Read Novel Full Chapter 483: Forced Trade
Chapter 483: Forced Trade
My first instinct was to throw a tantrum before throwing Vince himself off this island.
The universe loved a good tragic irony, didn’t it?
One of the few guys I actually bothered to treat like a human being just turns around and sets me up for an execution.
It shouldn’t have come off as any surprise to me.
I knew what kind of man he was. Even in the game, Vince Cleverly never had any moral qualms about not betraying anyone and everyone for enough money. The man’s loyalty had a price.
But he at least never betrayed any of his friends!
Well, never intentionally.
So was I not his friend?!
My abandonment issues and deep-seated insecurities about always getting a middle finger for opening up to the wrong people were running wild in my head.
Outwardly, I still tried to project calmness, though.
“Vince!” I called out, and simultaneously summoned my Divine Vajra. “I’m going to give you five seconds to tell me this is a prank. Because if it’s not, I’m taking back every nice thing I ever thought about you. All two of them.”
Vince didn’t reply.
He took a step forward, and it was then I noticed something weird.
His knee didn’t bend naturally. It jerked inward first, snapping forward stiffly before his boot pressed flat into the mud.
His arms hung limply at his sides, swinging a second too late to match his gait. He was like a wooden mannequin being dragged by invisible cables.
And that analogy actually made so much sense after what I saw next.
Seeping out of his sleeves, his collar, and the skin of his face were dozens of gossamer-thin red strings.
They were so fine that even under the diffused moonlight and the harsh glow of the crackling lightning above, it was almost impossible to spot them.
Not unless you noticed the sickening way they were burrowed deep into Vince’s flesh, probably threading through his muscles and joint tissue to manipulate his body like a morbid marionette.
I traced the glowing red strings with my eyes, following them straight past Vince and into the dark shadows of the forest behind him.
The strings were all converging into the slender, pale fingers of a young woman standing atop one of the high branches there.
She was… horrifying.
Her milky skin looked less like real flesh and more like a patchwork quilt, held together by hundreds of thick stitches.
Her sharp face was framed by jet-black hair that appeared metallic blue under just the right light, and the heavy dark circles under her blood-red eyes gave her the hollow look of a living corpse.
What the fuck…?
Before her, Vince took a step forward.
When he opened his mouth to speak, his lower jaw trembled a little, clicking against his teeth as if the girl holding his strings couldn’t quite get his facial muscles to cooperate.
“…Y-Your friend is under my control,” Vince stammered, the words sounding strained through a locked throat. It was his mouth and his voice, but the one speaking was clearly not him. “And if you don’t agree to the deal he offers you next, Lord Theosbane, then he will p-pay a heavy price.”
My gaze flitted back to the girl in the trees.
Pouring Essence into my eyes to boost my sight, I noticed her patchwork skin was even worse than I initially thought.
Some of the stitches were old and faded, but others were fresh. There were also hideous cuts littered all across her body, surrounding flesh either scarred or still red and swollen.
What was wrong with her?
“Who the fuck are you?” I yelled.
She didn’t open her mouth, just stared down at me with those blood-red eyes. Was she mute?
A ragged laugh suddenly echoed from up on the cliff behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder. Thalia was slowly gathering herself, clutching her deeply gored left shoulder. Blood was still oozing through her fingers, but her face was twisted into a manic smile.
“Shocked?” Thalia called down, hoarse. “Her name is Yasmeen. A complete supremacist, a total freak, and easily one of the most disgusting human beings I’ve ever met… but you have to admit, she’s very menacing. As long as she injects someone with enough blood of her own, she could make them dance to her whims. There’s no limit to how many targets she could puppet, just how much she could bleed herself. It takes a couple of days to prepare enough blood for a single human, while beasts can take weeks or months depending on how big they are. Still very impressive, isn’t she?”
I turned back to the stitched-faced puppet master, my jaw tightening.
Yasmeen didn’t waste any more time with pleasantries. Her slender fingers pulled a tight cluster of red strings.
Vince’s body jerked like a broken doll. It looked like he was in pain until he manifested his own Origin Card.
His eyes were wide with pure terror, locking onto mine as his jaw clicked and forced out another unnatural sentence.
“D-Deal…” Vince gasped out, the puppet master speaking through his throat. “You’ll lose your innate ability for the next minute… but gain forty percent more Essence Regeneration in return. Do you accept?”
Ah, damn it.
So this was how they trapped Michael.
It made so much sense now.
I forced a dry scoff, trying to come off as dismissive as possible. “You really think this works on me? I don’t even care about the guy that much. He was somewhat useful in the Wilds, that’s it. Go ahead, do whatever you want with him.”
Yasmeen quickly took me up on that challenge.
—SNAP!
Vince’s right arm lurched upward. An awful pop rang out through the clearing as his elbow bent out of its joint at a nauseating, horrifying angle.
“AAGGGHH!” Vince let out a blood-curdling scream into the night. That scream, I concluded, and the tears streaming down his face were definitely real.
The red strings seeping out of his arm pulled taut. His fingers began to wriggle and contort, slowly bending away and backward toward his wrist.
I held out for a split second longer, trying to bluff, but the sight of his hand about to mangled and crumpled made me click my tongue. “Fine! I accept it!”