Chapter 159: Contract 1
Chapter 159: Contract 1
Heart of the Exiled Serpent had offered precisely one thing as a trade condition.
Her Incarnation.
"You think I'm going to accept that deal?"
"Do you know how rare an Incarnation with a Dream Demon's talent is? That guy broke through the Academy's barrier with zero support. I don't know what The Incinerating Tyrant promised him, but you won't find a better reward than him."
Heart of the Exiled Serpent flashed a cocksure grin.
Something about that insufferably punchable face made me want to slip a knife between her ribs.
But this was a Clone body with the pain receptors removed, so I had no choice but to hold it in.
'Case in point—she didn't even react when scalding tea splashed onto the back of her hand.'
The same woman who'd rolled on the ground wailing from a few scratches
wasn't about to calmly endure a burn from boiling water.
That aside, her terms were genuinely appealing.
Trading Incarnations like you'd draft an athlete.
A transaction only possible with the consent of the contracted Constellation.
I might have been tempted if that talented Incarnation weren't male.
'But he is.'
I already had a beautiful Incarnation waiting for me on her hands and knees in a collar.
Did I really need to ignore The Incinerating Tyrant's demands and pick up a male Incarnation?
'For some scatterbrain in shorts who fawns over women?'
Besides, Kim Ha-eun was an Incarnation with the Dream Demon's talent as well.
Her gift ran toward sheer magical capacity rather than stealth and deception,
but she still possessed that supposedly rare Dream Demon aptitude.
Unaware that my Incarnations were overflowing with talent,
Heart of the Exiled Serpent kept up her arrogant posture.
Then again, every Constellation on the continent was desperate for an exceptional Incarnation.
A rare Dream Demon talent, in particular,
was something you could absolutely put on the negotiating table.
If only he weren't a man.
'I mean, he's still a guy.'
When I woke up in the morning, an obedient beauty attended to my needs.
Around midday, a beauty clung to me with devoted obsession,
and in the evening, a beauty so passive I questioned whether she was my slave performed her services.
Then, when I went out on occasion, an elven girl straight out of a fantasy novel welcomed me.
This was the reality I had constructed—a pleasure palace deliberately shaped
by the last survivor of the apocalypse and all his festering desires.
Did I really have to accept a man into this arrangement?
If this bastard shared my sense of sexual norms—
if he came from a world without the gender reversal—then maybe.
Loyal Fang and I could gripe about women
and drink over stories from this world.
But the Incarnation's sex was the overriding factor.
"No."
"See, I told you— wait, what?"
She stared at me, baffled.
The expression perfectly matched "a pigeon hit by a slingshot."
That dumb look: eyes wide but utterly uncomprehending,
refusing to believe her own ears.
"What stupid nonsense are you talking about? I said he's a guy who awakened just by absorbing a Dream Demon's magical power. I'm offering to spend my own points to transfer his contract to you, and you're saying no? Do you not understand what a genius Incarnation he is?"
"I know exactly how good he is."
He was the one I'd contracted in the Northern Continent slums.
He'd never received a scrap of support, which meant he'd never even been to the Academy.
A back-alley male prostitute with no formal training whatsoever
had breached the Academy barrier and carried out an assassination. That was a staggering talent.
A real shame he wasn't a woman.
"...Why? There's no downside to this deal for you."
"He's a man."
At my plain, unambiguous answer, her face contorted.
Radiating disgust and contempt, she spat back at me.
"You crazy bastard. You're no different from a back-alley rent boy yourself. You'll regret this."
She'd been working up a dramatic exit,
but the moment I shot to my feet and feigned like I was lunging at her,
she yelped, jerked her ass backward, and vanished in a startled panic.
A genuine third-rate villain, that bitch.
※
You'll regret this—
She'd struck a pose and vanished on that line,
but absolutely nothing came of it.
How could it? The woman had no way to harm me.
I had my Sanctum set up in the middle of the safest place on the continent—the Academy—
and I'd captured the one Incarnation in the entire world capable of infiltrating it.
She'd already had her best Incarnation snatched out from under her in the most hollow way imaginable.
Exactly what means did she have to come at me?
So I left that emptiest of threats behind
and headed for Lee Ha-rin and the alchemists.
"So, you need to finish the research as fast as possible?"
"Hmm, should we increase the dosage a little even if it strains the test subject?"
What I'd told them was
about the Tail-biting Hound's Incarnation.
Not the embarrassing details of that night's work,
but the fact that the Tail-biting Hound's Incarnation had begun a pursuit.
Lee Ha-rin and the alchemists were working hard on the research,
but the Tail-biting Hound's Incarnations were proving far more competent than I'd expected.
They might track down Heart of the Exiled Serpent before the research was even done.
Better to tell them now that another Incarnation had been added to the task
than to inform them later that their efforts had been wasted all along.
"Should we bump up the 03-P Reagent a little? A bit of kidney dysfunction should be fine."
"Which drug was it that caused the neurological issues? We can dump in everything the culture medium can compensate for."
The alchemists buzzed among themselves, checking their charts.
The blond man beamed as a slew of dangerous chatter reached his ears.
Huh... Back in the old world they said a woman's grudge could summon snow in midsummer.
Apparently, in this world, a man's grudge was every bit as chilling.
Whether he'd quit his Imperial Guard duties outright
or gotten some kind of leave from the Tyrant,
the victim's older brother kept hovering near the alchemists.
His terrifying fixation aside,
on the outside he was a well-built, handsome blond man,
so the alchemists, who'd studied their whole lives holed up in their rooms, were grinning with their philtrums stretched.
"Hey, Ha-rin...?"
"Yes, my Constellation?"
"Has that man been with you the whole time?"
"Yes, he follows us around as if he's keeping watch, using the test subject's escape risk as a pretext. But since he helps with chores—like moving heavy objects with his Steel Armor—it's awkward to chase him off, so we just let him be. The people I work with don't mind him either. Nobody here seems like the type to come on strong to a man."
I glanced around. Sure enough, just like men trying to impress a pretty woman,
a cluster of female alchemists had gathered around the Imperial Guard.
The conversations they were striking up to win his favor
were interspersed with deeply disconcerting tidbits about
nervous systems this and internal organs that and excisions whatnot.
...Well, if they're all happy, who am I to object?
Leaving the Imperial Guard to melt into the alchemists' ranks behind me,
I turned my steps toward Han Ye-ji and her team members.
Or I would have, if someone hadn't called out to me.
"Um, Constellation?"
A familiar voice.
I mean, it hadn't been nearly long enough for me to forget.
The hot night we spent together—we'd parted just yesterday.
We met the day before and separated yesterday morning, so it'd barely been twenty-four hours.
I turned around to find her wearing an ambiguous expression.
Tall and lean with taut muscle on full display:
the Tail-biting Hound's Incarnation and several other women.
Their similar attire and identical belts
suggested the others were also Incarnations of the Hunting Dog.
Half teasing, half curious, I tossed a quip her way.
"What is it? Ran a little low on magical power and came back for another sniff?"
"No, not that...."
Maybe she hadn't expected me to drop a sex joke out of nowhere with other women present.
Cheeks flushed red, she trailed off but kept speaking.
To be fair, if magic really was the reason, she would've come alone.
She wasn't the kind of crazy bitch who'd bring a whole entourage
and ask, "So, how about an orgy?"
"I have something to report to you, Constellation."
From the way they moved, these weren't fellow Incarnations but subordinates.
She gestured with her hand, and the women brought something out.
Their faces were all above average and their figures were great.
A lewd fantasy flickered through my mind: several at once might not be so bad.
Into my hands, mid-fantasy, was placed a round orb.
Fist-sized, it had the firm, springy feel of a rubber bouncy ball.
"What is this?"
"Would you channel your magical power into it and crush it?"
I did as she said, smoothly moving my magic and pouring strength into my grip.
The orb started to crumble, squishing like a lump of clay.
Violet smoke billowed up as if reacting to the magic.
The rising haze churned for a moment, then coalesced into a shape.
A street, an alley, the retreating silhouette of a person walking.
I didn't recognize the alley backdrop,
but the walking figure—him, I could identify.
"Is that...?"
"Yes, that's Heart of the Exiled Serpent."
"You already found him?!"
"It's less that we found him and more...."
How in the world had she tracked him down in a single day?
As that question filled my mind, she held out more objects.
Orbs, to be exact—nearly a hundred of them.
"......?"
"Well, there are simply too many traces."
Orbs arranged as neatly as gold bars inside a briefcase.
Before my brain could process the absurdity of the sight,
I loaded up my magical power and crushed several at once.
Heart of the Exiled Serpent walking down an alley.
Heart of the Exiled Serpent entering a club.
Heart of the Exiled Serpent stepping into a bar.
The crushed orbs churned out traces without pause.
"Seems like his habits aren't great—he comes down here every day, from the look of it."
What the hell. How had they not caught him until now?