[1% LIFESTEAL] Chapter 192 - Haven

In the empire, the number of stars wasn’t the only thing that dictated someone’s status. But even the lowest of three-stars could open many doors locked to all but the most exceptional of two-stars.

One such thing was the right to request an audience with a high legal enforcer, such as an adjudicator.

It was thus that, as he barged into the adjudicator’s room in the tower, Freddy wasn’t surprised in the slightest to find the wounded man there, arguing with the adjudicator.

Eyes flashing wide open, the man pointed at Freddy and shouted, “Treason! It is illegal to intrude upon a private meeting in an adjudicator’s office!” He grinned widely. “There! You need a ‘proper reason’ to arrest him!? What more could you possibly want!?”

Freddy hesitated for a moment at the man’s words, but then, the adjudicator shrugged and took another sip of his drink. “Indeed, it is highly illegal to intrude upon a private meeting in an adjudicator’s quarters.” The man’s face lit up with joy, but then the adjudicator continued, “However, this isn’t an adjudicator’s office. This is a temporary office I hold as the overseer of the defense force. As one of the most important members of the defense force, not to mention as the de facto owner of this entire tower, Mr. Stern has free access to this room.”

The wounded man stepped back. Then, he laughed. “This is so blatantly corrupt I can barely believe what I’m hearing!” He nervously turned to face Freddy. “But this still doesn’t change the fact that he tried to kill me! Given the formal declaration, he has no right to do what he did!”

“Is that so?” The adjudicator asked with a sigh, then turned to face Freddy. “As per the contract you’ve signed with the city as an independent entity, you are indeed acting outside your legal power if you kill someone without a reason. So, what exactly is your reason for killing this man?”

Freddy caught on to what was happening. “He pissed me the hell off.”

“All right, then. With a reason, you aren’t breaking the contract terms.” The adjudicator turned to the wounded man and shrugged. “Anything else you’d like to say?”

The man stared blankly at the adjudicator. Then, he slowly turned to face Freddy. “People will hear of this. And they won’t be happy.” With those words, he turned to leave the room.

But Freddy moved to block his way. 

“You!” the man screeched. “Get the hell out of my way, you bastard! You can’t possibly be insane enough to attack me in the presence of an adjudicator!”

Freddy paused at that again, at which the adjudicator said, “You are still within the bounds of your city. Do not let my presence disturb you. Feel free to act within your legal boundaries all you please.”

That was all he needed. He conjured Sanguine Avenger. 

His face going pale, the man started backing away. “You fuckers are gonna burn in hell for this!”

“Oh, will we?” Freddy asked. “What could you possibly be suggesting? That it's wrong to stretch the law to justify murdering people?” He laughed coldly at the man. “Fuck off.” And with that, he lunged at the man.

This man wasn’t a true fighter. All his abilities were highly defensive, and his overall toughness was crazy high. He likely had a talent that made anything defensive more powerful. That made him tough enough to even trouble Freddy for a while. 

From barriers of stone, to stone armor covering his body, he had a number of abilities that were pretty effective at delaying his death. 

But eventually, his essence ran dry.

Freddy thought the fight was over, but to his surprise, the man could take a number of direct hits from Sanguine Avenger. It made his death rather gruesome as Freddy was forced to practically chop him up before he finally stopped moving. 

Once finished, he looked down at the mangled corpse. He couldn’t help but feel a bit ill at the sight. It was far from the first dead body he was responsible for. But the thought of openly and slowly killing someone in front of an adjudicator of all people didn’t sit well with him. At all.

The adjudicator, for his part, just nodded in approval and clapped his hands. 

The doors opened, and several servants walked in, carrying cleaning equipment. For their part, they looked neither surprised nor hesitant. They just started cleaning the mess Freddy had made; some were even maintaining their usual pleasant smile, just as always. 

Unable to stay there any longer, Freddy headed towards the entrance. “If you’ll excuse me. I’ll be heading out.”

“Make sure you get enough rest on your day off,” the adjudicator said. “There is no need to tire yourself out with menial tasks like this.”

Freddy paused. “Are you offering to help?”

The adjudicator sighed at that. “Please, Mr. Stern, you should already know that I am powerless against anyone acting within the law.”

Freddy’s blood ran cold at that. “I see. So you’re suggesting I stop trying to fight against ghouls like this?”

“If you wish to interpret my words in a way that paints me as a villain in your mind, feel free to do so,” the adjudicator said with no small amount of annoyance in his voice. “Given your history, I’m well aware of your stance on the legal situation within the Northern Belt, and perhaps the empire at large. And that is fine. You are allowed to dislike the way things are. While you’re no Lord yet, you are already a ruler. Change the law and set the rules as you please. It is within your power to do so.

“But if you wish to take a moment to get your head out of your ass, you might remember that I’m an adjudicator, not a politician. I don’t make laws, I represent them. No matter what the law looks like, I have sworn an oath to uphold it to the best of my abilities. And this includes laws you’ve personally already set for this city, as well as any laws you might change in the future.

“Getting angry at me for doing my job will do you no good. And now, if you’re willing to actually listen to what I’m saying rather than what you want to hear, you will also perhaps realize we are currently in the midst of a disaster and stretched to our limit in dealing with it. 

“There will be many who will come to exploit this situation. There are always such people around. You have one day to rest out of every four you spend fighting to your absolute limits. I’m simply suggesting you might be better off relegating these chores to someone else while you ensure you don’t lose your mind from the constant violence and exhaustion.”

Frozen at the sudden outburst, Freddy felt a bit ashamed of himself. “You’re right. I apologize.”

“You have nothing to apologize for. Again. I am simply doing my job.”

Glancing at the adjudicator one last time, he continued walking towards the exit. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

As soon as he left the room, he called up Travis. 

“Hey! Is everything okay?” the man answered almost immediately.

“I need your help with something. Are you free to meet up?”

The man went quiet for a few moments. “Come to my office in half an hour.”

They met up, and Freddy explained the situation. He told the man about the possibility of new exploitative businesses springing up, and tasked him with two things—creating new laws that will force the adjudicator to maintain order and getting rid of anyone who tries to skirt the law anyway.

It would require Valhalla to pull a good deal of their defenders away from the wall and frontlines, but the adjudicator had a point—it was too much for Freddy to handle just by himself.

Although he mostly felt fine, he knew he was in serious danger of losing his damn mind. He had to pace himself to avoid any future trouble.

As soon as he left the office, he knew he was making the right decision. After all, it felt like a large boulder had just rolled off his back. 

Taking a deep breath, he vowed to focus on the defense for now. There would be time to set things straight when they were out of this mess.

***

For a while, things went smoothly. 

Freddy continued trading with Lily and producing organs with Sophia. If Drake was bothered by anything, he kept it in.

Drake and Lily’s relationship, however, wasn’t doing so well. They didn’t even fight anymore. They just kept a distance between them, mostly refusing to talk. Every so often, they’d break down and have another argument, and then they’d make up and everything would seem fine, only to then suddenly go cold again and keep their distance. 

As the invasion continued, the mercenaries were happier than ever. The rate at which Freddy killed monsters only got faster and faster. With their share of the loot, they were getting filthy rich. 

Freddy knew exactly how much they were earning—he was being paid the exact same amount, given their fifty-fifty split. They were earning billions of dollars every single four-day shift.

And the thing was, while someone like Peri could clear weak monsters faster than Freddy, her means were extremely destructive, which left a lot of damage on the monster corpses, drastically lowering their value. Meanwhile, Freddy ended most fights with a couple of clean swings of his sword—even particularly big creatures were no exception. 

After a while, Freddy started getting concerned. The monsters supposedly had some kind of ether virus, so it was worrying that their bodies were being sold. But his worries were for naught—this wasn’t the first time something like this happened. The companies specializing at processing monster corpses had a number of ways to keep their products safe. 

Then, after much waiting, it finally happened—Freddy felt a sudden shift of madness washing over him, coming from behind a nearby tree. 

Someone was spying on him. 

He immediately shouted it out, pointing towards the exact tree. In the next moment, as the spy vanished, so did the surge of insanity. 

The scout was baffled as to what Freddy was doing, but when he focused and checked closer, he actually found an incredibly stealthy woman shifting in and out of reality as she fled deeper into the forest. He turned to face Freddy with an astounded look.

Freddy, meanwhile, grinned. This would confirm the rumors to be true. And the next time someone came, the rumors would only get stronger. 

One day, Sophia arrived at the start of their shift without her flesh golem. It was no surprise. That mantis wasn’t the only monster that saw through her, and it was becoming increasingly apparent that she was putting herself into undue danger by testing an unfinished product in combat. It ended up slowing her down quite a bit for a while, but as she started testing how to directly modify her own body, she got a lot more effective at killing again. 

Every so often, a major threat would appear, and a ping would sound from Freddy’s watch. 

But usually, the pings only came from Peri, Reginald, or Georgie. Emily never requested help, not even once. Freddy wouldn’t judge her for that—after all, he had never requested help, either. And while she never sounded the alarm herself, she always showed up when someone else did. 

During these emergencies, Freddy got a very good look at everyone’s skills. 

While Reginald was more of a scholar than a fighter, he must have been one hell of a scholar, given how much of a fighter he was. It wasn’t even that he was that skilled, it was that all of his abilities just seemed so effective. And he had a large variety of things he could do. 

He had no more abilities than the maximum a two-star could handle, but he had so many different types of bugs and plants at his disposal that the combinations of specific abilities and specific bugs-slash-plants was absolutely mind-boggling. The dude had a hyper-specific solution for everything—and usually, his solutions were kind of gross. 

There was a lot of bugs crawling up holes. And despite having seen a whole lot of gruesome killing, the sight of it always left Freddy deeply unnerved. At some point, he found himself clenching his butt cheeks a little harder whenever he was close to the man.

Georgie’s skillset was also quite shocking. Literally. With metal, water, and lightning, she seemed to focus on using metal and water as conductors for electricity. Her attacks were vicious and reckless, her speed was incredible, and her durability was also through the roof. She actually had Hundred Wet Hells, albeit a more traditional route than the one Freddy was pursuing, but strangely enough, that wasn’t even her main form of defense.

Her metal affinity synergized with her talent in a very surprising way. Metallic Bones made her limbs damn-near-impossible to cut off. And as long as she didn’t lose any parts of her body, her Super Regeneration put her back together in the blink of an eye. 

Next up was Peri. And the way she fought was simply horrifying. 

Her blade-staff was always imbued with her soulfire affinity, and any time she killed something with it, it caused the target to implode and then suddenly transform into a fire elemental. Now, these fire elementals were pretty basic. 

But her Fire Dragon wasn’t. And that thing could eat the smaller elementals to grow in size. 

After seeing it in action, though, Freddy understood what Peri meant by it being just a large essence battery. It was effectively just a big fancy flame thrower. And while its flames were admittedly quite dangerous, they weren’t the best against a single, powerful target. 

But Peri was more than enough for such targets, even by herself.

Although she always called for help, it wasn’t because she really needed it. She was just diligent and cautious.

She had a spirit ability that rooted her in place in turn for spiking her physical abilities. On top of that, she had an advanced form of Ignited Muscle, which granted her further explosive power.

Coupled with her insane skill with the blade staff, she could go toe-to-toe with creatures even Freddy would struggle with. The most impressive part was that she didn’t have anything to enhance her perception, and yet, she could keep up with incredibly swift opponents. She was just that good. 

But alas, despite their impressive showing, none of them could hold a candle to Emily Umbra. 

Her ego was perhaps a bit large, but it was far from unwarranted. 

To be frank, Freddy didn’t even really know what she was capable of. Mostly because he rarely saw her strain herself.

The bindings she could cast were horrifying. She once arrived to help with a giant lizard monster. She cast a Dark Binding, which then wrapped around the creature’s neck and the base of its tail. Then, the binding shrank in on itself, bending the lizard’s spine the wrong way until it broke. This wasn’t just some random monster. Reginald had sounded an alarm over it, and for good reason. But that still wasn’t enough to challenge her.

And, for whatever reason, she seemed to really dislike Freddy. Ever since he’d killed that giant, she had been acting strange, shooting him spiteful glances and scoffing even more than usual. 

Eventually, Freddy approached Georgie and asked, “Hey, do you have any idea why Emily seems to hate me so much? Did I offend her by accident or something?”

Georgie gave him a lop-sided grin at the question. “I’ve met countless people like her during my life. She is a real genius, Fred. People like her are used to being the most exceptional person in any room they walk into.” She suddenly turned serious. “The thing you did with the giant was impressive. By anyone’s standards. You had done something she couldn’t. For a brief moment, you outshone her. Of course she’s going to hate you.”

Freddy scowled at the explanation. “What? That can’t possibly be it. There’s no way she’s that petty.”

Georgie chuckled at his words. “Oh you’re so naive.”

The days kept passing. Soon enough, a whole month went by. 

Other than one day where a massive flock of flying monsters appeared, there wasn’t a single time where the city faced a truly serious threat. And even that only resulted in a handful of casualties.

The city was well defended, both outside and inside. 

All of the buildings had been heavily reinforced, and a number of hide-outs had been built. Sure, a few people had failed to reach shelter in time, but compared with the devastation seen in the neighboring cities on a daily basis, this was nothing. 

As predicted, Ottawa was already on the verge of collapse. Several other cities had already completely imploded. 

Hordes of refugees appeared at their gates every single day. 

On one such day, during his rest, Freddy decided to show his face at one of the entrances. It was something of a public relations stunt, but he was also curious to see what the situation looked like. 

It was harrowing. 

Numerous people walked inside with missing limbs and other severe injuries. Many arrived on the verge of death, forcing the city to set up a small camp for treating emergency patients as soon as they arrived outside the city walls, just so that people would stop dying while waiting in line.

As Freddy stood there, he could almost see the madness rolling off the poor victims. 

Walking between the tents, he was momentarily tempted to bring Sophia over, but she would be in deep trouble if she showed even a small part of what she could do. 

Walking around, he gave out food and other supplies, all while being followed by one of the reporters from a local newspaper. They were quite literally producing propaganda, which left a bit of a sour taste in Freddy’s mouth, but if it would ease some of the building anxiety among the citizens, he would happily do it. 

There had been a surge of terrorism lately, with more and more people losing their damn minds and going on a rampage. It was bad enough to force Freddy to ban the local newspapers from fearmongering. They now had to put a positive spin on everything they put out. Again, it was a tactic he wasn’t particularly fond of, but the crisis demanded every means available.

Still, even as he walked past children crying for their dead parents and adults crying for their dead children, he felt an underlying pride at all he’d done. 

This was nothing compared to what the other cities were going through.

Without proper defenses and a solid supply chain, many places devolved into what could only be called hell on earth. There were reports of cannibalism and a huge upsurge of people taking and using all sorts of harrowing illegal talents. There was a woman out there with a talent that allowed her to reap the souls of children to progress her abilities and gathering. And she wasn’t even the worst case.

In Repentawa, meanwhile, while there were certainly issues, the people were fed, safe from monsters, and mostly safe from each other.

As long as nothing massive changed, he will have saved an untold number of lives.

Suddenly, Freddy froze and turned to face a duo standing in line to enter the city. He scowled as he got a closer look at them. 

He saw a woman wearing sunglasses and carrying a deformed man. He had a blindfold over their eyes, and his whole body was awfully mangled. Limbs twisting the wrong way, off-colored skin, random bulges and growths—it was one of the worst cases he’d seen.

But the looks weren’t what got Freddy’s attention. 

It was the vivid waves of pure, violent madness radiating off him. 

He could tell that mangled individual held a profound, harrowing hatred for everything, to the point where he wanted to burn it all down.

If Freddy saw anyone else radiating such an intense insanity, he would be inclined to at least interrogate them. But seeing the state of this man’s body, he left him alone. It was hardly surprising that he’d been driven to such a state. Given that Freddy couldn’t feel the man’s gathering, it was likely that he was a mortal. 

He shook his head as he looked away. Poor bastard got hit by something nasty. 

Once finished with the photoshoot, he met up with Lily, who produced another blood coin for him. Thanking her and paying for her services, he swallowed the coin and went to do some meditation.

As he did, something bizarre happened.

One moment, he felt like he was on the cusp of reaching some kind of profound revelation about blood. In the next moment, he was standing in a world that seemed straight out of a painting. The ground was solid, crimson red. Beside him flowed a river of blood. The sanguine sky above rained red. 

And far in the distance, almost too far to see, a giant form shifted and turned to look at him. 

As he met its gaze, he knew he was about to die.