I collared Amalia…

I take my penis out of her.

She’s stunned, and doesn’t react to this.

If this thing doesn’t work, I’m dead meat.

But if it does work…

“Did you actually do what I think you did?” Amalia stands up and is releasing a pressure that doesn’t fall short to Bianca’s, but I’m having trouble breathing, just like the thunder tiger, this is the pressure of someone who really wants me dead.

There is no longer any hint of her dopey and carefree attitude, and instead she has an expression of utter contempt and hatred, but before she can do anything, the collar starts choking her.

“Guh- Dammit!”

After this, the world blinks for a moment and I find myself somewhere else, I’m in the workshop back in the clan, but there’s 8 anvils for whatever reason, and I can see a giant silphium seed with the 3 ladies drawn on it right on the middle of the room.

This is the inside of my mind.

I breathe a sigh of relief.

A large piece of paper appears in front of me.

I read it, and it’s a large list of things I’m not allowed to make Amalia do.

Things like “You can’t tell me what to say.” or “You can’t make me hurt myself.”

There’s almost 100 items written here, but the top of the paper says:

“Highlight the 3 you accept.”

…How one-sided.

But this does benefit me.

If I only have to choose 3 concessions to Amalia, I first have to consider why I collared her in the first place.

I mostly did it on impulse though.

But I do have a few reasons.

The first one is that I’m sure to get injured again, and I wouldn’t have to worry about it if I have the guarantee of an alchemist with 4 patterns at my service.

My luck will run dry eventually, and I hate relying on it on the first place.

I don’t want to have another broken limb or lose another sense and not have a way to fix it, who knows if I’ll be lucky enough to find another way to heal myself the next it happens.

And my second reason is that I have to be even more proactive in obtaining strength, and alchemy sounds like a fine enough way to keep building it up, even in a secondary way.

As for sex… I don’t plan on going the extra mile and rape her.

Enslaving her is already evil enough, I just want to become stronger.

So I circle 3 concessions with the black arm.

“You can’t make me have sex with you.”

“You can’t make me have sex with other people.”

“You can’t make me hurt myself.” It should be really obvious why I’m choosing this.

As soon as I finish circling the last one, the paper disappears.

I gulp.

I can’t take back this anymore, so I swallow my remaining doubts about this.

I can’t second guess myself now.

I exit this place, and go back to the real world.

 

* * *

 

“So, young master, what are your orders?” Amalia says, her voice dripping with sarcasm and contempt.

“Only tell me the truth.” I feel this is a good baseline.

“The truth.” but when she says that, the collar tightens on her neck “Of course… Young master…” she mutters with a pained expression.

“I want you to tell me who did you plan to use this on?” I’d also like to know why did you just leave it out in the open, but I feel that’s more of a taunt.

“You.” She looks even more mad now.

Ah.

Yikes.

Now I don’t feel any guilt about this.

How dangerous!

“Can you elaborate further?”

“Me and Bianca had planned to enslave you, the plan was that I would extract whatever I could of the <penultima seed> from you and give it to her, and I would get a butler-boy.” Amalia mutters that last part, but I can hear it clearly.

Bianca too?!

I’m more surprised about that than I should honestly, I always knew that she was planning something shady, and that there was something weird between these two.

But damn, I thought Bianca was my friend, at least in some weird way.

Amalia is still glaring at me, but now I only see it as the stare of a sore loser, I really don’t have any sympathy left for you.

“Then why didn’t you use the collar on me?”

“You stank, so I got horny.” She shrugs “Since you are so weak I didn’t think you could actually escape or do anything really.” Amalia emphasizes the ‘weak’ when she says it.

Yeah, no sympathy for you.

“Tell me more about Bianca, what is she planning?”

“She wants to kill the new boss of the <Sycamore gang>, but I don’t think she has a proper plan, Bianca is more of an opportunistic improvisator.”

She wants to kill Makoto? That makes sense.

But what the hell does opportunistic improvisator mean?

“What do you mean by that?”

“Are you an idiot? it’s like I said, it just seems like she’s taking every opportunity to increase her strength in the short term without any kind of greater plan.” Amalia sounds completely exasperated by the question.

But after a moment the collar start tightening, how convenient it seems this thing somehow understand my intent.

She tries to resist for a moment, but gives up and start talking. “Bianca is also doing bizarre stuff all around, like that little performance when she introduced you to me, I have to assume Bianca told you one thing, but told me another, so she tried to act in a way that she thought would make sense to both of us.”

That whole scene was weird, and what Amalia said confirmed my suspicions that Bianca had something weird going on at the time.

But I don’t really care about the <Sycamore gang>, and since I’m going to leave basil soon enough, it’s really not going to be my problem.

Hmm, I actually don’t know when I’ll leave basil, I should talk about it with those 2…

And thinking about it, I haven’t explored basil at all since I got here, I have been too preoccupated about my arm to care.

I feel like I’ve lost my way from my original goal of ‘going on a journey and explore the world’…

I look at the naked alchemist that a look of utter contempt for me that I just enslaved.

Yeah, I’ve definitely derailed.

Hmph, it doesn’t matter, becoming strong seems to be the bare minimum to explore around anyway.

It’s only logical I do whatever I can to become as strong as I can.