LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 27: Contract
Mila
Getting Corith’s four E rank subordinates to sign contracts wasn’t difficult at all. Along her way to the whorehouse, she’d stopped by the home of a wealthy but physically weak merchant for a bit of B & E and took a bag of holding from off the man’s belt, which was lying in the house’s hallway as the man spent time in his bedroom with his young wife, his guards having been sent away from the house.
The contents of that bag of holding included a couple bottles of exceptional magically influenced alcohol and she used those at the whorehouse to pretend she represented a distributor of high end liquor. All four men were there and not yet under the weather, as was their pattern, and she got them to agree to standard contract terms quite easily, only having to follow one of them up to a room, where she then escaped by jumping out the window after he got drunk.
She then snuck into the same alchemist shop where Aalam had committed murder in his instance and killed the alchemist, his wife, and his two apprentices in hers as well. Aalam had spent the day thinking about what she could make in there by herself and over the next night he guided her in making her own specialized bacterial disease.
It wasn’t as cool as his, not being airborne for one thing. But, given what she’d learned about the settlement’s water supply, it was pretty much perfect.
She put her creation in seven vials, took a decent shower, and then left after setting the building on fire. Then she snuck into the city’s reservoir and poured the contents of three vials into the water before traveling to the four other temporary water storage locations throughout the city and pouring a vial into each.
Her bacteria wasn’t anywhere near as deadly as Aalam’s, or as stealthy, but it would kill anyone with less than 63 Vitality, i.e. everyone in the city other than about 103 individuals, within two days of ingestion, so that was nice.
Mila then headed to the school, kidnapped a few kids one by one through the use of sleep inducing potions she’d stolen from the alchemist shop, potions which she was able to directly inject into the children with a stolen syringe, and then, deliberately having them awaken at different times over the next hour so she could threaten them all alone in different abandoned buildings, she forced the children into contracts.
Through the contracts, she then had the children wait for a specific time, knowable by loud churchbells, and then head toward their relative who was an E rank, explain the terms of the contract they were under, and bring their E rank relative to a secret meeting spot, where Mila would wait for them.
For the first three times, everything worked out rather easily. Mila got the E rank to agree to a contract with both their and the child’s death as the punishment and added a few extra clauses not allowing them to reveal anything about her or let her get significantly injured. More important, however, even without being able to use any secret clauses due to the fact they were E ranks, she got them to agree with some more specialized terms.
They each had to kill one E rank from the list of E ranks she’d formed standard contracts with, i.e. the E ranks she didn’t think she could get to make contracts with death as the punishment, and they had to kill them sometime after sundown but before sunrise the next day.
Her second to last meeting, however, went very, very wrong.
Tall with dark skin and reddish hair, Kiloran Kiv was generally considered the third most powerful man in the city, and he had an F rank wife and a ten-year-old son. When he came to Mila’s second to last secret meeting spot with his son, however, the living room of a house whose owner had recently died, instead of talking and trying to understand what she wanted and eventually capitulating, he thrust his right hand through his son’s heart, killing him instantly, and then grabbed Mila’s throat with his left, effortlessly raising her off the ground.
“What exactly are you aiming for?”
Mila quickly thought about what she knew about the man, and how that was all almost certainly wrong given his actions just now. Then she thought about the setting of the challenge and what might make someone so decisive and cruel put on the persona he’d been living under.
She quickly came up with a guess and decided it would be best to tell the ‘truth’. “I want to kill the man who goes by Corith, as well as his underlings.”
“Why?”
Mila, as Nana Xara had taught her, thought about the man who’d killed her back on Earth, leading her emotions, and thus the emotions shown in her aura, to show what would be expected if she were telling the truth. “He killed my father and raped my mother.”
The man just stared at her for a few seconds, eyes cold, aura unreadable for someone of her skill level, even though it wasn’t much stronger than hers. But then he grinned and started laughing, placing her down on a couch in the room. “And how would you kill a D rank, little girl?”
Mila rubbed her throat, thinking about her grandfather to create the right amount of anger and hope in her aura. “The same thing I was trying on you, but on the city lord. I’d threaten his kids, get his wife to sign a contract binding her life to the success of the mission as well, and force the city lord to kill the bastard or lose them all.”
“It wouldn’t work.” Kiloran Kiv sat on the couch next to her and started slowly removing the coat she was wearing, his son’s body still on the floor. Though, somehow, there was no blood on his hand. “Corith is actually Jaaspeer Jarn of the Forilon Empire. He wasn’t a huge deal there, but, by the standard of the Zoridon Kingdom, he’s a monster. Even with a sneak attack, the city lord wouldn’t win.”
Mila thought of the human trafficker who’d taken her when she was twelve to put her emotions in the right state. “Then why are you still talking to me?”
“Because you’re pretty.” The man took off her shirt, leaving her top only covered by her underclothes. “But also because your plan has a chance to work, just a low one.”
“I’m going to have to leave soon if I’m to make it to my meeting with the city lord’s wife.” Mila feigned more fear than she actually felt. Counting the Russian oligarch, this was the third time in her two lives she’d been put in a state like this, and she’d managed to survive the other two.
“Oh, that’s too bad.” The man pushed his hand behind her back and undid her bra, but he didn’t pull it off.
Then a System prompt appeared in front of her eyes.
Mysterious man Kiloran Kiv has sent you a contract request.
Terms:
- You may not discuss anything about your interactions with Kiloran Kiv or anything you learned during them with anyone
- You may not take any actions with the intention to harm Kiloran Kiv
- Tomorrow at noon, if you are still alive, you will join Kiloran Kiv in his bedroom
- Kiloran Kiv will not immediately tear out your heart
Punishment:
Death
Do you accept?
Yes/No
Mila accepted and then put her clothes back on and left, not breaking the contract with her uniqueness because she didn't have Nana Xara with her to hide the act.
Then she made her way to where she’d instructed the city lord’s two children to bring their mother, and made a similar deal with the E rank woman as she had with the E ranks before the man very obviously not named Kiloran Kiv. The target of assassination this time was the man known as Corith and he had to die before sundown, but, unlike with her previous contracts, Mila allowed her to tell her husband everything to enlist his help.
Now done making contracts with all the E ranks with young children or grandchildren, Mila then moved on to the E ranks with weak partners. She kidnapped and enforced contracts on the partners of the two remaining E ranks, but the deal she made with them was slightly different, forcing them to kill quite a few powerful F ranks during the night instead of a fellow E rank.
Mila then found a place to watch the festivities, hiding on the tallest tower in the city, right above the bells of the city’s main church. Then, right when the bells started ringing and she realized her location was not at all good for her enhanced hearing, the attack occurred, a giant explosion happening on the mountain outside the city walls.
She then saw the city lord fly back into the city, landing on the steps to his mansion off a large plaza, but Corith, AKA Jaaspeer Jarn, flew after him, his right arm missing and the rest of his body bloody, but his aura strong. Corith landed in the plaza, but that was apparently the second part of the city lord’s plan and another explosion occurred there, the energy all focused on right where Corith had landed.
When it faded, however, Corith looked about the same, only his energy levels appeared lower, his aura not as strong. Corith then charged up what looked like an energy blast attack from Dragon Ball Z in his remaining left hand, pointed it toward the city lord, and released, blasting through the man and taking out the entire mansion behind him as well, along with a rather large section of the town.
The city lord’s wife, who had an assassin class, then appeared behind Corith and stabbed him in the back with all her energy. Corith was able to react at the last second, however, and the attack missed his heart. He backhanded her head without turning around, crushing it completely, and then rushed toward her husband.
The city lord was unstable on his feet, most of his right side missing, but he put all his energy into one blast of fire from his left hand and hit Corith right in the face. The attack didn’t do enough immediate damage, however, and Corith reached him before the attack had put out all its energy, punching the city lord’s face and crushing the man’s skull.
Then the man going by the name Kiloran Kiv took his turn.
The dossier hadn’t had much to say on him, but Mila suspected he was an agent of Zoridon Kingdom’s greatest rival, the unoriginally named Burning Kingdom. He’d infiltrated the settlement for about six months according to the dossier as well as the information broker she’d questioned, and Mila was guessing one of his tasks was to take out the city lord and any other D ranks attached to Zoridon Kingdom if possible.
He appeared behind Corith like a ghost, a much more powerful assassin than the city lord’s wife had been, and his knife found the D rank’s heart, some kind of special attack activating after the stab causing Corith’s entire chest to burst out with an explosion of blood and guts.
Then he disappeared again, using some sort of movement skill, and the next thing Mila knew he was right in front of her, smiling. “Thank you for your work, but I think it’s safer if I don’t let you live any longer.”
His knife traveled at a much, much slower speed than when he’d attacked the D rank, moving toward her right eye no matter how much she moved, and Mila realized she was going to die.
She’d taken a stupid risk to try and keep up with Aalam, and it was backfiring on her extraordinarily.
