Chapter 88: I Want To Go To The Arena

Within minutes, the tray of protein had already been devoured courtesy Aden and his Vassals. Well… Mostly Aden, but that wasn’t a point of concern.

Aden laid eyes on the woman who stood behind the counter with a stiff smile on her lips, earning a low hum from his lips as his eyebrows furrowed in thought.

Eventually, he stood up and walked towards her, each step causing her to flinch more noticeably, but he didn’t stop his footsteps.

As he stood face to face with the woman, he could see droplets of sweat run down her forehead, her eyes had already squinted as a result of the increasingly forced smile, and his increased perception could make out her shivers.

His arm slowly rose, and even that small action caused the room to fall into a strange silence.

The tension in the room became palpable all of a sudden, every person present there had looks of apprehension on their faces that even they didn’t know they had.

Then, it happened.

Aden’s hand touched the woman’s shoulder, and despite how much he fine-tuned his density to cater to her skeletal strength, a look of discomfort still crossed her face.

Their eyes locked inevitably. The woman’s poorly hidden fear being projected in his irises and Aden’s blank face in hers.

After a moment of an oppressive staring contest, his lips parted slowly and words that would send shivers down anyone’s spine left them.

“Thanks for the meal.”

Without waiting for her response, Aden turned towards the door and left the shop with his Vassals trailing invisibly behind him.

The cheerful music of the streets hit Aden like a physical wave, but it failed to wash away the vacuum of silence he left in his wake. Inside the shop, the air rushed back into the room as if he had been a walking atmospheric pressure drop, leaving the woman and her patrons gasping for air they didn’t realize they had been missing.

“Master,” Zero called out as they weaved through the crowds with ghostly ease. “Could it be that the battles here interest you?”

Aden’s merely shook his head in response. “Let’s just say I’m not interested in the battles in itself, but the people involved.”

Lorelei had already taken to the roofs of the surrounding buildings to scout ahead of any dangers the moment they left the shop, but she could hear the conversation with relative ease.

“Are these people in question related to our coming here?” Zero asked quietly.

Aden’s eyes turned sharp as the inquiry. “No. They aren’t,” he replied.

Zero kept quiet and continued walking behind him, meanwhile Lorelei had a more conflicted expression.

Despite how she introduced herself during their first meeting, she infact didn’t know much about the bartender or Aden’s life before then. But from the bits and pieces she managed to pick up over their course of interactions, she could easily draw up the conclusion that he had some sort of emotional ties to this place, or at the very least, he clung to the hope that he still had some left.

’Could it be a woman? I wonder what she looks like,’ she mused, yet despite the seemingly harmless train of thought, her eyes gleamed in an obsessive light.

’Lorelei, come down from there,’ Aden spoke telepathically, crashing her obsessive train of thought.

Giving a slight nod, Lorelei licked her lips before jumping down from the building she ran upon.

Upon her soft descent, she tied her hair up into a bun with a hidden battle frenzied smile as the nature of the surroundings registered in her mind.

Thunderous screams filled the arena as brilliant floodlights bathed the arena in harsh white light. Tier upon tier of seats curved around the massive structure, rising high above the battleground and making the pit below seem even deeper. At every entrance, massive bodyguards stood watch, effortlessly restraining the roaring crowd.

“This is a massive upgrade from the last time I was here,” Aden remarked.

Lorelei tilted her head slightly and walked over to Zero, who stood closer to Aden due to the thick crowd gathered outside.

“It was barely more than a slum back then. To think they built all of this in less than a year, yet couldn’t spare even half that effort for the town,” Aden said, shaking his head with a quiet chuckle. “I’m not sure whether to be annoyed or impressed.”

Even Zero found himself confused.

Their Master was never this talkative. If it didn’t concern his survival, he rarely spoke at all. Yet now he was discussing an arena like it held sentimental value—and the look on his face was unmistakably nostalgic.

Aden’s sudden movement forward didn’t let either of them dwell on the strange situation. He met one of the guards who stood in upright and handled the lines of people that wanted to enter the arena. His voice rose, and caused the bodyguard to shake a bit. The sudden appearance caught him off guard, and the seemingly non-existent nature of the person before him caused him further wariness.

The bodyguard stared at Aden for a heartbeat too long, his hand instinctively hovering near the weighted truncheon at his belt. He was used to the rowdy, sweat-stained brawlers smelling of cheap ale and desperation—not this silver-haired specter whose voice felt like a cold blade pressed against his throat.

“Entry is ten silver, or you show a Registered Combatant’s sigil,” the guard grunted, though his bravado was thinning. He looked Aden up and down, taking in the tattered rags that shouldn’t have looked as regal as they did. “And we don’t take ’potential’ as payment. You got the coin, or are you just here to block the view?”

Aden didn’t blink. He didn’t even reach for the pouch Lorelei had provided. Instead, he simply tilted his head, his blue eyes catching the harsh glare of the floodlights in a way that made the guard’s skin crawl.

“I’m just here to watch,” Aden said, the harmless words somehow causing even more apprehension to bear down on the bodyguard.

“Then get in line.”

The bodyguard’s eyes widened slightly, surprised by the servile tone that had slipped into his voice.

Aden shook his head. “I don’t want to. I want to get into the arena right now.”

A bead of sweat formed at the back of the bodyguard’s neck. The whole scenario was just too strange.

But before he could say anything else, a man who stood at the helm of the line and had most likely been waiting for his turn yelled in frustration.

“Get this fucker out of here you fool! What happened to the rules your dumb management placed here, huh?!”

The bodyguard’s instincts, honed by years of dealing with high-status arrogance and volatile threats, were screaming. This wasn’t a man he could afford to offend, but the silver haired man by his side caused another wave of apprehension to wash over him.

He turned towards Aden quickly with hidden plea, but when he turned back to address the screaming noble, the world seemed to stutter.

The man was gone.

There was no sound of a struggle, no rush of wind, and no lingering afterimage of movement. One moment, a loud-mouthed obstacle was breathing down the guard’s neck; the next, there was only an empty patch of cobblestone and the fading echo of a half-finished insult.

It was as if the man had simply been deleted from reality.

Aden didn’t even look toward the empty space. He merely adjusted his tattered sleeve, his blue eyes remains fixed on the arena entrance.

“I guess I’m next in line.”

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