episode_0055

“Master, will that foolish woman come today? Or will she just hide?”

“She won’t be able to get the money today anyway. If she comes here, it’ll be to negotiate. If she doesn’t come, then tomorrow begins a new hell.”

I stake my name as the son of a merchant; Emma absolutely cannot gather the money and bring it today.

She’s firmly mistaken that looking down on money is what makes one noble, so she doesn’t truly understand how shabby her family’s situation is.

High-ranking nobles may scorn handling money, but they probably can’t even imagine hiring tax accountants, lawyers, or financial experts to shrewdly save money.

What if, to overcome this situation, she goes to Lizley or Leon?

If Emma truly makes such a self-defeating move, I’d have no choice but to admit she’s an idiot beyond imagination.

How could that foolish, weak-willed coward, who bullies the weak but crumbles before the strong, ever escape this crisis with a flawless lie that would convince her cunning masters?

Ultimately, she’ll struggle alone, agonize, and miss the repayment deadline, and from then on, it’s the start of a new tragedy.

But I thought Emma would harbor futile hopes and seek out ‘Orca.’

Having watched her for quite some time, I could somewhat predict what Emma was scheming.

“Set up some brutes outside, and today, let’s go for a more intimidating back alley atmosphere. The pitiful Lergo has died, and the mysterious black magic workshop has also collapsed.”

“Yes, sir!!! What about me? Can I watch from the side??”

Just in case, I don’t particularly want Pisces’s true face to be exposed.

“Hmm. Something befitting a back alley boss. With a decadent and sexy appearance, adjust your illusion magic.”

“Eh…! Then you don’t even need to use magic. How decadent and sexy Pisces is. Look at this~”

The girl struck several strange poses, and all I could do was sigh. Is she imitating Rosalie?

Anyway, to be so utterly cute with a face and body like that, isn’t that a talent in itself?

“You’re very lovely, but use magic. And it might be better to just stand still without any poses.”

“Hmph… I was imitating Rosalie…! When she did things like this, he was completely enchanted…!!!”

I roughly stroked the grumbling girl, doting on her, and she soon cheered up and used magic on herself.

Having received a radical effect incomparable to makeup, she transformed into a sexy girl no less stunning than Rosalie.

“Done? Then I’ll sit in an elegant and captivating pose and drink some coffee. Master, no… like your ‘lover’?”

“Good. The picture’s perfect now.”

Well… as I was killing time like this, Emma arrived as expected.

*

“Perfect… I’m perfect. Now, I might not even be inferior to Lizley…? Maybe even more?”

Emma Agnelli completed the ultimate dolling up, something she had never done even once when going to meet Garett.

Of course, following Lizley’s advice not to show too much of herself to her boyfriend, she did tend to put “less” effort in when meeting Garett.

Instead, when going to hunting pubs or blind dates behind Garett’s back, she’d try her best to look as flashy and sophisticated as possible…

Anyway, Emma’s dolling up today was on a completely different level from anything she had done before.

Objectively speaking, it was arguably the peak of her physical beauty in Emma Agnelli’s roughly twenty-plus years of life.

In her mind, the image of a fierce and wild, yet beastly and charming Orca, completely falling for her, was already swirling.

“Underworld boss or whatever… If Orca is a man, he won’t be able to resist me now, will he? A sly man… He pretended to be harsh, but perhaps he subtly went easy on me?”

It was true that Ras had gone easy on Emma, ensuring she didn’t die while physically restraining her.

However, this was merely because if Emma died, his plans would go awry, and there was a low, but still present, risk of being pursued.

Anyway, Emma, in high spirits, hummed a tune as she entered Delphi’s back alleys, the alleyway leading to Orca’s loan shark office.

Dressing up so elaborately and entering dangerous back alleys without any escort was an astonishingly brainless act.

However, since Ras had just recently cleared the area, Emma didn’t encounter any unfortunate incidents on her way.

Of course, upon arriving at the entrance of Orca’s office, she immediately began to suffer a concentrated dose of the indignities she had avoided.

“Heh heh… A young woman with orange hair. Must be the woman the boss spoke of. What’s your name?”

“E-Emma Agnelli. But you… how dare you…! To a noble…”

Three or four burly thugs surrounded Emma, chuckling.

Pisces’s personally hand-picked ‘Black Rose Vine’ elite guards were audacious and quick-witted.

Following Pisces’s instructions to intimidate Emma beforehand, they encircled her and began to verbally abuse and ridicule her.

“This is the first time I’ve seen a woman come to a loan shark’s office dressed up like this. Oh, perhaps you’re trying to seduce our boss?”

“Hahaha!!! No way. With a face and body like that, how could she? The woman who’s always by the boss’s side is so beautiful.”

The burly men, laughing loudly and scoffing at Emma’s elaborate preparation, made Emma shrink back, and more importantly, her pride suffered a tremendous crack.

Just an hour ago, Emma had been full of confidence, comparing herself to ‘that Lizley’ while looking in the mirror.

However, once a person’s heightened pride is disparaged by others, their spirit tends to rapidly crumble.

Especially for people like Emma, who lack genuine self-esteem, such denigration and ridicule act even more terrifyingly.

“Get out of my way! You… you lowly commoners… You who can’t even meet my eyes…”

Emma glared at the thugs fiercely and growled, but what reason would back alley denizens have to fear such a thing…?

“You who can’t even meet my eyes~~ Hey, hey! Marukl, this girl is crying, she’s crying.”

“Tsk, tsk. She even put on makeup to try and seduce the boss, and it’s all running now. Stop teasing her. It’s clear she has no money and came here willing to repay with her body. Just leave her be. Haven’t we seen types like her a hundred times?”

One thug mimicked Emma and ridiculed her, while another, even more unpleasantly, offered pity while delivering harsh truths… Emma was already starting to feel faint.

‘Just you wait. How dare mere subordinates… Clearly, the look Orca gave me was one of lust. Whether as a concubine or whatever… As soon as I get a place by his side, I’ll have all of them beheaded…’

And when one’s mental state is cornered, a person’s thoughts and actions tend to narrow and harden.

Emma Agnelli thus entered the office, half-submissive to Orca, the loan shark of the back alleys.

In just one day, the messy and bizarre black magic workshop had transformed into a clean, library-like office with a rugged feel.

Neatly lined bookshelves, orderly account ledgers, and a table and chairs were all meticulously arranged.

The black curtains, which had been desperately wrapped around like a cave, were all drawn back, making the office feel pleasantly airy.

Orca sat at his desk, quietly reading a book.

And a woman Emma had never seen before was humming a tune as she brewed coffee.

The breathtakingly beautiful woman had hair as black as ebony and purplish-black eyes.

A sexy beauty with an aura, face, and body that Emma could never possess unless she was reborn.

Gulp—

Emma involuntarily swallowed, overwhelmed by the stunning beauty, and only then did the woman brewing coffee raise her head to look at Emma.

The emotions in her gaze were contempt, disdain… such things.

“Orca. It seems your guest has arrived?”

A resonant voice, sounding dismissive with a “hmm~” tone, was directed at Orca, but Orca didn’t even glance at Emma.

Emma, feeling a suffocating pressure, opened her mouth towards the indifferent yet brutal man.

*

“Mr. Orca, hello. I’m Emma Agnelli. Um… I have something to tell you…”

“Did you bring the money?”

I picked up a random book and pretended to read, not looking at Emma, and simply stated my purpose.

One of the good ways to assert my dominance is to cut off the other person’s words and state only my business.

The other person, regardless of their prepared words or actions, will have their tempo broken and get flustered.

Furthermore, note that giving not even a glance can double the pressure.

“That… I apologize. I couldn’t arrange it. However, I have a good offer…”

“Do you think you’re in a position to make me an offer?”

My voice was as dry and calm as possible, but imbued with power. It would be good if I could infuse it with mana, and even better if I could infuse it with an Inner Realm, like me.

Instead of the fierce and passionate Inner Realm of Rakshasa or Nameless, I completely infused my voice with the ice-cold and merciless Inner Realm of Snow Bloom.

Emma, properly terrified by my icy, heartless voice, froze like a person whose mouth and body had been immobilized.

I quietly closed the book I was pretending to read, stood up, and walked towards Emma, who was still standing by the entrance.

Thump, thump.

After taking about two steps, Emma trembled like an aspen tree and then knelt down.

With a thud, a little dust scattered.

And then, her outfit, makeup, and even perfume caught my eye… It was so obvious she had gone all out to ‘seduce Orca,’ and it was hilarious.

Emma, how could you be so exactly the person I imagined?

“Stand up. Kneeling won’t change anything. For now, go sit over there. You must be tired from coming here, so I’ll give you a free cup of coffee.”

“Please… just a little, let me tell you…”

“Go sit.”

Emma gasped and then, trembling, stood up and followed my command.

Yes. From now on, you will obey my words without the slightest deviation.

“What kind of life must you have lived to think of borrowing from a loan shark at your age? Here… drink it while it’s warm. Your elder sister can’t stand to see pitiful children like you.”

Pisces rolled her eyes and, with an overly excited voice, poured coffee for Emma and handed it to her.

As expected, like an excellent actress, Pisces’s tone and the atmosphere of her dialogue were perfect, completely devoid of loveliness and filled with cunning.

“…..”

Emma received the coffee Pisces handed her with hands so stiff they seemed frozen, and silently sipped it.

“And dear, you should say ‘thank you’ at times like this… What kind of family raised you? Your home education is truly terrible, isn’t it? Well, of course, with rotten home education, you’d think of taking out a loan for such a thing.”

Her manner of attacking Emma, even dragging in her home education, was sharp, and I conveyed my sentiment with a look: ‘Excellent, my subordinate.’

“Tha… thank you…”

Emma, completely overwhelmed by the Inner Realm of Snow Bloom and her current predicament, even offered thanks, which she would never usually do.

“What’s important to a loan shark is money. Money repaid on time, money that has accumulated due to overdue payments, and money that is defaulted on. And I… hate defaulting on money more than anything in the world.”

As I growled lowly at the trembling girl, she couldn’t even meet my eyes, like a scared dog.

“I didn’t expect you to so brazenly blurt out that you couldn’t get the money. It’s not even a huge sum. Can’t a distinguished noble madam like yourself produce a mere fourteen talent gold coins?”

“I brought something better than money… So please, just for a moment… listen to my story…”

Seeing Emma desperately pleading, it was clear how pitifully she clung to her self-pride.

“There’s no need to hear your story. It’s obvious, isn’t it? You’ve come to offer that worthless body of yours? Listen… you greenhorn, how many years have I been doing this, and how many women do you think have taken out loans from me?”

Actually, I debuted as a loan shark less than a week ago, and you’re my first client.

Of course, even if our Emma were a hundred times smarter, she wouldn’t know that.

“A big shot like me in the underworld can embrace any beauty I desire. You… honestly, you’re not even good enough to be my foot-wiper. Of course, repayment is possible in other ways using your body.”

“…Foot-wiper? Then what about that look…? No… more than that, ‘other ways of repayment,’ do you mean…?”

As expected, Emma seemed to have interpreted my amused gaze as deep affection or lust for her.

I’d already noticed this when she kept clinging to me and acting flirtatiously in such a pathetic way… I can’t believe she actually relied on just that.

“I’d rip out your organs and sell them. Your heart, liver, kidneys, eyeballs… things like that. Or, there’s always the option of selling you into slavery in Kashmir or Azulda. But that wouldn’t make much money. You don’t seem to be a special constitution like Extreme Yin, Extreme Yang, or Yin-Yang Body…”

“You… you lunatic…! You’re not a loan shark, you’re a human trafficker…! How can someone do such a trashy thing…?”

The girl, in her typical fashion, tried to pick a fight the moment words like organ trafficking and human trafficking came out of my mouth.

“Heh heh… Hearing such words from you is absurd. Then what does that make you, who even took out a loan to use black magic to kill your own unsuspecting schoolmates? Do you know what happens to someone when ‘Decay’ properly affects them?”

“Ugh… That…!!”

Lergo’s ‘Decay’ is a particularly vicious curse, even among black magic curses, of a very high caliber.

If a properly cast ‘Decay’ hits its target directly, anyone not at the level of having mastered an Inner Realm will inevitably die in agony.

Moreover… even if performed consistently, this ‘Decay’ can inflict significant damage on those who have mastered an Inner Realm.

Before the regression, Leon used this very curse to send the previous emperor, who had entered the Inner Realm, to his end much earlier than planned.

If Emma had truly succeeded in casting this curse, the rest of the kids, excluding me, would have died if unlucky… or become permanently disabled for life if lucky.

The black magic ingredients were shoddy, but the level of the affected kids was so low that they had no resistance to the curse itself.

My actions of immediately acquiring Pisces, a master of black magic tracking, and trying to prevent Leon from casting more curses on the previous emperor right after my regression, in a way, saved the rest of our team members.

Pisces, who had been listening to Emma’s nonsense beside me, burst into laughter and mocked her.

“Morality, sentiment… those are only discussed by those who are qualified to do so. Do you think you’re better than us? No… You’re trash, but you’re also waste that doesn’t even repay money. And with that body of yours, which isn’t even worth looking at… no matter how hard you wiggle, will ‘my dear’ even budge? You can’t repay a single coin with that body, no matter what you do.”

While speaking, my subordinate, who charmingly wrapped her arm around me and flirted, was incomparable to Emma, who was merely ill-tempered and spiteful.

I didn’t even give Emma, who was trembling with anger and fear, a chance to reply, and began to speak what I wanted to say.

Listen carefully, for this is my true purpose.

“This is my personal story, and I didn’t want to tell it, but you seem to have such a profound misunderstanding that I must. It’s a rambling personal history, so if you sit and listen to the end, I’ll deduct one gold coin from your debt.”

Emma, in no position to be picky, eagerly nodded at the mention of even a slight debt reduction.

“Emma Agnelli… Orange hair, slightly spiteful and sharp eyes, a thin body and short stature… You possess every single element I despise in a woman. Honestly, it was hard to tolerate you.”

Just to clarify, my words are, of course, mixed with lies.

I don’t hate people based solely on appearance and body. I only hate ‘Emma.’

“H-how can you say such a thing…?”

Of course, Emma muttered distractedly upon hearing my declaration of ‘hatred,’ but I paid no attention and immediately got to the point.

“I am from the Kingdom of Kashmir. My family, like yours, was a lower-ranking noble house. A baronial family… though I don’t know if the family still exists.”

This is the beginning of the fictional character Orca’s tear-jerking past recollection.

“How did I, a noble, end up in the underworld? The tragedy began with a woman exactly like you.”

“What… what are you talking about?”

Her voice was almost sobbing as she asked me, and I calmly recounted the story of the fictional baronial young master, Orca.

“She was my fiancée’s childhood friend. A woman who always looked down on me because our family’s title was low. Every word, every action… always saying ‘just a baron,’ ‘a noble who isn’t even noble-like,’ ‘uneducated’… Although that person was merely the daughter of a viscount family herself. Just like you, Emma Agnelli, she was the daughter of a family with no real standing and no money.”

“….Please… please don’t insult my family.”

Emma desperately tried to protect her last bastion, her insignificant family, but it was useless.

The times she subtly looked down on me and ignored me when Lizley wasn’t around… Back then, I just let it go, thinking she was my future wife’s closest companion.

I forcibly understood, thinking there was enough reason for Emma, who treated Lizley like a sister, to dislike me and Etgard, and Emma soon started to treat me like a pushover.

So, excessive empathy or sentiment is always poison.

“Is that an interjection? It sounds good. Anyway… this ill-bred wretch did something terrible to me. I don’t know why she hated me so much, but she falsely accused me. First, she tricked me with water at a noble’s party and made me drink an aphrodisiac. But I failed because my body doesn’t react well to drugs. So… she framed me as a rapist who tried to sexually assault her.”

“That… that’s… just because she hated you…”

Yes. That’s exactly what you tried to do to me, you wicked, foolish woman.

“People’s malice is more terrifying than you think. Our family was too weak to protect me from such rumors. I don’t know why that woman did what she did… but her methods were so malicious I wondered if she was a lesbian who loved my fiancée. I suddenly became a complete piece of trash who tried to rape my fiancée’s childhood friend, and I fled to avoid going to prison.”

In this way, the past me before regression, the present me, and Orca of the back alleys, whom I created by projecting my life, intersect and blend in my mind.

Wavering flames, melting away truth and lies, past and present, fuse them all together.

Is Orca the loan shark a perfect fiction and illusion?

No.

If I hadn’t been falsely accused so unfairly before the regression, if I hadn’t faced the blades that still aggressively target me even now, after returning and living a new life, Orca would never have been born.

You, and your esteemed masters, created the vicious loan shark of the back alleys, so I am merely going to collect the debt of my life.

Ah, why won’t these foolish creatures just leave me alone?

“Truly… astonishingly similar. Your manner of speech, gestures, appearance, voice… and above all, that poisoned heart that tries to harm someone for reasons utterly incomprehensible. Looking at you disgusts me to no end. To be honest… I don’t need money or anything else; I’m currently torn hundreds of times over whether to simply melt you into nothingness here and forever forgive your debt. Will my heart be at ease if I blame everything on you?”

In Emma’s terrified eyes, full of my gaze, my flickering flames were reflected entirely.

The madness of that time, when I was driven insane by injustice, returning from the past, dancing in waves—the Rondeau of the Fire Fiend.

Like someone watching an erupting volcano right before their eyes, Emma was desperately pleading with a voice full of despair and terror.

“Please… stop… stop it… I-I’m not the person you know…”

“Shut up. It’s your fault. You made me so miserable. So say it! Say you’re sorry. Say you’ve committed a heinous crime. Say you’re trash unworthy of forgiveness.”

Logic, situation, or even revealing my identity—none of that matters to me now.

When I killed Emma with my own hands before the regression, did I receive an apology from her?

No… Back then, before I could even demand an apology, the out-of-control Nine Heavens Annihilation Art rampaged and instantly consumed Emma and everything she had built.

So, this current stubbornness is merely acting on behalf of the past me, who couldn’t find peace without receiving an apology.

Emma prostrated herself on the floor, banging her head, and repeatedly apologized to me.

“I’m sorry. I, I did it. I committed a heinous crime. I’m trash unworthy of even forgiveness… So please, just spare my life…”

“If you understand, get out. As promised, I’ll forgive one gold coin. But considering the interest… I wonder if that forgiveness will even matter. Get out before the count of thirteen.”

Emma, terrified out of her wits by my growling words, fled.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been subjected to such intense emotions; I’m utterly exhausted.

Did the man, who had suddenly become a sinner without any guilt, finally find peaceful sleep?

“Ras… what exactly did you go through…?”

Pisces sat beside me with a pained expression, pulling my face into her embrace.

Melon scent… The smell of the soap she uses these days mixed with her sweet body odor wafted faintly.

My agitated Inner Realm, and the ‘real me’ that had melted and merged with my pre-regression self and the current Orca, found stability and returned to their original form within that faint, warm fragrance.

“I’ll tell you… not too late. I’m a bit tired right now…”

“It’s okay. Whenever, or… if you don’t feel like it, you can keep it a secret. I’m smart, so if I get really curious, I’ll find the answers myself…”

Her soft, loving comfort, soothing me, felt even sweeter today.

Sweet enough to bury without a trace the stench of burning corpses that often wafted from various corners of my heart.