46 Do You Know Your Wrongs?

The small room was cold, but Darkscale didn't shiver. He stood there with an enigmatic expression on his face, moving countless threads of light around the large array that lied on the granite floor.

The distorted image that hovered on top of the large hole filled with plasmatic silver energy, flickered in and out an existence as he tried to find the right balance in his calibrations.

The consumption of energy that such a complex formation required was enormous, but the snake wasn't worried: he had planned for this moment for almost an entire year. He was ready: he hunted for beasts, for humans from the neighboring tribes and even grinded the herbs filled with power that grew near the Yellow Lake and fed them to a container that he created after studying the Ghost Pond. He poured his all being into the construction of such a great formation, spending so much time drawing and perfecting every single rune.

The serpent then tested it thousands of times, made countless mistakes and corrected them thanks to hundreds of test trials. It had been the most meticulous and long work in all his life. However, he didn't hate it, not even for a second. The Darkscale that despised working hard on something for more than a few minutes was dead, killed by the cruelty of the real world.

Now, he knew and accepted the truth that there was a need to make sacrifices to survive. What he wanted to do and what he needed to do, were two completely different things. He had struggled a lot with that problem, with the discrepancy between his desires and the reality of his world, for a long time after the Battle of the Blood Woods.

He wanted freedom, he wanted to be unbound from any link he had and to get rid of the artificial intelligence that betrayed him countless times.

However, he soon realized that desire alone would not help him at all. He didn't know what to do to get rid of the MAID without losing his ring. Plus he was also feeling day after day more chained and constricted into a relationship that he had to agree to.

The link between him and Star Leaf was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it was an incredible way to cultivate, a course because he had no power over her.

It was the very first night that he passed in the Outpost that changed completely his perspective. He had a Dream, the first in a long time. It wasn't a long dream either, but it gave him what he needed. In the dream he was talking with another creature, a large octopus with eyes on each tentacle.

They were talking about how he was able to infiltrate any community, taking what he needed while slowly preparing a way to kill them all. When he woke up, he felt thrilled. He immediately put that plan in action, slowly acting less aggressive against the Leaf girl.

She was suspicious at first, he could feel it, but gradually he became better acting.

'Yeah, better at acting' murmured the snake, almost incapable to not justify the relationship that he had with the green-haired woman. Strangely, he couldn't help but feel a tight grip around his heart. He tried to dispell the sentiment, but it only grew stronger.

The threads of lights that departed from the body of the snake vibrated dangerously, almost extinguishing themselves

'It is just acting' he stubbornly continued, trying to concentrate back on what he was doing. The threads stabilized when he fully concentrated on them, continuing sending discharges of energy to different parts of the formation.

Finally, after passing almost an hour working on the fine-tuning of the array, the image hovering in the middle of the stone room stabilized. It was a black screen with red words that read "Black Hand Market". Although it did look less realistic, it was the exact same screen that he could summon thanks to the Black Hand Orbital System that he had in his Blue Cave.

A slow jingle started to echo from the dark screen and a slim creature emerged from the darkness, looking at him with a friendly smile. It had the upper body of a human, and the lower body of a fish. Odious creature.

"Welcome to-" she didn't even finish her sentence that Darkscale already dismissed her with a cold voice. "Bring me Spike of the Coltberra Clan" ordered the serpent, looking at the strange fish-like creature that tried to talk to him with a melodious voice before getting immediately interrupted.

The fish-like woman looked surprised, opening her mouth to say something but receiving a terrible look from Darkscale and changing immediately opinion.

"Now!"

The creature disappeared without even saying a word, and for a long period of time the black screen continued to stay completely void. The serpent started to think that the fish-lady hadn't actually followed his order, when a familiar figure emerged from the screen.

It was way slimmer than the last time Darkscale had seen him, and had very large bags under his eyes. He exhausted, almost as he had not slept for a long time.

However, the serpent did not feel an ounce of pity for the horned individual. In fact, if it wasn't for the incredible cold blood that he learned to maintain at all moments and the fact that he understood that his runes only allowed for energy construct to be transmitted, he would have already tried to attack him with rage.

"Tell me, do you know your wrongs?" he asked with a sharp voice, while his violet eyes looked deep into those of the horned merchant.

"Wrong? My old friend Darkscale, what did I do to wrong you? Why did you block me from your trader?" the slim trader immediately started lamenting, pointing at his body and swearing that it was all because he wanted to help him that he remained without a single penny.

"Look, how I became! I used all my money to help to repay the interest on your deals! Id didn't even have left the credits to eat properly! Did you know that if you disappear I need to repay them for you?" he continued to cry, looking incredibly in pain and massaging his now flat belly.

"Debt? You bastard have the courage to talk to debt with me? You sabotaged me! You gave me a terminal illness passing her as a great gift!" sentenced the serpent, not losing control even under such a ridiculous claim.

This was the time of the merchant to feel stunned. Saboted him? How? He remembered clearly their meeting, it had been the most important moment of his adult life, after all. He did give him everything he asked for, even adding a premium class MAID. He felt that this was something that needed to be restated, so he tried to made him recall that.

"Master Darkscale, I gave you techniques, and a MAID..." he stated, stretching his voice especially on the last word. How could the little master forget the incredible beauty that he sent him?

A pulsing vein appeared on the front of the serpent. His eyes narrowed for a few seconds but then he closed them and calmed down after a long a single long breath. When he reponed his eyes, the fury was completely gone, substituted by a cold and sharp glint.

"No, you gave me cancer, you gave me an incompetent traitorous coward that almost got me killed multiple times and disobeyed every single order I gave her" said the serpent with a cold voice.

"What?" Spike was completely lost. What was he talking about? When did he ever send him anything like that? A Cancer? A Traitor? The merchant started to believe that the poor snake had been scammed by someone.

"Master Darkscale, if someone approached you saying that he was coming from me, that's not my fault if you believed them. I -" he said, trying to sound the nicest possible.

"Do you think I'm a moron? I'm talking about your precious MAID." rebutted Darkscale, keeping his eyes fixed on the round face of the horned creature.

"???"

"She doesn't obey me, she continuously bothers me when I try to cultivate, she even prohibits me to study more closely the formation of the Blue Cave. She won't even pass me the control fo the treasure even if now I'm completely able to bind it myself. Moreover, she gave my secret techniques away to my own ene-..." Darkscale stopped talking, his eyes changing for a second. He tried to complete his word a couple of time, but each time he felt as if someone was depriving him of air and the grip around his heart grew exponentially.

'Why I can't say it?'