Chapter 332: Blackout
"Get in," the guide ordered coldly whilst holding a door open. Rakna was already itching to cut off the man's head but he calmly followed the instruction. Keeping the act of being Rita, he still gave him a weak glare beforehand and then stepped in, the door closing behind him instantly.
Rakna looked around at the modestly large room. There wasn't anything fancy about it, for it was nothing more than a crude and insolent place; essentially a placeholder for a sole king-sized bed.
"Tch, they left me here to wait?" He muttered in distaste and ignored the nightgown hanging next to him on the wall, obviously meant to be worn by the women that enter here. He sat down on the edge of the bed with a scowl. He rubbed his neck where one could see the mark of an injection and allowed his body to heal it.
Before entering Bora Quaso's residence, he had been injected with a toxin meant to weaken and paralyze the use of his physical strength and skills. There was also a violent dose of aphrodisiac mixed in. Nêww chapters will be fully updated at (n)ov(e)l/bin(.)com
'It's a surprisingly complex compound,' Rakna thought as the nanobots that constantly ran through his veins began to destroy it completely. After the injection, he had been forced to halt his body's immune response to get rid of it instantly lest someone noticed it.
He grunted once he could feel the alien elements were fully expunged. "Eye, how long?" He asked out loud afterward and Eye of Symphony promptly answered.
[| T-Minus 465. |]
"A bit less than eight minutes, huh? Let's hope that pig doesn't barge in too soon," Rakna muttered and crossed his arms patiently, feeling the familiar presence of Sonata inside his soul, ready to be drawn out at any moment.
He calmly waited for several minutes, without moving an inch, and passed the time by watching the feed of the Plateau's cameras and tracking Cura and Rita's positions. After a moment, he looked for Hans instead and saw him sitting on the bench of a small park, reading a book.
'Of course,' he snorted internally and spent another minute searching for Nyx, but as expected of her, there was not even a trace anywhere.
"{Aah... this is nerve-wracking,}" Fray suddenly remarked with a groan.
Rakna didn't reply right away and squinted at the bedroom door as if he was seeing something through it. "...as things would have it, you spoke at the best moment possible."
"{...}" The fabulist fell silent as the door opened and Bora strutted in with a smirk whilst wearing a chamber robe. A servant closed the door behind him and the fat pig promptly turned toward his 'toy' sitting on the bed.
"What? You're still dressed?" He frowned. "Who do you think you are?"
"...where is my brother?" Rakna decided to lead on with the act. At the same time, he faked being restless and mentally ordered his body to create fake blush to hide the fact that he had neutralized the aphrodisiac. 'Give me a freaking Oscar,' he jested internally.
"Ah? As if I would bother remembering that," Bora quirked his lips in mockery as he walked to a cabinet. He took out a glass and poured himself some wine. "You should just shut up and listen to my orders. Then, maybe I'll let your brother live."
Rakna narrowed his eyes at the back of the man and suppressed the twitch of his hand wanting to call Sonata and cut him down. 'Eye,' he called.
[| T-Minus 112. |]
"Now, get prepared. Though... I wouldn't mind tearing your clothes off myself too. Hm, yes, that would make you a nice appetizer for the other woman," Bora cackled sadistically and Rakna stood up silently.
"Oh no, I know! Why don't you strip down for me? Hahaha, yes, that's perf—" The man stopped talking when he heard a strange sound, like a swarm of flies accompanied by low-pitched buzzes.
"Who would do this and why...?" The scorpion mused and soon enough, the crimson spots under his sunglasses flashed in realization. "Damn...!" He cursed and kicked the ground. Like a lightning bolt incarnated, he crushed the ground he was standing on and zoomed through the air.
Without ceremony, he grew out his nine scorpion tails while in the air and used them to punch a hole into the roof of Bora's residence. The poison inside his appendages melted right through it and he fell right inside.
With a scowl, he calmly looked down at the headless corpse of Bora. He clicked his tongue, "What a useless bastard. He lazed so much he forgot how to fight," he muttered and turned toward Oslort, the head butler, who was silently standing inside the room. This servant's job normally included protecting his master's life; someone charging in, like Zasha, was his duty to stop.
"Got tired of the piglet?" The scorpion sneered at the butler; a man whose real identity was a Host no weaker than himself. "Did the Pale Ghoul get rusty? Or is this a betrayal?"
"...don't get ahead of yourself, Zasha," Oslort indifferently said. "I'm not part of your little alliance of villains. I'm only here because Lord Temat was indebted to the Scorpions. The rest of the Abyss may listen to you and those things, but my Lord shall not. This place is going to fall today. There is no point in preserving that worthless life anymore."
The butler grunted as he loosened the tie of his suit and began to head for the exit, "Oh, and as a friendly warning, if you are going to chase after that girl, be careful."
Zasha snorted. "What, do you think I will lose?"
"It's not 'think', I know that you will lose if you're not on guard," Oslort stated and stepped out of the room without any other word.
The Nine-Tailed Scorpion slightly lowered his glasses, revealing a pair of unicolor black orbs, just two mere dots of red light shining through the middle. They watched the butler leave before eerily shifting toward the corpse again.
"So, it's that girl, after all. She moved a bit too fast... but, it should be fine," he muttered to himself and started looking around for traces. His eyes turned from red to orange for a short moment and he headed out. "Hm, I wonder if something was urging her," he mused and eventually halted in the middle of the corridor where the spiritual trails disappeared completely.
Zasha hummed and glanced at the decorative glass statue next to him. He stared at his reflection for a moment before grinning. "I see. Interesting. You thought you could escape like that?" He said with a chuckle and in a split second, he had already leaped through the roof.
He landed on an adjacent building and propelled himself again, too fast for most people to see him move. The spreading fires on his path were being put out seconds after he passed over them.
Then, eventually, Zasha extended his hand forward as if he was trying to reach for something that wasn't there. He grinned and his hand pierced through something invisible, opening cracks in the air. "Got you," he laughed and pulled whatever he was holding.
The purple-eyed beauty he was chasing was dragged out of the mirror dimension by her shoulder and the scorpion saw her eyes widen before he promptly used one of his tails to strike at her. She reacted skillfully and blocked it with her sword, but that didn't stop her from being sent flying toward the ground where she crashed into a building.
"Well, well," Zasha snickered as he watched the rubble burying her figure tumble about. He landed on the roof of another structure and summoned a large toothed sword into his hand. "You seemed to be in a bit of a hurry to leave," he jested. "How about you accompany me for a moment? Don't worry... I'll make sure you're not bored enough to run again."
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Have you ever felt like your brain was experiencing a drought? Because fucking hell, that’s me right now. For the life of me, I couldn’t finish my current chapter for the longest time and when I tried to start the next, I couldn’t get past one paragraph in two literal days.
.
Tch, I envy those people who can write like machines. I’ve said this before, but I’m honestly not talented when it comes to writing. I’d say I have decent creativity, but that’s about it. I use brain power to write, but really good writers use passion.
I guess this is my handicap as an author; my brain’s refractory period is shit.
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