Wrath Didn't hesitate, she killed the slowest one and faked that she can't follow the other because she worried about her friend's safety and returned to the house.
"Do you need to change your security manager again? Or maybe an entire team this time?" Wrath said while looking at the two corpses on the floor.
"No, Since you're here, This time I'll give them a chance to find the moles. Changing the manager or an entire team can only buy me sometimes until the next assassin comes. More than that—"
Greed dragged her voice, looking at Wrath's katana in her hand.
"Shit…" Wrath cursed in a low voice then looked complicatedly at her friend's current situation.
Now Greed's eyes light up golden as the aspect of her power begins to take control of her. She gazes with greedy eyes at Wrath's katana.
"Wrath, can you unsheathe it so I can see it? I didn't see it clearly when you used it earlier." Asks Greed, while her eyes still glow with golden light.
Wrath let out a sigh before reluctantly unsheathing the sword so her friend could see it.
The moment the blue-red blade of the katana appeared before Greed's eyes. She almost drooled as the golden light shone brightly from her eyes as if it was a spotlight.
Then the light slowly receded as Greed slowly straightened up and the aspect of her power was brought under control.
"Phew…. that was close. It's good that I'm the weakest. Otherwise, I might lose myself there." Greed let out a relieved sigh.
The witch of the 7 Deadly Sins' power is related to the manifestation of that witch's sins aspect. The stronger that witch is, the harder it could control their sins aspect not to take control over their body.
The witch's mind was also one of the factors to make them strong, as the stronger mind would have a lot more capacity for the power of the witch to manifest without them losing their mind.
"Where did you get this sword?" Greed inquired.
"Daniel… He made it for me." Answered, Wrath.
The moment Greed heard that, she looked at the sword once again, but this time she looked at it with a scrutinizing gaze as she tried to peer through its secrets and method of how it was created.
Of course, Greed was not the Artificer but she was working with one of the best for a long time. She knew where to look and knew what it was made of at a glance.
"This… this is made from magic steel, I think it's the new steel-making technique I've never seen before. And this blue and red energy flows within the steel blade itself. He even made steel that could amplify the mana efficiency of the user!
This is not the technique the Modern day Artificer uses!" Greed blurted out in astonishment looking at her friend's face again.
"I thought you said that he learned the Atlantean Artificing method just because you want to boast about your boyfriend!" Greed said with astonishment.
"Hey! Even if I want to boast I wouldn't go so low as to lie to make him look great! He never needed it in the first place." Wrath retort.
Greed smiles wryly at her friend's antics. It seems that her friend was head over heels for the man named Daniel.
"Can I hold it?" Greed asks, wanting to hold the blade in her hand.
Wrath didn't say anything, she handed the sword over to Greed, and once the sword touched Greed's hand. Its power disappears and turns into a normal sword as if the power just a moment ago was a lie.
"This is…" Greed stuttered, then Wrath took the sword back from her.
"He made it to be a soul-bound artifact. It also has the power to rewrite the causality and it will always cause my attack to hit the target first no matter the circumstance." Wrath introduced her sword and kept it on the scabbard.
After Greed's curiosity has been sated, She looks at Wrath again, but this time she's looking at her through the eyes of a businesswoman who sees the big opportunity in front of her.
"Tell me Wrath." She started. "Why do you ask for Sloth and Gluttony? Do you need their help with something?" Greed asks as she lets out a smile as if she has something in mind.
Wrath knows this smile of her friend very well. It is the smile before someone got duped by Greed or she has hatched some plan in that little head of hers.
Wrath sir down opposite her friend without caring about the corpses nearby.
"I want to find someone worthy enough to vouch for Daniel to enter into the Hephaestus Institute." Wrath answers truthfully then continues.
"So, If you know someone worthy enough to recommend him, could you please call them or introduce them to me?" Asked, Wrath.
"You want him to join the Hephaestus Institute? Why bother with finding someone to recommend him? Just tell them that he knows about the secret of the Atlantean Artificing method, and they would immediately beg him to join them." Greed asks in confusion.
"No, I can't do that. He didn't have the Mage ID and his teacher seems to not provide him with anything other than saving his life and the Atlantean Artificing method." Wrath answered as she felt a little bit resentful toward Daniel's teacher that he didn't give Daniel at least a mage ID for him.
"I see if he came out of nowhere with the Atlantean Artificing method. Is no different than swimming in a pool full of hungry sharks with a fresh wound on you." Said Greed, metaphorically.
One needs to know that the Mage ID card was also a form of protection that the Hightower issued to every mage. The ID card will contain the general data of the holder and also give the holder protection under the law of the Hightower.
Even though there are many mages who died because of Vendetta or any other reason and the Hightower doesn't care to investigate or uphold it, that was because the law in the Curtained World was different than the mundane law.
For example, the mundane law states that killing people was breaking a law, but in the Curtained World. Killing people was not against the law, especially killing mundane people who had witnessed them using magic.
The only killing that was considered to be against the law was killing the council member of the Hightower, or forcefully extracting knowledge out of someone's soul leading to damage to the victim's soul. Since no one wants to get their soul destroyed or damaged, that law was the same as killing.
Besides, there is always a chance that killing someone won't get rid of them for good. Because in the Curtained world, there are many methods of resurrection or letting the dead return to the world of the living.
Such as putting the soul of the dead into the homunculus body, putting the soul into the artifact body or just resurrecting them in the form of a vampire, or strengthening the soul of the dead and letting them live on in the form of the living ghost. That's why killing was not a crime in the Curtained World.
"Then how about this, I'll go to the Tessia Kingdom and vouch for your boyfriend myself! Including you, you just need to find one more person to vouch for him!" Greed volunteers to follow Wrath back to Tessia Kingdom.
"Are you sure? What about your work? If Sloth came back from Maldives, would she be alright if she didn't find you anywhere?" Wrath asks worriedly.
"Nah… Don't worry about that girl, I could just leave her a message or just give her more vacation time until I'm back." Greed said with a smile.
"Oh! about the three high-status mages vouching for him. You are the last one, Montgomery decides to vouch for him too." Said Wrath.
"Montgomery? That sly old fox!?" Greed repeats the name of the bald old man which Wrath nods for confirmation.
"Ugh… Do I need to meet that old fox? Can't be helped." Greed murmurs to herself feeling a little bit of revulsion toward the sly old man who manages the mage auction house in the Tessia Kingdom.
It's not that Montgomery can't be trusted but that old man if he were to know that she went to Tessia's kingdom. He would try to bother her non-stop or try to gain some benefit or make a deal with her.
And the skill of that old man made it very hard for her to take advantage of him or gain a big profit. And that will make her feel depressed because of her sin aspect.
After that, Greed called her cleanup crew to clean up the corpse in her house and also have an urgent meeting with the security teams. After the end of the meeting/roasting session, the two witches called it a day and moved their lodging from the rooftop house to the five-star hotel nearby.
As for the security team, They quickly disperse to find a mole and improve on Greed's current security measure as if their ass was on fire.
— 3 Days passed —
During those three days, Greed had taken many security measures to ensure the safety of her friend during the extraction of blood and magical essence. She had asked the Hightower branch in the Tessia Kingdom to send her a copy of the contract between her friend and that idiot Willow.
Today was the day the copy of the contract arrived at her law firm, of course, it was the law firm that works in both the mundane world and the Curtained World. Many mages and non-mages who specialize in the law of both world's law happily work for her in this law firm because she pays her employees very generously.
Now she has her employee review the contract to see if that Willow guy did anything funny to it, including the clause and wording of the contract to see if there is anything she could use to her advantage if something happens.
In the president's office at the research facility, Greed sat at her desk and read the copy of the contract in her email that her staff at the law firm had sent her, with some of the findings they had deciphered from the contract and several ways she could take advantage of it.
The contract has three key points.
First: Willow's family must provide the genuine magician ID card to Artificer Daniel within 4 days starting from the day this contract was made.
Second: The Willow family will not pass this information toward the third party unless the Witch of Wrath requests so.
Third: In return, the witch of wrath will give the willow family her blood and magic essence.
These are the three key points of the contract if either side reneges on their part of the deal. They will be punished by the maximum penalty under the Hightower law. Which is the extraction of the magic vein or withdrawal of the protection of the Hightower law for three months.
Greed read the context of the contract and let out a sigh, feeling a little bit of pity for her friend. This contract was clearly not fair to her.
Wrath magic and blood essence if it got made into an elixir, could increase the consumer magic power permanently. It's like trading a real plane for a toy car.
Now that Wrath had safely finished with the extraction procedure and rested in the patient room within this facility. She could put her mind to checking on that Willow guy who had already gone back with the briefcase containing Wrath magic and blood essence.
Greed called her acquaintance in the Hightower HQ in London and told them to look up the Willow family information in the Hightower database since she thinks she heard about them from somewhere before but can't recall it.
She waited for half an hour before her email notified her that she got the information from her acquaintance.
"Let's see…" Greed began to read her email. But the longer she reads, the more complicated her face becomes as the deal between her friend and that Willow guy starts to smell fishy.
"Shit… The Willow is the branch family of the Alchemont clan!?" She blurted out in shock.
No one in the mage community didn't know the name Alchemont. They are the sole creator of homunculus that many mages use in their household, ranging from the servant homunculus to the homunculus body that is more powerful than normal human bodies which many mages are using.
She read further and found that the Willow family used a different method in creating a homunculi body. They use the tree called the Sylvan tree which is the native magical tree only found in the secret pocket dimension in the Tessia Kingdom.
The Detail about how they created one didn't include it as it was the business secret of the Willow family.
But from what she knows about modern-day homunculi, it was created by mixing mundane technology such as cloning and biology technology with old alchemy. Thus creating a body good enough for the magician to use.
If the Alchemont gets their hands on Wrath's magic and the blood essence. Then they could create a homunculus strong enough to be considered a trump card! And their influence on the Hightower Council would increase again.
Greed wants to tell Wrath about it but decides to wait until her friend wakes up. Then she took out the smartphone from her suit and dialed one of the contacts from her long list of business partners.
"Good evening, do you want to know the latest information about the new development of one of the branch families of the Alchemont clan?"
Then she begins to tell the other side about Edwin Willow, who is trying to escape from the United States to the Kingdom of Tessia or Europe, where the main Alchemont family is located.
Greed repeated this process several times until she felt that the forces should be enough to stop Edwin from escaping.
She sold the information about Edwin and his precious cargo to Achimont clan enemies, and hope that they will serve their purpose and be able to stop him. She will consider the blood and magic essence of The Witch of Wrath to be the bonus for whoever manages to stop Edwin.
—
– 3 hours later –
After he got what he wanted, Edwin immediately checked out of the hotel, but unfortunately. In San Francisco, no business owner doesn't want to curry favor with The Witch of Greed. Especially the people at the top of the business world pyramid who are privy to the existence of the Curtained World.
As a result, his checkout process was met with many mishaps and delays and the hotel owners are making sure that Edwin's checking out process is delayed as much as they can. They make sure to make Edwin as comfortable as he can be in staying at their hotel including compensating him with many VIP services while he's waiting for the checking out process.
With the compliment from the beautiful women and the attention, Edwin never got in his life that made him feel like a king, like a celebrity. The false and sweet poisonous lies from Greed's scheme make him feel like the king of the world.
Greed's scheme works very well, too well in fact. He enjoys every service and compensation the hotel throws at him until he loses himself and loses track of time.
Edwin could only get out of the hotel after sunset as he was delayed for three hours. With happiness lingering in his mind, He came out of the hotel with a lot of compensation money and the false favor the hotel owner asks of him to introduce them to the Curtained World community.
This makes all of Edwin's wariness and caution disappear as he knew that many elites of the societies of the mundane world are privy to this secret so he takes all of the compensation for granted and enjoys himself to the extreme.
In the taxi Edwin was still smiling happily while taking the taxi like he own the world, not noticing that the taxi turn to the dark alley near the airport.
<Shatter>
The car window shattered as many magic bullets that were designed to be pierced through the basic magic shield of the mage crashed through Edwin's head unobstructed as Edwin didn't even have a right mind or consciousness in his current state.
<Splattered >
His head exploded as a watermelon and the red-white patterns inside the head splattered all over the car.
As for the driver, he didn't even faze at the death of his passenger but what made him faze was another matter.
"This is… disgusting!" The black man driver swore and then got out of the car with frustration as he is the victim of the red-white matter that splatters on his head.
"Why the fuck are you using the large caliber for! His brain matter nearly got into my mouth!" He shouted toward the dark corner of the alley and a man in a long coat with a large sniper rifle walked out of the dark corner of the third floor of a nearby building.
That man waved his hand toward the driver and many of the people who hid nearby slowly got out of their hiding places. Even the mage who works as a bounty hunter dispelled his camouflage magic and surrounded the car.
"Mo***r F***er…" The Driver swore again, this time both he and his friend who are a sniper raised their hands, indicating that they don't want any trouble.
"Ok.. let's make a deal, shall we?" The black man stated as he knew that he and his friend can't fight this many people who suddenly came out of nowhere.
"Do you think you have the right to negotiate with us? Hyenas" One of the mages who came out of hiding asked the driver.
Hyenas as the shunning terms used by the mage to call the Mage Hunter. As it was a profession shunned by the mage community because it was reserved for the non-mage combatant working for the Syndicate Union.
Even though Mage Hunters are capable of killing a mage and even taking down a strong mage if a pack of them work together, they can not take down a squad of mages no matter how skilled they are.
They are still normal humans after all. That's why the mage would compare them to how the hyenas hunt as even a pack of hyenas could take down a lion but at the end of the day, they are still the hyenas.
Sorry for the delay. I have back pain... Can't help but took some time to lie down.
Anyway, please tell me what you think of the story so far, every power stone from you make me more motivated in working through the pain.
T^T
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