Chapter 1682: Ominous Letters: First Set
"Wait a minute, I thought he had a whole thing against the idea of slavery," Olstenna whispered to Lythero. "Hell, he told us how he and his family got involved in a familial blood feud for the sake of a slave."
"Yes, but they don’t know that," Lythero replied. "Now hush."
The three princes of the Erupting Dawn Empire reacted negatively to the idea of being ransomed back to their own family, but they showed varying degrees of negativity.
The Seventh Prince, Lauvanne, looked perturbed by the announcement but not surprised. If one were to listen to his mutterings at this time, they would hear him making calculations and plans on how to best eliminate whatever debt was to be accrued in a matter of months as opposed to years.
The Fourth Prince, Galban, looked positively aghast and outraged over the Kaijin Lord’s words. Whether this was genuine distress, or he was using one of his strange aether arts to hyp himself up for another fight was unknown.
And lastly, the First Prince, Lofarro, maintained silence like a statue. However, even the most self-centered of motherfuckers would be able to detect that the man was like a volcano that was about to explode.
In other words, if Zhen Liu had simply let the man go, there was a very high chance of them coming back for revenge almost immediately.
And then Zhen Liu would finally have to put someone down for failing to make good use of their second chance at living.
As for the rest of the Erupting Dawn warriors, General Legante and his men, they looked rather resigned to their fates.
If their leaders, the most powerful warriors in their group, weren’t able to defeat the Kaijin Lord and his army of monsters, what hope did they have?
At this moment, Zhen Liu could feel the thick swirl of [Desire] radiating off of these desperate bastards and could feel that any [Cores] condensed at this time would be rather potent.
However, before he could act upon this opportunity, something came up.
To be more precise, Logos and Pathos popped into his head to deliver notice.
...Wait, what?...
=Pardon us, milord, but you’re going to want to find someplace private in the next five minutes or so.=
’Okay, so I know if it’s you or Pathos bringing this up, that means something bad happened. But I still need to ask...what happened?’
’Oh...shit.’
...Uh-oh...
Thankfully, Zhen Liu’s visage was still covered by his [Taboo] at this time. As such, none of the conscious prisoners were able to see his expression change.
"Now, I’m going to give you the chance to marinate over my words while I draft up a couple of letters of ransom," Zhen Liu said in his best show of confidence. At the same time, he sent the others in the room a private message via aether that he was stepping out because of the curators.
Understanding his motives, the others pretended that this was normal behavior.
"Miss Hearthtender, will you be sticking around for longer, or have you had enough of staring at the people who betrayed you?" Zhen Liu asked the only other visitor in the room.
Serena, for her part, stared at the lethargic forms of Hulna and Feroxxa before taking in a deep breath.
"I am going to need time to figure out how to better deal with these two," Serena said with certainty. "Do you mind if I stick around a little longer?"
"Take all the time you need," Zhen Liu said with a shrug. "Feel free to ask the others for their opinions on the matter."
"I say we kill them."
"Except for Olstenna."
"You know I’m right!"
And with that short exchange, Zhen Liu left the prison behind.
...Private Time...
"Damnit. I knew something like this would eventually happen..."
After he had left the prison and hurried on over to a room that the curators had prepared for him,, Zhen Liu saw that he had received not one, not two, but four letters from various portions of the world.
To be more precise, he received two from the kaijin he had sent out into the world and one from his cousin that oddly coincided with one he received from his fiancee, Bellona.
Needless to say, receiving all of these messages at once was...a little stressful.
Especially since he was fairly certain that ones from the kaijin were going to be bad...at least, from what the curators implied.
"Wait a minute..." Zhen Liu trailed off before he picked up the first letter. "I’m connected to these guys via my cultivation. Why did they send me letters?"
Realizing this discrepancy, Zhen Liu closed his eyes and reached out to his connections to the Gallop Brothers and Slug-at-Arms.
The former trio were tasked by Zhen Liu to investigate the Shadow Garden and the Fallen Clan. Meanwhile, Slug-at-arms was one of the Neo Storm Knights sent to escort his family as they went through the Echoing Valley.
The whole point of them being kaijin was that they had the ability to contact him whenever there was trouble.
Which is why, the moment he noticed that there was a fuckton of interference occurring when he tried to connect with them, Zhen Liu’s expression went from annoyed neutrality to actual worry.
The connection between himself and the kaijin was way too powerful to be interfered with by normal means...or unless the kaijin themselves chose to do so.
Right now, he could feel that the Gallop Brothers and Slug-at-arms were still alive, but that was it.
This situation reminded him of what was going on with Copper...and Zhen Liu really didn’t want to entertain the implications of that.
"Okay, looks like these letters make sense now..."
Understanding what was now at stake, Zhen Liu ripped open the first letter addressed by one of the Gallop Brothers, Railhorn.
The message was short, but the revelation was...expectedly terrible.
...What did the Gallop Brothers write?...
To the War Chief,
If you are receiving this message, it is because it as you have feared.
The Shadow Garden has made contact with the Fallen and the two of them have established an alliance.
This alliance consists of the former providing the latter with manpower and resources, while the latter is turning key members of the former into Grafted warriors.
We had to use snail mail, by the way, because one of the Grafted is this weird bat-looking motherfucker who could somehow pick up our mental communications.
We managed to shake them off by resorting to more normal means of communication, but this is a temporary fix at best.
We need either extraction assistance or martial assistance; we aren’t picky.
Sincerely,
Railhorn.
...Oh fuck...
"Wait, didn’t I assign those weird lovestruck protokaijin to work with those three private detectives? Fuck, I have not been on the ball for my clandestine shit lately...hence why I was on vacation...fuck."
Knowing that it was too late to cry over spilt milk, Zhen Liu took a breath before bringing his attention back to the other letters.
For the sake of giving his bad news brain a small break, Zhen Liu decided to switch to one of the letters that came from the mortal side of his life. In other words, he decided to take a look at the letter he received from his cousin, Zhen Yue.
"Last I heard, she was living up that engagement life with Santiago in the Bronze Bell Kingdom," Zhen Liu thought aloud. "If they’re sending a letter directly to me...I don’t like the implications of that."
Cutting open the envelope, Zhen Liu could immediately sense that the letter was actually two messages instead of one.
The first was written with ink and paper, but the second was written in [Chaos].
"Oh...I don’t like that..."
The written portion read like a standard postcard, wishing the reader well and hoping that they had a chance to come and visit wherever the writer was writing from.
As for the message written in [Chaos]...that was where things became a little more...interesting.
...What did his cousin send him?...
My dear Xiao Liu,
I know that you are on vacation on the Dozing Salamander continent, but your assistance might be needed in the Bronze Bell Kingdom.
Bellona has informed me that she has also sent you a letter asking for help, but I figured I should send one as well, just in case.
To put it into parlance that you would use, things have been getting "stupid political" and "blood feud levels of fucked-up."
In the past few weeks, we have been receiving more and more "gifts" that have been attempting to rope us into one political faction or another or curse us.
We have managed to resolve and deflect most of them, but it’s starting to wear on us.
Your assistance, or one of your kaijin, would probably help to put an end to this.
Bellona will insist you do this as peacefully as possible.
I am normally of the same mind, but...the sheer amount of attempts is starting to wear at my kindness.
Please intervene before I decide to take a page out of Nepherage’s book.
Sincerely,
Zhen Yue.
...Huh...
"Fuck."