One of the Leonamon branches had been hit—a suicide bombing, they said. The second I heard the news, I bolted to the scene.
Amon was already there, standing stiff while talking to a magic knight, her face serious as she reported the situation. In the distance, I could see medics scrambling, tending to the injured, and amidst the chaos, Natalia stood out, directing them.
The moment Amon spotted me, her expression softened, and she rushed over. "Master!" she cried, throwing her arms around me. Her big breasts slammed into my chest, their warmth and softness pressing hard against me, her breath brushing against my neck. Normally, that would've done something to me, but now... I wasn't feeling any of that.
"Amon," I muttered, hugging her back, my mind far from the feel of her tits. "How bad is the damage?"
I didn't give a fuck about the property loss, but it felt like the easiest place to start, to ground myself.
"A hundred thousand gold in damage, give or take," she said.
"...And the casualties?" My voice came out harder than I meant it to.
Amon hesitated. "...Seven."
Seven lives lost. Seven Leonamon employees dead because of this attack. The second that number left her lips, I felt a hot surge of rage flare up inside me. It boiled in my chest, spreading through my veins like wildfire, making my fists clench tight. Fuck.
"Miss Marie said she couldn't bring the dead back," Amon added. "Especially since some of the bodies were beyond saving."
Marie's ability wasn't some miracle. She could manipulate a soul, tweak it, but full-on resurrection? No, if the body was too mangled, too messed up, there was nothing she could do to reconnect the soul with what was left of them.
Around us, there were people crying, holding onto their injuries, their lives hanging by a thread.
Who the hell did this? No. From what Amon told me, the attackers had tattoos on their wrists. It wasn't hard to figure out—they were Eclipse members. This was Sesillian's doing.
"He's going to destroy whoever's responsible for this," she said with a dark smile, the kind that sent chills down your spine. "And when he does, it'll be merciless. That's how Master handles things—ruthless to the core."
I wasn't sure if she was joking or not, but the way her eyes gleamed with amusement sent a shiver down my spine. Leon... I was starting to see that maybe he wasn't too different from the man behind the Eclipse after all. A force to be feared.
And these women, powerful as they were, worshipped him for it.
***
Leon's POV
Marie walked beside me in the cold, sterile underground halls of Leonamon's headquarters. The silence was thick, broken only by the echo of our footsteps as we moved deeper into the facility. The dim lights flickered above us, casting long, eerie shadows that danced along the walls. We were heading to where I had Angelica detained—locked away like a ticking time bomb.
We reached the stark white room where she was being held, her body tightly restrained in a custom-made straitjacket. It wasn't just any straitjacket. This one was embedded with power-dampening threads, designed to suppress any abilities, making sure she couldn't pull anything dangerous while she was confined.
She looked utterly helpless, bound by the unyielding fabric, her eyes burning with a fury that matched the cold steel of the room.
I was with Marie for a reason—I needed her to do something specific. She walked beside me, barely reaching my chest. It was almost comical, like she could be mistaken for my kid, even though she was way older than me.
"It's not exactly a problem I can solve just by tweaking her soul to erase the hypnotism," she explained, her tone casual, like she'd done this a hundred times. "As you can see, even the power dampener doesn't change or erase the brainwashing. It's still intact."
"I still want you to try," I told her.
She shrugged, her shoulders rising as if to say, Sure, I'll give it a shot.
Angelica was going to tell me everything, one way or another—even if I had to break her to make it happen.