Sometimes you didn’t really have a choice.
Consorting with a monster is never pleasant. People would be surprised how unpleasant even just chasing a monster can be. But that’s a whole bunch of things we already said.
Taint, corruption, filth.
Jacob’s aura was above all those things.
He might have been weak, but fuck the world if he wasn’t the goddamn Blady Tyrant.
“Bob, there is a high chance that you might be the Plague Doctor. It’s not that high. But I’m going to kill you either way if you aren’t. We both came back from the future and The Eater landed close to us. I want to fuck her Empire up.”
Juliet was now fully coated in golden flames while Jacob’s aura was tearing to shred all things around him. A table in the bloodied living room was slowly getting carved up into nothingness.
“What?” Bob looked with wide eyes. “Plague Doctor? What’s—”
Jacob unleashed a terrifying attack to kill.
He had killed civilians before. And after discovering that Nerea so casually landed close to Hektor, he wasn’t going to take chances.
Bob got bisected in two and fell dead on the floor.
“Oh my God!” Juliet screamed, thinking they had just killed an innocent.
“The Plague Doctor might be capable of disguising his death, changing his own biology and even shapeshifting. So, start burning his corpse to nothing more than dust. I’ll personally make sure nothing leaves this room.”
Juliet looked with terrified eyes at the man they had most likely killed by mistake. She couldn’t believe that a person could get bisected at the waist, spill his organs and still—
“Wow, goddamn Blady Tyrant,” the upper body spoke as if nothing happened. “Killed and discovered again in less than a month.”
Bob crawled toward his lower half and started putting the spilled guts back in it.
“You used the same method the guy who killed me in my previous life used, Blady Tyrant,” the Plague Doctor had a non-plussed tone. “It is truly a marvelous discovery. It’s half-luck and half-genius, for real.”
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Bob started chanting in a low voice and his flesh melded back together.
“You know, Blade Tyrant, people always thought that my main thing was diseases and plagues. No one ever thought that they might have actually killed me already and that I was just able to fake it. I always wondered how stupid one must be to take a Tyrant so lightly.”
“Tainted Tyrant,” Jacob said calmly, “you killed—”
“Yeah,” Bob waved Jacob’s hand away and laughed, “why would you bring that up? You have caught me, spare me the speech.”
Bob did not look resentful. He was just annoyed.
“I thought you would be angrier,” Jacob pointed out.
Bob was now on his feet, checking with a frown his bloodied and cut clothes.
“Anger is not my style. I am not deranged like some other monsters you killed, Blade Tyrant.”
“But you are still a monster, right? And you mentioned you—”
Jacob suddenly looked toward Juliet since Bob was staring at her with rapt interest.
“She’s a future Tyrant,” Bob said matter-of-factly. “But she does not have any knowledge about the past. That’s interesting.”
It was a very weird moment, more anticlimactic than anything Jacob had ever experienced. Here was one of the biggest monsters in existence, the man whose even death was a mystery, and he was resigned.
“Are you not going to fight?” Juliet couldn’t help herself, feeling the same weirdness Jacob was experiencing.
“What? I’m good at what I do, but I’m not a battle-freak. And I’m sure that he would kill me without many problems. At this level, I could barely kill a few thousand people even if I sacrificed myself. If he wants me to kill The Eater and her Empire, we might have a business deal. I don’t get to cleanse humanity off this planet, but I can still kill many races that are quite ‘evil’ by his standards,” Bob pointed toward Jacob while speaking.
“You are quite rational. Do you know what’s going to happen?” Jacob asked cautiously.
“Soul Contract. Binding on my souls so that even if I wanted to explode my soul, I could not harm a human. Bindings on bindings, a contract so intricate I would only have restrictions when it came down to those selected by you.”
“You seem eager to accept.”
Jacob could understand where the guy was coming from, but he still suspected that this was a ruse of some kind.
“I will accept only if my power falls into your hands, Blade Tyrant—no, tell me your name, let’s drop the formalities.”
“Jacob,” our guy looked suspiciously at a outstretched hand.
“Oh, we shook hands in our past life. I was wearing a different face, but I still tried to kill you. It didn’t work then, so it shouldn’t work now.”
“Jacob, are we really doing this?”
Jacob ignored the hand while pondering Juliet’s question. Bob was a monster on such a scale that she probably didn’t even understand. And he could already feel her questions, even before she asked them; such was the power of the Ancestral Bond.
He killed so many people. Are we going to let him off the hook like this?
He’s a monster, why should we work with him?
He wants people to suffer and die. How can you get in bed with such a creature?
Many years ago, Jacob would probably have agreed with Juliet.
But this was an occasion of a whole other magnitude.
If Jacob could wield the Plague Doctor’s power for good, they would be able to reach new heights never touched before.