-Present-
Jessica was currently shaking as those memories flashed before her eyes.
She had been so terrified before, but now that she could remember what had happened, she was mortified.
Her mind had automatically kept her from remembering the events of that day. She didn’t want to accept what had happened, and her mind was trying to protect her from those same memories.
One could call it PTSD, but Silas didn’t really care.
All he knew was that the woman before him was shaking like crazy, and from what he’s understood so far, everyone with the Deathlock curse is someone who remembered something that happened that night.
Of course, most of their memories happened to be fragmented. Every time he asked someone with the Deathlock curse what had happened, they would tell him a few fragmented recall what the scene before freaking out again.
However, after his long interrogation, Silas realized finally pieced most of the story together, by using all of their memories and piecing them together like the jigsaw pieces of a puzzle.
“I don’t actually need you.” Silas thought aloud before grabbing her hair and raising her up against the tree behind her.
The terror in her eyes seemed to be multiplying as the seconds passed, but eventually, Silas snapped his fingers and created an icicle with an edge sharp enough to stab right through the average light armor.
He had condensed it to make sure that it can do the job and as he raised it into the air, readying himself to stab her through the heart, she said something that interested him.
“Slave…”
“What?” Silas raised a brow.
“Make me your slave. That way, you can make sure I will never tell anyone about what I saw that day.
“Too much work.” Silas shugged and continued “Plus, not only are slave items illegal, they are extremely expensive for that very reason.”
“Yeah… But I have one.” She muttered and took something out of her jacket pocket before dropping it to the ground.
“And why do you have that, exactly?” Silas asked with a suspicious tone.
“Madam Greed told me to capture something on our way back. As you can see, it didn’t go so well.” She chuckled before gritting her teeth in pain as Silas switched from holding her up by her hair to using her neck instead.
Creating an earth pillar, Silas raised the collar-like slave item to his eye level before narrowing his eyes.
“How do I know this is a slave item? For all I know, you might have a certain interest in collars and keep it around at all times. Now that I’ve put you in this spot, you probably thought you can use it to trick me since I probably won’t know the difference.” Silas frowned while keeping an eye on her life force.
Even though it was miniscule. the life force usually reacted when someone says a lie. Actually it reacts to all the person’s thoughts and emotions. From what Silas could see right now, he could tell that she was terrified of him. Her heart beat and breathing seemed to tell him the same too.
“I swear… I’m… Not… Lying…” She wheezed out, struggling to breath with the tight grip around her neck.
She had to use a lot of toki to even breathe. In that moment, she knew that there was no way she would win this fight, especially in her currrent state.
After she had woken up, Jessica made the only right decision… Or at least she through she did.
She didn’t want to test her fate, so without thinking twice, she had run away from the battlefield, trying to get as far away from Silas, or whatever he came, as possible.
She crossed many towns on the way, but her mind was trying its best to surpress the memories of what she had seen, so even though many asked her why her arm was hurt, she didn’t tell them anything.
However, at one point a healer told her that they would heal her arm for free, yet despite using everything up to tier 4 spells, she wasn’t healing.
It was as if the healing energy was being rejected. The healer didn’t understand what had happened, and even though they wanted to examine Jessica to see what they could do, she knew that they could do nothing.
However, now that Silas was right in front of her, something about her wounds were changing.
It felt like they were beginning to burn her. It felt like she was recieving the wound all over again, and the only thing she could see was excruciating pain.
“Put the collar on my neck.” Silas ordered while dropping her to the ground.
She wasn’t sure if she had heard him correctly. Maybe the pain was messing with her mind? Or at least that’s what she thought in that moment.
“Can you hear me? I’m asking you to put the collar on my neck. I have to make sure it works.” Silas asked.
He knew that putting it on himself probably wouldn’t work, so he was going to ask Jessica to do it. He was fairly certain that it wouldn’t work. It had a lot less energy than the one Greed had used, and since then, he had gained a certain level of resistance toward slave items.
‘Slave items?’ Silas reached for the back of his necks and realized that the item Greed had placed on it was gone.
“Right now?” Jessica asked with preplexed tone, while Silas simply nodded.
While Greed’s item had worked for the first few minutes, the serums she injected into his body had a hand in that. However, even if the slave collar worked, it wouldn’t be a big deal since he would eventually gain a resistance to it.
He usually wouldn’t have taken a risk like this, but since he already lost the advantage he had over Greed, he wanted to take something from her too.
Plus, he had a feeling that she had something to do with the assassins, and if his hunch proved to be true, he’d need someone on the inside to carry out his plan B
—————————–
[If you have enjoyed this chapter and would like to support the author, please vote using your power stones or golden tickets. Also, you can join my discord server today to see illustrations or to converse about the latest chapters.]