Chapter 685: It's been a while [5]

Chapter 685: It’s been a while [5]

“What!?”

A loud shout cut through the surroundings.

“You want me to pay for your mess?! This is bullshit! I don’t have the money! No, more importantly… What in the world did you do to reduce your room into this mess?!”

Coming up into Lazarus’s room to check up on him, the last thing An’as expected was the sight that greeted him. What could he even call the sight that greeted him? A mess? A disaster?

It looked like a storm had come.

There was practically nothing left of the room. The windows were shattered, all sorts of splinters of wood littered the floor, presumably pieces of what once used to be the furniture and the floor. The walls were dented, and the bed… Where the hell was the bed?

Glaring at Lazarus, who was tracing his finger across the wall with a stoic expression, An’as felt like beating him up.

Of course, he stopped himself when he recalled just how powerful Lazarus was.

“Oh wow…”

A soft voice echoed shortly after as Anne entered the room, whistling to herself as she saw the mess. Brushing her curly hair back, she placed her hand on her cheek.

“I did hear you say that this place was a mess, but can this thing even be called a mess? I’d say ‘total annihilation’ would be a more fitting term.”

Despite seeing the mess, Anne didn’t seem to share the same frustration as An’as. In fact, she found the situation to be somewhat amusing.

Then again…

It wasn’t like Lazarus had asked her to pay.

‘Wait, now that I think about it, I can have her pay for the place!’

An’as hastily opened his mouth, but quickly felt a hand press against it, stopping whatever word was about to come out.

“I’m not paying.”

Huh?

He didn’t even say anything!

“I don’t need to read your mind to know what you’re thinking. Your face tells me all that I need to know.”

“…..”

An’as stopped struggling from that moment, his shoulders slumped in the process. Both Lazarus and her were richer than him. Why was he made to be the one paying for Lazarus’s mess?

It wasn’t cheap either. This place was made specifically to withstand the harsh environments of the Mirror Dimension. The price of the repairs was enough to make An’as want to throw himself out the window.

“On another note, what in the world did you do to create a mess like this?”

An’as’s ears perked up the moment he heard Anne’s words. He was also curious to know the answer. Just what in the world did the merchant do in order to turn the room like this?

“Oh, that.”

Pulling his hand away from the wall, Lazarus turned his attention towards them.

“Not really a secret. I just absorbed Xa’hurl’s bone.”

“Oh, I see.”

As Anne nodded and pulled her hand away from her cheek, An’as reached his hand forward to grab her hand to cover his mouth.

“Huh? You sick perv….”

Anne suddenly blinked. As though the clogs in her head had suddenly been oiled, she blinked a couple of times before her eyes suddenly widened.

“You— Hmm!”

This time, it was An’as who covered her mouth as she nearly shouted at the top of her lungs.

“Shh!”

She proceeded to glare at him, but stopped when she realized how serious the situation was as she pulled her hand away from his mouth.

Similarly, pulling his hand away, the two stood in silence for a brief moment before An’as opened his mouth again, looking at Lazarus as though he were some sort of monster.

“You managed… to get Xa’hurl’s bone? How did you…? I clearly remember that—”

“That’s not important. He probably won’t answer even if we ask.”

Anne cut An’as off, staring at Lazarus intently.

“What skill did you learn?”

This was the thing that Anne was most curious about. What sort of skill did a primordial-ranked bone give? Surely it wasn’t going to be anything bad, right?

Both An’as and Anne looked at Lazarus with anticipation.

Feeling their gazes, Lazarus smiled before staring in An’as’s direction. The moment he did, his left eye suddenly changed color, and the world froze for a split second. By the time the world returned to normal, both An’as and Anne blinked their eyes.

“Huh? Did you do something?”

“I don’t—”

However, a few seconds later, both of their expressions changed as they looked at each other. Anne’s expression turned extremely serious as she looked at An’as. The same was true for An’as, who turned to look at Julien.

“Shit! We got an intrud—Uekh!”

BANG!

An’as was never able to finish his sentence before he was suddenly thrown into the wall, his back crashing against it as his face turned pale and he spat out saliva.

Thud!

Sliding onto the ground, Anne was about to follow up when she stopped, and her expression changed.

“Oh, shit.”

An’as groaned while he slowly raised his head to look at Lazarus. Memories started to surface in his mind as the two of them looked towards Lazarus, whose expression was rather pale.

His eyes were back to their usual color, and his expression eased shortly after. Covering his left eye, which was currently burning intensely, he began to mumble to himself, ‘In the end, I wasn’t able to last long. It seems that trying to pull this on a Tire 8 is still too much for me. However, it still works so…’

Neither An’as nor Anne was stupid. The two instantly understood the situation as they looked at one another.

“He erased our existence.”

“He did that thing.”

Having lived through this exact scenario before, the two of them immediately understood what Lazarus had just done, and their mouths fell open, unable to mask their shock.

This skill…

It was extremely overpowered!

“Hmm.”

Looking around, Lazarus sat down on the floor. The mana consumption of the skill was far higher than he had previously expected. But nonetheless, he still found the results to be good. While he couldn’t affect the mind of a high tiered user for long, it was still long enough for him to gain an advantage.

But he was still far from satisfied. There were still a couple of things that he wanted to test out.

Raising his head to look at the still-shocked An’as and Anne, Lazarus forced a smile as his eyes changed color once more. At the same time, he looked at An’as with pity.

‘Sorry in advance.’

*

“Get your bone!”

“Buy a bone! Our bones are of the highest quality! Get your bone!”

“We offer our bones at a lower price than most other bones!”

An’as screamed at the top of his lungs, waving a couple of bones in the air. As he screamed, people would turn to look in our direction as they pointed at us. Or more specifically, An’as, whose face was currently swollen. I looked at him with pity before lowering my head and grabbing a handful for myself.

“Bones! Get your bones…!”

This was the price of poverty.

In order to pay for the room that I had broken, we had no other choice but to sell bones. At first, I thought that An’as would have some money to help, but he was dirt poor. The same was for Anne, who had to pay for her crew and all the damages that her ship sustained. In fact, she was probably the poorest out of all of us.

“Get your bones!”

That was also why she was probably the loudest of the three of us.

“This is of the highest quality!”

As I waved another bone in the air, I suddenly felt a tug over my shoulder, and when I looked to my right, I saw An’as looking at me with a suspicious look.

“Wait, now that I think about it, do you really have no money?”

“Eh…?”

What was he saying?

Of course, I didn’t have money. Why else would I be doing this?

An’as’s eyes narrowed.

“From what I remember, you sold quite a lot of goods, no? Back when you just opened the gray chamber of commerce.”

“…Huh?”

Memories started to resurface in my mind. Thinking about it, that did indeed happen.

“If I’m not wrong, you even sold quite a lot of goods to Sylas? There was quite a large deposit involved, was it not? He also didn’t take the stuff as far as I remember…”

My eyes started to widen as I felt Anne suddenly stop, her head slowly turning towards me as I suddenly broke into a cold sweat.

I certainly did remember this, yes.

“Ehm.”

I cleared my throat, moving my head a little bit further away from An’as, who was moving his head dangerously close to me.

“…It’s rather dry here, don’t you think?”

I licked my lips.

At the same time, I placed the bones in my hand on the table.

“Dry? Do you think it’s dry, Anne?”

“Not much different than how it usually is.”

“…..”

These two…

I licked my lips once again, bringing my consciousness into my ring, where I saw several large bags filled with coins. Looking at it, there was probably quite a lot.

I brought my consciousness back and looked at the two of them. Holding onto my chest, my lips started to quiver.

“Don’t… bring up the matter of the money. Just thinking about it hurts me.”

“Huh?”

Both An’as and Anne looked taken aback.

I bit my lips, mumbling ‘sadness’ over and over again as a certain pain started to invade my chest, causing something to streak down the side of my face.

“During… my fight against Xa’hurl. I… practically lost everything. I… did have the money before, but gone… everything is gone.”

Clutching my shirt, I had to take a moment to sit down.

The pain was starting to get to me. I was so immersed in my character that I even started to believe my own story.

“Oh… my money.”

I covered my face with both hands, peeking through the gaps just to see An’as and Anne looking somewhat taken aback and sorry.

Seeing them like that, I did feel a little sorry. Unlike Lazarus, I was an award-winning actor. He might not be able to fool them, but me?

‘Any day.’

“If only I… didn’t… kek…”

“Eh?”

“Eh?”

We all paused for a moment.

“Did you just laugh…?”

“He did, didn’t he?”

I did, didn’t I?

Feeling my heart slowly sink, I was about to put up an even grander act when, all of a sudden, a voice echoed from behind.

“Is everything alright?”

I paused the moment I heard the voice. It was a voice I was all too familiar with. One that I had spent a major part of my life in this world with, and one belonging to a man who called himself my knight.

“I saw that you were selling bones. If now is not a good time, then…”

Leon.

He was right behind me.