Chapter 284 Bezos’s nature

Bezos gazed down at Mitsu. “So tell me straight. Was the gate actually broken, or was it opened from the inside? What exactly is going on over there?”

From the pressure this guy in front of her was giving her, from gazing like this, Mitsu’s mouth had gone dry.

The noise of the eastern battle around her was pressing her in from every side: women shouting, wood splintering under heavy impacts, the deep thud of larger monsters slamming into the reinforced sections of the wall; everything was getting a little too much.

She forced herself to answer Bezos anyway.

“It was broken, I think,” she said. Her voice stayed soft, but it did not waver. “Monsters were all over the area, coming from the dark ahead. Not the big ones. Smaller. Chicken-like monsters and dirt golems and also a smaller number of lizard ones like that, too,” she pointed toward a corpse lying a few paces away, “but smaller. They were already crawling through the streets when I left.”

Bezos’s jaw worked. He glanced at Pell, then back down at her.

“And the people fighting there. They were still holding?”

“They were when I ran.” Mitsu swallowed. “But there were a lot of monsters. And more kept coming from somewhere.”

Melanie, standing just behind her, gave a short confirming nod.

Pell rubbed a hand down his face. The exhaustion in his expression had sharpened into calculation. The eastern wall was still under real pressure. Pulling fighters away risked a collapse here. Leaving the western side alone risked the creatures already inside spreading deeper into the residential streets. Even with twenty to fifty meters of open ground between the outer wall and the houses, smaller monsters in enough numbers could cover that distance faster than anyone wanted to admit.

Bezos shifted the spear bundle under his arm. The impulsive heat in his eyes had not disappeared, but it now shared space with something colder and more practical.

“Small ones can’t break that gate,” he muttered, almost to himself. “Not unless something else happened first.”

He looked down at Mitsu again. This time the weight of his attention felt different. He stepped half a pace closer, casually, as if the space around him belonged to him by right. In the mixed light of lanterns and mana-bulbs, Mitsu’s damp dress clung to her frame from the long run. Sweat had made the fabric along her collarbones and navel cling to her body and the line of her front, too. Bezos’s gaze tracked that for a moment too long before returning to her face.

“So tell me, girl,” he said. “Who else is back there fighting those things?”

Pell moved, seeing that Bezos was too close to the girl, who looked way too small compared to his body frame and size.

“Mister Bezos. Don’t scare the girl off. Let her talk without you standing over her like that.”

Bezos smirked. The expression sat easily on his face. He smirked like a man who had spent years getting what he wanted simply by being one of the few adult men left in this cursed world. Having authority on top of it only made him more arrogant compared to the villagers here. 

“Who said she’s scared?” He glanced at Mitsu again, slower this time. “Look at her. Standing right in front of me without shivering or cowering. That’s not fear.” His eyes dipped once more, openly enough that Melanie’s jaw tightened, as she was right close to Mitsu, seeing the guy talk down to Mitsu. 

“Hey, girl. What’s your name? If you’re not bound anywhere, care to make a contract with me? Being on good terms with the village chief sounds good, right? It is enough to raise anyone’s status around here. So? Willing to be my girl? I don’t just approach anyone like this. Your gaze somehow attracted me. You seem to be able to control your fear quite well, despite being a scaredy-cat, huh-ha.” He laughed a little.

The words landed with the casual weight of someone who had offered the same arrangement before and expected gratitude in return.

Both Pell and Melanie started to step forward, mouths already opening to tell Bezos off. But Mitsu moved first.

She lifted her chin and looked directly into Bezos’s eyes this time.

“My name is Mitsu,” she said. The softness in her voice had not disappeared, but something steadier sat underneath it now. “And no. I already have someone I have vowed to myself to never leave. That person had accepted me as his family, even though I was just a stranger to him days ago. And just so you know. He is a far better man than you ever could be. Even though he could, he never looked at me the way you’re looking at me right now. Even if you were the king of this country, I wouldn’t follow you. I hate men like you. Who thinks the world revolves around them.”

For a moment Bezos simply stared. The easy smirk faltered. In a world where men could still trade on scarcity, clean refusal without tears or lowered eyes was not the reaction he was used to receiving. They existed, but not in his world.

Melanie seized the opening.

“Village Chief. If your courting is finished, step back. You’re making her uncomfortable.”

Mitsu’s shoulders remained straight, but the tips of her ears had gone pink. Melanie had read her correctly. The calm was deliberate, not natural.

Before Bezos could recover his footing, another voice cut in from the direction of the gate.

“Oh. Isn’t that Mitsu? The maid from Lys’s house? What are you doing here?”

John was pushing through the nearest cluster of fighters. Dust and a faint trace of divine light still clung to the space beside a log in the wall where he had been standing till now; he had been reinforcing the wall and offering what blessings he could manage under the pressure of monsters slamming into the same wall he was blessing. His gaze moved from Mitsu to the tense group around her, then sharpened.

Pell’s expression shifted with recognition. Lys had mentioned the girl in passing. The connection clicked into place when John mentioned she was Lys’s housemaid.

Bezos, however, barely acknowledged the priest. His attention stayed locked on Mitsu.

“Oh?” he said, voice rougher now. “So, that must be the name of your master, the one you mentioned just now?”

Mitsu didn’t say anything.

Seeing Bezos in front of Mitsu like that, so close, and also knowing Bezos’s usual way of behaving with women, John immediately closed the remaining space at once, in fear of having a conflict between Lys and Bezos if Bezos were to do something to Mitsu. 

After all, his fear was justified, considering he had even found the man doing unspeakable things before he had dragged his back here to do his duty as the village chief.

“What happened?” John asked, reaching them, and looking from Mitsu to Pell and back to Bezos again. “Why is everyone standing here instead of on the line? And Mitsu, why are you here at this hour? Shouldn’t you be at home now?”

Mitsu answered before anyone else could speak.

“Uhh, I’m because Lys and the others are fighting monsters on the western side of the village. That side’s gate has been breached. Monsters are already inside the streets. Miss Elara sent me to get help.”

The words almost made John feel the ground shake beneath him.

“What?” Color drained from his face. “Lys and others are over there right now, fighting?” 

“Is Selene also there?”

Mitsu didn’t say anything, just looked down. 

John spun toward Pell. “Then what are we still doing here, Pell? If the western side is compromised, why is everyone standing around here?”

Pell met the older man’s eyes and did not look away. He knew exactly why the news cut so deep for John. Lys was engaged to Selene. That fact was the hot topic in this village before he even came here; the priest’s only daughter and the young man who had somehow ended up at the center of too many recent events had finally tied the knot. Becoming John's family, too.

“Priest John,” Pell said, voice flat with exhaustion and straightness. “Even if we want to send help, we don’t have the fighters for it. Most of the guild adventurers here are already spent, as you can see. They can barely hold this line, needing you to constantly help them reinforce the walls. Asking them to run the width of the village and throw themselves into close combat against a breach we haven’t confirmed with our own eyes would not save the western side. I fear it would only make things worse, causing pointless deaths in the process.”

John stared at Pell’s face, realising the guy was a little straight with every decision about this fighting until now from the get-go, but would he be this much calculating right now? That was out of John’s expectations.

Just then, as if waiting for her cue, someone spoke from behind Bezos’s broad back.

“Did you forget about us Fiorans, Staff-Manager Pell?”

Pell turned.

Elder Verna stepped into the lantern light. Several Fiora hunters stood loosely behind her, quiet and ready. Body-enchantment tattoos seemed to glow on their body in this dim light as if they were awake. Even though it isn’t mandatory to have tattoos on one’s body to use body-enchantment, Fiorans are different in this case. They have someone who has reached the pinnacle of body-enchantment knowledge among them. And knowing how to enhance its effects, she had made every member of her tribe get at least one specialized tattoo on their body.

Yes, that person was this same person, named Elder Verna.

Verna’s gaze moved from Pell to John, then to the girl still standing at the center of the argument.

“If not forgetting, then should I take it as you are underestimating Fiora's resilience and stamina?”

John exhaled and gave a short shake of his head, finally relieved to see the person he wished to see right in this moment.

“No, Elder Verna. We didn’t forget. Mister Pell is new here. So, he doesn’t know your people the way the rest of us do. Everyone in this region knows Fiora's body-enchantment can cross ordinary human limits. Your reputation for taking only powerful body-enchanters in your tribe is well known, too. A man from the capital wouldn’t have that context yet. So, forgive his ignorance, Elder.”

Pell looked between them, confusion plain on his face.

Verna rested one hand lightly on the big staff at her side. The hunters behind her shifted as one.

“We Fiora may not take in magic users,” she said, “but we pride ourselves on our enchanting techniques. That is the only reason we have survived as long as we have.” 

She glanced once toward the dark western streets, then back at the gathered men. “So? What are we waiting for? People need help on the western side, right? Let’s go. Nothing else needs discussing when we are here.”