“Oh?” Connery lightly smiled. “Do tell me more.”

Seeing that Connery had picked up on his cues, Voron breathed a sigh of relief as the faint veil of pressure was lifted off of him. Then, he turned to Vidar, signaling for him to take over. After all, the slave trade was a Ragnor family business, not a Cavositas one.

“It’s quite simple, Guild Head.” Vidar continued while ignoring his sneering younger brother, Elof. “About two years ago there was a family who had the audacity to sacrifice the lives of young experts in their charge all for the sake of a depraved power. When their allies found out about this, they were both shocked and appalled. So, they completely renounced them and their actions.

“Luckily, at the time, my brother and his friend, Ace, were there. As you know, our family has been punishing those who should be punished for hundreds of years. In fact, you can think of us as the criminal justice system of the martial world.” Vidar’s words only seemed to grate on Dyon more and more. It was as though he was right next to him, whispering into his ear.

“As such, we took it upon ourselves to punish this despicable family. They’ve already been working as pill servants for a good long while, as a matter of fact. Only a single one of them seemed to be too useless to even do that properly, so, he was sent to fight in the Chaos Arena. At least this way, they can be of proper use to society instead of the bottom feeding leeches they once were.”

Connery nodded in agreement, almost a bit too enthusiastically. “I’ll gladly take these pill servants off your hands, then. In fact, I don’t mind signing a contract for them here and now.”

Vidar shook his head, “Don’t be ridiculous, Head Sapientia. With the work your family does, how could we make you pay for such a thing? Won’t your research benefit us all in the end?” Vidar’s ring flashed as a few sets of ten plates appeared in his hand.

Each slave was assigned one of these. They were essentially a brand to not only track their existence, but to also kill on a whim. The scars that ran across their face was only a guise of their marks. The true marks were embedded within the scars. The scars themselves were more of a psychological chain and ball. The slaves would wake up everyday knowing that they had a scar that would never heal. They were slaves for life… They’d never escape.

When Voron had told him earlier today that these might come in handy, he almost hadn’t believed him. But, it seemed like it really would. Whether Dyon truly cared about this family or not was already on full display, and having the opportunity to play with a such an arrogant boy, in Vidar’s eyes, was the greatest of pleasures.

Connery happily accepted these plates into his ring.

“The guild headquarters thanks you.”

The truth was that the Viridi family had been being used as pill servants in Arena City for months. Although the Cavositas weren’t array alchemy specialists, that didn’t mean that members of their and other families nearby, weren’t interested in the craft. As such, many cities had guilds of their own.

Arena city’s alchemy guild had needed pill servants, so the Viridi family had become at the perfect time.

As for Eli, he had been a truly odd case. Pills seemed to not be effective on him, no matter how many he took. In fact, most of his deterioration in health had been due to watching helplessly as his family was ruthlessly used and abused.

Seeing how pathetic Eli was, the guild elders had tossed him away to the streets. But, he kept coming back, refusing to leave his family. In the end, Eli had been dragged down to the chaos arena to die.

No one understood how he had survived so long. His cultivation couldn’t even be considered to be at the middle of the foundation stages. There was no reason why he should have survived so long without proper food and water. And yet… He had.

Connery watched Dyon’s back silently, his face maintaining a calm and ever so slightly mocking smile. He wanted to see how this Dyon would react to this situation.

Ri and the demon generals had immediately picked up on Dyon’s anger. Although the demon generals didn’t know as much about the situation as Ri did, it was clear to them that this family was important to Dyon and that Dyon was struggling to reign in his temper.

The irony of demonic will was that while it strengthened your body and allowed you to manipulate the emotions of others, it also slowly took away your ability to control your own. And in cases where the anger hit so close to home, Dyon had to try his best to not crush Ri’s small hand even as he held onto it tightly.

But, something seemed to have changed since the last time he experienced such a whirlwind of emotions.

Even as flames of dense black danced in his eyes under the disdaining gazes of those who watched around him, and gentler and forgiving flame of white began gently trickle across Dyon’s bronzed skin – skin so perfect it looked as though it had been cut out of crystal.

Ri and the demon generals were the first to feel this white flame, in fact, they recognized it from Dyon’s humanoid manifestation. It had been the ability housed in one of the six black-gold flaming circles. And yet, they couldn’t place just what it was… Much like they couldn’t understand the black flames.

But, what they did know is that Dyon’s once unstable emotions, seemed to reset themselves. Dyon’s anger all but vanished, replaced with a calm and calculating gaze as he loosened his grip on Ri’s small hand.

“I’m sorry.” He looked down at her apologetically. .

Ri flicked Dyon’s forehead. “Don’t apologize about something so stupid. I barely felt anything.”

Dyon could only smile at Ri’s white lie. His body’s strength was at a completely new level, and Ri had reset her cultivation. How could she not have felt anything? But, Dyon appreciated her all the more in that instance.

Seeing Dyon suddenly look back at him, Connery was startled to find a calm and arrogant smile.

“Since you all like to play games, we can play some games then? How about it?”

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