“A non-lethal show of force.”

The corner of Tina’s lips curved up while a strange, warm feeling emerged low on her stomach.

The casual confidence of those words, of the voice Leo spoke them with…

There was little to no time for the girl to adore her step-brother, for the men the mayor hired into his security detail weren’t to be trifled with.

None of them said a single word, nor did they wait for Leo to elaborate. The very moment the young man made his intentions clear, all of them reached out for whatever weapons they concealed on themselves, with one of them raising his empty hands as if to support the back of an invisible person standing right in front of them.

And then, they stopped.

Just like that, everyone in the room, from the mayor, through his security detail to the few unlucky aides; all froze to a degree that was too unnatural for the young woman to miss.

Not a single muscle on their bodies moved. Their eyelids refused to move up and down to keep their eyes moist. Even their chests didn’t bulge up only to deflate as if everyone suddenly decided to just hold their breath.

‘That’s different from how he made those fuckers stop back home,’ Tina thought, swallowing her saliva as she turned her face away from the mayor and looked over the table, to where Leo sat in the same, arrogant and perfectly relaxed manner as before.

“Now, savor this feeling,” Leo suggested with a small, sympathetic smile. “Etch this sensation down your souls, so that you may never forget it,” he said, staring straight into the city’s mayor's eyes.

The mayor didn’t reply. He didn’t nod his head or even move his eyes up and down either. He simply continued to look at Leo with his head leaning over his cupped hands and a judging look in his eyes.

With her eyes glued to her step-brother, Tina didn’t miss the small twitch of the corner of his mouth.

“Yes, it would pose no problem for me to spread this… influence over to everyone in this building or even district. Heck!” he exclaimed, “I could slaughter everyone in this town if I exerted myself a bit!”

Tina’s soul trembled as she imagined hundreds, thousands… No, hundreds of thousands of people all simultaneously losing their ability to move even an inch, all suffocating at the same time with their mouths and noses no longer capable of providing fresh oxygen for their lungs or exhaling the carbon oxide out of them.

But while Tina’s mind was busy showcasing the image of crowds upon crowds of dead bodies littering every street and corner of the city… The strange warmth continued to spread through her abdomen.

‘I know I’ve already seen him fight back in those two portals I got for him, but…’

This warmth, as strange as it was, wasn’t a new thing. It appeared both two days ago and yesterday, when she dived into one of the few portals that the military had yet to reach and saw the ease with which Leo slaughtered all the monsters inside once he judged everyone else had their fun.

But between back then and now… It was like comparing a fleeting flame of a match to a small inferno of a fireplace!

Leo rolled his eyes… Only for the city’s major to drop forward and down to the table, desperately gasping for air.

The very next second, all the unfortunate victims of poor timing did the same, either falling down on whatever soft they could find directly by where they stood or simply slumping down on their knees to the floor.

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“I’m going to release you guys, so don’t make me regret it,” Leo spoke out as he turned his eyes to the group of veterans standing still behind the struggling mayor.

The entire group moved… But only a tiny bit. It was more of a twitch of someone suddenly finding themselves freed from their bounds, not the desperate attempts at regaining fresh breath exhibited by everyone else.

Homer’s security detail managed to keep up their appearances and formation, even though their cloudy eyes and unnaturally pale faces indicated they actually suffered under Leo’s attack the most.

“Now, I’m aware this wasn’t nice, but it was absolutely necessary for us to establish the simple fact that I’m a power you cannot control, remove, or…” Leo hesitated for a second only to then roll his eyes and shrug his shoulders, “annoy?”

The young man shook his head.

“Well, I bet you are smart enough to get the gist of it.”

“Yeah…” Homer muttered, only now regaining his proper breath and finding enough leeway to raise his face and look up at the desk and at Leo’s face. Still, the mayor’s face contorted before he spat out a short few words, “What the hell do you want, then?”

Leo smiled brightly, revealing but a hint of warmth in his eyes for the very first time since the meeting started.

“Well, I’ve started with a massive threat, so I’m going to move on to the good news,” he stated as he pulled his legs off the table and sat down straight, taking up an appropriate position befitting the nature of the meeting. “I can provide you with some basic insights into magic. I can also supply you with a reasonable number of those,” he added before throwing a short glance at the girl.

‘Oh, right, it’s my turn now,’ Tina thought, scrambling to reach into her small bag before fishing out a single, green-colored stone out of it.

“The finish reward?” Homer muttered, his eyes widening a bit when he saw the item Tina placed down on the table.

“Those are not, but you are not that far from the truth,” Leo shook his head before explaining. “This crystal, you can consider both my gift of good faith and a hands-on example of just how ridiculously valuable those are.”

Without any further signal from her brother, Tina lightly tossed the crystal over the table, making it soon drop down to the wooden surface and roll over a few times, only to stop right by Homer’s elbow.

“Give it to one of your men, preferably those who already visited… or if possible, one of those who managed to close one of the portals already. Then, have them crush it in their hand.”

‘To think he would really give one of those away so easily…’ Tina thought, watching how Leo roped the entire, small crowd further and further down his sweet, sweet trap. For, for anyone with the alien circuit, the benefits just one of those would bring were far more addicting than even the most potent drug in the world.

Homer hesitated for but a short moment, before picking up the stone and raising it up to his eyes, staring into and then past its translucent walls and into the slight, green discoloration hidden beneath its surface. Then, once he sated his initial curiosity, the mayor raised his hand with the stone firmly held in his hand.

“Bjorn?”

The most… average-looking one could ever imagine emerged from the group of six. And it was only when the man intentionally made himself known, did Tina realized she had gotten the count of the mayor’s security detail wrong, even when literally all of them were unable to as much as move their eyeballs, not to speak about keeping up any sort of clever guise.

“Yes, sir,” this seemingly infinitely average man reported right by the mayor’s side before calmly picking up the stone… and then crushing it in his palm.

‘Crap…’ Tina bit down on her lips, struggling to fight off the sense of loss and jealousy for something this man, in particular, was likely never to receive again… and something that Leo actively fed everyone within the family whenever a new batch of crystals would be completed.

Still, the warmth in her abdomen was enough to quell those unsavory feelings, forcing the young woman to focus back on the important negotiation at hand.

The crystal shattered, but save for Bjorn closing his eyes and taking in a long breath… nothing else really happened. Nothing else, besides the small shine in the man’s eyes that appeared when he pried them open again, only for this shine to vanish as it settled down within the man’s pupils, too deep for anyone to ever see it again.

Bjorn then glanced over to the side and turned his eyes back… Only to turn his entire head as he did a double-take, locking his now shocked eyes onto some undisclosed and seemingly random point in space just a small distance away.

“That’s…” the man muttered under his nose, only to turn his face back towards the Mayor and give him quite an intense look.

“What are the results, Bjorn?” Homer insisted, not shying away from the soldier’s intense gaze but responding to it with a determined glare of his own.

“Actually…” the shine at the bottom of the soldier’s eyes now fully settled, bringing his face back to the empty averageness it represented before. “Actually, nothing happened at all.”