The meeting point was a rather seedy bar. Unfortunately not the 'overtly gay because at least one of the head honchos of the city liked to fool around on their turf' kind, just a shadowy dirty thing with a clearer workers lounge.
Which he had to wait more than a couple dozen minutes to be made acquaintanced with, but still he wasn't in too bad a mood.
Partly because the one to invite him was rather good at kissing, something he demonstrated rather well on the few moments he'd had to show. Or it could be because it turns out he liked big, well kept beards for more than just aesthetics, but that was something to figure out later.
In the not so dark room, there stood the bearded bartender, a man more well kept and handsome than a place like the current establishment should have, his purple skin filled with vigor despite the silver hairs showing in his face.
Opposite to him, there was a slob of a man who, were it not for his clear and focused eyes, could have passed for a homeless bun in any one street of any one city, the man wearing a mane of brown hair over his motled brown clothes, his age impossible to tell behind the face full of hair and grime.
To top it off, there was the envy demon kin who had contacted him to begin with, his androgenous face marked by a few earrings and some make up for whatever reason.
Far from the table he was signaled towards however, there stood a little girl of fox kin origins wearing a maid outfit, maybe fourteen or fifteen. Her expressionless face seemed a bit out of place with the concealed stress of the rest of the room, but he could see that she too was dangerous.
"Ah, that's little Soph, she will be our support, not participating on the actual operations, but will be facilitating our acquisition efforts. Don't be afraid of asking her for stuff or for contacting us." Introduced the spy, the little maid nodding to him, which he responded in kind before sitting down on the table.
"Understood. Allow me to introduce myself then. I am Aki, currently Gaius, and the big ass sword is a decoration, an apprentice could defeat my sword play. I alone am enough to substitute for a cabal of mind mages, but do not think that is all I can do. You will be able to find me in the adventurers guild, raising this disguise's fame." There were nods all around, his words understandable mostly because of that trick he had found with mind magic as he was currently speaking common.
Which he hadn't put too much effort into learning due to the sheer amount of enchanting work he had to deal with, nevermind the harassment from random nobles and his other extra curricular activities, though he could actually understand it nowadays.
"Zhis. Assassin." Said the almost bum in a volume that was almost unheard even by his enhanced ears.
"Xerxes, long time adept pugilist. I take care of our main refuge and other stashes. Take a gander at our list before this thing later, just in case. Don't be shy with asking questions either, I'll be here." Smiled the gentleman in a way that he wasn't so sure was merely polite.
"And I am Argu, an infiltrator with a heart of gold and some mage training." Announced the one that called him over. "Though from what I learned of you my own arcane expertise won't be if much use." He shrugged.
Aki nodded, then his illusion exploded like a flashbang, inundating the room with a smorgasbord of sound and light, though it was more of a epilepsy inducing pulsar than a ray or anything, meaning that even as he broke the assassin's neck and sent a spear from his storage to impale the bartender to the wall, the sheer force of the sound made it so nothing could be heard and no experienced fighter could properly feel the incoming attacks as most of their skin vibrated to the incredibly unhealthy volume.
Much in the same way, the little girl was somewhere between passing out and paralysed, the physicality of the sound waves enough to make up for their lack of magical fuckery, while the only person without the resistance of a prepared mage or stout warrior on the room was already falling over if only because of the sudden lack of balance due to destroyed eardrums. A small collar to his neck was enough to properly subdue him.
The bartender tried to fight it while the girl pretty much had a panic attack, but after manipulating the magic he had already cast to focus on releases much more narrow than before, both of them were knocked out and collared enough.
The one with a broken neck was even easier to capture, as the collar even served to help to support his reforming neck after some forcefully pulling and vitality manipulation to reintroduce the man to a normal blood pressure on his head.
Seemingly not understanding what had happened however, he attempted to attack him despite the bomb having already burned out, the collar seizing his muscles and sending the gray man into apoplectic spasming.
While slavery was outlawed in the demon empire, that did not mean they did not stock up on slave collars for situations like this, so of course he bought some.
Interestingly enough, it was a good chance to witness someone being brought back to life despite the system declaring them dead.
All things considered, he would need to kill someone more than a bit more than couple of times for this to be worth not extinguishing a mob's life, and he held little doubt that he could simply open a retirement home where he helped his enemies spend more time alive with this kind of method without significant decreases in XP generation, but it could be useful one day.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Not that such a scheme would ever be as lucrative as Black star's pirate paradise…
Either way, he had three newly enslaved bastards to process so as to avoid the local lord wasting his efforts by triggering their anti capture measures. While not a fan of traumatizing teenagers with great pain and despair, there were simply too many lives at stake for him to let the little girl go however, so she was coming too.
……………..
"The good new is that these are all the operatives on site, the trap they wanted to use on me didn't have an actual target besides this random ass knight from the household of one of them, so with that place practically surrounded, there is no real threat remaining here. Bad news is that I'm pissed and there are several teams around here who are being targeted. Worse, there is a high chance that these insurgents have already managed to replicate feats like this all over the empire, and no matter how minor their successes, it can still be pivotal to their cause so long as they manage to properly shake the demon king's position. Even worse, I FUCKING THEORISED THIS FOR YOUR FUCKING GOVERNMENT ALREADY!"
"Are you done, agent?" Asked the frowning sloth demon who was technically his direct superior.
"One more thing. The more we talk, the I am sure I'm not the only one that knows, isn't being paid to keep it a secret, and still won't tell you." He told the lazy ass dead man, who now frowned harder.
How his wife managed to not just murder the man in his sleep was beyond him, as with the skills of an operative as skilled as her, there were certainly many, many chances to take his head over the years.
"I will await further instructions while reacerting official control over the local line of information and security. Agent Aki done and out." He informed the silent commander when no order immediately came, fully intending to take on the punishment for insubordination later on.
Not like they could use more than pain to get to him effectively after he became so rich in contribution points and remained so subservient to proper commands. So long as unreasonable levels of stupidity weren't involved that is.
Truth be told, it wasn't like they would have managed to avoid the current situation by simply switching to his method of nurturing new psionics. He was angry that they had let such an obvious weakness get to them due to a lack of unity allowing fear to dictate how such useful personal are treated, but that wasn't why he had suddenly blown up on his boss.
Rather, it was because he now intended to root out these pseudo-jihadists out himself.
He wasn't particularly bothered about the cavity and skin checks for implanted devices, but having to do his first mercy kill on a child was certainly ridiculous. It also left him burning in so many ways that he simply found it impossible to actually sit down at the moment.
The look in her eyes as he brought the girl from her self imposed coma was heart wrenching. Honestly it made him want to just straight out stop and respect the teen's wish to end it all.
But no, he had the way to do it and the need. So he kept the beast kin who'd rejected and burned away her bloodline on the right side of the brink of life and death. Even with his ministrations, she would have died were no further treatment applied, but there were many knights on the local lord's palace, and they could each donate their vitality easily enough, nevermind the city guard, who could be called in groups to provide supply aid as well.
After some time of simply surviving like that however, the girl gave in, no torture needed besides maintaining her existence. By that point there was only fear and a sense of wrongness left for her to feel, most her senses going on and off seemingly at random and he concentrated on creating a stop gap to the injuries of her self harm.
When she was done speaking, she begged to die, swearing on her birth name she knew nothing more of use, a contract firming between them despite his conscious mind finding no need for it. The whole situation was just that much of a natural ritual.
Despite having already decided against the path of a Healer, Aki tried to explain he could build her back a healthy body, that she could be free so long as she waited a bit more like this.
He failed.
They spoke in the essence of the mana flowing through and around them, thoughts going from a mind to the other due to the many connections he'd firmed to support the collapsing soul still in his grasp. So how could he deny so much emotion and conviction? How could he deny a spark purposefully burning itself away even as he reinforced it's layers.
No, this was unfortunately it. He could do nothing to heal those cracks because he himself had them, but instead of breaking he bore them as cursed medals.
So he instead did what he could. He shared his acceptance, shared his plan, and shared her peace as the child accepted.
At the time he had thought to call for at least one supreme entity's presence, mark the moment as True in even more ways, but the only one who wouldn't try to intervene was an old thing with horrible taste in music and a worse sleep schedule, so they would only create trouble for the surroundings, possibly detracting from the moment instead.
So he corralled the system away. A small core inside of him remained, trying to suck away at his conviction and barrier, but it wasn't quick enough.
One moment he was carefully brushing the now sickly white ears of Maphilhis Soten, in the next, his eyes and veins flashed a colorless glow and there was nothing.
Body, mind and soul would not, did not and had not existed. No connections, no impressions, nothing left behind in existence to point out that Aki had any reason to be shaken besides the hole in his memories leading to his blast of oblivion and the significance he recognised as grief and envy in his core.
He knew himself, could guess what all this meant easily enough even as he allowed the system core inside or his soul it's freedom. So he became angry. Angry enough that his emotions and will condensed into a new state, significance he had no memorable reason to be able to generate compressing them into a fine point.
This allowed him to concentrate enough to start looking for what he knew would be missing. And indeed, he easily enough entered the correct state of mind to see the connections of fate and the huge hole that seemed to caused several threads to fray all around.
Also obvious were the places where there was a Void of fate.
Considering the apparent lack of ways, or even mention, to sever connections of fate in the surrounding lands, he had to assume that those were his next targets.
To go there, all he needed was implicit permission and to message a report about finding suspicious activity before going towards his next hit.