Chapter 26: The Meaning Of Affection
’90% Affection?!!’
Asher snapped his head to Juliana, who was busy eating. He stared at her flushed face, completely oblivious to the internal crisis she was causing him.
{90% Affection Means Love.}
’Does that mean "This" Juliana loves me? How? When?’ He thought, and turned his gaze back to his food, lost in thought. The concept was entirely foreign to a man who had spent his life being treated as a worthless outcast.
Juliana has two personalities. The current one with them loves him, deeply affected by his kindness and his newly boosted charm, while the second most likely takes him as a friend... or just a very useful supplier of evolution stones. He couldn’t gain anything from this without unintentionally hurting or angering the second.
For now, Asher’s thoughts weren’t on love. Yes... Love is impossible in marriage, but their marriage wasn’t ordinary. It was a transaction built on mutual brokenness. Asher plans to get each one of his wives to their absolute stage, to heal their minds and unlock their devastating potential, then he will think about love.
’That doesn’t mean I won’t increase their affection. If 90% means love, what about 100%? What does that mean?’ He asked himself.
{....}
’No answer from the system... Seems I will have to find it out myself.’ He finally took a full spoon of rice, pushing the complex emotional geometry out of his head.
’Hmm... This is good!! Did I cook this?’ He exclaimed in shock, looking up at his wives who were focused on eating and tasting everything on the table. The flavors were literally out of this world.
Asher finally understood how powerful a Mythic-Tier cooking is. He smiled warmly, and continued eating, watching his broken family share a moment of pure, uninterrupted peace.
’Hmm... I have a brilliant idea.’ He thought to himself, a new plan forming to secure their future.
___
[Holy Sword Guild’s Headquarters.]
"So you’re Mr Levi?" Marianne asked, twirling the pencil between her fingers, her gaze fixed on the bald head lawyer positioned before her desk. The opulent office of the Guild Leader felt like an interrogation cell under her piercing stare.
Just to locate the one who killed the S-Rank dark elf, and unleashed a Mythic-Tier equipment energy, she has searched through the burning building. She was a warrior, but she was also a meticulous tactician. Her gut was right, the Dark elf was killed outside, so why was the building in flames? Not only that, they located a burnt body in the building, clearly tied up.
After some investigation, delving into the rotting underbelly of the slums, she discovered that was Mrs Vito, the wife of Iron Guild Leader, and also a very close client of Levi.
"You are a very important person, Mr Levi, so why work for such people? With your career, you are set for life." Marianne said, and continued, her tone dangerously conversational:
"So tell me, did Mrs Vito call you last night and ask for liquidation of her assets?" She asked, her words stunning Levi.
"How... How did you know that?" Levi stammered in shock, and disbelief. He had covered his tracks perfectly, or so he thought.
"There is nothing my Guild can’t find out, well... We don’t know the owner of the foreign account!" She placed the pencil on the table with a sharp tap that made the lawyer flinch:
"The records we got are kind of stupid. The owner of the foreign account is named Gigimowo, what sort of name is that?? Then his location is amongst the other five countries which were all destroyed centuries ago!! The worst part, the moment he or she got the money, they made a transfer to a secretive third-party website, which then forwarded the money to an unknown bank, later on, he deleted the foreign bank. We are clueless..." She said, frustration briefly cracking her icy facade.
The person wasn’t just impossibly strong; they completely removed all traces.
"You... You already know all the valuable information, I have nothing to give." Levi stammered. He might be a top lawyer, a big fish in the criminal underworld, but the lady before him was the third guild leader on the board. She was way out of his league, a true apex predator.
Marianne picked up another pencil, and threw it at the man. It moved with deadly speed, breaking the sound barrier within the span of a few feet, and cut his ear, drawing blood.
"AHH!!"
Levi screamed in pain, holding his bleeding ear, staring at her in absolute horror.
"I brought you here to give me the lists of all illegal acts done by Iron Guild... You see, some while ago, I was feeling bad for this group, but after knowing what they did to their previous Guild Leader, and the people; I just couldn’t hold myself back."
Marianne stood up, and walked towards the glass window, staring at the horizon of Silverspire, her disgust for the rot in her city palpable:
"You have two options, one; place down the lists. Two; die."
"I will write down everything!! Please don’t kill me!" He yelled, quickly picked up the book on the table, and started writing with trembling, bloody fingers.
Marianne exhaled, her gaze fixed outside the window, ignoring the pathetic scratching of the pen behind her: ’Who are you? Where are you hiding? Oh well, I will locate you very soon.’ She thought to herself, obsessed with finding the unknown SSS-Rank.
"DIE!!"
BAM!!
Driven by cornered desperation and the sheer arrogance of a man used to untouchable privilege, Levi shot forward with the pencil, and plunged it right into Marianne’s skull, drawing blood.
"Die you bitch!! That’s for injuring me!!" He yelled, panting heavily. "HAHAHA!! I killed this bitch!!"
"Bitch? Aren’t you going a little too far?"
Levi froze, the adrenaline instantly turning to ice in his veins, watching as the body before him shattered into energy, and vanished like broken glass. He slowly, almost mechanically turned his head around, seeing Marianne, leaning on the door, completely unharmed and utterly bored.
"You got me confused here. Did you actually believe you can kill an SSS-Rank Awakener that easily? Look at yourself before planning anything." She pointed a finger at him, the air in the room dropping to a freezing temperature:
"I only wanted to get some information from you, but now... I will take more than that."
WHOOSH!!
Levi only felt a breeze, a slight displacement of air, and the next moment, a hole appeared on his forehead. With eyes wide open in uncomprehending terror, he dropped to the ground, dead before his brain could even register the pain.
"What a headache." Marianne said with a sigh, lowering her hand. She didn’t even bother looking at the corpse of the corrupt lawyer.
’I will keep searching.’