Looking up, Aki couldn't help but hold his throat, because his tie was somehow still too tight.
"You sure i can't just blackmail the mayor? I'm already impervious to anything lesser than a war rifle made to penetrate tanks! And i don't die imediatly if my brain is hurt, so..." He tried to ask, but both women by his sides hit him.
"Don't you dare." Melissa murmured.
"There's a swat team in town armed with those exact rifles." Isabela pointed out. "Now i know why."
"Ok, ok, not like i was thinking of a frontal assault anyway, jesus." He grumbled. "Now that i think about it, the cristian angelic panteon probably exists, doesn't it? Wonder how an actual angel would look and taste like."
"Probably like the very essence of pain, punishment and mail delivery." Replied the blonde liutenent that was guiding the two through some connections to accelerate the process of creating a store and brand with their meager capital. Aki was going on a trip to solve that later, but this would still be his base of operations since there was only so much he could control while his cultivation was still shit in the eyes of the people living in better places.
"Shouldn't that be what demons taste like, and why the fuck am i talking about something like this with you two?" Pointed out the brunete, who now seemed to be in her late twenties at the very max.
"Nope/maybe" Said the two sociopaths at the same time. "Some demons definetly taste like actual tar, no need to eat then to know that, but there should be some poisonus ones that taste good and reproduce by having their flesh consumed by hosts or something along those lines. Makes you think about SCP 610, which is practically a demon of flesh/ hivemind with strangely fleshy substance, but is ironically safe for consumption." Aki explained.
Melissa was about to tell him to stop the creepy bullshit, when a woman wearing a butler outfit told them the master of the house would see them.
Aki shut up and followed the ladies while looking aloof, practicaly turning off really, until someone called his name.
"Yes?" He asked, turning to his new ally.
"Did you hear the conversation at all?" Grumbled the other woman.
"Nope. Plenty of practice in having different levels of attention to conversations around me, and this house's eletrical system is much more interesting." He pointed out, causing the thirty or so year old man that they were there to ask for help, to laugh a bit.
"You got quite the guts kid." He pointed out. "I don't normally repeat myself, but this isn't for me, so let me ask you again, can you get my kid to reach the power cultivators talk so much about?" He asked, his smile still present, but now pointing only that his mouth seemed to have many a similarity to a snake's.
"Yeah sure." He imediatly answered. "The speed itself depends on wheter or not i already have a martial scripture that matches his affinity, wheter he has any at all, in case of not i'd have to realise a sirurgy with some expensive materials, and how much effort he puts into it."
The complete certainty on his voice took the rich man by surprise, but hearing all this he had to confirm some things, so instead of trying to seem menacing he just took on a serious contenance and straight up asked.
"How can you determine that kind of thing, how would such sirurgy go and what kind of regimen would he be put under?"
"As expected of a doting father, right to the important part. The test isn't hard at all, i can even do it to you right now, just give me both your hands palms up and i will circulate my energy to determine your atributes. The sirurgy is more of a spiritual thing, i'd give the boy a part of my own affinity, which would naturally regenerate with time, while i made sure he has the affinity fixed to himself in a stable and natural way. The ingredients are easy for me to obtain, so you just need to pay me for them, but they are both to help stabilise my own energy inside the kid, like an IV to keep the patient on an hospital fuctioning well. The training would be normal and light exercises, since it's actually easier to push a kid to grow, and some meditation on provided literature." The recipe was as easy as that. Inversely, this made the rich man frown.
"I'm really pissed at some people right now, so just answer me one more thing. Why can you say something that everyone else said would be 'earth shaterring' hard and make it sound like it is simple?" He questioned, but Aki simply shrugged.
"An experienced brain surgeon would not be afraid of comiting mistakes on a surgery because it is not useful in anyway. If it can be done than it can be done. My method is easy because i'm only thinking of infusing a weak and suitable part of a willing and sturdy donor after consultation on the subject's circunstances. I have not yet performed this specific procedure, but i did more complex ones that had me actually opening my patients phisically and spiritually, so even in the worst situation, i can simply undo my work, force the boy to heal and devise a new procedure that is better suited to his situation."
"Force him to heal?" The man noticed.
"Share my regeneration and energy or whatever you want to call it. The worst that may cause is some hiperativism for the next couple of days. That part at least is common procedure, other doctors should be able to confirm my intended procedure and list of nescessary materials." He finished. Their new contact nodded, got up and shook everyone's hand.
*****
"You said your kid was born like this?" Aki asked, completly unprepared for what he found.
"Yes, he looks white like a sheet and has fangs, but he doesn't drink blood." The tired father showed his five year old son. His name aparently Lincoln something, Aki couldn't really remenber the hard to pronounce surmane at the moment.
"Good to know, otherwise i'd have to kill him." This got him several ugly looks from all those in the observation room. "I wouldn't kill a child for looking like a vampire, the kid just has an affinity for blood better than mine and a special physic tipe, one that makes him very 'autistic', in the sense that his emotions, mainly anger and hunger, are hard to control and he is an exeptional learner. Just to be sure, how old are you and who was the boy's mother? These things are generally hereditary." He completly ignored the situation and asked. He'd have a vampire to hunt down if the mother was still alive and he most certainly wanted to rob the kid of his affinity already, nevermind someone stronger. Of course, he wouldn't do it to a guiltless child. He could very well groom the boy like his own mother did for him.
"Why should i tell you?" The man frowned.
"Because i'm taking the boy as my diciple, he could even use my own blood art and reach past spirit realm. What you need to understand though, is that i'm not letting him be caged like this when i know i can help solve the problem. Also, his mother may or may not be a vampire on the run, those actually exist." He further explained. There was silence for a bit, but Lincolm started talking when he saw the warm way the young man in front of him had towards the child behind the glass. As if he was remenbering some long gone past.
"Seven years ago she was a warrior level expert. I'd not even know her face or anything of this world if she hadn't come back nine months later with an unnamed baby and forced me to take care of him." Hearing that, Aki simply noded and decided to not ask much more on that front. The man was clearly a proud guy and asking about the time he was raped and completly manupilated wasn't the best of ideas when they were already dealing with a sensitive problem.
"Sir." Aki put his hand on the man's shoulder to get his attention. "I'll be honest and say that while your child doesn't need any sort of external help to cultivate, there's just no way his mind would properly handle the stress of what will come the moment he starts. It would be best if we get something to lower his inate talent while we get him used to the power, otherwise there's a very real chance he's going to end up killing a lot of people in the process of killing himself." The man seemed a bit irritated by the idea itself, but he perfectly understood it was a nescessity, his son had had some episodes where he lashed on his caretakers and even a psychiatrist, hanse him looking for help of the cultivating world and rich magnates that deemed themselves scholars. "We also need to know why he was considered a defect by his egg donor since it may come as anything at unexpected moments. Much like chemistry, there are a lot of undesirable outcomes when mixing the wrong things together in the magic side of things."
No one in the room thought the way he refered to the woman that concieved the boy sleeping on the room by the side was strange, nor did they have other questions on the effectiveness of the plan. Lincolm still had something to say though.
"There's no need to wonder that, she spat on my shoes while handing me the baby and told me my genes were trash that could aparently not produce a proper heir no matter how high my yang affinity was." There didn't appear to be any change on his tone or face, but Aki could perfectly see the disgust surging on the man.
He almost couldn't help himself in asking if he'd be up for a quicky, but that really wasn't the time.
"You don't need to pretend, i know my body's value." There was an actual reason he was taking up the shady and, until recently, completly unknown Aki. No one else had any way to reliably take care of his son, and he was deeply sadened this included himself, without some absurd sacrifice. He'd try whatever unortodox method he could before he had to offer himself as a glorified slave while sending his son away to whatever esoteric solution the big and middle sized sects had. They'd not accept something so fickle as money for the use of resources like the ones supposedly nescessary, that simply wouldn't cover it for the middle sized ones and the bigger organizations wouldn't give two shits about the situation since there were many more geniuses wanting to join then, nevermind Lincolm was already in his late thirties and even with his talent would still not have much of a future ahead of him by earth standarts.
"I'd imagine you would preffer the painful and medical option, which is ironically much more of a bonding experience, but yeah, no, i will just take money for my project, even cover the materials and consumables myself. Know that you can always ask for a favor though." He said and winked. The man didn't seem as disturbed by the idea as much as he was surprised there even was such an option. "Let me introduce myself to little John Graham them. He has such stiff name for such a cute child though." Aki smiled and joked, looking at the delicate fairy that the boy was. Much like his father, he'd obviously grow to be a lady killer, but in a totally different way.
Lincolm had a stern and handsome face with some graying hair that mainly accentuated his seriousness and made the moments when he smiled that much more special.
Little John though, had smooth silk like skin, big doe eyes and lustruous black hair that seemed to point to his father having had another kind of beauty in his younger days. His serious face in his sleep may have looked strange to others, but Aki just thought it was cute. Him, his father and two siblings all had the same resting birch face whenever they didn't effort into it after all.