Taming the Protagonist

Volume 3

Chapter 23 : Guide

On the streets that were like a three-dimensional labyrinth, the tall girl walking at the very front had her spirits high.

Even though she was not the one leading the way, she still put on a head-leading posture, like a wolf patrolling its territory.

Mingfuluo stared at Anselm’s side profile with a faint smile, and suddenly said, “I’m starting to suspect now that you did it on purpose.”

“If I could control Hit’s direction of experience, then how would I have let her fall into this kind of trouble?”

“If Aluo you insisted on thinking that way…”

The young Hydra who pinched Mingfuluo’s earlobe shrugged: “Then I had no way to explain it.”

“It’s that kind of ‘I forgive your unreasonable troublemaking’ tone again.”

Mingfuluo snorted coldly and lightly swatted away Anselm’s mischievous hand. “It’s not hard if you want me to forgive you.”

“Why would I need you to forgive… fine fine.”

Under his monster miss’s dangerous stare, the great adventurer Lord Faust raised both hands helplessly: “Then what should I do?”

“Stop staring at her all the time.”

Mingfuluo lifted her hand and tugged Anselm’s hair, quite dissatisfied.

“Is it that hard to distribute your attention?”

Anselm froze for a moment, then could not help but chuckle, and obediently bent toward her with the force of Mingfuluo tugging his hair.

“Alright, I understood, this indeed was my fault, dear Aluo.”

Mingfuluo did not say anything, but she also let go, and quietly walked side by side with Anselm.

“An… Faust!”

Hitana suddenly called out from the very front: “I wasn’t just following along to watch, this matter, I also wanted to participate.”

“Oh?” Anselm slightly turned his head. “This wasn’t within the scope of our transaction, Miss wolf you didn’t need to do so much.”

“I didn’t want to make a transaction with you.”

Hitana crossed her arms and snorted. “I just wanted to catch those damn bastards, I didn’t need you to pay anything.”

As she said this, a bit of brutality that came from the heart, from instinct, surfaced on her pretty and alluring face.

The girl who was like the incarnation of a magical beast slowly clenched her fist, and her slightly lowered voice carried pure disgust and cruelty.

“After dealing with the leader, I forgot to sweep the other trash clean… that was my oversight. If those guys still haven’t run away, then they have to pay the price!”

The faintly spilling red-black aura from her body made Mingfuluo frown slightly.

She subconsciously looked toward Anselm, only to find that the young Hydra merely revealed a pleased expression.

“Since you had said so… then I had no reason to refuse.”

Anselm chuckled as he responded: “Then, first, thanks for Miss wolf help?”

“Hehehe cough cough cough hmm!”

Hitana, who had just wanted to laugh foolishly out loud, hurriedly coughed several times, only then managing to maintain wolf big sis’s face in front of the little underling who was truly leading the way behind her.

She raised her chin.

She clearly acted very proud, but also wanted to pretend to be quite reserved, looking very funny.

“Small matter, it was just a small matter… A Da, are we there yet?”

The little underling leading the way looked quite out of place among this group of handsome men and beautiful women.

He answered carefully, “After we passed through a secret passage, we’ll be there soon, it’s just big sis, if we swaggered about like this, would it be too…”

“As long as we could lock down the general direction, that’s enough.”

A cruel and excited smile appeared on Hitana’s face: “I had almost caught that position, it was too late for him to run now.”

The young man froze for a moment, then turned back to look at that black-haired young man who looked like trouble at a glance.

He swallowed, and as if to cheer Hitana on, he loudly echoed, “Worthy of big sis!”

“Hmph hmph hmph hmph, of course!”

Anselm's eyes reflected Hitana’s smug appearance.

His gaze was extremely gentle, yet it also flowed with a few strands of something hard to describe… emotion.

Not knowing what he had thought of, the young Hydra turned his head and looked toward the thin and frail girl walking at the very back, and the latter, after noticing Anselm’s gaze, immediately blinked and silently asked, “What was it?”

The deep mutual understanding between Anselm and Mingfuluo, in life, manifested as a tacit understanding that needed no words, but it did not necessarily show insight into each other’s hearts.

If they could so easily see through the truth in each other’s hearts, then that breakup three years ago would not have happened.

But this well-behaved and docile girl before them could very easily do it—instantly grasping Anselm’s meaning, almost never making mistakes, extremely rare.

However, correspondingly… she also seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper in the mire because of this ability.

Think carefully, Marina, think carefully.

What, exactly, had everything you were seeing now let you see?

What did Marina see?

She herself was not clear either, not knowing how to describe it.

Right now… they should be, on the way to save a trafficked child, right.

Why did even Hit seem to appear so… excited?

Marina had never thought about these unimportant things before, because these things could not help Anselm, and had no practical meaning.

She would only feel that Hitana had that kind of personality, and being able to save a child who had been seized and sold would make her little sister happy, nothing more.

But as she was influenced by the many absurdities and contradictions she had seen in Strife Fortress during this period, when matters involved both Transcendents and ordinary people, Marina could not help but drill deeper.

Human trafficking was a dark and cruel matter.

Whether it was Anselm or Ms. Mingfuluo, when they saw that scene in the sewer, they both felt anger from the heart.

But why could they, in the blink of an eye, become so relaxed and intimate, chatting so casually… that real anger vanished in an instant, as if it had never appeared.

Was it because they were certain they could absolutely find that child?

It should be like that… after all, if so, then indeed there was no need to keep holding onto any heavy emotions.

But…

Transcendents squeezed this “Transcendence” pleasure and meaning out of ordinary people.

This sentence unbidden surfaced in the girl’s mind, and she also connected Hitana’s current excitement with it.

Thus, she uncontrollably thought of something that made her shiver.

Hit… was she also drawing pleasure from this “rescue”?

No… no, Hit would not be like that.

Gaining happiness from good deeds was only natural.

She had neither deliberately created suffering, nor was she lending a hand to others for the sake of happiness… Hit, who purely yearned to overthrow injustice, deserved this happiness more than anyone.

Marina immediately denied her own thought just now.

She even felt ashamed, ashamed that she would harbor such dark speculation toward that naive and pure girl.

If even Hitana would become that terrifying appearance, then Marina would no longer hold any expectations for this world that had already long since become rotten to the core.

But, like a mortal girl swallowed by a huge pitch-black vortex and unable to extricate herself, a thought still surfaced in her mind:

If it was the Hit from before, who was not as powerful as she was now…

On the road to saving others, was she gloomy and furious, or was she like now… excited and buoyant?

If it was not the same, then the fundamental reason that caused her state of mind to gradually change into what it was now could only be…

“We’re here! It’s inside… once we squeeze through this little path, we’ll reach the slave black market.”

“Was there even a place like this?” Hitana flew into a rage, the brutal mad flames in her dark red eyes burning fiercely.

“Damn… I thought once I dealt with that guy it would be over! A Da, why didn’t you all tell me!”

“Huh?” That young man froze. “Big sis, you didn’t ask us either?”

“This… this still needed me to ask!” Hitana twisted her head in disbelief to look at her current “followers.”

“There were still people suffering elsewhere… you couldn’t possibly just accept it so casually, right? Since you couldn’t accept it, then shouldn’t you have told me directly!”

This young man was momentarily at a loss for words.

He awkwardly grabbed the back of his neck, not knowing what to say for a moment.

“Now wasn’t the time to discipline subordinates, Miss Wolf."

Anselm said calmly, “Continue leading the way.”

“Ah… I, I… yes.”

Clearly, in theory, he was Hitana’s subordinate, but when he heard Anselm’s order, this young man did not bother with Hitana’s opinion. Instead, after hesitating for a moment, he softly agreed.

Hitana naturally could not discover such a small matter.

Angry and seething, she now only wanted to tear down this so-called slave black market.

She likewise urged the young man to lead the way faster; the ferocious aura she did not hide at all made this poor young man subconsciously shiver.

They moved through the gaps between stacked houses.

The lower city’s peculiar building structure perfectly hid this black market away.

If no one reminded her, the Hitana who lacked that kind of scheming would absolutely never have thought there were still Varied Snake’s remaining forces here.

“Hey, you are—”

Arriving before a heavy iron door, the guard first froze when he saw Anselm’s group.

He had just spoken four characters when, with a thud, his whole head was seized by Hitana and smashed hard into the iron door.

Under the young man’s terrified gaze, Hitana expressionlessly threw the doorman—alive or dead unknown—to the side, lifted her foot, and directly kicked the entire iron door flying out.

In the huge rumble, Anselm’s gaze moved through the sparsely populated dark alley, taking in the stunned expressions of the few people.

“Looks like, due to fear of Miss Wolf’s reputation, business here has become much worse than before.”

Anselm stepped into this “black market.”

Rather than saying it was a black market, it was actually just a street that was not wide.

On both sides of the road were stacked constructions, houses like cages.

Presumably, the specific trades were conducted inside these houses.

“Much worse than before?”

From between Hitana’s lips and teeth spilled what seemed like boiling, scorching breath: “This kind of business… should be ground rotten into the mud!”

As soon as she finished speaking, Hitana immediately wanted to follow her perception and slaughter her way through, but Anselm still spoke first to stop her:

“This should be inside a cluster of buildings… don’t be too intense, it would make the surrounding houses collapse. Also, leave some alive.”

Hitana’s figure swayed, and in the next second she vanished from where she stood.

And then, without any warning, came a bone-chilling rumble and screams.

The box-like houses stacked on both sides of the black market were like they had been blown up out of thin air; their outer walls suddenly exploded apart.

An ordinary Transcendent simply could not capture that berserk figure wreaking havoc in this narrow dark alley.

Even afterimages were hard to see.

“…Unreasonable.” Mingfuluo said softly.

“In just these few days, she had already become far faster than when she was in Hydra’s Domain.”

That stunned young man could not see or hear her, so Mingfuluo had no need to be subtle about anything.

The petite scholar lifted her head to look above.

In a non-serious state, she only… barely kept up with that red-black afterimage.

“I had originally thought her previous state was already at the limit of third-tier, and yet… she could still continue improving?”

Mingfuluo shook her head and looked at Anselm: “Where exactly was her limit?”

“This was not easy for me to say.” Anselm chuckled. “Who told you she was Hitana?”

In the original world line, after the Celestial Wolf Empress achieved world-invincible might, where exactly did she go?

The story did not give an answer.

Among the four heroes, only she had no clear ending.

Did she step onto seventh-tier, unprecedented in history, by way of Celestial Path, or did she rely on that martial force to pierce through the barrier of endless worlds—no one knew.

Anselm only knew that the original Celestial Wolf Empress, after all thoughts were settled and the dust had fallen, had only one purpose—that was to go to a higher, farther place.

A higher, farther place… this was also the sight Anselm had once promised Hitana.

Hit, the current you, did you still hold such ambition?

Bang!

Within a dull thud that made one’s scalp go numb, a middle-aged man fell from the air… no, it should have been that he was smashed straight down onto the ground.

Fresh blood quickly spread across the floor.

His limbs twisted, and he still twitched a couple times from time to time, but he seemed not dead yet.

“I told you to leave him breathing, and you really only left him breathing.”

Anselm shook his head somewhat helplessly.

With a casual wave of his hand, the man who had nearly been slammed to death on the spot by Hitana was yanked out of thin air.

Just as Anselm was about to say something, Mingfuluo lifted her hand to stop him.

“Leave it to me. In order to become like this, I had more or less done some research on the soul.”

Cold light bloomed in Mingfuluo’s purple eyes as she murmured softly: “Even trash had its use.”

With only his last breath left and not understanding what had happened at all, the black market leader immediately rolled his eyes white again, his whole body convulsing violently.

About half a minute later, the middle-aged man who had been yanked into midair by Anselm’s unseen force let his limbs droop, his head lolling to one side, and there was no longer any light in his eyes.

“Found it.”

Mingfuluo opened her eyes and said calmly: “Salt Lake City, at the home of a retired third-tier adventurer. The teleportation array there wasn’t open, so we had to travel overland.”

“And all the other slaves currently still alive, not yet sold out… I’ll immediately record the hidden den locations and hand them to you.”

“No need, give it to our Miss Wolf.”

“…Her?” Mingfuluo frowned slightly. “You wanted these slaves finished?”

As soon as her words fell, Hitana, covered in blood aura, had already dropped down from the air, with quite a bit of blood and severed limbs still stuck on her.

“Really not afraid of death.”

The ferocious wolf spat out a mouthful of spit and said with a hideous expression, “Thinking I didn’t exist, huh, ah?”

“According to that guy you just threw down’s memories, it wasn’t that they weren’t afraid of you, it was that they felt Strife Fortress’s upper city would immediately send people down to clean you up.”

Mingfuluo said flatly, “After all, normally speaking, you went deep alone into a territory-city with such enormous forces and still wanted to go against the ruling group; it indeed was looking for death.”

Hitana wiped away the mottled blood on her face, and at the same time red-black aura spread around her body and erased the bloodstains.

She sneered, “Then they thought wrong, very wrong… what were you staring at me for?”

Stared at until her whole body felt uncomfortable, Hitana warily retreated one step. “What were you plotting?”

“……”

The scholar miss sighed, turned her head to Marina, and said with utmost solemnity:

“If it wasn’t because you were by her side, I absolutely would not have listened to this damn brat’s words.”

“You overstated it, Miss Mingfuluo.” Marina slightly bowed.

“I’ll do my best to assist Miss Wolf.”

Mingfuluo nodded, then glanced at the somewhat blank Hitana: “I and Anselm found the person, but the teleportation array over there wasn’t open. I and Anselm will hurry over first, you and… Ma Ganlei will stay here.”

As soon as Hitana heard “you stay here,” her brain instantly overloaded, and she reflexively said, “Why! I also want to—”

Halfway through, she remembered that the things in her hands were already so many she was getting frazzled, and she simply could not handle them, so how could she be suited to run off to another place?

Seeing that Hitana wasn’t stupid to the extreme, Mingfuluo only then slightly withdrew her gaze of paying attention to the idiot, while Anselm said for her, “Aluo collected all the slaves’ information scattered in the lower city.

In a bit she’ll hand it to Ma Ganlei, and you’ll handle this matter with her, Miss Wolf.”

“Th, this way…” Hitana scratched her head, that pure and kind look seeming like two different people compared to her magical-beast ferocity just now. “Alright, then I won’t go, you—”

“Lord Faust.”

At this time, Marina suddenly spoke.

She first withdrew the gaze that had一 straight been falling on that young man shrinking in the far corner. After a short silence, she said with utmost solemnity: “You said you’d give the commissioner an answer within three days; at most it’s only going out for one day… one day, I wanted to witness the ending of this commission.”

After Anselm met the girl’s serious and resolute gaze for a moment, he nodded: “Alright, then you’ll first come with us to Salt Lake City… Miss wolf, Ma Ganlei will have to come help you one day later. Of course, it’s only one day, that should be fine, right.”

“I—”

Hitana, who had originally thought that with Marina accompanying her she wouldn’t be too lonely, now went blank.

She wanted to shout that she also wanted to go, but when she thought of those files piled on the desk, thought of the countless dark corners in this lower city, where there might still be more filth like this slave black market that made people furious to the extreme, she could not bring herself to say the words of acting shameless and coquettish.

“…I knew. It’s only one day.”

The girl smiled. “No problem, you can go… but don’t forget, give me Ma… Ma Ganlei early!”

Anselm nodded slightly.

He did not say much more, and turned to leave this dark alley.

A completely ordinary commission, with a reward that wasn’t even two gold coins, had dragged out so many matters.

Anselm taking this commission indeed had deeper intent, but of course he could not have imagined things would develop like this.

However… such twists and depth were clearly a good thing.

Because this would make this ordinary commission that, for smart people, was very meaningful for re-understanding this world, become even more meaningful.

Although Anselm already knew the direction and possibilities of how the ending would go, since he had not deliberately manipulated or designed anything, he naturally could not decide the content of the ending.

But this did not prevent him from taking Marina to witness it—and what’s more, he was also very happy that Marina was willing to actively witness it.

Once again, she had defied her own wishes.

This was good… perhaps she herself had not even noticed.

Then, go take a look, my Ma Ganlei.

Go take a look at what kind of ending mortals who were bought and sold like livestock would ultimately receive.

Go take a look at this… world that was terminally ill.