Knock, knock!

"We're almost there, Milord." Sounded the Knight from outside the carriage.

"Whew, that is fast, don't you think so~? Now, let us rehearse what our dear Marquess is gonna do later?" Smirked Clara mischievously, donning a ragged rug.

"I-I will go straight to the dungeon where I kept the dwarf and told the guard to leave." Iterated the man in trepidation.

"Very smart! I like smart people. Now, now...Don't look at me like that, love~ You might think you get the short hand of the stick by dealing with me. But it can get worse, dear Marquess. Like that woman over there...Believe me, you don't want her anywhere near you." Whispered Clara, pointing at Renata, who was minding her own business and ignoring them.

'That is...Unfortunately true...' Ever so slightly, I nodded in concur.

"Get your head in the game! If I so much as catch the two of you messing up, I'll confiscate those rings myself. Milord's grace knows no bounds, but you need to respect and keep it." Scolded Renata harshly toward the two Shadows, who had been wearing these dazed looks on their faces for a while.

"No!"

"Please, no, Assassin!"

Cried the two shadows alarmingly like kids whose toys were about to get taken by their mom.

"Oh, my~? Someone's a bit salty, I think...I'd love to get on to this more, but since we're here already, I guess I'll save that for later?" Teased Clara.

So, yeah. Long story short, since I erased their marks of enslavement, the two just won't stop crying. I know it was fucked up, but it is what it is...

Thus, in order to make the two grown-ass adults stop crying, I decided to make an impromptu decision to give them rings on their thumbs. A proof of recognition, some might say, which they liked. In fact, they seem to treat it like an heirloom or some sort.

More details needed to be fleshed out about these new dynamics I wanted to be implemented in the House, but that would be left for later. Right now, Helios came first...

Creak!

The carriage stopped, and the harmless banter inside the carriage died down in an instant.

Out the window, the shadow of a lustrous mansion could be seen standing tall and wide.

The carriage's door opened, and Marquess Pearl stepped down, leading the way.

To our side, a row of knights, a.k.a, Clara's prisoner at the time, stood upright as if to guarantee their master's safe journey till the end. And in front of us were the servants of Marquess Pearl, along with some of the house guards, armed with armor and weapons. Some magicians stood in their midst, holding their staffs and wands, pointing them at us, the new slaves.

The entourage from the man's house appeared bewildered by the fact that the Marquess had taken the same carriage as the slaves, hence their stances.

I could spot Marquess Pearl flinching with cold sweat running down the back of his neck when the guards started roughing us up.

"Be gentle with them, you fuck-...Ha...Be careful with them. They're expensive." Barely able to hold himself back, Marquess Pearl quietly gathered his manner and instructed the guards.

Baffled as they were, an order was an order, indeed. And honestly, I would also prefer not to be pummeled in the gut with weapons and shoved harshly from time to time.

"Bring them to the dwarf's room." Commanded the Marquess.

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"Pardon, Marquess? But you said not to bother the healer while he's working on the-," Asked one of the guards.

"You dare question me!?" Barked the Marquess impatiently.

"Forgive me! I will bring them to the healer's room. You, you! Move now." The man saluted and began moving in angst.

'Well, this works too, I guess...Now, let's see what we have here...'

Prompting a command silently in my mind, I scanned through the huge mansion, trying to see what this Marquess Pearl was cooking in his hideout.

To my surprise, nothing felt too suspicious, not like Melkor, for example, who had a hidden mechanism in one of his studies. Sure, there was a secret compartment in here, but it was the usual behind-the-painting kind of thing.

There was no trap, no ambush, or anything. Nothing...It was disgustingly too clean, in fact...

'Hm...? What is this?'

But maybe I spoke too soon because as soon as we entered the mansion, I could pick up a strange mana movement from all over the place.

It swam freely and faintly, like fish in water. It was almost untraceable if I didn't have my senses heightened still.

Be as it may, I still couldn't figure out what in the living hell it was. I tried using my mind's eyes, but still, it did nothing. I could see the mana moving, but I couldn't see what caused it. And it was so frustrating.

Lost in my thoughts, we soon arrived at our destination.

The guards swung the door open, and what awaited us was a clean, well-lit basement laboratory. It had a bed in the corner and a separate bathroom, with tidied documents and books decorating almost half of the room.

All types of flasks and equipment were placed on the desks of the huge room. Some were clean, and some were filled with strange-colored fluids.

"Sir...?" Flabbergasted by the Marquess's act that followed us into the room, the leading guard held the door open in confusion.

"You come in with me and leave the rest of the guards outside." Commanded the thin Marquess.

"Sir! You two. Stand guard outside." Saluted the man and did as ordered.

He closed the door, and as soon as the door clicked, I could hear the sound of a sharp dagger scraping the small gap in the guard's armor, finding his tender neck.

"Move, and you die. Say anything, and you die...Kneel and raise your hands if you understand." Renata's cold words fell on the burly guard's ears.

He spent little to no time weighing his options and knelt in a heartbeat; terror had bested him. And the look on Marquess's face was beyond ugly at this point.

Well, can you blame the dude? He literally got dragged to hell out of nowhere when he just did his job.

BAM!

Renata then smashed the back of the man's head hard, and he went straight to the dreamland without looking back once.

"I can live now! I'm telling all of you, I am not going to put that rug on for the third time. I will get out here looking like this if I must. Look at my skin! They really did a number on these beauties..." Whined Clara, taking off her disguise.

To be fair, the rugs we were wearing did look like they hadn't been washed in years, and that was just the norm for slaves...

"Tie him." Ordered Renata to the two Shadows.

Seemingly in high spirits, Clara approached the Marquess, poking his potbelly with her finger. "Alright. Now what? Where is he, love? We are missing one grumpy old dwarf if I'm correct?"

"He should be here! Please believe me!" Cried the man as his complexion grew a shade paler.

I believe seeing one of his Knights get their ass kicked and faint from one blow must've terrified him. He might've thought we were about to go full ballistic on him or something.

"Calm down, Spy. Here he comes..."

The bathroom door creaked open, followed by the sound of a small yet firm gait.

A man with a dark, neat beard with a hint of grey dangling up to his stomach, with unkempt and damp hair that struck quite the contrast with how the beard looked, appeared before us. He had these large black eye bags that made him look like a freaking panda and a tattoo of a white snake circling his wrist, crawling its way across his upper body into the other wrist.

We met each other's eyes in complete silence whilst time trickled by ever so slowly.

And the one to finally break the ice was none other than Helios himself.

"We finally meet...You, who holds the fate of the world..." Said the man, taking the small towel off his head.

"Summons arsenal. Realm of God!"

I wasn't proud of it, but I was too taken aback by what he said. So, I summoned dozens of weapons, with every last one of them pointing to his neck. On top of that, I even used a domain to seal the deal in case those weren't enough.

He got me good...

"You have one chance to explain why shouldn't I kill you right here, right now...One chance, Helios."