Chapter 673 Contracts and ‘Fireworks’
?For whatever reason, Eliza had conjured a contract circle and faced it towards Evan. When she saw the expression on his face, she began speaking.
"Kuro, Nadarus, Amy…I've seen you do this multiple times so it's not too surprising I picked it up. Don't forget you also let me flip through that Grimoire of yours as well."
"…
You were serious about that contract with me?"
"Did I look like I was joking?"
'No, but I certainly did not think you were serious either.'
Evan kept that reply to himself as he looked at the circle and analysed it. He then proceeded to scan his memories of the Akashic Page to see if he had come across such a magic circle before while scanning through it for new spells.
"Evan, you need this more now than ever. You are contracted to 3 of the Seven Sins. That's almost half of the lot.
Sure, your Mental and Spiritual Force Resistances are high enough not to be bothered by it, unlike what you make people believe.
But in the end, they are still 'Resistances' not 'Immunities'. Anything can happen."
The young hero narrowed his eyes at Eliza's attempt to persuade him, and the girl felt cold sweat drip down her back.
'Please don't ask, I don't want to have to lie to you.'
Such a thought passed through her mind when she saw Evan's eyes narrow. The way she was speaking made it seem like there was something about the Seven Sins that she knew which he didn't.
'She was also against my contract with Nadarus as well for some reason…'
Evan didn't put much thought into this then, especially since she didn't say anything after Leviah came along but now he was beginning to think she was just hiding it.
For over a year now, Eliza had this strange anxiety over Evan's mental state, even going as far as to learn Serenity Inducement magic just for him.
He had guessed the reason why her calming aura 'worked better on him' was because she was doing it on purpose, but when he thought about it, that guess seemed to hold true.
While Evan was thinking this, Eliza's mind was filled with the visage of the 'Evan' Artemisia had shown her once, but she shook her head to get that off her mind.
Just as she did that, she felt Evan's palm on hers and looked down to see him infusing his magic power into the contract circle she had conjured.
"Evan...?!"
Despite being the one to suggest it, she was surprised at how easily he agreed.
'I thought I was going to have to spend more time convincing him…Wait up, did he modify it?'
She snapped out of her daze and saw that Evan had modified the circle, removing some features from it.
Though she was a bit miffed at how easily he modified it since she had spent a lot of time trying to achieve the same result, she quickly put that aside and took a look at the changes he made.
"Sensing Location and Vital Status…as well as a channel to transfer some attributed energy. Nothing more."
"…that's enough. It's already a lot that you're going along with this."
Eliza suddenly felt like she was being an overly paranoid girlfriend, but Evan reassured her that she wasn't, after all, she was just worried for his safety.
"I have Kuro staying in your shadow all day long to protect you in case of anything even though he's meant to be guarding Kayla…I think I'm the one who worries more here."
"You know…sometimes I forget he's supposed to be Kayla's guardian."
A few hundred metres away, a certain cat spirit suddenly sneezed, before rubbing his nose and walking away from the dozen corpses pierced and impaled all over with pikes of dark light.
Back in the now-deceased Executive's office, Evan was scanning the signed bank checks he picked up when he was packing Maude's files.
"Guess I just got a few hundred million richer."
"You're taking their money?"
"Is there a reason I should not?"
When Evan asked Eliza that, she reasoned it and saw there was no reason for Evan not to do so. So she simply shrugged before deciding to join the money bandwagon.
"Keep my share."
"Don't worry, I separated that first."
Just as he said that, the door to the room was suddenly bashed open and a suit-wearing High Demon barged in with a bloody great sword in his hand.
"I SMELL MONEY!!"
""…""
Evan and Eliza looked at Nadarus, and then at each other before bursting into laughter simultaneously, much to the demon's confusion.
"Huh? What's up with you two?"
"Nothing serious. Catch."
The young hero tossed a book to the confused demon whose expression changed from a confused one to an ecstatic one the instant he saw what was written on the bookmarked page.
"good, VERY GOOD!"
Multiple arm constructs of earth moved towards the boxes on the side and pulled them into the black patch of space on the ground, while Evan wondered when Nadarus gained the Inventory skill.
At that moment, Roselia walked in while cleaning her sword with a cloth, raising a brow in question when she saw Nadarus' strange expression.
"Money?"
"Money."
That short interaction was all she needed to figure out why her brother was looking like a creep.
Roselia and Nadarus being here meant that the operation had gone pretty well, and soon, the others began showing up one by one.
Kayla and Kuro popped out from Evan's shadow while Amy and Milena came in through the door, trailing right after Kieran and Beluar.
The blue-haired Second Star General turned to Evan to ask him a question but the boy tossed a folder with the name of his home country written on it to him.
"You guys owe me for that."
Kieran was confused at first, but when he flipped through the contents and saw how many of his nation's nobles could be put in incriminating positions because of this, he could not contain his surprise.
Then, he was hit with a feeling of fear at the fact that the Demonic Hand had this information, meaning that some, if not all of these nobles were probably compromised.
"Seems we have some cleaning to do when we get back to Askal."
"Indeed, we do."
Beluar concurred with him after flipping through and seeing some familiar names present.
He noted some who were present during the court meeting where Evan's intention was revealed, but the fact that the Demonic Hand was still unaware of this attack meant that they weren't spies; it's just that their dirty laundry was in the organization's possession.
Evan lifted Eliza off his lap and got to his feet, clapping to attract everyone's attention before speaking.
"One Executive and a replacement dead, and the Ninth Division of the Demonic Hand effectively crumbled.
I'd say we did a good job here today."
He looked to Kieran and asked him to have the soldiers retreat as far as possible, as fast as physically possible. He also added that they should have barriers on Croville's borders that faced the Taiga Lion Thicket.
"…what are you planning to do?"
"Um…fireworks?"
"Why is your reply a question?"
Kieran sighed as he asked, holding up his walkie-talkie and giving orders to the soldiers he brought to retreat.
As expected of an Elite Company of soldiers, they only lost 15% of their numbers. This was impressive considering the fact that they were greatly outnumbered.
The casualties would have been more had they had to deal with the Barbarians, but thankfully, Kieran was present so said Barbarians had become broken ice statues.
As Evan expected, a lot of Senior Members tried escaping with teleportation stones, but Beluar's barrier blocked the effects of the stones and they had no choice but to stay back and fight, which did not end well.
In the end, they still didn't kill all the Demonic Hand members present. Not too surprising since this was the Base where an Executive resided, the number of subordinates here was far more than what they could handle with their numbers in such a short amount of time so Evan only said to target the grandmasters.
There were a lot of survivors, but as Evan had stated earlier, he had 'fireworks' planned for them.
Evan picked up Maude's frozen corpse and leaned it against the chair he was sitting on, before requesting Beluar to begin the teleportation out of the area.
"Link the distance between the spaces as I decree."
As he started the short chant, a magic circle materialized at their feet while Evan opened his inventory and began searching for something.
Beluar was curious, but he did not neglect his spell conjuring and finished creating the magic circle. It was then that Evan finally brought his hand out of his inventory and dropped a metre-long black cylinder on the ground right outside the spell circle and directly beside Maude's corpse.
"What th-Shit! Greater Teleportation."
The Duke nearly lost concentration when he saw what Evan brought out, but he regained himself at the last moment and activated the spell.
They were all wreathed in a spatial light and in a second, they had vanished from the room.
*BEEP-BEEP!
**BEEP-BEEP!!
***BEEEEEEEEEP!!!!
The room was silent, save for the sound of the rotating standing fan that was doing its job, when suddenly—
***KAABOOOOOMMM!!!!!
On that day, the people of Croville were treated to the brightest 'fireworks show' they had ever seen.
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