Chapter 153. The Final Two
Two Tier 3 mana signatures closed in on them, looping toward them from either side. Rhys devoured another tomato and pulled out a third, eating it so fast that tomato juices ran down his face, mingling with the red facepaint. He still wasn’t a hundred percent, and even if he ate all the tomatoes, he wouldn’t be. He needed the slow, regenerative power of Self-Regeneration to set everything right. The tomatoes were just patching him up, lessening his pain as much as possible and keeping his body moving. Trash Body was still active, and for a reason. He was still fucked up on the inside, emotionally and physically, but mostly physically. When he let Self-Regeneration fix him over a long, slow night, it set his bones right and adjusted what needed to be adjusted. The vitality tomatoes were more like a band-aid. It kept him upright and kept him from bleeding, but that was it. He could feel that his bones hadn’t set right, and several of his organs felt trampled-on and messed up, but he could keep fighting, where he’d been ready to conk out before. He needed to rest and recover, but for now, he could keep going.
All the low-Tier mages had backed away. They hadn’t outright fled, but watched from the edges, curious about how this would end. Rhys had a feeling that this was not the first time this particular troupe of criminals had had a violent change in management. No one seemed too concerned, especially since Rhys hadn’t been aggressive toward any of them, only toward the upper echelons of their structure. It explained why all the other mages he’d taken over had gone along with his wild new plans so easily—or half of it, anyways. The other half, he figured, was the Empire. They’d struggle to survive in the ‘wild,’ as it were, without someone protecting them from the Empire. It was safer to align themselves under a boss of sorts, who knew how to keep their magery on the down low. As long as Rhys could provide that protection, he was just as valid as the Water Syndicate to most of these lower-Tier mages.
Really, these were probably exactly the people he needed for his fight. People who didn’t particularly like the Empire, or at least weren’t excited about it. People who wanted to do their own thing, not be held to someone else’s standards and cultivation techniques. There was no reason to harm them just because they were temporarily part of a criminal enterprise. They’d be recruited to his cause soon enough, whether they wanted to be or not.
They aren’t told about my glorious purpose. They don’t find out about anything we’ve set up so far. This part of the enterprise stays separate from my tight-knit group of rebels.
Still, his chip and fries empire needed manpower, and if fast food in his world had taught him anything, it didn’t matter if that manpower was underpaid and would rather be anywhere but at their job. All they needed to do was show up and do enough work to pass it off as a desirable product, and that was enough.
Two figures sprinted out of the forest, closing in on Rhys from either direction. One, a man who had the Waters family shoulders; the other, a woman who had the Waters family jawline. Their eyes blazed with anger.
“Are you the one? The one who’s been killing all our sons?” the woman shouted.
“You dare come here and fight us in our homes? Is killing our sons not enough?”
“I didn’t kill all your sons. Leonard is still alive,” Rhys informed them. “Also, you sent your sons after me. What was I supposed to do, keel over and die so they could live?”
“Silence! You die, here!” the woman shouted.