Chapter 37: Danger

{+15 Love (Sephra Lilliel)}

{+3000 Affection points}

The system chimed, alerting the child to a sudden rise in affection from none other than Sephra. His journey through the casino was…silent, to say the least, with neither he nor his partner uttering even the slightest of syllables to one another. Arthur couldn't say anything. His mind had been too preoccupied with the missing corpse of the man he had so swiftly defeated to focus on such a tedious thing. It was odd. It was eerie. Arthur felt sick, a sensation the boy didn't understand. It wasn't like he killed the man. No, he merely struck him with his magic, but then why wasn't he there? How had his body moved? He was unconscious, wasn't he? Did Sephra somehow call upon a member of her security to discreetly move the man away from the stairwell…yes that had to be it. That was the only working theory. Sephra had called upon a member of her security to remove the man from the casino and had likely taken him towards the nearest guard to be punished. Yes, that's what must have happened; otherwise, there'd be no need to remove the man from his place of rest. Yet despite having attained such an answer, Arthur still felt queasy. His mind kept on replaying that sickly grating snap on repeat. Initially, Arthur had enjoyed that crisp sound, but now, it felt wrong. It sounded a lot more unsettling and violent than what the child had first heard through his battle-clouded mind. Perhaps it was because the sound was no longer drowned out by Arthur's rhythmic deafening heartbeats, but it sounded harrowing. It didn't crunch like the brittle snap of broken legs nor the gentle break of a destroyed arm. It continuously popped, similar to the soft popping of bubble wrap…like a myriad of broken vertebrae.

*Gag* Arthur's body released a gentle gag. He had to stop his thoughts here. He didn't need to delve further into the man's disappearance. It was fine to remain a mystery. Arthur already had all the answers he needed.

"Are you ok, Arthur?" Luna gently purred her soft breaths grating against the boy's reddened ears, "You look sick," She continued her ruby red gaze focused upon the sickly white face of the broken child. His body was hunched while his dirty brown eyes gently trembled in their sockets, unfocused and uncaring to the world around them, as though he wasn't viewing the same scene as anyone else but rather a different plain of existence entirely. A sentiment that held partial truth regarding the boy's current plight. Arthur wasn't focused on his surroundings. His world had gone dark, his eyes no longer reflecting the bustling scenery of the unconcerned crowd around him but a different picture entirely. The hustle and bustle of the mass had been replaced by a strained spectral silence only broken by the sound of a monotonous drip, like that of a leaking faucet. The darkened world around him gained form but remained monotonous in colour, with nothing but harrowing shades of grey and rusted brown to fill the child's imagination. Cages of decaying metal lined the child's peripheral view, all as uninteresting as the last, while laying dead centre in front of the stunned boy, broken upon the cold stone flooring, was a lake of crimson. Its vibrant hue practically glimmered amongst the sea of monotony, quickly becoming the sole focus of the starstruck boy. He knew what it was. He knew where he was. Arthur had been here once before, on that fateful day.

'Why…why am I here,' Arthur hollowly chuckled, his dirty brown eyes now devoid of life. They were soleless, without spark, without hope. 'I thought I was done with this place, so why, why am I here, why does my mind keep bringing me here!' Arthur inwardly screamed, yet no matter how much he begged for an answer, no such thing arrived. He just stood there, his body unmoving, unresponsive to his mind's calls, forced to stare at the puddle of blood with which he felt a strange, unsettling connection. Arthur was mesmerised, his eyes locked upon the crimson pool with infinite curiosity. It was the only thing in the room to catch his attention, the only thing he could possibly stare at to bide his time in the harrowing space. No reflections shimmered across the surface of the bloodied lake. It consumed all. Leaving only scarlet in its wake. That was until something began to form upon the surface of the bath. An image, a face? It certainly shared all the features one would correlate to such a thing, yet…they were all misplaced, flipped, the silhouetted figure's features were inverted.

In place of a jaw appeared a windswept head of infrequent hairs, the appearance of which seemed akin to a scraggly beard, while sitting atop the silhouetted visage appeared a face, so contorted with rage, so ferocious that one could only imagine the grudge he held in the moments prior to his death. Obviously, he was dead. There was no way he wasn't. His head had been spun around a complete one-eighty degree, his shoulders remained in place while his disfigured hollow gaze locked with the horrified face of Arthur.

Arthur didn't need to imagine the rage, the torment the man had experienced in those brief seconds prior to death. He had seen it. This body, this figure, it belonged to Roland. 'No, no, no, no, no, no, no,' Arthur's mind fractured while his stomach lurched as though pulled forward by an invisible hook. This couldn't be real. There was no way it was real. This was all in his mind, of course, it was, it had to be, he couldn't have been brought to a place like this without his knowledge, yes, this was all in his mind, a continuation of the broken mystery Arthur had tried to put a cease to. Despite his order, his overwhelming decree, his mind had continued to imagine what had happened to the vanished body of Roland. It pieced together the necessary clues only to arrive at the harrowing answer that it now lay bare.

'This isn't happening, this isn't real, it's all my imagination,' Arthur heatedly stated, slamming his eyelids shut in a desperate attempt to tune himself out from the truth that surrounded him. However, in place of one sealed sense, another opened. A grating crisp snapping sound like a horrific pop filled the young child's frantic mind, echoing in his dainty ears on a seemingly endless repeat. It wasn't the snapping of a leg nor arm that Arthur tried to excuse it as, no, the source of the sound was painfully evident to any and all who heard it. It was the dry, horrific sound of one's snapped neck being painfully contorted to an unnatural degree.

'I…I…I…' Arthur could only hollowly mutter, scared to say those final words, that admission of guilt. He didn't do it. This was all a lie. None of this explained the man's vanished body, merely the type of injury he may have entailed. He wasn't…He couldn't have…Arthur couldn't possibly have killed him. 'Yeah, that's right, this doesn't explain anything, my brain can show me that image as much as it likes, but it still doesn't explain the missing body,' Arthur brokenly stammered in a futile attempt to deny the truth that lay squarely in front of him. 'He's still alive. I know he is. One of Sephra's men probably healed him with a potion before taking him to a guard. Yeah, that's what happened…that's what definitely happened. I didn't do that to Roland. I couldn't have. The only thing I'm guilty of is destroying his life…not taking it, I haven't sunken that far, not yet,' The boy furiously denied, his clenched eyes opening to reveal a changed landscape. He had returned. Escaped from his self-imposed prison.

"Arthur, are you ok," Arthur heard Luna's frantic voice of panic resonate from his left. He could still feel it, the woman's gentle warmth against his arm, her calm yet lascivious gaze now filled with worry. Arthur could sense it, their undeniable connection. Yet despite having returned to his correct plain, Arthur did not feel joy, sure he had escaped from that realm of torment, but in its place lay in wait a sensation so ghastly, so unexplainable, that Arthur couldn't help but doubt his very nature as a human.

He had expected to feel sick, to feel hatred for what he had done. Even if he had not taken the man's life, he had destroyed his future, yet Arthur remained uncaring.

He forced himself to feel sick, to unknowingly replicate the emotions one would expect to go through as a human, to appease the society around him, to not stand out. Arthur wore a mask that had attached itself to his face with such ferocity that he no longer knew how to remove it. It had become part of him, his greatest shield.

To the world around him and to himself, Arthur, in this very moment, appeared to be going through a great deal of distress, all his motions indicated as such, from the way his body involuntarily gagged at the slightest of pops to the way his eyes trembled with undisguised fear. They all felt real, Arthur thought they were, yet they weren't. Every action the boy took was an unknowing projection of how he thought someone would act, an act so fantastic, so believable that even Arthur mistook it for the truth.

"Ye-yeah, I'm fine," Arthur hollowly muttered through quivering lips.

"Really? You don't look fine~" Luna anxiously whispered, her heart unknowingly panging with tremendous pain that only increased in severity with every second she spent looking at the broken boy. "We can find somewhere for you to rest if you want. I'm sure both Vienna and Sephra will be able to find us no matter where we go," The fox continued, tightening her hold of the boy.

"No…" Arthur blurted, stunning the young woman with his instant refusal. "Sorry…I'm fine, I just felt sick for a second there, but I'm A-ok now," Arthur continued, sending a bright smile filled with childish glee to the stunned fox who could only relent to the child's immature response.

"If you say so," Luna half-heartedly stated. With every syllable exchanged between the two, every second spent in Arthur's company, her heart began to increase in pace. At first, it was nothing more than the occasional skipped beat, but now, it was as though she had run a marathon without a mana core. She felt lightheaded, dazed by the boy's rose-painted sparkling visage. Her breath felt short, as though she had been winded just by being in Arthur's presence. While her head burned with an undeniable heat, Luna couldn't think straight. Every thought, every idea that came into the maiden's mind revolved around the stunning child that remained plastered to her side, locked within her embrace. She had never felt this way before. Everything the temptress was feeling was so new and strange that she couldn't comprehend what was going on. Should she be enjoying this peculiar feeling? Or should she hate it? Luna was split. For the first time in her life, she felt overly self-conscious. She began to worry about the littlest of things, from the way her silky black hair was arranged to her posture, was it too lax, would Arthur think less of her. Such worries barraged the twin-tailed fox's mind with ceaseless fury, tormenting her to no end with the only escape from such a continuous assault coming in the form of contact with the sole cause behind it all.

"Did you know?" Luna suddenly blurted in a fruitless attempt to escape from the barrage of anxiousness that assaulted her mind without relent.

"Know what?" Arthur curiously questioned.

"That you were going to be attending the fifth prince coming of age ceremony, back when I originally brought it up, you looked shocked…but something felt wrong. Your reaction seemed disingenuous, staged, so did you know? And what was that weird thing you said to me? That "I know"? It was like you had already predicted your disqualification from the meeting before it even happened." Luna hurriedly explained, her ruby red eyes positively shining with interest as she stared at the passive figure of Arthur.

Silence momentarily reigned in the bustling street that the pair had made theirs. Arthur's eyes flickered with hidden interest momentarily before quickly returning to their previous apathetic hue. Did she know? Had Luna caught onto the fact that Arthur's entire performance in the room was nothing more than an act, a perfectly made character that the boy had to play, or was she merely curious? Whatever it was mattered not to the positively beaming child whose smile didn't quite reach his eyes.

"What are you talking about? How could I have known what was going to happen with the fifth prince's whole thing? I don't even know who the fifth prince is, let alone what a coming of age ceremony entails," Arthur responded, "But I'm thankful that Sephra managed to convince madame Vienna to leave me with you for the whole ordeal…I don't know what would have happened to me if I had gone like Vienna planned…would I die?" The boy continued shifting the focus of the topic away from his mysterious act and toward the more pressing issue concerning his narrow avoidance of death.

"No…well maybe," Luna answered, her face a furious shade of crimson. "If Sephra hadn't managed to convince Vienna, then I would have, and if all else failed…I would have taken you by force~" Luna purred, "I did say that you'd eventually be mine, didn't I, Arthur?" The fox smiled a brilliant smile, one that Arthur couldn't help but admire in stunned reverence. The scene was picturesque. Luna's sensual aura had all but dissipated, leaving nothing more than the innocent ambience of an awkward maiden in love in its wake *badum* Arthur's heart forcefully skipped a beat. At the same time, his sickly skin flushed a violent scarlet. He could have spent hours staring at Luna's dazzling visage. In fact, the boy wished for such a scenario. Yet, alas, fate had other plans in store for the pair as the moment Arthur and Luna's love-struck eyes locked, they were interrupted by none other than the marquis and casino tyrant, the former of which stared at the couple with a gaze that practically screamed for Luna's untimely death.

"Arthur…what are you…nevermind," Vienna silently huffed. She didn't want her final moments with the boy to be filled with rage. No, she needed to make them count, to have a parting she can look upon fondly for the coming month, something to sustain her craving for the boy when the times get rough. "Come over here. I need to say goodbye," The mother continued, beckoning the boy over with a seductive call. A call that Arthur's body instinctively responded to, as though urged by the very heavens themselves, Arthur's limbs began their autonomous march towards the mature beauty. With every step, he felt his heart jump in his chest. With every inch left behind, he felt a sickening sense of foreboding grow in his mind. He had no control over his body. It simply followed Vienna's call, searching for her sensual figure without the need for thoughts. Thinking would only serve to distract the paralysed child from the beauty in front of him. It was needless. Arthur need only to pay heed to Vienna's heart-shaped pupils that screamed out in euphoric glee at the boy's movements. That was until they came to a stop. Arthur's figure lay frozen in arm's reach of the pink pupil seductress, his gaze dreamy, as though drunk on the mother's infinite palpable lust. He couldn't move. He couldn't think. He was at the mercy and every whim of his bloodline attraction. Arthur's chest felt hot, scorchingly so, as though burnt by the original flame. Compared to this heat, the one fueled by Luna felt like a mere warm breeze as opposed to the dragon's breath he initially compared it to. His eyes unknowingly shimmered in a faint yet enchanting purple as they remained locked with the mesmerising gaze of Vienna.

He could see it all. Every ounce of love the mother held for him was on full display. From her warm yet lascivious gaze that made every hair on the boy's frail body stand on end to her pleasant kind smile that beamed at Arthur with no remorse, to any and all who viewed the mother's current temperament, it would be obvious to deduce the feelings she held for the seemingly socially inept child, this wasn't the gaze one held for a servant, but one possessed only for their dearest lover, their soulmate, the person who gave their life meaning. Vienna's dainty hands wrapped around the sickly figure of Arthur, capturing the previous peasant within her warm embrace before dragging him ever closer towards her heavenly or rather demonic body. Their figures collided, Arthur's stick-like body stuck to Vienna's sexy figure like glue as the mother's embrace only proceeded to tighten. It was like she was trying to merge with the boy, to go from two to one, one body, one mind, one perfect relationship. Of course, such a thing wasn't possible, but that didn't stop the mother from trying. She wanted to be as close to Arthur as feasibly possible within her final moments. In fact, she didn't want to let the boy go. Minutes passed in placid yet heated silence, with Arthur's figure remaining firmly entrapped within Vienna's infinite embrace. Her gigantic F cup-breasts had moulded around the boy's head, acting like a cushion and freeing him from the background noise that such a locale brought. Everything was silent within Vienna's warmth. The only sound that played in Arthur's befuddled mind was that of his own thunderous heartbeat, a drum so loud, so strong that it drowned out the heated breaths and low mutters that would have otherwise echoed in the boy's obscured ears, a fortuitous fact, a blessing from the goddesses, a stroke of utmost luck. Arthur didn't hear Vienna's obsessed mutterings, her self-imposed confessions, nor eerie threats of what was to come. His heartbeat prevented that reality from letting him remain in the perfect delusion that he currently resided in, that was until Vienna broke the embrace, or rather, she was forced out of it, restrained by none other than Sephra, who now held the mother away from the stunned child with a face of apparent horror. What had she heard? What could the casino tyrant possibly have witnessed that the starstruck boy did not?

Arthur was confused, his illusory purple gaze flickering in a sporadic attempt to return to the boy's initial dirty brown hue, which it promptly did, taking with it not only Arthur's enchanting visage but also the heat that plagued the child's rapidly beating chest. 'Why is Vienna being restrained?' Arthur could only helplessly question, unaware of how dire his previous situation had been nor how close he had come to being stripped bare upon the many cobbles that lay underfoot in the cramped space to be used as the love-struck Vienna saw fit.

However, the boy didn't have time to question Vienna's current predicament. No, the moment Arthur regained rationality, his mind detected another warm sensation, one similar to that of Vienna's gentle body heat; however, instead of wrapping the boy's entire body in such warmth, it only lingered in Arthur's unknowingly outstretched palm.

"Come on, Arthur, we need to go~" Luna seductively purred, her voice carrying with it the usual air of sensuality that it held along with something else, one other emotion…worry, fear, it was something like that, Vienna had brought about panic in the seductress.

"Eh…B-but I haven't said goodbye's," Arthur dreamily stuttered, still affected by Vienna's overwhelmingly beautiful figure.

"You can say them some other time, but for now, we need to go," Luna continued, pulling the child by his outstretched hand and dragging him away from the furiously screaming figure of Vienna, her body writhed in apparent displeasure or was it pain, anguish maybe, whatever emotion the mother felt it was clearly tearing her apart. Her wild swings fell against Sephra's Adept Knight realm body, causing little to no damage to the woman's beautifully pale skin. At the same time, her undisturbed crazed gaze remained fixed upon the departing back of her beloved, their twin pink-hearted pupils trembling in unprecedented rage. She had been stopped. Sephra had halted her advances upon the young child. She had him. Arthur was practically her's. No, he was already Vienna's. She was in the right to claim her dearly beloved's love. It was rightfully hers for the taking. His body, his heart, his mind, everything already belonged to her, and likewise, all of Vienna belonged to Arthur. They were simply meant to be, yet Sephra stopped her from consummating their relationship. Now how was Vienna meant to sustain her lust for the child? She couldn't, that's how. Vienna's mind was already on the verge of breaking just from this slight separation. She had been without Arthur for mere seconds, and yet she was already on the edge of mental collapse. She needed him, to be with him at every given moment, to spend their lives together.

"ARTHURRR!!!" Vienna mournfully screamed, her hair rapidly switching between shades of blonde and brown. She couldn't contain it anymore. Her love for the boy was too grand to be bottled up, yet Sephra was forcing such phenomena to occur. Vienna wanted to rush to the departing boy, to sweep him up in her gentle embrace and steal him away from that damned temptress.

"Calm down, Vienna," Sephra angrily muttered.

"NOO!!! MY ARTHUR!! MY ARTHUR'S BEING TAKEN AWAY FROM ME!!" Vienna continued her strength increasing with every syllable that spilt from her obsessed lips, her wild strikes that previously held no power now left visible blemishes upon Sephra's ivory skin while two faint black horns poked out from the sea of blonde hair that covered the mother's head.

'She's changing. Is this her bloodline?' Sephra could only hollowly mutter, her mind too taken aback by Vienna's sudden change in appearance to comprehend the severity of her situation. 'This is bad…I can't hold her for much longer,' The half-elf seethed through gritted teeth. Vienna's strength had now almost reached her level, and Sephra didn't doubt it would continue to increase with every millisecond spent in captivity. She needed to stop her now, to contain the mother's fury. 'I'm sorry, Vienna,' Sephra inwardly apologised as her hands started to glow with a brilliant white light

*Boom* The sound of distant chaos resounded across Arthur's ears, temporarily piquing his curiosity that better not be turned towards the now incapacitated mother. 'What's going on?' Arthur could only absentmindedly question as a flurry of translucent blue system panels assaulted his view.