Chapter 826: “Disciples” of Nowhere (1)
<=Spring Brawler...what the hell?=>
[Shut up, I’m improvising. Screamira, Hurricroak. You girls ready?]
[Yuppers! Unusually powerful senpai and kohai plan is a go. Just waiting for a good time to cut-in.]
[Are these human disguises really necessary? I feel so…exposed.]
[Was…was that a joke over the fact that you’re actually made of bones or the fact that you’re built like a brick house made of sexy?]
[Yes.]
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The best lies in the world have the following traits:
1. Just enough truth so that people think you’re just misinterpreting facts at the very least.
2. Just enough details that people would get distracted and be unable to to separate fact from fiction.
3. A group of people that can affirm that the given lie was actually a shared truth.
Of course, it should be noted that having all three of these traits is about as rare as a royal flush.
-Thr musings of a gamble who challenged the devil to a card game…and won.
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“Hang on, you did this?,” the young man(Spring Brawler) reiterated when he saw that Daria had readily volunteer as the culprit.
The Seventh Lady of the Zhen Clan held her head up surprisingly high despite being blamed for a large amount go collateral damage. Evidently, she was one of those people who didn’t shirk away from their responsibilities and/or blame, but was the type of person who would stand with their head held up high even if they were framed for a crime they never committed.
Granted, this was a case where there were about a dozen or so witnesses.
“Why yes, young man,” Daria stated with a clam tone of voice. “While I was in the middle of chatting with my darling niece and nephews, some strange being appeared out of nowhere and tried to land on top of like a demented mosquito. Which is why I treated the thing as a mosquito and smacked it out of the way so it wouldn’t bite anyone else. Unfortunately, they proved hardier than anticipated. So instead of being reduced to mist as I intended, they got launched into your previous wall. I do apologize for that.”
“…”
While the Zhen Clan scions were relieved that they weren’t being the subject to the tirade of some random young man, they couldn’t help but stare at the Seventh Lady with a mix of admiration and pure shock. Despite Daria telling the whole truth, she was stating it in such a way that made it sound as if she was entirely blameless.
The young man picked up on this vibe as well, but looked as if he didn’t believe her to be blameless in the least bit.
“Well if that’s really the case, miss, then who’s going to be compensating for damages?,” the young man asked in a impertinent manner. “Because these walls ain’t cheap to fix. Leaving out labor costs, the materials alone costs an arm, a leg and a firstborn child.”
“The hell is this place made of?,” one of the scions asked with a shocked tone of voice.
“Materials rarer than a toad with flawless skin,” the young boy replied without missing a beat. “So I must reiterate. Who’s gonna-”
“Oi, Simon! Are you harassing some poor visitors again? You know we’re not allowed to do that anymore,” an energetic voice called out.
“The curators said it was poor form for us to do that after the other three incidents,” a sultry whisper of a voice followed.
Moments after these two voices called out, two wildly different tornados of energy appeared out of nowhere, in a space that was right between the destroyed wall and the conversing people.
“Wait a minute…this feeling…”
One of the tornados radiated this mixture of lighting and thunder aether and had a bluish tint to it, while the other was a deep crimson but radiated this aura of pure death aether. While these types of aether on their own we’re already rare, what caught the Zhen Clan scions’s attention was the quantity and quality. Namely, that the owner of these tornados appeared to be Aether Grandmasters.
Granted,the way the young man was acting at the sudden appearance of these tornados, gave the impression that these newcomers weren’t his teacher, but more likely his fellow disciples.
An impression that proved to be true, for when the tornados finally died down though, a pair of radically different, yet familiar looking young women appeared before their very eyes.
“Wait a minute…,” Zhen Hai mumbled to himself as he stared at the women. “Isn’t that…”
“Legit though, are you seriously trying to scam a bunch of poor sods over our walls again? You know they can probably sense that they have regenerative properties, right?”
“W-well I-”
“Honestly, Simon, you can’t just scam everyone who comes to the Library. How else are people supposed to come and…why are there naked men laying in our floors?”
“Oh shit, I didn’t notice that. Did someone try to organize another orgy?”
The first of the young women to speak up was a tanned skin girl with neon blue bobcat hair and athletic build, wearing a rather bold outfit that exposed her midriff. The woman had this natural charisma and confidence to her that made the scions think of a singer.
In contrast, the other woman was tall, pale, Amazonian, had spiky white hair and curves that could put most courtesans to shame. In contrast to the tanned girl’s two piece outfit, this other woman appeared to be wearing some kind of bodysuit.
Granted, absolutely none of the people in the room knew what to make of these clothes…except for a certain group of young women who were doing their absolute damnedest in maintaining a straight face.
“Wait a minute…ah!”×2.
As the two women continued to make their presence known though, two of the Zhen Clan scions, Zhen Hai and Zhen Tai, let out simultaneous nosies of recognition. It was the kind of sound that silences a whole room and caused people to stare at the source.
“Xiao Hai, Xiao Tai, are you two okay?,” Daria asked, as was appropriate for the eldest figure in the room.
Zhen Hai and Zhen Tai didn’t really say anything until they were close enough to the mysterious women who showed up out of nowhere, to point fingers directly at their faces.
Needless to say, the women looked rather uncomfortable at the sudden pointing and staring. A part of their instincts told them to
“Is there a pro-”
“I saw you fighting in the arena earlier today,” Zhen Hai interjected. “You were fighting alongside those two mystery fighters, Mad Stitch and Mad Ink, before a purple burning asshole appeared out of nowhere and made a mess of everything. You were calling yourself…Storm Singer? No…Thunder Diva! That was it!”
At the mention of this stage name, the girl who was known as Thunder Diva for the time being turned beet red with embarrassment.
“O-oh! Well,uh…I…”
“Wait,” the pale woman interrupted without missing a beat, forgetting about the fact that someone was staring and pointing directly at her. “Did you sneak out of here in order to fight again? I thought-”
“You’re one of the new maids back home!,” Zhen Tai suddenly interjected. “I saw you cleaning up the meeting room while we were leaving. You were reprimanding one of those weird aether beast apes that was recently caught!”
“I…what?”
Needless to say, practically everybody was caught off guard by Zhen Tai’s wild(my accurate) statement.
…
[Ah shit, we didn’t factor in the possibility that some of these scions actually do recognize the faces of their lessers.]
[Well…]
[You know what I mean.]
[It’s cool, it’s cool,] Spring Brawler comforted his fellow kaijin, [that’s why we’re improvising…and slightly throwing Jasper and Janice under the metaphorical bus.]
[What do you mean?]
[Follow my lead.]
…
The room was silent as everyone tried to digest Zhen Tai’s incredibly wild statement.
Zhen Hai recognizing one of the women being one of the mystery fighters appearing at the Stone Claw Arena made a little sense, since they seemed to have similar clothes and auras.
But Zhen Tai claiming that this incredibly noticeable woman, with the power of an Aether Grandmaster, was actually one of the recently hired maids back at the estate was ludicrous…initially.
But when the scions thought about how Aranea and Lucille showed up out of nowhere and took on administrative roles in the clan’s business…it didn’t seem that farfetched.
A tensen atmosphere filled the room as the Zhen Clan scions, and by extension Daria, began to process that this mysterious place had been spying on the Zhen Clan with an incredibly powerful warrior.
That is…until the young man identified as Simon suddenly spoke up and broke the tension altogether.
“Wait a minute…Simone! Harriet!,” Simon yelled. “Y’all know the curators said not to get involved with the locals in any capacity. So what the fuck?!”
To the outsiders watching this moment, they would think that this was a simple interdisicple dispute about rules.
To the ones in the know though, this was their prompt.
