DD 204 Ch 31

The new president of SJS Financials stormed through the offices, loosening his collar as he finally made it to the former office of King Albar. Well, the old King Albar. Technically as his brother he was now King Albar as well.

His reports swore the room had been cleaned to the best of their ability. However, in his mind, the coppery tang of blood and the rancid stench of his brother's failure had seeped into every facet of the room. 

Yet, in the short time he had been at the head of the company, he had stripped the entire room bare and built it back up with his own aesthetic. He personally liked ivory and obsidian, but only real ivory. It was powerful and calming, and he needed that right now as he grabbed a priceless Chinese vase and hurled it across the room, shattering it against the obsidian bookshelf. 

"That little fucker," he spat. 

His secretary had been standing to the side of the room, waiting for him, as was her job. "Sir, would you like that repaired or replaced?" She asked.

"Replace it," he waved a dismissive hand, "I won't have any failures in my office. How dare that fucking brat interfere with my plans." 

He didn't mind venting in front of the secretary. She wouldn't say a word. She understood the sort of power he wielded could not be escaped. After all, as one of the singularly wealthiest men in the world, he was akin to a god amongst humanity. The thought brought a smile to his face. He needed to reinforce that to the world.

"That young adventurer is merely another one of the ants running around collecting scraps for us, and he dared bite the hand that feeds. We need to send a message. For a mere adventurer to stand up to me cannot be allowed to stand." He fumed.

"Weren't we in the process of sending a message already?" The secretary asked. "You had specifically asked us to target the families of his friends." She swiped at her pad. "There are several others who might be slightly less soft targets, but certainly they can be persuaded." 

"Oh?" He perked up.

"Obviously his direct party is..." the secretary hesitated, "difficult for us to touch." 

The president chuckled. "Difficult for us? There is nothing my money cannot buy. If we can't oppress them with the strength of adventurers, then we simply have to crush them through other means. Smear campaigns, target their guild members, and slowly pick their organizations apart until they crumble. After all, money is power. I have all the power." 

What infuriated him most of all was that despite the numbers clearly showing that he was more valuable to the world, that he was a better human than the adventurers, the world was still obsessing over those that had dove to the depths of the dungeon.

The world heralded them as heroes as if they were somehow better than those that ruled earth and all its resources.

And money couldn’t sway those adventurers after a point. No matter how much money he threw at high level adventurers, they would not do as he said. They were too proud and stupid to see how serving him could benefit them both.

Not to mention the UG often insulated them from too much. They thought there wouldn't be consequences.

"Understood, sir. We can have a proposal set up in two days." The secretary offered.

"Make it a day," he said, turning and feeling powerful. 

The secretary made a note on her CID. "It will be done." 

"Perfect. Step out then, please," he dismissed her, something he rarely did as he focused back on the obsidian bookshelf, staring as if he could bore through it simply with his will.

He paused, noticing a small indicator light, nestled so out of the way that others would barely notice the light. It blinked several times.

Annoyed he was being interrupted, he walked forward and adjusted several books. They clicked a few times before the shelf rotated. Instead of the square shelf, it became a round one behind a false panel as it rotated around. There was only a singular object there that looked like a giant serpent's eye.

The pupil on it was pulsating. He spun his finger around the top before the serpent pupil swelled, enlarging the image inside. It didn't bring color through very well, and again, for all he knew, the fork-tongue bastards might not even see in the same colors that humans could see.

They were so damned ugly, he resisted shuddering as the device activated. "What do you want?" he demanded. 

"What do I want?" the Naga hissed. 

Usually, there was one of the lesser females in the image. This time, it looked like he was getting to meet with the matriarch. A small grin tugged at the corner of his lips. It seemed they had wisened up and elevated his status. 

"Well, hello, matriarch," he said slowly. “I’m glad you’ve finally come to realize who’s in charge here.”

"Do not seem so happy, human," she spoke slowly and clearly. "You have sent one of my matriarchs and too many of my swarm to their death," she punctuated her words with a hiss. 

"You knew the risk when you accepted the commission," he said. "More importantly, I am disappointed in you for your failure." They were hired for a job, failing it is their fault not his.

He had more or less inherited this communication device and the relationship with the Naga from his brother. Though he’d been aware of it for quite some time.

"My failure is because of your incompetence. Your information was flawed and now my swarm is smaller as a result," she scoffed. 

He had to spin this for her. Ah. That’s it. "You've removed more failures from your ranks. If that's uncomfortable for you, then I'm not sure what to say. You should always remove low performers. If I understand anything about Naga, it is that you breed so damn fast that you're going to replace that army in like, what, two weeks?" He threw his hands in the air, only for the Naga to hiss at him. "If you're just here to hiss at me, please get on with it so we can get back to my day. I have far more important issues than dealing with you. Your failure has caused me more headache than you can afford."

The serpents were utterly useless. It seemed nearly everyone was at this point, perhaps he needed new henchmen.

The Naga turned slightly to the side and spoke in a hissing language. He wondered if she was considering her folly, only for a human, male voice to say, "That should be enough. Unless you would like more, Director?" 

Only a moment later, a portal ripped open in the room and the very problem he wanted to rid himself of stepped through the portal himself.

The young man was only nineteen, but he seemed to exude power. Perhaps it was the radiant white hair that made him seem almost other worldly or the golden eyes and the weight within them.

***

It was almost laughable how much toxicity permeated the Albar family. I had seen firsthand between Prince Albar, the King, and this new King what somebody drunk on power would do for the sake of having their will forced on others. I honestly had no idea how these people functioned from a day-to-day perspective.

They must literally have staff for everything. Otherwise, I was fairly certain they would have starved or had some sort of terrible accident. They were laughably incompetent, they just had enough money to hire competent people.

When Director Ametto gave me the all clear, I ripped a portal open and stepped through it, ready to face this new leader of SJS.

The man was clearly standing in front of the device. I gave him a wave of my fingers, enjoying the anger in his eyes. The director and her husband came through the portal a second later, and I knew the director's glasses were recording the whole encounter. 

"Detain him," she said to her husband. 

He shot forward in a flowing motion, almost as if his body was a whip, distorting and blending with the shadows on his way. He grabbed the SJS president and slammed his head hard enough into the desk that he lost a few teeth. 

"Oh, this brings back memories," I said, waltzing forward and grabbing the Serpent Eye artifact. "If you don't mind, I'm going to take this."

I stuffed the artifact into my CID as the director walked up to the table. She sat down lightly next to where her husband had the man pinned. 

"We're going to have a conversation. The length of this conversation is entirely determined by you," she said. It sounded like a casual boardroom meeting.

However, I knew with an uncomfortable certainty that this was going to be very painful, but only for one involved. 

"You can't do this to me!" he shouted. 

"Huh?" She held her ear as her husband grabbed the back of the man’s hair, jerking it back so hard I thought he was about to scalp him in front of me, only to slam him back down. 

"Sorry, I didn't ask a question and I didn't expect an answer just yet. You'll have to repeat that after I've asked the question," Director Ametto smiled and crossed her legs. "From here on out, you will speak when spoken to. You will answer the question and just the question. Otherwise, you will receive a stimulus. Should your answer not be satisfactory, you will also receive a stimulus. My dear husband here will be the one choosing the said stimulus you get. I can assure you that he takes great joy in hurting people who annoy me. Now, we will begin. How and when did you become aware of this artifact that is capable of communicating with the Naga?" 

I stood by the side with Penny, who seemed incredibly uncomfortable at everything unfolding in the room. Perhaps the assassin side of my life was a touch too much for her.

Slytha, Felin, and Ambrosia had joined us as well. The Dark Angel looked sick to her stomach, Felin seemed bored, and Slytha seemed keenly interested in the violence happening in front of us.

"So this is the one that sent matriarchs to their death and killed his own kind?" she asked, pointing at him. "Why is he still alive?" 

I grunted half in agreement with her. "Because ideally, we understand if any more of his family was involved in everything that happened. But at a certain point, you just need to rip the whole problem out by the roots." 

Slytha made a hiss of understanding. "I see. It is good to remove the root of the problem so it does not crop up again later. We would just annihilate their entire swarm and take away their spawning pools." 

The man's face was slammed against his desk several more times as Director Ametto proved her point, and her husband looked a little like he had lost it as he knocked another tooth out. The director then healed the president of the SJS, only for her husband to begin again. 

"Wait, wait, wait, wait," the president said as his head was lifted off the desk. "I knew. I knew this whole time.”

The director didn’t so much as flinch as she continued. “Were you or were you not working with the Kaiming?" 

The man laughed. "Working with Kaiming? No." His head was smashed against the desk several more times before it was lifted back up.

"Were you working with them in any regards?" she asked. 

"No." He said, quickly getting his head slammed into the desk.

"I wasn't working with them. They were working for us. There is a clear difference." He croaked.

I frowned across the room. "Excuse me? They were working for you?" 

The president of SJS nodded rapidly. "Of course. Do you think they would have the balls or ability to pull off everything they managed? To worm their way into a dozen different businesses?" He scoffed. "How would they have those connections or that sort of money? Their little assassin business did not generate enough for them to expand as quickly as they did. No. The Kaiming were one of our dogs. Just like the Nagato clan was once supposed to be as well." 

He spat out some blood. "Unfortunately, that didn't work out the way it was supposed to. Their new heir refused multiple advances from Kaiming and our company." He grinned at me, all the more manic with the blood in his teeth. "You're her son, aren't you?"

My blood boiled, but I was frozen in place by the unexpected news. I wanted to rip him to shreds, only to put him back together again.

He grinned. "When she refused to fold herself and the rest of the Nagato clan in by joining the man we'd picked out for her to marry, she needed to be eliminated. The Silver Fangs as a whole needed to be picked apart, their members enticed elsewhere. And the Nagato clan needed to be mothballed. Anything not helping my goals should be removed."

I nearly launched myself across the room and stabbed him in the face. Before I finished the job, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Penny had moved alongside me.

"Ken, I'm fairly certain he wants you to kill him. That would be too easy," she said as her hand shook. 

I got ahold of myself and nodded, grinning down at the man. "One death wouldn't satisfy me enough. Heck, I doubt even a dozen would settle my boiling blood." I could see the moment that fear blossomed in his eyes when I chose to be cold rather than hot in this situation.

He shifted back to Director Ametto. "Keep him contained, because if he kills me, you're not getting another word out of me," he threatened with a smile. 

Director Ametto shot me a glance, as if warning me. But I shrugged off Penny's hand and crossed the room in a flash, a dagger appearing in my hand as it stabbed down right next to his face. 

He only laughed. "You can't kill me. I'm untouchable. Even if I've killed people, even if I've destroyed countless lives, I am simply above it all. Even the UG won't simply get rid of me," he laughed mockingly at the director. "Don't you understand, with my kind of wealth, I am untouchable." 

My hand twitched to the side, and his head rolled off the table. These types needed to be proven wrong. He was just as mortal as any other human. In fact, I’d say he succumbed to more mortal flaws than most.

"Whoops," I said, spinning my knife around. "Sorry, my hand slipped. He said he was so untouchable, and above it all, I figured that he wouldn't even be cut," I knew I was being petty, but I was pissed.

She allowed herself to smile briefly before suppressing it into a business-like flat line. "That was highly unprofessional." 

"Eh," I grunted. "Dock my pay if you need to. That was worth it. And perhaps things will get a little easier when he realizes that he too, like the rest of us, is merely mortal. Money doesn't grant you godhood." 

I waved my hand, beginning to cast Revive. The ability took almost ten seconds for me to cast.

His head lifted up and reconnected with his body, the man gasping back to life. 

"Oh, sorry," I smiled at him. "Turns out you're quite touchable. I would dare say you're actually quite... fragile. I barely even touched you," I chuckled, before turning to the director. "The Nagato clan will take any job you have pertaining to his family and the SJS in the coming weeks. I’ll beat any price you’re offered." 

The humor left his face. "You can't kill us." 

"I think that is where you're mistaken," the director said. "We can, and we most likely will. At the end of the day, you are incorrect. You are not untouchable. The adventurers that have descended into the depths of the dungeons are the ones that are untouchable. They hold humanity's future. Meanwhile, all you do is cling on to a wealthy past that has enriched you beyond your wildest dreams from the second you left your mother's womb. Ken, if you would be so kind as to cut me a portal back to the UG offices, I will guarantee you that he is taken care of and request the UG president that the Nagato clan be employed for any and all services needed to wrap this up." 

I shot her a giant grin, flashing my teeth like a shark. "It was a pleasure working with you, director." I opened up the portal for her and stepped aside as her husband unceremoniously threw the offender through. After that, I turned back to the rest of my group.

"How about we all head back to Star City? Honestly, that made me hungry," I said nonchalantly, ripping open a portal and walking back through. The others trailed behind me, all in varying states of processing everything that had just occurred.

AN - Whoops, they added more settings in Patreon and I fudged this. Enjoy the early chappie.