When Kyon opened the gate to the training ground, he saw something terrible.

Charming Juno was sitting on the bench with a disgruntled look on her face, her arms folded irritably across her chest. She was nervously wiggling her foot in a delicate sandal. A hefty teenage slave, brutally battered, was lying next to her, his breath ragged and hoarse. He was leaning against the wall, a lost cause. He was holding in his half-opened hand a handful of teeth, cruelly knocked out. The other hand was twisted at an unnatural angle, all his fingers were broken. His black clothes were soaked with something wet, most likely with his blood, which confirmed the scarlet drawings sprayed on the wall and the ground. One of his eyes was smashed so bad that it disappeared behind the red swelling, the other eye had a bit better look. His face was bruised all over, his nose was broken in several places. Anyone would be terrified by the sight of him. Judging by his weak breath, the poor thing didn’t have long to live.

Sashka thought the young lady would be kind to him. She looked like an angel when they first met. He had been feeling down after losing his potency, but his depression disappeared when he was awaiting the lady’s arrival to the training ground. His heart was beating faster in anticipation of the training after which he would have wonderful dreams of his bright future, and a full stomach at last. But when the beauty finally came, all his expectations were shattered at once. The lady with the expression of a maniac on her face furiously rushed at him, surpassing him both in speed and power. She mercilessly beat him up, not giving a chance for resistance. Plaintive moans, cries of pain, and pleas for mercy resonated across the deserted training ground. The image of an angel burnt to ashes turning into the embodiment of a fierce demon. People can’t be so senselessly cruel...

In the end, Sashka was lying half-dead on the floor. He knew that his life was coming to an end. All he wanted was to get away from this damned world, created to bring him pain and misery.

When Kyon saw the dying slave, he almost choked with surging rage. The battered boy reminded the former emperor that he was in his place not so long ago. He had clearly ordered Juno not to beat anyone, let alone kill, but she violated his order... There could be only one explanation. The slave was nothing but a thing for her, not a person, only a thing.

He could hardly cope with a fit of anger. The urge to break Juno's neck grew even stronger.

Juno noticed the approaching "master," rose to her feet, sighed as if she was pulling herself together and then blurted out:

«Flitz had only shaved your hair off, nothing more! I... I didn't mean to... That just happened! P-please... Master... Do not punish me too much…» - Tears were shining in Juno’s wide-open eyes, her voice trembled plaintively, her eyebrows knitted together. Gods, for what merits did you grant her the skill to play the sympathy card at the hundredth level?

However, her sophisticated acting skills had no effect on angry Kyon. The evil girl had big problems with common sense. How could she be possibly seeking sympathy from him again, if her previous attempt had failed? He is not a guy to bite her bait.

«Shut the hell up!» – Kyon rudely silenced her, walked over to the slave and poured Synergy into him.

Sashka raised his head and had some difficulty to focus his dull, swollen eyes on Kyon. His whole body acquired supernatural lightness, he was floating above the earth with his invisible wings.

Kyon frowned and carefully examined the mutilated slave. He was boiling with an unspeakable rage against the one who was to blame in Sashka’s suffering. With great difficulty, he held himself together. Kyon was brought up in the strict observance of intergalactic norms that state that every rational being has the right to exist in conditions suitable for life and reproduction. Apparently, the little beast couldn’t be bothered by such trifles...

«I order you to fall on your knees before Sashka and apologize.» – Kyon said quietly.

«Why should I? He is a thing that belongs to me!» – Yet, the order made the delicate girl obediently approach maimed Sashka and kneel. - «Please, forgive me…»

The half-dead boy could not believe his ears or eyes. Was heaven itself apologizing to him?

«Louder! Again! Head against the floor!» – Kyon demanded in a hoarse with rage voice.

After another apology, tears flowed from Sashka's eyes. He tilted his head back and howled with inhuman longing and despair. His assassin was begging on her knees to forgive her. Did heaven take mercy on him?

Kyon gritted his teeth, touched the back of Sashka’s head, and severed some vital nerves with Synergy so that he would not suffer. The body of the poor fellow went limp and fell sideways, enjoying his final rest. Farewell to the innocent victim of the evil girl.

As much as Kyon wished, he couldn’t save him because of the numerous internal injuries. If it were his own body, he could somehow pull through, but it was someone else's... He would run out of Synergy, moving it through Sashka’s vessels and tissues. The detailed scan of each cell would take hours. At least the poor fellow heard an apology from his murderer before dying. If the afterlife really existed, his soul would rest in peace.

«Please… Don’t beat me, I’m begging you…» – Juno whispered plaintively, completely ignoring the deceased, never taking her eyes full of barely concealed animosity off her “master.”

Kyon inhaled deeply to calm down, then he quickly grabbed Juno by her long golden hair, wrapped it around his hand and tugged violently at himself. She let out a painful squeal when Kyon roughly lifted her up and pressed against his body. His hands held tight her slender body, one of them cupped her tight butts, reflexively squeezing and groping them.

Juno could not say a word in shock. She seemed to stop breathing.

«N… No… Don’t you dare… I… I will kill myself…»

Kyon snorted dismissively, hugged her tight and buried his lips into her thin neck. Her soul was ugly but the highborn lady was amazingly beautiful from the outside... The scent of her body was more delightful the fragrance of heavenly flowers. She had an effect of a good drug with a touch of aphrodisiac.

Juno twitched in disgust in his arms. It was like a bucket of slop was poured all over her. A nasty, humiliating feeling. Her face turned white like the first snow, she went limp in the hands of her tormentor and fainted.

Kyon pulled away from her sweet, delicate neck. She passed out too quickly and couldn’t experience all the severity of her punishment. He would have to repeat it again, more than once... However, when he looked at her bloodless face, Kyon's heart sank. A trickle of blood drew a scarlet trail from her small nose. The beautiful girl was withering in front of him as if her spirit was slowly leaving her young body that was bursting with life not so long ago.

{Damn it!} – Kyon was worried about his victim’s well-being. She had promised that she would kill herself if he kissed her again, and she seemed to have kept her word.

Kyon laid Juno on the bench and put his ear to her chest. Her heart was skipping a beat, her breath uneven. Apparently, she was in shock of the 4th degree. It could be fatal for an average person.

And yet, it was too strange. Could a simple kiss bring someone to such a life-threatening condition? Maybe any noble lady would behave this way if a slave harassed her? Dinah, for example, tried to beat him half to death, but she didn’t faint... Although, he didn’t kiss her the way he kissed Juno. A slave meant really nothing in this world, where each next stage of development elevates you tenfold over the weaker ones, which leads to a constant increase in the difference in position.

Kyon remembered his life in the mine, or rather the hierarchy in which he had to survive. He was a slave below his warden who was responsible for ten slaves. The warden was far below the leader, Byron. The big man had to kowtow to the supervisor. Supervisor Mob bowed to Ren, the delivery man. Ren showed respect to Flitz. Flitz would bow and scrape before any elder, as well as Juno. She was of the 1st rank, after all, while Flitz was only of the 2nd. Only the patriarch himself was above Juno in Stone family. The Royal family was above patriarch Stone, though... In this long chain of power and influence, Kyon was at the bottom. And now, he dared to molest Juno. Everything was clear from this point of view. A dirty mortal dared to desecrate a living deity.

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Kyon came to the conclusion that this strong-willed, determined girl would commit suicide as soon as she got a chance. With her unique cunning skills, it wasn’t impossible to bypass his formation. In the worst case scenario, his status of the patriarch’s granddaughter’s master would suddenly become useless. He would be found and killed, properly tortured beforehand.

Kyon wanted to run his fingers through his hair in anger, but he could only rub his smooth bald head sadly. The damn girl gave him no peace. He had tons of problems with her. She is his everlasting headache with her set-ups and traps. And at the same time, she was the most unusual and amazing person he had ever known. It was impossible to rehabilitate her. No pain, no humiliation worked on her. In the case of harassment, she would prefer death to shame. Why not let her die?

Kyon was looking thoughtfully at his unconscious slave girl. He was filled with a desire to take revenge for all her tricks and threat to his life. There must be a way where she would do him more good than harm. Be that as it may, he did not intend to stay in the mansion like a cat on a hot tin roof, waiting for her suicide. Either he would leave the estate, giving her a delayed order to kill herself, and his secret would go with her to the grave, or he had to find another option.

When he became her master, Kyon found a way to protect himself as efficiently as possible. He came up with the cage of orders, which should have worked perfectly. What other options did he have?

Kyon considered an idea to use a formation with pain transmission, but the code to create it was too complicated for his stage of development. Besides, what’s the use of pain if it wasn’t Juno’s teacher?

He had the idea of wiretapping, but it required a lot of energy to create in spite of its simple design. Most importantly, it needed a spatial attribute. It was beyond Kyon’s power yet. Otherwise, he would have been using wiretaps for a long time, eavesdropping and watching everything and everyone in the mansion. It’s energy-consuming to perceive a sound signal, transform it into an impulse and send it to the brain. It’s much easier to control Juno’s subconscious, the principle of which is the simplest hypnosis. Kyon was still underdeveloped to create audio, moreover video signal. But the future was promising.

Kyon could also give Juno a banal order to kill herself if she tried to go against him or hurt him or kill him. However, in this case, she could die at any second, because the subconscious could misinterpret the train of her thought. It happens to people quite often. It’s an unpredictable time bomb that can detonate at any moment, a bad idea.

Today, Kyon discovered that Juno cared for Marina. He could threaten her to beat up her friend. Or even better, he could make Juno beat her dear friend if she plotted something against him, but... Again, the mind is not perfect. Poor Marina could suffer in the end, and Kyon owed her his life. Kyon wouldn’t let anyone touch a hair on Marina’s head.

As a last resort, Kyon thought he could use a formation that would kill her if he died, but... The Law of Formacy says when the heart stops beating, the energy within the formation ceases to perform its functions. When the soul gets detached from the keys and leaves the body, the formation gets dispelled. Therefore, there was no sense in the killing formation, it just wouldn't work. Besides, Juno was well aware of this cornerstone of Formacy.

Kyon had no doubt in the quality of his formation. He couldn’t improve it or reapply, anyway. Juno’s mind had already acquired resistance. He had to make do with the existing one. It was all about Juno... Somehow, she could bypass the basic laws of Formacy.

It seemed to Kyon there were only dead ends all around. The cage of orders, his only hope, proved to be weak and inefficient. It was time to change something. It couldn’t go on like this. Kyon didn’t want to lose his current position. It cost him a lot of blood, effort and, to be honest, good luck. With Juno by his side, he had every chance to quickly become a powerful practitioner, build the foundation with his unique body, develop himself with the help of high-quality medicine, learn some powerful techniques. Without her, he would have to find all that one by one, not without threats for his life.

Kyon had a fair question: {Why did she have such willpower? The pampered offsprings of noble families are never so preposterously resolute and stubborn...}

Kyon recalled the dialogue between Juno and Jean when she said with firm confidence that she was much more talented than her sister, that she would soon surpass her. And indeed, no matter how developed her mind and psyche was, Juno would have broken long ago without her desired goal. It must be the goal “by all means to defeat her sister” that gave her strength. Yes, it did... That must be it...

Kyon's eyes flashed brightly in the awareness of the new, risky, but mutually beneficial solution to the current situation. It was a kind of compromise, something that didn’t require any effort from his side but allowed him to enjoy the benefits of being the patriarch’s granddaughter’s owner for quite some time without fear of being killed.

If the whip didn’t work, the carrot should do the job. Especially if Juno was in question.

Kyon sighed heavily and poured Synergy into Juno so that she would recover as quickly as possible. He started practicing the movement technique, thinking over and planning everything to the smallest detail.

Kyon had to choose one of two options: 1) he orders Juno to commit suicide in a couple of days while he leaves the estate and relies on himself. 2) he allows Juno to serve him in exchange for purifying her keys, at the same time ordering her to kill herself if she tells someone that he has this incredible ability.

In the first case, a new life was waiting for him. He would have to start everything from scratch. He would have to look for opportunities, to lay the groundwork for seizing power. Who knows how long it was going to take. It wasn’t in his nature to take baby steps.

As the advantage of the second option, Juno wouldn’t commit the promised suicide. She would stop trying to finish him off (the walking “opportunity” to surpass her sister).

Of course, there were certain disadvantages. Sooner or later, Juno would free herself from his control and tell everything to her grandfather, perhaps even her mother and brother, no one else, that’s for sure. However, it was not that bad. With his speed of development, her grandfather would be no equal to him pretty soon, and no one else would be in the know. In the worst case scenario, he would change his personality. By that time, he would have gotten the head start he needed from the Stones. After that, they could turn the whole world upside down looking for him. Besides, as soon as his development allowed him to use the wiretapping formation on Juno, her threat to his well being would be minimal, almost innocuous.

But Kyon couldn’t just give Juno something so incredibly valuable. She was already in red according to his principle of “paying debts.” It’s like asking the enemy, who is beating you to death, to take a better stick.

And then Kyon remembered one of his Masters, who taught him how to rationally build his relations with the right people, especially with those whose relations were built solely on the losses and profits of both parties.

It's like taking a loan to develop business and then paying off the debt that had grown over time. Applied to his situation, he could force Juno into debt by rendering her the necessary service. In the future, he would make her pay for everything, with his interest.

Kyon had always considered himself a rational person, but when it came to the beautiful and emotional, his logical train of thought turned into reckless ways. His masters repeatedly reminded him of his two weak points.

«You’re an idiot! Even the most flawless beauty costs only three hundred thousand credits! And if you use the discount coupon, even less.» - The old master instructed him, but Lovr replied it was a piece of cake to deteсt a fake. True beauty is created by the universe itself. Perhaps that’s why Synergy favored him. That shut his master up. Synergy did favor him, and it was the quintessence of the universe.

Lovr confirmed his words with his love for mysterious cosmic landscapes, mountain ranges that pierced the sky, endless seas, contemplation of the fire, water, and other elements, as well as beautiful girls and animals, of course.

These two weaknesses got him in a lot of trouble in this world. If Dinah wasn’t so beautiful, he would give a damn about her. Instead, he gave in to the desire to warn the maid personally to avoid him. He wanted too much to send the beautiful girl a message. She was clearly underestimating him. And what did that get him? She came to get her revenge in the library, fortunately, with no intention to kill him.

Even now he felt sick at heart, imagining how he would confront in cold blood the stupid beautiful girl and order her to stick a dagger in her heart. It was quite contrary to his desire for revenge. However, when he imagined beating and torturing her with no chance to kill or mutilate her, it felt... so good. He seemed to be a sadist, after all...

Time was flying by.

While practicing, Kyon looked from time to time at Juno’s face, and his heart favored more and more the second choice, where he didn’t have to kill her. It’s not that her beauty deprived him of the opportunity to finish her off, by no means. It’s just the second option outweighed the first one. In the worst case scenario, he would only have to change his appearance. In the meantime, he might find a way to create a wiretapping formation before Juno met her grandfather.

Kyon had made the final decision - {I will pretend that Juno is my apprentice. I’ll purify her keys for her faithful service. In the future, when she has to pay back the debt, her respect for me will not allow her to turn into a spineless creature.}

He wasn’t going to punish her for the misdeed with Flitz, for the time being. He was even going to give her some delicious “carrot.” But she shouldn't have any illusions. It means only one thing. Her cup of misery will be full. His revenge is not going anywhere. The time will come when the grim reaper in his face will collect all her unsecured debts. For Sashka and himself.