me right away.'
Back in Korea, if a high-profile figure's face appeared on the news, it would stay on the internet, so people would recognize them immediately.
But Warsland was too backward for that to be possible.
He'd actually come out without his subordinates partly to teach Barjet a lesson and partly to gauge the public mood, but he hadn't expected this.
The atmosphere inside the shop was hostile, primed for a confrontation at any moment, but Jiha just whistled.
Perfect.
He'd been planning to force this hopeless witch into becoming a real person anyway.
This was a fine stage for it.