Back at the knight's quarters, seven figures sat around a round table.
Looking at them, Ciel tilted his head, 'Are they roleplaying the knights of the round table?'
"Personally, I think he's better than his brother. The second prince knew about my affinity to truth and lies, so he only sent letters, which I can't judge with my magic. The crown prince talked to all of us face to face. He didn't even point out me using my affinity. Besides, he was telling the truth."
Kierra spoke the longest sentence Ciel had ever heard from her.
"That's true, but this is all too convenient for both sides. So convenient that it seems like a trick." Jadiel sighed. "What do you guys think?"
"We three have no brains. You two strategists decide." Lanae shrugged. At some point, the trio had huddled together and started another card game.
"We go wherever you go." Ivan agreed.
"From his last words, he's also going to let us keep Erin. That's a plus from me." Mason shuffled the cards.
"What about you two?" Jadiel turned to Ciel and Erin.
Ciel shrugged, "I'm just a servant. Can I have an opinion?"
'According to the novel, you will join hands with Dominic anyway.'
Thinking this with disinterest, he looked at his self-proclaimed brother.
Erin had joined in on the card game and was currently learning what each card represented.
"So you do have an opinion?" Kierra asked, leaning forward.
"Speak." Jadiel spun his gun, his intentions obvious.
Ciel immediately gave a harmless smile, "I think you guys should accept the offer. As the crown prince said, there is no benefit to clinging to power over a ruined kingdom."
Looking away from the playing cards, Erin glanced over Ciel, taking note of Ciel's strange smile.
"Little sister, come over and play cards." He waved Ciel over.
"Sure." Still smiling, Ciel took the playing cards from Erin's hands.
***
From the second prince, who was now his ghost servant, Dominic gathered a variety of information about slave trading. After accepting Dominic's offer, the first task the group had to do was to move to the new organization base.
Like the novel, the new organization was named Fatalite. Their second task was to go on a rescue mission. As a result, Ciel was currently at a Fleur De Lis auction with Jadiel, Lanae, and Ivan.
Fleur De Lis was the head of the slavery organizations. He had no idea how Dominic had managed to sneak them in there but it was the perfect target for them. For Fatalite's beginning, Dominic had wanted to make a huge impact. And what was a better way then to damage the head of the organization?
As for whether they could do it or not, that was none of Dominic's business. Even if they couldn't do it, they had to do it.
***
In a large room reminiscent of a small theater, Kierra, Jadiel, and Ciel were wearing masks in the audience—disguised as guests, and Ciel was in a dress—even after they had learned about his actual gender.
Wearing his shoulder-length hair in two pigtails, Ciel irritatedly pulled at the white ruffles on his yellow lolita-style dress. Why were the group's tastes so similar to his past life's sister's tastes? Even the ruffles were the same style, delicate and full of lace. Damn it, at least he was allowed to rip this off later.
Meanwhile, the host of the auction wore a flamboyant golden mask as he proudly pranced to the stage.
"Ladies and gentlemen! This is the moment you all have been waiting for! I know the times have been chaotic lately because of the change in rulers, but do not fear! We, the Fleur De Lis, will not fail in providing you all wonderful lilies no matter what happens in our kingdom!"
The audience around the team of three clapped in approval. Ciel clapped along with them. He noticed Kierra and Jadiel staring at him. He smiled harmlessly and mouthed,
[We have to blend in. Don't we?]
They were clearly not experienced with infiltrating enemy lines. Ciel's mood improved from watching their stiff faces, their clapping sounding equally robotic.
The pair turned their gazes back at the host, who was presenting the first 'lily', a quivering mottled cheetah boy around the same age as Ciel's physical body—nine years old. He looked human, but he had two cheetah ears popping up from his head, and he was clutching his dirty mottled tail. But despite the dirt, Ciel immediately noticed a flower formed from the mottled patterns on the top of his head. A heavy black collar was around his neck, its chain connecting to the heavy metal lily held in the host's hands.
'What bad taste. Even worse than my dress.' Ciel stopped himself from clicking his tongue.
The audience in Jadiel's vicinity suddenly felt a heavy pressure descend on them, but it then disappeared like an illusion.
Kierra had grasped Jadiel's hands, calming him down. Ciel glanced at him, recalling what Dominic had said, 'They're both cheetah eves, do they know each other?'
The man on the stage smiled, "this young wildcat was caught a few years ago, and only recently gained a human form. Take him home and you can experience the thrill of raising a beast from young! Raise him right and you'll get a cat loyal to you and only you!"
Ciel shivered in disgust and resisted the urge to look beside him—Jadiel must be exploding in anger by now.
Soon, a ferocious bidding war started. Although the eve was a male, his race was rare, and he was a carnivorous eve—the ones harder to catch. With a final price of 100 gold coins, the boy was sold to a peacock-like lady wearing a flamboyant turquoise feather dress. The lady lifted her head proudly as she stepped out to the stage to receive her 'lily.'
All of a sudden, the auction house was plunged into darkness. In that instant, the trio started to move. Kierra jumped onto the stage where the cheetah eve stood, about to go to the buyer.
–Clink.
The boy's chains were easily snapped and thrown aside as Kierra carried the boy down from the stage.
Ciel and Jadiel had also started moving, flashing to the stage and entering the back covered by curtains.
Behind the curtains was a dungeon. The guards were already knocked out, and the enslaved eves stood timidly in a line.
'How skilled. They were all killed unaware.' Ciel looked down at the dead guards laying in their own pools of blood. Their expressions didn't reveal any fear, shock, nor surprise. One was even laughing before he died.
All of their necks were neatly slit.
"Scared?" Standing next to a body, Mason twirled his bloodstained daggers, shaking the blood off.
Ciel shook his head. He had known what kind of bloody world this was when he had first regained his memories.
Besides, it wasn't like his last world was any better than this one.
"Good. Everyone, let's go." The eves moved timidly behind Lanae as she followed Mason out. Kierra also joined the group backstage, still carrying the cheetah boy.
Outside, the host was trying to calm the guests down. Some masked people were already getting up to leave in panic.
"Now, everyone, don't panic. Our auction house is well versed with these kinds of situations. Just some foolish beasts wanting to carry out a rescue mission. Stay still and we will continue the auction in just a few minutes."
Hearing this, the peacock-like lady opened up her fan to cover up her masked face in dissatisfaction. "I already bought that cat, I hope Fleur De Lis will give me compensation if it is not found."
As the host nodded and apologized again, the lights went back on. Jadiel motioned for Ciel to go out—it was his turn to do his part.
Finally able to tear off his dress, Ciel was happy. Underneath his ruffles was a neat white and gold suit similar to the host's suit, but specialized for children.
Twirling the poker cards he had sneaked from the base, Ciel smiled, grabbing a golden mask from one of the dead guards. He dusted it off before replacing his own plain white mask with it and walked out.
"As an apology for the commotion, the Fleur De Lis will present a special show." He winked confidently at the host.
The host, who had not heard of anything like this before, silently backed off. Anyway, the other person was wearing a golden Fleur De Lis mask. They were probably sent by one of the higher ups to mitigate dissatisfaction with the lights out. He quickly scampered away to find guards to catch the escaped cheetah eve.
The guests sat back down. Even though the host had said that the auction house was skilled in handling situations, Fleur De Lis had never actually had any accidents before, so naturally, there were no so called 'special shows'.
In the end, curiosity won over their fear of being caught. Besides, although their face was covered, the guests who were mostly nobles could tell that the newcomer was a young but pretty child from their incredibly short stature and the face revealed underneath the oversized mask. (Ciel: Excuse me?)
Most people were less guarded against children. Especially cute children.
With a confident smile on his face, Ciel threw his entire deck into the air. Without any use of mana, Ciel skillfully shuffled the cards as they fell and neatly stacked them into a deck. Randomly taking out nine cards, he threw them towards the audience.
The next series of actions were completed in a matter of seconds—nine blood red cards embedded themselves into the walls of the hexagonal room. With another flick of his wrist, another nine cards stabbed halfway into the previous cards on the wall. Ciel repeated this three more times, leaving him with only seven cards at hand, and nine card towers standing horizontally on the walls.
In his heart, Ciel lamented the fact that the cards would soon be destroyed. However, on the outside, Ciel kept his composed smile.
"Let the show begin."
At Ciel's command, the blood from the cuts he had previously made on each of his fingertips flowed out to each of the card towers, with the last strand of blood connecting all the cards together.
Each string of blood split into two thinner strings, and then those strings split. This continued until a web of blood surrounded the entire audience. The entire room resembled an eerie but organized spiderweb.
With another flick of his wrist and a crimson flash, the guests felt their vision turn red.
The cards connected by the strings had exploded simultaneously. In an instant, the guests could feel themselves being covered in their own blood and the blood of the ones next to them.
"Aah!"
"R-run!"
"Red! Everything's red!"
"Save me!"
Screaming filled the room. A majority of the nobles here today were the corrupt, weaker nobles who had closed mana veins—ones who couldn't use magic. Even with Ciel's low mage rank, he could still heavily injure a few people, immobilizing a majority of the audience.
On the stage, Ciel still had the guts to bow smilingly with his increasingly pale face, "I hope you enjoyed the performance. I'll be taking my leave now!"
He leapt off the stage and ran towards the exit.
The uninjured nobles immediately went into action.
"Catch him!"
"Call the guards!"
"F*ck, guards! Kill that brat!"
Ciel laughed happily as he ran past the shocked guards outside the room with a stampede behind him. 'Only the injured should be in the room now. They'll be dealt with easily.'
Ciel had only sprinted past a few doors when he felt like his stamina was all out. It couldn't be helped though, Ciel had been in a small tower for the entirety of his second life, it would be strange if he had good stamina.
'Seems like I won't be able to follow the escape route they planned out.'
Panting heavily, he quickly darted into a nearby room and jumped out of the window, using his momentum to shatter the glass. Thankfully, the auction was held on the first floor, and Ciel crashed right into the soft flowerbeds.
Ciel quickly rolled up and almost stumbled because of the blood loss—because of the urgency of the situation, he hadn't been able to guide the blood back into his body.
His body was picked up and Ciel looked up to see Ivan. Ivan frowned at Ciel's bloody body as he jumped on a horse and galloped away.
Ciel smiled, Ivan being here meant that his diversion succeeded. Hearing the angry screams of the guests behind him, he peacefully blacked out.