Inside the Ardoros Continent's expanse, belonging to the Devereaux Family, the atmosphere was far denser due to the presence of several powerhouses observing the events unfolding in front of them.
Hidden behind an invisible wall, several individuals floated in the air, looking down on several others engaged in conversation with a young man.
"Chief, it's already very late. The higher-ups want results," one of the men wearing a black cloaked dress with only amber eyes visible turned towards the woman standing in front, while gazing down at the events unfolding beneath her.
"Tell them, until we get a reason, taking rash actions will only enrage Lady Alisia," feeling irritated due to orders from the second Mistress of the Devereaux Family, the woman gritted her teeth.
Two hundred soldiers and four battleships belonging to the higher-ranked army under the Devereaux family were ordered by the second wife of the present head to kill a mere kid. 'Humiliating!'
The woman's irritation at the fact that neither the Head of the Family nor the First Mistress was saying anything in this matter made her feel helpless to go against the orders.
'Sorry, young man, but it seems you shouldn't have woken up from your sleep.'
....
thump thump
Parting her lips with a quivering voice, Mia clasped Ryuk's hand with both of her palms, feeling her heart racing as she looked down.
"O-oh, H-hello. Nice meeting you too, Mr. Toy."
'Why is her palm cold?' Ryuk noticed the unnatural temperature of Mia's hand, slightly confusing him, as it was natural for humans to have some warmth.
[Host, she is suffering from some unidentified curse]
'....' Seeing Mia's sickly demeanor and hearing her heart beat, Ryuk could guess that she had a crush on him, causing her overall shy behavior towards him to emerge.
"Mia, you bitch! Stop your acting right now!" Interrupting their interaction was Adrian's sister, her anger visible at Mia's friendly and maiden-like behavior towards the Young Master.
'!?'
Noticing her words forming a frown on Ryuk's face, Adrian's sister swiftly clarified her statement.
"Young Master, everyone knows about Mia's habits of dissecting other races' kin alive, including children, and not even sparing their families if she found them unfit!"
WHOOSH
"How dare you condemn my daughter with such lies!" Dreck burst out, feeling his anger rising after hearing such words against his naive daughter.
"We all know about this, Dreck, don't act ignorant," Adrian interrupted, glaring at Dreck. Everyone from the Crawfords had the same reaction to this situation, causing the earlier frown on Ryuk's face to vanish.
A confusing reaction for all of these people to understand.
Unbeknownst to them, Ryuk's mind was busy speculating something instead of their words. Coming out of his thoughts, he turned his attention towards Mia, commanding, 'Show me her color.'
Right now, instead of knowing about each other, he needed to know about the girl's real mindset after all.
Unlike what they stated, Ryuk's mind processed those words differently instead of blindly believing them.
There can be chances of someone doing all those crimes while hiding behind her, or maybe she just wants to heal those people — unbelievable but still better than trusting someone blindly and losing such talent he found.
━━━━━━━━━━━ ⟡ ━━━━━━━━━━━
Showing Individual Characteristics
1. White: Kind-hearted
2. Green: Compassionate
3. Yellow: Optimistic
4. Red: Ambitious
5. Black: Malevolent
━━━━━━━━━━━ ⟡ ━━━━━━━━━━━
With a screen popping up, a green flame appeared on Mia's head, with her widened eyes looking down as if feeling anxious for being judged like that.
drip
Tears broke out, feeling hurt. Lifting her palm to wipe out her tears while speaking broken words, "I-I am n-not evil... sniff."
"You bastards—!" Dreck tried to burst out again but was interrupted by a stretching hand falling on his daughter's head, softly caressing her head.
"I know, you just wanted to help them, isn't it?" Ryuk looked towards Mia with a genuine smile, understanding the mentality of this girl, at least better than all of these people present here.
badump
"T-thank you, Young Master." Feeling warmth from the hand above her head, Mia felt her heart beating faster.
Since no one ever believed her until now. Not even her father, even though he acted like he believed her.
'.....' For a mere moment, hearing those words from Mia's lips, an image of a ruby-eyed girl with ash-grey hair passed through his mind, reminding him again about how he had left many things behind.
'It's not time yet,' but now that he had come out of that cage called Heindal Continent, Ryuk wanted to return there only after becoming strong enough to break it whenever he wanted.
"Don't think you can manipulate her?" Dreck's eyes were fixed on Ryuk, noticing that small smile which seemed to hold a different feeling, making Dreck guard up while preparing himself for battle.
"Sigh," Ryuk sighed, removing his hand from Mia's head, who seemed disappointed for some reason.
He turned his gaze towards Dreck, looking down on him. With a chilling tone, he calmly stated, "Don't act mighty, Dreck. Before you could blink, dozens of bodies will fall."
"Y-you!" Everyone seemed dissatisfied with those words, but none of them took a single step forward, including Dreck, who was just a hand's distance from Ryuk, holding the strength of a Legendary Rank.
But all of their instincts were already embedded with fear.
They could show their anger but couldn't take it out on that young man—a helpless situation.
'System, is it still not done?' Ignoring these people, he turned his attention to the task he had just given a moment ago to the system.
╔═══━━━──── • ─────━━━═══╗
INFILTRATING MAINFRAME
BATTLESHIP 760RT....
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███▒▒▒▒▒▒▒
█████▒▒▒▒▒
███████▒▒▒
██████████
ACCESS GRANTED!
LOCKING CANNONS ON HOST
╚═══━━━──── • ─────━━━═══╝
'Why do you seem more energetic?' Turning his eyes towards the empty sky before taking a peek towards all of the people here, he casually noted the system's tone being more fluent right now.
[ AFTERALL, I WILL NOT GET MANY CHANCES TO FIRE A CANNON ON YOU HOST ^_^ ]
'....' Not wanting to say anything about this matter since it was his initiative to use those Higher-ups' trap against them.
Everything was going fluently from the beginning; he had stretched enough time for this whole act of the branch family to not be seen as some sort of treason against the main family.
After he instantly killed two members previously, he had already sowed a seed of hesitation among all these people; each one of them was unknowingly fearing him.
After dealing with these branch family members, what was needed was his final announcement and a reason.
A single reason or pretext on which he will announce his arrival on Ardoros, and what can be better than some small fireworks?
'Fire the Cannons System,' Ryuk ordered, his face turning cold, slowly a resonance within his soul coming from the very nostalgic sword, which was with him even in his past life, started to call upon the hands which slayed millions, as if telling him to again soak it in blood.
A 6-Star Aura Sword, only one on Heindal in his previous life which seemed weak but after awakening his Kundalini, he could feel the hidden monsters inside that sword, wanting to cut through the very fabric of this world.
SWOOSH!
A dark obsidian blade, shining with an ethereal glow, started to materialize in his hands, slowly revealing its presence, added with the Ether running through its core.
A sword which was nothing but a part of his body, both carrying the same blood known as Ether flowing through their veins.
DING!
[Firing the Cannons, Have a Good time Host ^_^]
Zzzzwwwwooooooo!
BOOOOOOOM!
A sharp light shrouded the whole place into its illumination, blinding everyone; the only thing remaining was horror on the faces of those people who identified that sound instantly.