Chapter 73 73 : Get Your Dirty Hands Off Him...! Part 2
And if there are any mistakes pls comment them down*^
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"Suthia has already punished the disloyal maid for you. Zero won\'t bother you anymore! She and her machines have turned into a pile of \'scrap\'."
After saying this, the imagery showed Zero again, and Suthia urgently wanted to see despair on Renji\'s face, so that her Lord would no longer resist and could enjoy happiness with her.
However...
"How! How can you still smile? Without Zero, what do you have left? Is there anyone left by your side who can stop Thia?"
The nun screamed.
Yes, why did Renji suddenly smile? It was simple – he felt a contract response, signaling that one of his Eclipses was very close.
And the location...
Right above his head!
"Thia, how about we make a bet?" Renji suddenly threw away the only weapon in his hand, the water pipe, and then smiled and asked the nun opposite him.
"A bet?"
"Yes. Let\'s bet whether Eileen will come back, and whether she\'ll bring Zero with her."
Suthia stared intently at the young man, trying to see if he was joking. Unfortunately for her, she couldn\'t.
Eileen?
The nun never imagined that at such a critical moment, the last name to come out of her Lord\'s mouth would be Eileen…
In her eyes, this was the kind of trash character that Her Lord would abandon at the first opportunity. Suthia never even considered "Eileen" a threat, or worth factoring in when contemplating her Lord\'s potential resistance.
But the result...
"Hahahah, My beloved Lord, you must be sick. Didn\'t you see that Zero has already been completely scrapped and turned into a pile of junk by Thia?"
"So... come back to my side, my Beloved Lord, Thia will heal you. Thia will..."
The nun\'s doting words hadn\'t even finished yet when...
BOOM!*
Suthia\'s infatuated words were abruptly cut off by a thunderous roar from above, as if the sky had collapsed. The entire sewer seemed to shake, bricks and rubble falling from above. Suthia, with disbelief in her eyes, for the first time shifted her gaze from Renji and looked upwards.
What they saw was the complete collapse of the ceiling of the sewer they were in, creating a massive cave-in. It looked like an abyss gazing back at Suthia.
At this moment, Renji\'s voice resounded once again.
It echoed in the nun\'s ears.
It reverberated in the underground sewer that had just been pierced from above.
"Thia, do you remember when you asked what Eileen did before she became an Eclipse? You asked what her profession was?"
Without waiting for the nun to answer, Renji answered his own question.
"Eileen was a scavenger, someone who made a living by collecting trash"
"So..."
Renji opened Eileen\'s character panel and looked at the skill that had often been subconsciously ignored as if it were a useless decoration.
That was Eileen\'s "Base Specialty" ability.
[Base Specialty: Trash Master (IV): A "Medium Chance" to turn gathered trash into treasure.]
(HailTheLoili: that\'s one of the reasons how she fixed Zero\'s robot maid. sorry I forgot to mention it last chapter... my bad)
"Well… she Is really good at picking up trash"
The situation was increasingly slipping from Suthia\'s control, and the sense of familiarity she felt towards Her Lord was getting stronger.
Back then, when they faced one seemingly impossible, unwinnable, hopeless deadlock one after another, it was Renji, Her beloved Lord, who cleverly strategized and perfectly commanded, leading them to miraculous victories and turning the tides in desperate situations, overcoming one formidable enemy after another.
However, back then, that familiar feeling for her, as a comrade of her Lord, was comfort, ease, joy, and happiness.
But this time... she was standing opposite her master.
That familiar feeling rapidly turned into tension, unease, impatience, fear, and dread in the depths of Suthia\'s heart.
Suthia didn\'t care anymore. She didn\'t care about anything.
Even at the cost of enduring the backlash of the contract, she lunged at Renji, reaching out to grab him.
She was afraid of her master\'s power, not his personal strength, because the true source of Emperor Ashen\'s terror, the one that had made countless forces in the wasteland fear him, was his leadership and planing.
But obviously.
It was already too late.
Intense flames flickered from the giant hole above, gunfire lashing out at Suthia, and several whistling micro-missiles locked onto the nun\'s body.
[Anger....Protect…. Master!] A mechanical, yet not cold, electronic synthesized voice rang out,
And then
And then, the roar of a sword.
Behind the flames, a new bloody greatsword, filled with murderous and ferocious aura, descended from the sky, cleaving toward Suthia, who was trying to grab Renji and escape.
Eileen: "Take your damn —— dirty hands."
"Off him!"
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Explosions and flames filled the underground sewer.
When Suthia, who had been forced to retreat, anxiously searched for Renji\'s figure, she found that the he had been taken far away from her.
Standing on either side of Renji were the robotic maid with smoking gun barrels on her arms and Eileen, who had been sent away not long ago but had returned wielding a giant sword!
Oh, there was one more person, the Knight Tamic, but his presence didn\'t stood out so much from the others that he was subconsciously overlooked.
"Old Timer, she... she didn\'t harm you, did she?" Eileen immediately cast her worry gaze on Renji.
"No, but it would have been bad if you had come any later."
Seeing Renji\'s pale and exhausted appearance, and recalling the simulated scenario with the maid, Eileen felt even more distressed and guilty. The girl tightened her grip on the sword in her hand.
"I\'m sorry, I came late. If I had realized the message you gave me earlier..."
Before Eileen could finish, Renji waved his hands repeatedly:
"No, no, no, the fact that you understood the meaning of that business card already exceeded my expectations."
"What!? Is that all you expect from me? Do you think I\'m a fool?" The girl\'s mood shifted from self-blame to anger as she stared wide-eyed at Renji.
"I can\'t say for sure."
"What would you have done if I hadn\'t come?"
"What else could I have done? Just obediently endure it until she\'s satisfied."
Watching Renji\'s expression, which seemed to say, "Well, my wife won\'t get tired anyway" Eileen blushed and mumbled to herself,
"You shameless pervert... not even a bit embarrassed!"
"Heh~, What\'s that? You\'re not playing the tomboy this time?" Renji teased.
"Ugh!"
[Warning. Detected abnormal increase in combat capabilities of hostile target. Please refrain from engaging in pointless provocations, Master and Miss Eileen] a warning from the mechanical maid interrupted their banter.
It was clear that Suthia on the other side had adopted her classic pose of lowering her head, covering her expression with her bangs.
Whenever this pose appeared, it meant that the nun could no longer control the dark, twisted anger on her face.
"Here\'s something good for you."
Before Eileen could react, Renji took out the upper and lower Brand marks of [Raise a Glass!] and, as usual, handed them directly to Eileen.
As the Brand marks entered her body, Eileen couldn\'t help but let out a grunt. For some reason, this time was completely different from before, and the sensation was unusually intense.
Indeed.
Because the previous Brand marks that Renji had given her were like "dog food" and "upgrade materials" that once fed to Eileen, became her possessions.
But this time\'s [Brand: Raise a Glass] was different. It was equipment, and even if he gave it to Eileen, Renji could take it off at any time. For the girl, it was truly an "alien" item.
As the Brand marks entered the girl\'s body, the contract at the back of her neck flickered with red light. All powerful Tainted items were a double-edged sword, bringing unparalleled strength while imposing a heavy contamination cost.
That\'s why the priest Gralon spent decades trying to find someone who could successfully equip this set of Brands.
But with the [Contract] Eileen\'s mind was clear and focused. All the frenzied gibberish and chaotic muttering caused by the Taint\'s Miasmas influence disappeared in an instant, leaving no trace.
In its place, a tattoo-like pattern appeared on the girl\'s upper and lower back, resembling a pair of raised glasses.
The tattoo pattern was not static; the corners of the two raised glasses seemed to sway gently, as if craving to be filled with some liquid.
That liquid was none other than fresh, red blood.
"Ahhhhh!" A miserable cry came from the distant opposite side as Suthia completely lost her sanity the moment Renji gave the Brand marks to Eileen.
Her eyes were bloodshot, her hair disheveled, and she was both enraged and terrified.
She could win this battle.
She had a terrifying horde of Tainted corpses that Gralon had accumulated over decades, nearly covering the entire underground sewer of Blackhole Plains. On the other side, there were only three people, just three!
\'I have absolute numerical advantage. Faced with this disparity, even with my Lord\'s Leadership, what can he do?\'