“Ten thousand shins, Your Highness,” Garlan said, slapping his hands on the table. 

I exchanged glances with my lady, who was seated on the cot. She shook her head. Then, this was Garlan at his best. 

The bulky man grumbled beside Lykan and straightened in rage, only to crush the ceiling lamp above him. The shard pierced his large stature, but it did little damage. His arms were ripped with muscles, the bluish tunic hugging them too closely. The exposed forearms had bulging green veins that throbbed periodically, matching his breath which resembled grumbles. He was taller than me, perhaps by almost a foot, and occupied most of the space in the room. Scars decked his face, shaved unevenly, and a knife hung from his waist that was no different from a needle for his oversized hands. His trousers were ragged in places, and I saw his loincloth underneath.

Maybe he didn’t get the right-sized underwear. I reasoned.

I was standing close to my lady’s cot, watching the exchange with much interest. I was a bad merchant by nature, so I was eager to know about Garlen’s sleighs of earning some good money.

Lykan’s steel gaze didn’t affect my bread lad. The hard gaze that was reserved for commoners. 

I didn’t really get this old prince. His crew was composed of commoners, yet he hated every other commoner with undisguised hatred. Why did they serve them with such loyalty, then? Did seamen enjoy getting mishandled? 

Maybe I should try killing a few to ascertain my claims. 

“Look, Your Highness,” Garlan sighed. “I started from twenty thousand shins and somehow, begrudgingly reduced it to ten thousand shins. Isn’t your leg worth this much at least?”

“I got no shins on me, commoner,” Lykan said, placing his costrel on the table. “But I can give you two ships. All the goods rightfully belong to us.”

“Only nobles or Ulley can own the cogs, Your Highness,” Garlan waved his hand. “We got no use for it.”

“Lady Letitia has the blood of nobility,” he said, staring in our direction. His empty sleeve frailed beside him, but his gaze toward my lady was one of respect. And I didn’t sense any hatred directed at me, either.

“How much can we earn by selling a cog, Your Grace?” My lady stood up and walked to the table, hardly three steps in the short room.

“Our cog is a good one, so I suggest you hold on to the ownership, noble of Arlikia. You can rent it to the sailor’s guild and earn monthly revenue. The funds will be transferred to the capital through the merchant guild, so you don’t have to worry about visiting the port for every installment,” he paused, taking a few breaths and a sip from his costrel. “But the second cog will be half destroyed. Because it is the one my insurgent crew has to raid. And they aren’t all talk. My retainers will handle the ownership transfer and the rest of the procedure, but they would need your presence.”

“And how are we supposed to get this cog?” Garlan asked, and Lykan clicked his tongue. “Your Highness.”

He removed a map from his pocket and spread it on the table with much difficulty. “You see this route?”

My [Devil eye] loomed over their head and watched the red dotted lines connected the Isles to the mainland, along with many other symbols spanning over the blues separating them. 

“This cog has goods worth ten thousand shins, which are supposed to reach the port tomorrow,” Lykan continued. “Two ships are coming from this direction,” he dragged his finger across the dotted red, starting from the Isles. “One is our ally vessel with the goods, following the cog that has the first prince’s reinforcement requests. They are running a few hour glasses ahead of our ally cog, so we need to stop the reinforcement vessel and loot it, killing everyone on board because we have no clue on the identity of the messenger.”

“You see a freshly born baby, you kill it. You see an old hag, you kill her. You see a sturdy man from distant lands, you kill him. No one on the ship should be left alive, and mycats would do the rest of our job. They’ll clear the bodies, and we’ll anchor our ship at a distance and watch it get cloaked in the shade of black. By this time, our ally cog should reach us with the elite crew, and they’ll clean the rest of the ship. Both the vessels will belong to you, one for your help in usurping the throne and the second one for healing my leg. The favor of the prince will always be a gratuity should we succeed, so you can count on that, citizens of Arlikia.”

He coughed and folded his map before stuffing it within his lavish robe. I had no clue this rundown cog even had such exquisite clothing. 

“Not a bad deal,” Garlan looked at us, and my lady nodded. “Then we’ll take the two vessels. One with the ownership, and you can have the goods.”

“What do I need to do for the ownership transfer, Your Grace?”

“Greet them politely and maintain decorum, lady Letitia,” he said, quite seriously even though coughs hardly let him speak coherently. “People of Isles are more rigid with their ranks, so don’t let your servants raise their eyes in their presence. If you see my hatred for commoners as extreme, then you are better off never visiting the Isles. I hope my prince Balar will bring reforms unseen.”

“This maiden is grateful for your guidance,” my lady curtsied politely, and the drunk man smiled. 

“I would have loved to see you in the harem, lady Letitia,” he chugged down another sip of ale. “You are wasted on this man.”

I was not as rich, as handsome, or as influential as his prince. But damn, I was undead. How could this old drunkard belittle me?

“I am not, Your Grace,” my lady smiled, her countenance infallible. “Rudolf is much better than the horny… noble princes of any kingdom.”

“Do you know that I will heal your leg, old man?” I asked.

His eye twitched, and he closed the costrel with the cork. “If you join my crew, I will consider respecting your commoner status, but otherwise, you are no different from fodder, butler. My crew follows me because they are my crew. No questions asked.”

I smiled, my lips struggling to hold themselves up. The silence lasted for a while until Lykan asked, “Are we signing the deal?”

My lady nudged me, and with fervent resistance, unconcealed repugnance, and high craving for bread, I materialized mana on his leg. The meat over his knee was festering, and he managed to prevent the further assuage of putrefaction by casting [Freeze] over it. Healers had attempted to rectify it before, probably too many times, with no success. That was not surprising, considering strange mana particles continuously coagulated the blood within, not letting the pus die down.

I tried destroying them with the purest form of dark attribute mana. The weird mana particles skittered around erratically, sensing the dangers posed by mana particles that could annihilate others, but there was not enough matching between the two for the annihilation phenomenon to occur uninterrupted.  These little bastards weren’t mana. They were alive.

I could not see them, but I could sense my own channelized mana. That was why I could feel their movement which was different from usual mana particles, which were nothing but a superposition of various attributes. 

Was this a Curse? I didn’t quite know. But [Heal] wouldn’t work unless I thrashed these bubbly bodies. Because healing helped create and not destroy.

“Where did you get this wound?” I asked, watching his face contort in pain since he, no, Ungaln had stopped casting [Freeze]. 

“Long back,” he said, touching his chin. “In a battle against the raiders from the east sea. They had a sage in their rank, and he single-handedly wiped out half of our army. Rot, we called it, but this grotesque disease was a curse. How he cast this blight is beyond my understanding, but those alive say he summoned a demon. One that had bulging eyes over its body, thousands in number, and blobs of demonic outgrowth that latched onto anything alive. I got this while I was injured in the,” he touched the periphery of the decompisng flesh, “the battle of Crusa, which was an absolute tragedy in the history of the Isles. Never had anyone witnessed such one-sided slaughter, but the raiders left our lands untouched. Took a few gallons of ale and returned to undiscovered lands of the east. It was as if they came to revel in the blood of humans.”

“That was a ritual,” I said, earning all eyes to myself. “Those dabbling in demonic arts call it Buello Decun. And the demon is Decun, the Carcass.”

I smiled at the memory. I had locked that bastard in the demon realm, but I didn’t know that ignorant mortals were using him for slaughter. 

Our encounter? He was my first and only cursed creation. An attempt to help a mortal had resulted in the demon of today. I had manged to seal him once he came after my head. Sad, because he could have lived by eating humans much freely.

I didn’t use sealing magic usually because there was always a risk of getting sealed myself. It involved drawing incantation circles on the ground, blood sacrifice, and reverse summoning, but everything within the circle got sealed. So, if I used sealing magic, anybody could nudge me inside the circle and I would be trapped in my own spell. Of course, I could try to use transmigration magic to jump between realms, but my seals were far too strong. So, unless I learned how to undo my spells, I would always return to the sealed realm for eternity. But countering the spell of a prodigy was like looking for bread crumbs in the sand. 

“Do you practice demon summoning, bread lad?” Garlan asked in surprise.

I ignored him and glanced at the sturdy man, asking for his knife. He handed it to me without a world. Of course, he couldn’t talk.

“This is going to hurt, but I’ll heal you,” I said, excited to make this prince suffer. “But not inside this room. Take him out, big man. And call some seamen to clean off the blood. Portgulls don’t leave bread untouched, I’ve heard.”

“They are carnivores, Rudolf,” Garlan laughed.

“Well, even carnivores eat bread,” I shrugged, and my lady giggled.

Ungaln helped the prince out, who gave me multiple doubtful glances. Garlan followed them after patting my shoulder with pride. “You are our shin tree, no doubt.”

I rolled my eyes at him as I tied my lady’s hair to a bun. The sea breeze had moistened them, so the strands clung to her cheeks, which troubled her. 

“Do you know that horrendous demon, Rudolf?” She asked, wrapping her hands around my waist as I stuffed the barrette at the base of the bun.

“I made and sealed him, my lady,” I said, removing her hands from my waist once I was done. “I have done more horrendous things than that demon.”

“But you are my mongrel, so it’s acceptable,” she nodded. 

I laughed. “Aren’t you too partial, my lady?”

I had thought my undead-lores would freak her out.

“Does it matter?” she asked, her lips pursed. “If I say you are virtuous, you are. That is the end. A mongrel shouldn’t question his master,” she touched my bracelet, “and this is the proof that you are mine for eternity. Let’s make demons together next time. It sounds as fun as watching fishes.”