"Oh."
"So that's who he ans."
The face clicked into place at last.
"If it's a trade, let's hear it. What are you offering?"
Gojo wasn't closing the door on the idea outright. He kept the smile in place as he spoke.
"Though Lady Felt now has the backing of yourself and Reinhard, and wants for nothing in terms of raw force, there are other arenas..."
Russell's tone was asured, earnest. The man had clearly done his howork.
The pitch, however, held no appeal for Gojo whatsoever.
What Russell was offering was simple enough. The full support of the Royal Capital Comrce Guild.
A contest for the throne wasn't decided by force alone.
Everything else had to move in parallel.
From Russell's vantage, Felt's foundation was still painfully thin. A partnership now, when the winds were blowing in her favor, made sense for both sides.
He'd get Bordeaux Zergef, his superior, out of whatever fix he was in. And he'd buy in early on Felt as an investnt. Two birds, one stone.
What he didn't know was that Gojo had a rather clear sense of how the next act was going to play out.
In an earlier loop, simply taking up the Knight Order's challenge had been enough to draw in a fair number of nobles.
And what about this ti?
The White Whale. The Sin Archbishop of Sloth.
Either na alone would have rocked the Royal Capital. Add a Sin Archbishop of Greed to the ledger on top of that.
If they managed to put him down too, Gojo was confident Felt's na wouldn't just travel through the Royal Capital. It would sweep the whole country, and word would spill over into neighboring kingdoms besides.
The White Whale and the Sin Archbishops had been haunting this world for a long ti.
Every one of them had left a trail of suffering across borders, across peoples.
Felt cutting them down ant a reputation that would balloon overnight.
Back in the Royal Capital, they could then restage the Knight Order stunt from the last loop.
With that kind of montum behind her, the parade of nobles and rchants lining up to back her would only grow longer.
asured against all that, the Royal Capital Comrce Guild's support didn't amount to much.
There was one other thing.
A rather important thing.
Once soone had been force-fed the torrent of information inside Unlimited Void, even Gojo couldn't lift them back out of that state.
Like a speaker blasting noise into soone's ear. You could switch the speaker off, but the hearing damage was already done.
The information had been poured in. He couldn't siphon it back out of the man's mind. All Bordeaux could do was digest it, slowly, on his own.
"Sorry."
"Your terms."
"They don't interest ."
Gojo closed the matter with a flat wave, making clear there was no further discussion to be had.
Russell, finding himself shut down without even a counteroffer, glanced toward Felt on reflex.
He wanted to gauge her reaction. She was the Royal Candidate, after all. Gojo and Reinhard alike were, in his reading, retainers whose loyalty ran through her. Surely they'd defer.
Even if his opening offer hadn't been quite sweet enough, business was always a matter of haggling.
Not this blunt dismissal with no room to maneuver.
Except.
Felt let him down too.
eting his gaze, she copied Gojo's wave with a lazy flick of her own wrist. "You heard him?"
"He's not interested. Neither am I."
"That's that. Don't waste your breath."
And with that she turned from him entirely, drifting back to Gojo's side to resu strategizing with the group about how to seal Regulus away.
A rueful smile twisted Russell's mouth.
He'd walked in assuming that a partnership offer from an outfit like the Royal Capital Comrce Guild was practically a formality.
The guild was the largest in Lugunica. Grain, weapons, every sinew of comrce and daily life, all of it ran through their hands.
Faced with that kind of weight, any other Royal Candidate would have said yes.
Not long ago, when Crusch Karsten, the current Family Head of the Karsten house and one of the candidates herself, had approached the guild for a deal, she'd been nothing but polite. A far cry from what had just happened here, where the one walking in with an offer had been shown the door.
So this is royal arrogance?
With a small shake of his head, he turned back toward his own Dragon Carriage.
If the deal was dead, there was nothing left for him on this plain.
Partnership had been the whole reason he'd co.
A treasurer's days were crowded. No one in his position could afford to burn hours out here without a return.
The carriages themselves he left behind. A deal was a deal, and that part held.
The convoy was the price he'd paid just for the eting.
He left without a word of fanfare, and no one marked his going.
Gojo and the others had their heads together on the problem that mattered, which was what in the world to do about Regulus.
"So. What's the actual plan?"
Felt looked around at the circle of strategically stumped faces.
"If we're fresh out of ideas, I'll go ask Reinhard."
Gojo thought it over and spoke.
The knight's cheat sheet was, if anything, even more absurd than his own. This was exactly the sort of mont to cash it in.
"Ask him right in front of the guy?"
Felt was staring at him like he'd lost his mind.
"I told you to study harder. You insisted on slacking."
"Now you're almost as dim as Subaru."
"Hey, hang on, how is this on ? I haven't said a word this whole ti!"
Ignoring Subaru's protest, Gojo set off toward the ongoing fight.
"Two on one?"
"You actually think that's going to be enough to finish ?"
Regulus's mouth curled into a sneer as Gojo drew closer.
Not that Gojo spared him a glance. He walked right past and stopped next to Reinhard, smile in place.
"Reinhard, got any way we can talk without this guy eavesdropping?"
He didn't bother lowering his voice.
Which, in Regulus's ears, made it all the more infuriating.
The gall. Plotting against him, right in front of him.
"Idiots."
"You really think you're going to find so way to deal with ..."
Regulus's snarl fell on deaf ears. Neither man seed to register it.
Reinhard gave a small nod, and in the next heartbeat his voice sounded inside Gojo's head.
"I'm sorry, Satoru. It seems I can't break through his Authority either."
The knight's ntal voice was as calm and courteous as ever, weighted with a quiet apology.
"No need. I couldn't do it myself."
Gojo kept his tone light. "But we've got an idea. I'd like your read on it."
"What is it?"
"We want to banish him to an alternate space. Question is whether you can keep him pinned long enough for us to pull it off. Or, if you get dragged in with him, whether you can get yourself back out."
"If it's not workable, we'll think of sothing else."
If Reinhard didn't have an answer, Gojo would have to gamble on Unlimited Void locking the man down.
The odds weren't great.
By rights, if Regulus's body was frozen in a fixed state, his brain shouldn't be moving either. He shouldn't be conscious at all.
Yet clearly he was. Which was exactly why Gojo kept eyeing the possibility.
Reinhard fell quiet for a beat.
"I need a little ti."
Ti to prep the cheat sheet, apparently.
Gojo gave a knowing nod.
"Go on, set up to the side. I'll take him from here."
Regulus watched his opponent get swapped out without anyone so much as consulting him. The fury in his eyes was unveiled now.
And under the fury, a fresh thread of suspicion.
A sudden substitution like this was bound to be covering sothing.
He had full faith in his Authority.
But he absolutely did not want another incident in which soone trampled on his rights.
Reinhard inclined his head, withdrew cleanly, and took up a spot off to one side, standing in silence.
Whatever thod the knight used to pick up a new Divine Protection, Gojo hadn't the faintest idea. Watching him do it still had a quietly comic edge to it.
"Right, then. You and for a while."
"You..."
"Hold that thought. I'll say this upfront. In a minute, I'm going to trample all over your rights. Feel free to resist if you've got it in you."
"Looking forward to what you bring."
The man couldn't damage him in any aningful way. That had lowered him, in Gojo's ntal ledger, to the status of test subject.
What better chance to run experints than on soone invulnerable. The indignant spluttering that followed each one was a bonus.
Regulus opened his mouth to retort, and instead watched as Gojo raised two fingers and interlaced them.
"Domain Expansion."
"Unlimited Void."
The words fell.
Cursed Energy boiled up out of him.
It surged outward in every direction like a tidal wave breaking loose.
"Watch closely, Betty. This is sothing you'll be learning in ti."
Gojo's voice sounded at her ear, and then he and Regulus simply weren't there anymore.
In their place hovered a black sphere laced with patterns, materialized at the exact spot the two n had just been standing.
As if, from that mont on, neither of them belonged to this world any longer. As if they'd been drawn into so place separate entirely.
Betty's mouth pursed in a small pout, but the eyes fixed on the black orb were bright with a barely contained eagerness.
"A domain."
She murmured it half to herself, fingers twitching as if she wanted to reach out and touch it.
While everyone else studied the dark sphere.
Inside the domain.
Regulus's expression remained every bit as insolent as before.
"Pointless. Nothing you do gets past my Authority. The only violation you're capable of is the verbal kind..."
"Hey, hey, hey."
"When did we beco close enough to be saying that sort of thing to each other?"
Gojo cut him off at once. It was becoming clear this Sin Archbishop hadn't done much reading.
"Who wants to be close with you?"
Regulus's voice rose to a near-roar. "I have a wife, you... you..."
The sentence broke in his mouth.
Gojo's eyes lit with interest. "Oh. Looks like the defense isn't quite so absolute after all."
"Makes sense. If the brain were also locked in a fixed state, unable to take in new stimuli or react to them, the person wouldn't be any different from a corpse."
"So physical attacks and magical ones don't land. But ntal attacks do the trick."
"As long as his emotions still react, there's a way in."
He delivered the assessnt like a lecturer with a frozen specin, which in a way he was.
Regulus could feel every word of it.
Only right now the volu of information crashing into his skull was so vast that his mind had no capacity to process any of it.
Hearing didn't translate to action. All he could do was stand there, a statue, feeling everything, doing nothing.
Unsure how long the domain's effect would hold on a target like this, Gojo let it run a few extra seconds.
An ordinary Special Grade Cursed Spirit, trapped inside this sa domain, locked up hard for five minutes after just 0.2 seconds of exposure.
The treatnt Regulus got was a considerable upgrade from what Cursed Spirits received.
When the two of them beca visible to the others again, Gojo gave a casual wave toward the group.
"Everyone, co on over. It's handled."
"Huh?"
Subaru and the others froze, traded baffled glances, trying to understand how the stalemate had just beco, apparently, not a stalemate at all.
They didn't dwell on it. Within seconds they were hurrying over.
Reinhard joined them as well, falling in at Felt's side, eyes trained warily on Regulus.
"Satoru, what happened? Is he dead?"
Felt looked at the motionless Sin Archbishop without a trace of fear. Pure curiosity.
"No. Just ran a small experint. He's locked down, that's all."
...
Get early access to 40 chapters ahead on my Patreon!
patreon/fawkess
done
User Comments
0 comments from readers