Juno headed off to the coffin, but Kyon quickly grabbed her by the collar and pulled her back.
«Stupid girl! Where do you think you are going?! I don’t want to go to the next world, certainly not with you!»
«But…»
Kyon approached the sarcophagus and began to study the patterns in the beam of his flashlight. He was looking for the slightest hint of a trap. He walked around it, crawled underneath, looked on the top, anything but getting inside. Then Kyon touched it with his fingers... He infused the surface Synergy, but it couldn’t tackle the hard rock. He made a little tube and blew some saliva into the crevice of the coffin. If there were any elemental barriers inside, his Synergy would reveal them. But the brief search showed there were no traps.
Juno was shivering with cold again. She looked like a plucked chicken, hugging herself with her arms.
«Master, just open it. Any elemental trap would have dissipated for hundreds of years.» – She took out the stick they both knew so well. – «Try this.»
Deep in his thoughts, Kyon looked at the stick that had nearly killed him once. He nodded to himself and slowly walked away to the staircase.
«I order you to remove the lid with the stick carefully!»
«ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME?!» – Juno cried, turning pale. She was totally dumbstruck. However, she had to obey the formation. Juno poked the stick at the lid, tears streaming down her cheeks. It budged an inch... When she moved the cover about halfway, Kyon ordered her to stop.
Juno fiercely shot a stream of hatred with her eyes at the target that was standing just a bit away. Tracks of tears ran from the corners of her eyes. All her life had flashed before her... She did not want to die!
«You are the most terrible person in the world! There is no one worse than you! The devil will envy you!» – She wanted to give the jerk a load of nasty words, but she was afraid of the inevitable punishment. – «How can you do this to a girl?! Masters don’t do that! You have no right to call me your student anymore! What if I died?!» - Juno squealed in a thin voice.
«Then, there would be one bad person less in the world.» – Kyon grinned, approaching the half-open sarcophagus.
Juno clenched her fists, growling softly with rage like a wolf cub. She wanted to kill the smug bastard so much!
Kyon discovered a dried skeleton inside. On its sides, there was a whole bunch of cloudy green stones with formations. His eyes shone with delight. He found ancient heritage! People of antiquity loved to leave all sorts of goodies! Their sense of self-importance and narcissism could be seen even after their death as if they were saying: «Look how great and powerful I was in my lifetime!»
Kyon held out his hand to the first nephrite he saw. Then he stopped, took the stick from the hands of the aggressive-minded little fox and touched the sphere with it, releasing Synergy. He could see no traps. He knew there was a chance that some of the information could be destroyed along with Synergy, so he studied the stones carefully.
He nodded to himself, wished himself good luck and prayed just in case. Then he took the first nephrite in his hand. A relieved sigh escaped his lips: he was alive.
«Master...» – Juno muttered, her teeth chattering from cold. She could hardly restrain her anger. – «You must share the heritage with the Stones, especially with me. My family had discovered the location of the tomb, and I showed you how to get here as a representative of the noble family!»
«First come, first served.» – Kyon said shortly, carefully studying the information contained in the nephrite.
«What do you mean first served?! You just opened the entrance. It was my family who did the dirty job! My family who the first to find the tomb! Ninety percent of the heritage should belong to the Stones! But I’m a generous person, so I will give you twenty... no, twenty-five percent!»
«If it weren’t for me, you would keep dancing around the tomb for another thousand years. You’d never get inside. So, at least nine-tenths of everything here is mine. But I’m a truly generous soul. I won’t let you suffer any agony or grief over your lost wealth, nor will I tell anyone about it. Your family can go on banging their heads at the gates of the castle as long as they like.»
«How dare you?!» – Juno wanted to tear him into small pieces. He was stealing from her family a real treasure! Thousands of years of toil and everything went to some damned egoist, who opened the door by pure luck! It was unfair!
Juno was shaking with anger. She ran to the coffin in a fit of rage and grabbed the first sphere she could reach with her little hands.
«It’s mine!»
Kyon quickly grabbed her hand and squeezed it firmly with his fingers, not letting the little thief snatch the sphere.
«How dare you steal from your master?» – His slave girl was asking for a long-awaited punishment. Kyon guy had already figured out what it would be, but he suddenly noticed something unusual in Juno’s behavior.
She fell on her knees and screamed with inhuman horror and panic in her voice:
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«А-а-а-аа-аа-аh! It hur-ur-uur-ur-urts-s-ss-s!» – She broke free from his grip and flopped to the floor, whining from hellish pain, twisting and turning, trembling with her whole body, crying through agony for help.
Kyon was near her at once. He pulled her clasped hand. The sight was terrifying: a little sphere of nephrite was biting into her palm, radiating bright light. It looked like some carnivorous scarab from the movies about tomb raids. The sphere had crawled into her wrist and was gnawing a path into her body. Once it got to her vital organs, she was dead.
Without any hesitation, Kyon grabbed the bunchy glowing patch of skin and pressed it with his hand with all his might, trying to squeeze it out.
With the unpleasant sound of torn flesh, accompanied by a heartbreaking girl’s scream, the little sphere popped out from under her skin and, like a magnet, flew into Kyon's hand, biting into his flesh.
It got more aggressive this time. It wasn’t gnawing its way on the surface but deep inside, tearing muscle tissue and joints with speed ten times more than before.
Everything went dark from unbearable pain.
Juno opened her tear-stained eyes and stared at Kyon. {Did he just save me?}
Kyon raised his pain threshold a hundred times and was about to take his sword out of the ring to cut open his arm when he realized it was too late...
{I never imagined I would die so foolishly.} - He didn’t want to die, but all he could do was to rely on his regenerative abilities.
The little ball gnawed through his chest to the heart with unwavering zeal.
Kyon’s face took on an ashen shade of gray. He stared at Juno intensely. She was looking at him with pity and horror. Suddenly, he whispered:
«Juno... Do not hurt slaves, you dummy... They are people, too.»
The next moment, the bright sphere penetrated his heart, reached the key of light and started to destroy it. An unbearable hurricane of pain washed over Lovr, his whole body twisted. He lost control of his limbs, they went into spasms and cramps. A violent explosion went off in his head. For some reason, the trick with increasing the pain threshold did not work.
He had a feeling that liquid magma had penetrated his channel of light and was flowing straight into his soul.
The pain was so unbearable that Kyon forced himself into a coma, leaving it to Synergy to save his dying organism. Let the chips fall where they may... Juno might help him, but it was no use counting on her.
Kyon did not have time to think about why he had saved her. On the other hand, if she had died, he wouldn’t have left the mansion alive.
Meanwhile, Juno began to lament:
«No! Do not die, moron! You can't die so easily! Please! You have not purified my keys yet... Master, please! I don’t want you to die like this!» – She shook Kyon, moaning with unbearable pain in her hand. Drops of her tears soaked his black shirt.
What should she do now? Pain and cold made it difficult to think. First of all, she took out some ointment and applied it to her hand. She also took a painkiller that she had wisely taken from the hospital. The pain was almost completely gone, she started to get things straight.
{Why did he save me? Why? Is scum like him capable of noble deeds?} - Juno failed to find the answer, and yet she couldn’t help thinking about his last words. {It’s ridiculous... The slaves are not people, and you are no hero!}
Juno gently touched her forehead. The mark did not disappear, which means he was still alive. She pressed her ear to his warm chest and heard his unstable, weak heartbeat and hoarse, intermittent breathing. It’s crazy... Why didn’t the sphere? However, he had surprised her before. Once he told her all about his regeneration.
The question was what to do next?
If her annoying master died, she would finally be free from the chains of slavery. She would take a deep breath and get back to her life, to fulfilling her dreams. Wasn’t it something she had been dreaming of since she got the damn mark?
On the other hand, if he survived, she would have a chance to get the legendary key cleaning, something that only goddess Danna can grant. Oh well, and this bastard, too, which was still hard to believe. If everything went according to her original plan, she would become a super genius in the near future. She would get rid of the mark and get her cruel revenge. The mighty wings of her growing talent would let rise incredibly high... Elsa would finally turn into an obedient servant. Juno would become number one among all the Stones, to her grandfather’s and mother’s delight. It was breathtaking even to think of. She had to endure the monster beside her. Or maybe, she didn’t?
Juno took out the only pill she had. She had specifically asked the doctor for it in case she got a serious injury. She was turning it with her fingers, wondering if she should give it to the servant or not. The pill was not a simple one. It contained lots of healing powers. The servant would almost certainly recover with its help. He was unlikely to survive without it. Without medical care, Kyon was a hundred percent dead. Now his fate was in her hands.
Juno took a deep breath, a cloud of vapor left her cold lips. The chill in the room bit into her and made her numb. She wanted to scurry to the warm bathroom and then to bed. She wanted to leave the jerk to die here... He deserved the most brutal execution. Juno would happily strangle him right away but... Key cleaning... Super talent... And... He did save her...
The last thought was decisive in favor of his salvation. But Juno could not admit this to herself. Instead, she thought: {I am not going to spend my life with impure channels. I want to rise high above everyone else!}
Juno decidedly put the pill in his mouth.
She shivered once again and decided to go back to get warm clothes and some water, but she realized that her servant would definitely freeze to death while she was going all the way to her room and back.
Reluctantly, Juno took off her jacket and covered Kyon with it. Then she took the flashlight and hurried outside.
When Juno came downstairs, she was dumbfounded. There was no azure light... There was no way out, either... As if it had never been there.
«No... It cannot be... Where is it?» – Juno touched the wall in the place where the exit should be, she pushed it but to no avail.
Juno shone the flashlight on the wall in an attempt to find a lever or at least something useful. There was nothing.
«No! Noo-oo-o!» – She drummed her fists on the wall in a fit of despair. It occurred to her that it was all because of her greed. The trap got activated, and the servant was dying. She was to blame. But she did not want to admit it.
Juno took out the sound transmitter, her hands trembling. Then she remembered that the cage of orders forbade her to use the device. For a moment, she regretted giving the master her pill. But she knew that even if he died, no one would open the door for her.
{Am I am destined to perish here because of my greed.} - She concluded helplessly. Then a silly, probably even naive in this situation thought flashed across her mind like a ray of hope. If the servant could get inside, he would find the way outside! He was her last hope.