“You won’t let me take it? I insist on taking it!”
Ignoring his desperate gaze that seemed about to spit fire, Aurelia deftly undid the leather cord of the small pouch he was so unusually concerned about.
The mouth of the bag opened, and an irregular black crystal fragment about the size of a thumb slid into her palm.
In the dim alley, a faint, weak gray-white light flowed faintly within the crystal.
An extremely ominous aura instantly rushed towards Aurelia’s face.
“This is…”
Aurelia frowned tightly, looking at the crystal fragment in her hand that emitted a dense aura of the Power of Calamity.
She stood there, completely stunned.
That cold, gray-white aura wound up along her palm, trying to burrow into her skin and erode her flesh.
‘This power isn’t unfamiliar to me. Isn’t the creator of this thing living in my head?’
“Ha! I told you not to open it! Now look, you’re also a Corrupted God’s Artifact polluted by the Power of Calamity! Just wait for the Church to detect you and then be purified!”
However, the anticipated pain or struggle did not appear on Aurelia’s face.
She didn’t even look down at the gray-white aura coiling around her right arm.
Her crimson eyes merely shifted slightly downward, glancing at her arm.
There was no panic in her gaze, only full-blown disgust.
“Oh? Really? I’m so scared. It’s the Power of Calamity? What should I do, is my right hand going to disappear? Corrupted God’s Artifact, sounds terrifying!”
“Hehehe… Hahaha!”
Seeing this, although the Cloaked Man was pinned to the ground, unable to move, and his broken arm was in excruciating pain, the malicious glee born from despair surged in his heart when he saw the gray-white aura wrap around Aurelia’s arm and she only seemed stunned and spoke of “fear.”
It even overpowered his fear and pain.
“Now you’re scared? It’s too late!”
He coughed, yet still tried to lift his neck, attempting to make his voice sound more confident.
“Pretend, keep pretending! I’m telling you, in this world, aside from the newly awakened Braveblood with purifying power, no one can completely resist this erosion!”
“It will be like maggots clinging to bone, slowly devouring your flesh, polluting your soul, turning you into a madman who only knows destruction and killing! Just you wait, it won’t be long before you become a Corrupted God’s Artifact! A monster everyone wants to beat!”
The more he spoke, the more excited he became, as if he had already seen Aurelia’s miserable end.
A sickly light flickered in his eyes.
The legend of Braveblood was widely circulated among the common folk and the Church, portrayed as the only bane of the Calamity, but no one had truly seen it.
In his view, no matter how powerful this strange maid was, she absolutely could not be related to the Brave Lord who was preparing for the coronation ceremony! She was doomed! This was the price for her arrogance!
Listening to his confident mockery, Aurelia’s face showed an expression of utter disgust.
It wasn’t just disgust for him, but also for the Power of Calamity, for the Disaster Source in her head, and for that Bastard Redhead who tried to kill her without asking for an explanation.
And this statement, if that Old Immortal heard it, would probably laugh its head off, though she didn’t know if it even had one.
“Oh? So impressive?”
She drew out her tone.
The perfunctory tone combined with that disgusted expression made the Cloaked Man pause.
In his heart… what was this strange feeling?
“But then,” Aurelia tilted her head, slowly raising her right hand, “I’m the kind of person who’s afraid of trouble. Rather than waiting for it to slowly take effect, how about…”
Before she finished speaking, her right hand Dragonified once more.
“How about, being more direct.”
Along with Aurelia’s calm and even voice, that pitch-black Dragon Claw, under his disbelieving gaze, clenched its five fingers—
Crack!
A crisp shattering sound, not loud, yet seemed to strike directly upon his soul.
That Calamity Crystal, which his employer viewed as a death warrant and considered a mobile source of pollution, was crushed to pieces as easily as ordinary, cheap glass within that Dragon Claw.
At the same time, the Power of Calamity contained within it violently erupted.
An ominous aura, ten times, a hundred times denser than before, transformed into a viscous gray-white mist, instantly completely swallowing Aurelia’s Dragon Claw arm, even threatening to completely stain this back alley.
The last trace of color drained from his face, his eyes filled with ultimate fear.
‘With such a dense eruption of the Power of Calamity, forget her arm, the entire alley, no, probably this whole block, even this city might be polluted! This crazy woman! Does she want this city to be subjected to Divine Judgment by the Church!?’
However, the next moment, a scene that overturned his worldview appeared before him.
The erupting gray-white Calamity mist did not erode and pollute everything as he had anticipated.
On the contrary, it was as if they had encountered a bottomless black hole.
At a speed visible to the naked eye, they frantically converged towards the palm of Aurelia’s pitch-black Dragon Claw, and then there was no further trace of leaking aura, as if they had vanished into thin air.
And Aurelia’s Dragon Claw arm not only showed no signs of erosion, but rapidly receded, transforming back into that fair, slender, long-fingered human arm.
The traces of being wrapped by the gray-white aura earlier had completely disappeared.
The skin was as smooth and clean as fine porcelain.
“Oh right, what were you saying earlier? The Power of Calamity?”
She shook her right hand and, under the Cloaked Man’s earth-shattering pupils, slowly explained, “Forgot to tell you. My grand ambition is to eradicate all the Power of Calamity in this world and save those eroded by it.”
The Cloaked Man lay on the ground.
The pain from his broken arm seemed temporarily blocked by this overly shocking declaration.
His eyes were wide open, his pupils contracted to tiny dots from excessive shock, his mouth hanging open unconsciously.
The expression on his face was a mixture of bewilderment, disbelief, absurdity, fear, and a kind of self-doubt—
“Did I get hit in the head too hard? Am I hallucinating?”
This woman who had just easily broken his arm with inhuman strength, crushed the Calamity Crystal with a Dragon Claw, instantly absorbed the erupting Power of Calamity, sat on him extorting compensation, and confused him with her twisted logic…
“Are you fucking human…?”
“Hey! Who are you cursing?”
Aurelia slapped his face with her right hand, the force a bit heavier this time.
The stinging pain on his cheek and Aurelia’s displeased tone made him jolt.
He looked at that exquisite face full of impatience, then glanced at that palm that had easily crushed the Calamity Crystal but now seemed soft and harmless.
All the questions and sarcastic remarks about “whether she was even human” were forcibly swallowed back, turning into a fearful whimper in his throat.
“I… I didn’t mean that…”
He instinctively defended himself, his voice low.
“Whatever you meant! You insulted me, I’m very unhappy!”
Seeing Aurelia raise her right hand again, the Cloaked Man thought she was going to transform into that form again and hurriedly cried out in fear, “No, no, no! I was wrong! I was bad! I’ll tell you whatever you want to know! Don’t kill me!”
‘Hmm~ Isn’t this much more sensible? Perfect. I want to establish a team, and I still have to avoid that Bastard Redhead. Finding this kind of person to inquire about gray area news and information is just right.’
She was making her little calculations internally, but the expression on Aurelia’s face became increasingly “kind and amiable.”
She even reached out and, quite considerately, wiped the blood from the corner of the Cloaked Man’s mouth.
Although she used a piece of cloth torn from his tattered cloak, and the action was rather rough.
“You see, if you had cooperated like this earlier, wouldn’t it have been fine? Why all the fighting and killing? Harmony brings wealth~”
She said while wiping, using that “I’m doing this for your own good” tone.
The Cloaked Man shivered from her sudden “gentleness,” stiffening his neck, not daring to move.
In his heart, he had already labeled this strange maid as “extremely dangerous,” “possibly mentally unstable,” and “absolutely must not provoke.”
Afterwards, Aurelia stood up and sat on the nearby staircase steps, propping her chin, smiling at the Cloaked Man.
“Then, out of courtesy, I’ll introduce myself first.”
“My name is Aurelia. I’m an ordinary tavern maid, currently on vacation, wanting to expand a little side business. For example…”
Her eyes narrowed slightly, meeting the Cloaked Man’s gaze for a moment.
“The Underground Black Market, or… certain gray area industries.”
“After all, you know, working in a tavern, you always hear some strange gossip, see all sorts of people. Hearing too much, you can’t help but get a little curious, right?”
She tilted her head, her tone innocent, as if she really was just an ordinary girl full of curiosity about the underground world.
“And, I’ve heard that although these lines of work are a bit riskier, the profits are quite considerable. For a diligent and ambitious maid like me who wants to earn a little extra money to help out at home, isn’t that very reasonable?”
‘An ordinary tavern maid? On vacation expanding a side business? Interested in the Underground Black Market and gray industries? Helping out at home? Bullshit! Only a ghost would believe this bitch’s nonsense!’
He cursed inwardly but dared not show any neglect on his face.
Forcing himself to ignore Aurelia’s nonsense about being an “ordinary maid helping out at home,” he swallowed hard with difficulty, thinking about how to answer to satisfy this scourge.
“Ahem! So, Miss Aure… Aurelia… you… oh no, what would you like to know? I’ll tell you everything I know!”
“Hmm~ Good boy~”
She once again revealed that gentle, harmless smile, then continued, “Then tell me, the general information you know about Twilight City’s Underground Black Market, the distribution of forces, and the most prominent figures.”
“Y-yes… The underground of Twilight City… the waters are deep and muddy. On the surface, the City Lord and the Church are the bosses, but in the shadows, various forces are deeply intertwined. If you’re asking about the most established and clearest in terms of rules, they can roughly be divided into three…”
He kicked his legs, letting his back lean against the broken target Aurelia had set up, looking directly at the seemingly non-threatening maid not far away.
“One is a force called ‘Golden Coast.’ They’re mainly responsible for all kinds of transactions in the black market—antiques, magic items, smuggled goods, weapons, armor, even… the kind of ghostly things related to the Disaster Source that you just crushed. As long as the price is right, there’s nothing they can’t get!”
“The second is ‘Archhand.’ They don’t directly do business, but no one in the black market dares not give them face! They are the ones who maintain the rules of the underground world. Their leader is very mysterious, said to be a taciturn, massive man who handles matters with extreme fairness!”
“They’ve set down some ironclad rules. For example, both trading parties must abide by agreements; fraud, forced buying, and selling are strictly prohibited; causing trouble in the underground black market is forbidden; and, most importantly, not letting things escalate to the point of alerting the Church and City Guard Army above.”
“I’ve heard they also take on protection or escort commissions, but regardless, in the few blocks where they mainly maintain order, it’s relatively the safest, as long as you don’t go looking for death yourself.”
As he said this, a deeper flicker of fear passed through his eyes, and his voice lowered a bit, as if afraid someone might hear.
“The last one is ‘Shadow.’ Mentioning this name in the black market makes many people shiver.”
He said, swallowing another mouthful of saliva.
“They are different from ‘Golden Coast’ and ‘Archhand.’ They don’t do business or maintain order. They only do one thing.”
“Take money, take lives, ask no questions. They are the purest assassination organization. As long as the money is enough, there’s no one they dare not kill, and no task they cannot complete.”
“It’s said their scope of accepting contracts is vast, from commoners to Nobles, from merchants to… even minor officials. Who the leader of ‘Shadow’ is, no one knows. It might be a group of people, or it might just be a codename.”
“Also, their members are extremely secretive, their identities a mystery, and their efficiency is extremely high. Once they accept a contract, it’s a fight to the death, and they almost never fail. After each assassination, they leave a pure black Knife on the target’s body.”
“So in the underground world, you can offend ‘Golden Coast,’ you can violate ‘Archhand’s’ rules. But if you are targeted by ‘Shadow’…”
He shuddered, as if thinking of something terrifying.
“Then pray for yourself. Those people are true ghosts, formless reapers. They come and go without a trace and absolutely will not show mercy to their targets.”
After finishing his explanation of the three major forces in one breath, he felt his mouth dry and his broken arm hurting terribly.
He stole a glance at Aurelia, finding her still propping her chin, looking as if she was listening with great interest.
Her crimson eyes flickered with thoughtful light in the dim illumination.