"Miss Aelia, everything's finished. We can open the restaurant whenever you want" Daniel and Ricky were reporting the status of the restaurant to Gaya as she was munching on the cookies. Crumbs of cookies were all over her pearl white dress and the sofa yet she couldn't care less.
"I'll inform Ghost and come to a decision. Now go make sure there's no problem at Majestic"
"Yes, Miss Aelia" They bowed deeply before leaving her room. With Gaya's guidance and the pills given to them by her, Ricky and Daniel reached the Body Strengthening stage. Previously, one could count the bones in Ricky's body but now, he developed a well-toned body. Daniel on the other hand shed all the fat as well as his bushy beard.
Their transformation was shocking to many people in River town who have known them for so long. When they quit their guard job, many thought they were making a mistake, after all, working under the king of Bredia would provide them with a stable income and pension. However, those people who thought this became jealous as Daniel and Ricky did not only earn a handsome salary but their social status was also elevated by Ghost.
"Sister Aelia, may I come in?" Jack asked, standing near the door.
"What is it? Is someone messing with the new girl again?"
"No no no" Jack frantically shook his head. Only yesterday, he saw Gaya beat the shit out of a guy who groped the new girl at the counter's ass.
She was so ruthless that she set the guy's butt on fire.
"She's doing fine"
Considering a portion of the profit they were making in Majestic is going to the sect, Gaya hired a female disciple of the sect to be her assistant. By being Gaya's assistant meant that the girl has to do everything that Gaya does at the Majestic, including the occasional curses at the customers to keep them online. Thanks to Ghost and Gaya's reputation, there weren't as many unruly customers as when they first opened the Majestic.
On top of the girl, Gaya also hired a group of adventurers as the security in case someone tried to steal or attack the Majestic while she was away. Even if the adventurers couldn't stop the attacks, they would function to slow down the enemies a bit by either getting killed or wounded.
"Miss Ella is here to meet you, Sister Aelia"
"Go and tell her to come in" Soon after Jack left the room, Ella entered the room. She was still in full black with a hood covering her burned skin.
Seating herself on the sofa, Ella looked around, searching for Ghost.
"He's col...tivating. Tell me, how's your thing gi...ing?" Words barely escaped her mouth which was filled with biscuits.
"With everything you've given me, most of the disciples, teachers and elders will follow me"
"Most? You've got a specific number in mind?"
"We've 140 disciples, 23 teachers, and 6 elders. Out of them,100 disciples,15 teachers, and 4 elders are on my side. The rest of them were too loyal to Mathias"
"Or too stupid," said Gaya, placing the empty cookie jar on the table.
"Alright, I'd say we put this merger on the road. Demand the election to vote for a new sect leader now. Since you've got the majority of the elders and teachers at your side, you can easily win it but something tells me you would have done it by now if there isn't a problem with that plan"
Ella sighed, nodding her head.
"Mathias found a loophole in the document written by the founders. The election can't be held for another couple of years"
"Fuck the elections!" Gaya punched the sofa in anger.
"Enough of this election shit. Let's kill this fucker and be done with him"
"No way we can kill him. The only reason he's still not killing me or my supporters is that he's afraid of your previous sect master, the Soul Refiner. Besides, nowadays, he's not leaving his room and always cultivating"
"This seems like a good test for Aria" Gaya remembered Aria's ability to pass through defense arrays without triggering them. Handing over the operation to kill Mathias would be a good test for Aria, Gaya thought.
"Wait a sec," She said to Ella before going to the kitchen. Ella saw her coming back with a flower vase.
"Put this near Mathias's room. We'll take care of the rest"
"What is this?"
"You don't want to know. Just do what I said"
************************************
"Next time...give me...a fucking...uwak...warning..." Gaya threw up on the floor after Michael brought her to Abyssal by teleporting her.
"It's a new teleportation scroll I just created. You'll get used to it"
"I better be" he gave a few minutes to stabilize her body.
"Gross," Nightmare said, hovering over her head.
"Go away...uwak" she swatted Nightmare away before continuing to throw up. Considering she filled her belly with cookies, it took her a few minutes to empty her belly.
"Here" Michael gave her a bottle of water and wiped off her mouth using a kerchief.
"Don't you have...a juice or something"
Thut!
Michael slapped the back of her head, "just drink the water"
"Raylene really spoiled this snake" Nightmare ridiculed Gaya.
"Enough you two. Come we have work to do" he said walking towards the surveillance monitors he glued to the wall in his room.
Soon afterward, he willed the system to show the feed of Sadie's room.
While the system was displaying the feed, he retrieved all the parts he bought from the burning star to start building the drones.
"Hey look it's the human who tried to kiss you" Nightmare bit his tongue quickly realizing that he shouldn't have said this. Yet it was too late as he felt a cold killing intent radiating from her body.
"What?!"
"Relax, I told her that I have a girlfriend. Nesta?" However, before Gaya could say anything, she saw him stop whatever he was doing to stare at the monitor.
"We'll have this conversation later" she mumbled as she stared at the muscular woman on the monitor. After Nesta, a few other youngsters with guardian symbols embroidered on their chests entered Sadie's room. All of them looked very serious.
"Is it done?" Sadie asked Nesta.
"Yes," Nesta said, throwing a file on the table before Sadie.
"I assume everyone has read this file" except for Sadie who gawked cluelessly, nodded their heads.
"What were you doing? Banging Ghost?" Nesta asked as Michael felt the air around him became colder.
"I wish. Apparently, he has a girlfriend now"
"Good for him. Alright, let me run everyone through the plan again, listen carefully" Sadie leaned on the nearby wall to listen to Nesta.
"From an hour ago, we the guardians and the duke have withdrawn the troops and recalled the hunt for Nightcrawler"
"Interesting," said Michael.
"What's the plan?"
"The plan is simple, Sadie. We withdraw the men, let Nightcrawler crawl out of whatever hole he's in, and when he does bam!" Nesta punched a hole in the wall, "we nab that bastard"
"How?"
"Take a look at all the paintings' ' Nesta threw the file at Sadie as she began to rummage through the file. Since the spider couldn't cover the photos inside the file, Michael had no idea what the paintings looked like.
"Those are the paintings of Nightcrawler's victims. My team did a good job putting it all together. Can you see what they all have in common?"
Sadie remained silent for a few moments before answering Nesta.
"They all have red hair?" Sadie said furrowing her brows in doubt.
"Exactly. That sick bastard has a thing for redheads. However, that's not the only thing my team found. Look at the map, that's his hunting circle"
"Although redheads are not very common, there must be at least a fifty redheads living in this area"
"Thirty-six to be exact and all of them are being replaced by my men as we speak," Nesta said and continued,
"As you all know, ever since we put the city under lockdown, there wasn't a single new murder that matched Nightcrawler's mo. The behavior predictors at the guild had classified Nightcrawler as a serial killer. The longer he goes without killing, the stronger his desire to kill again. We may have still no idea how did he manage to kill those nobles who had powerful defense arrays, we now know that he will strike as soon as he feels safe"
"Are you pretending to be withdrawing the troops or..."
"No tricks. For the plan to work, we really have to convince the Nightcrawler that we called off the hunt. Only then, he would emerge again and make a move on one of my thirty-six men"
"You're taking a pretty big risk here, Nesta" Sadie said as Nesta laughed.
"No risk, no reward Sadie. You know this better than anyone"
Michael swiftly moved the spider through telepathic connection to take a glimpse at Nightcrawler's hunting area. The spider had a risk of being caught by Nesta or anyone the guardians in the room but it was worth the risk. If they did catch the spider, Michael would destroy the spider remotely so they would get nothing.
"Just a little more" Michael mumbled looking at the spider getting closer and closer to the file. If he could manage to move the spider directly above the file on the table, he would get a glimpse.
"System, the moment the file comes into the sight, take a picture"
[It would be 50 badass points]
"No problem"
Fortunately, the camouflage of the spider was enough to avoid getting detected by the guardians. Regardless of all the safety measures Michael built in the spider, he still treated spying using the spiders cautiously.
[Picture taken successfully]
The moment he heard the confirmation sound from the system, he immediately moved the spider to a safe dark spot.
"Let's hunt this Nightcrawler ourselves"
***********************
Here's the discord link to my server where you can see the character images, listen to character theme music and have a chat with me...
https://discord.gg/yMCZbVNbpC