The heavy oak doors leading to the main office of the Marquis of Oakhaven ceased to exist in a fraction of a second. A short jerk of my telekinesis tore them from their iron hinges with the force of a cannon shot. The thick wood shattered against the marble floor inside the room with a deafening roar, scattering sharp splinters and clouds of dust in all directions.
We stepped inside. The air in the office dripped with stifling splendor that bit the eyes. Thick tapestries woven with gold threads hung everywhere. A fluffy carpet lay on the floor, and massive shelves groaned under expensive books that the owner probably never even opened. This aristocratic circus screamed of the huge complexes of a man who tried to buy respect without having a shred of a real foundation.
In the very center of this pathetic theater, behind a mahogany desk, cowered the Marquis. He was exactly as I imagined him on pure logic. Fat and terribly pathetic. Heavy sweat dripped down his shaking face, soaking into his silk collar. He shook like jelly, staring at us with eyes wide in panic. In his plump hands he clutched a decorated flintlock pistol. Faint smoke rose from the barrel, indicating a loaded spell.
"Guards! Crimson Guard! To me!" he screamed hysterically, his voice breaking in the highest registers. The barrel of the pistol jumped in all directions. "Kill them on the spot! I am the Marquis! I am the ruler of this city!"
I ignored him completely. I slipped my hands deep into the pockets of my black coat and walked toward his desk with a leisurely pace. My Brazen chill completely filled the office space, choking his pathetic screams. I did not care about the weapon aimed at me. Pure physics of this world and the power of my Vessel told me one thing: this toy mana gun could not even scratch my skin, let alone pierce the passive sapphire barrier.
I approached the edge of the counter. The Marquis pressed himself deep into the carved armchair, panting heavily and gasping for air like a fish pulled ashore. Instead of lunging at him, I slowly took my hand out of my pocket. I grabbed a heavy decanter standing right next to a pile of confidential documents. I poured ruby liquid into a decorated goblet. I raised it to my nose, smelling it slowly. I winced with pure disgust.
"Cheap piss closed in nice glass," I threw coldly. I tilted the goblet and poured all the contents straight onto his fluffy carpet. The red stain slowly began to soak into the bright bristles. "Tart crap masked by a tonnage of sugar. Exactly like you, Marquis." "Your aristocratic illusion of power has just broken." "Pure logic speaks clearly." "It is time to pay the bill for all these years of being a parasite."
The fat man trembled, trying to raise the pistol higher, but only a pathetic whimper escaped his throat. I turned my head toward the girl walking behind me. Shnee entered the office completely soundlessly. Her diamond eyes burned with pure hatred. I saw in her the echoes of years spent in a tight slave cage, hunger and humiliations prepared for her by people like this fat trash behind the desk.
"Yours," I said firmly, retreating half a step and leaning loosely against a tall bookshelf. "Take proper care of him. I will not let him escape into unconsciousness until you are done."
Shnee bared her rapier. The silvery steel hissed quietly in the stuffy air. She did not use Soul Power yet, she had no access to the destructive KAI or black ice. She did not need them for this pig. Her inhuman speed and classic ice magic, which she mastered with surgical precision, were enough. She did not play with theatrical threats. She did not shout sentences. She closed the distance in a fraction of a second. Before the Marquis could pull the trigger of his pathetic pistol, two lightning-fast thrusts of the thin blade pierced his fat hands. The rapier went through the flesh and wood smoothly, nailing both his hands straight to the oak desk with a dull thud.
The weapon fell from his fingers with a clink. The fat man howled inhumanly. The sound of his agony tore the silence of the estate, echoing through the corridors. But before the red blood could flow onto the documents lying under his hands, Shnee released ice magic. Extreme cold immediately struck from her fingers straight into the open wounds. She instantly froze the exposed tissues. The blood literally froze in his veins with a quiet crackle. Frost surgery fulfilled two tasks simultaneously – it stopped the bleeding, preventing the victim from bleeding out quickly, and drastically multiplied the pain. Frozen, open nerve endings sent signals of unimaginable suffering to the Marquis's brain.
The fat man started thrashing in the armchair, sobbing and choking on his own saliva. The pain shock was so massive that a human body under normal conditions would immediately cut off power, saving the psyche from burning its circuits and forcing fainting. I had no intention of allowing that. I activated precise telekinesis. I grabbed the aristocrat's heart, beating in frantic panic, with an invisible grip. I stabilized his pulse. I forced an artificial rhythm on him, blocking his nervous system from shutting down the fuses. I took control of his biology. He will be aware of every passing second.
Minutes passed. The air in the office became freezing and soaked with the stench of sweat and urine when the terrified aristocrat finally lost control over his own physiology. Shnee cut methodically. She worked in absolute silence. With inhuman accuracy she deprived him of successive tendons in his forearms and shoulders. Every slow thrust, every precise cut of the surgical steel ended with the immediate freezing of the damaged tissue. She froze his elbows, letting icicles straight into the joints to slowly blow them apart from the inside. The Marquis whimpered, begged for death, spat out promises of giving away all the gold, land, and ships he owned.
Stolen story; please report.
I ignored it, watching the dust settle on the shelves with Brazen chill. After exactly forty minutes of uninterrupted agony, I yawned shortly, breaking the silence. I scratched my neck.
"Physical suffering is terribly boring," I stated coldly, tearing my back from the bookshelf. My voice sounded in the office like a final sentence. "Only a piece of his thrashing meat suffers. The body gives up eventually anyway. Let's destroy his psyche."
I approached the desk, looking down at the crying fat man, blue from pain and frost.
"Take everything he hides behind. Strip him of this artificial pride," I threw to Shnee. "Strip him naked."
The elf looked at me, and a predatory smile of understanding twisted her lips. With a quick rapier movement, she tore the remnants of his expensive shirt, thick coat, and silk pants from the Marquis, leaving him on the armchair exactly as he was created. The blade flawlessly cut the expensive materials, exposing his spilling belly and pathetic silhouette. Naked, shaking from terrible cold and pain, the aristocrat finally broke mentally. He lost the remnants of his imagined dignity, sitting in his own filth. Only empty babble came from his mouth. We stripped him of everything that gave him power over this city. Gold and silk.
I looked at this pathetic wreck of a man with cold indifference.
"And now," I said quietly, nodding slowly to the white-haired girl, "we can start the real fun."
Shnee tossed the bloody rapier aside. She focused raw ice magic in her right hand. With a hiss of freezing air, she formed a sharp ice dagger in it. She looked down, exactly at the point between the Marquis's spread, naked thighs. A psychopathic smile of pure fascination bloomed on her porcelain face.
Dozens of minutes later, it was finally over. The room stank of deep frost, rotten blood, and unimaginable fear. The massacred corpse of the former ruler of Oakhaven, frozen to the bone, sat in the armchair. The expression on his blue face forever remained a ghastly monument of pure terror.
I turned away from the desk, crunching my neck. I located a wall safe hidden behind a painting. Instead of looking for a mechanism, I simply placed my open hand against the thick steel and released a short kinetic charge. The heavy door flew off its hinges, spinning in the air.
We gathered the profits. I loaded several heavy pouches with gold and silver into my bag, along with a pile of property deeds and contracts. There was no surprise. The wealth did not knock me off my feet. Pure logic suggested that this fat pig had started living way beyond his means a long time ago, patching his budget with dirty slave auctions and secret commissions from the Crimson Trail. I treated the loot gathered in the safe simply as a fair return for our operational costs today.
"Dave. Come here. Look at this," Shnee called from the other end of the ruined office.
She was kneeling on the carpet. She tore out one of the loose oak floorboards, revealing a deeply hidden stash. She pulled a strange tube from the darkness. The metal it was made of did not fit the primitive blacksmithing art of this world in any way. It was unnaturally cold, absorbed light, and was sealed on the edges with a disturbing symbol that did not resemble any runic alphabet known to me.
I took the object in my hand. I felt its absurd density in my fingers. The energy signature that slowly smoldered inside this alloy had absolutely nothing in common with the rare magic of the aristocracy or the pulsating power of cores from local dungeons. It was something from a completely different league. I narrowed my eyes, analyzing the find. I slipped the mysterious tube deep into the inner pocket of my coat. I intended to deal with this artifact in my free time, when the dust from today settled.
We left the ruined office, walking slowly down the marble stairs. The vast courtyard was already waiting for us with Count Valerius. His armed men stood behind him, staring at us with open mouths. Their entire attention was focused on the elite squad of the Crimson Guard, which I had previously driven into the stone walls of the residence with a powerful gravity wave. The elite of Oakhaven lay scattered in puddles of blood, unconscious and completely pacified without the use of even a single fireball or a visible spell. Valerius himself was pale as a sheet, unable to tear his eyes away from my relaxed silhouette.
"The estate and the entire Noble Hill belong to you now," I threw coldly, passing him without stopping and taking my hands out of my pockets. "Leave the Marquis's office upstairs in exactly the state you find it now. Do not clean up the bodies. Let every greedy aristocrat in this shitty city go in there and see with his own eyes, on pure logic, how bad risk assessment ends in a clash with the new management of Oakhaven."
Valerius swallowed his saliva loudly. He nodded feverishly. He understood the rules of the new game. He also understood that his power is now only a delegation from my mandate. Power at the top of the city was officially reset and rebuilt on hard foundations of fear.
We set off down the empty trail, towards the center. The night air was cool. Suddenly, the metal tube hidden deep in my pocket twitched. It became unpleasantly hot. I pulled it out. The alien symbol on its surface burned with a faint light, and the metal seal simply cracked with a dry sound. Instead of coming from the object itself, the sound resonated directly in the space around us. A hoarse whisper filled the night air, sending shivers down my spine.
"My pawn was utilized..."
Shnee stiffened immediately. She stopped in mid-step, placing her hand on the hilt of her bloody rapier. Her diamond eyes violently scanned the dense gloom between the trees in search of an invisible enemy.
I did not search. I clenched my hand, using raw will, and with crushing kinetic force I simply crushed the mysterious tube to dust, turning the alien metal into a handful of useless filings that the wind blew from my fingers. A predatory smile of a madman crept onto my face. I accepted this challenge with open arms. Someone was throwing down the gauntlet on my own board.
In that exact millisecond, a powerful roar came from the dense forest in the far north. The Mutated Soldier trapped in my kinetic barrier. Oni. This time he did not howl in mindless rage. The tone of this inhuman scream was different. He answered the call. He reacted to the signal thrown by his dark master.
The warmup with the self-absorbed aristocracy was definitely over. It was time to clean up this forest and deal with a real threat.