Chapter 80

When Kyon opened the gate to the training ground, he saw an unsightly scene.

Charming Juno was sitting on the bench with a disgruntled look on her face, her arms folded irritably across her chest. She was nervously wiggling her foot in a delicate sandal. The hefty teenage slave was leaning against the wall next to her, brutally battered, his breath ragged and hoarse. He was holding in his half-opened hand a handful of cruelly knocked-out teeth. The other hand was twisted at an unnatural angle, all his fingers broken. His black clothes were soaked with something wet, most likely with his blood, which confirmed the scarlet patterns sprayed on the wall and on the ground. One of his eyes was smashed so bad that it disappeared behind the red swelling, the other eye looked a bit better. His face was bruised all over, his nose broken in several places. Anyone would be terrified just looking at him. Judging by his weak breath, the poor thing didn't have long to live.

Alec had thought the young lady would be kind to him. She looked like an angel when they first met. He was depressed after losing his potency, but the upcoming Juno's arrival at the training ground perked him up a bit. His heart was beating faster in anticipation of the training, after which he would have wonderful dreams of his bright future and finally a full stomach. But the beautiful lady came and shattered all his expectations at once. With the expression of a maniac on her face, she furiously rushed at him, surpassing him both in speed and power. She mercilessly beat him up, not giving him a chance for resistance. Plaintive moans, cries of pain, and pleas for mercy resonated across the deserted training ground. The image of an angel burnt to ashes when Juno turned into the embodiment of a fierce demon. How could she be so senselessly cruel?

At the moment, Alec was lying half-dead on the floor. He knew that his life was coming to an end. All he wanted was to get away from this damned world that had brought him nothing but pain and misery.

When Kyon saw the dying slave, he almost choked with surging rage. The battered boy reminded the former emperor that he was in his place not so long ago. He had clearly ordered Juno not to beat anyone, let alone kill, but she violated his order... There could be only one explanation: the slave was nothing for her, not even a person but a thing.

He could hardly contain his fury while the urge to break Juno's neck grew even stronger.

As Juno saw the approaching "master," she rose to her feet, heaved a deep sigh as if pulling herself together and blurted out:

«Flitz has only shaved your hair, nothing more! I... I didn't mean to... It just happened! P-please... Master... Do not punish me too hard…» - Juno's wide-open eyes were shining with tears, her voice trembled plaintively, her eyebrows knitted together. What did she do to deserve the skill to play the sympathy card at god level?

However, her sophisticated acting skills had no effect on angry Kyon. The wretched girl must have problems with common sense if she was asking for mercy after her previous attempt had failed. He was not going to bite her bait.

«Shut the hell up!» – Kyon rudely silenced her. He walked over to the slave and poured Synergy into him.

Alec raised his head, struggling to focus his clouded, swollen eyes on Kyon. His body had suddenly acquired supernatural lightness as if he were floating with his invisible wings.

Kyon frowned and carefully examined the mutilated slave, boiling with an unspeakable rage against Juno, who was the only one to blame in Alec's suffering. Kyon was brought up in the strict observance of intergalactic norms that stated that every rational being had the right to exist in conditions suitable for life and reproduction. Apparently, the little beast couldn't be bothered by such trifles...

«I order you to fall on your knees before Alec and apologize.» – Kyon said quietly.

«Why should I? He is a thing that belongs to me!» – Yet, the order made Juno obediently approach maimed Alec and kneel before him - «Please, forgive me…»

The half-dead boy could not believe his ears or eyes. Was it a heavenly being apologizing to him?

«Louder! Again! Head against the floor!» – Kyon demanded in a hoarse with rage voice.

After another apology, tears flowed from Alec's eyes. He tilted his head back and howled with inhuman longing and despair. His murderer was begging on her knees to forgive her. Did heaven finally take mercy on him?

Kyon gritted his teeth and touched the back of Alec's head, severing some vital nerves with Synergy so that he would not suffer. His body went limp and fell sideways, enjoying its final rest. Farewell to the innocent victim of the wretched girl.

As much as Kyon wished, he couldn't save him because of the numerous internal injuries. If it were his own body, he could somehow pull through, but it was someone else... He would run out of Synergy, moving it through Alec's vessels and tissues. The detailed scan of each cell would take hours. At least, the poor fellow heard an apology from his murderer before dying. If the afterlife really existed, his soul would rest in peace.

«Please… Don't beat me, I'm begging you…» – Juno whispered plaintively, completely ignoring the deceased, never taking her eyes full of barely concealed animosity off her "master."

Kyon inhaled deeply to calm down, then he quickly grabbed Juno by her long golden hair, wrapped it around his hand and tugged violently at himself. She let out a painful squeal when Kyon roughly lifted her, pressing her against his body. His hands held her tight, one of them cupped her taut butts, reflexively squeezing and groping them.

Juno could not say a word in shock. She seemed to stop breathing.

«N… No… Don't you dare… I… I will kill myself…»

Kyon snorted dismissively, hugged her tight and buried his lips into her thin neck. Her soul was ugly, but the highborn lady was amazingly beautiful from the outside... The scent of her body was more delightful than the fragrance of heavenly flowers. She had an effect of a good drug with a touch of aphrodisiac.

Juno twitched in disgust in his arms. It was worse than a bucket of slop poured all over her. A nasty, humiliating feeling. Her face turned white like the first snow, she went limp in her tormentor's arms and fainted.

Kyon pulled away from her sweet, delicate neck. She passed out too quickly to experience all the severity of his punishment. He would have to repeat it again, more than once... However, Kyon's heart sank when he looked at her bloodless face. A trickle of blood drew a scarlet trail from her small nose. The beautiful girl was withering in front of him as if her spirit was slowly leaving her young body, bursting not so long ago with life.

{Damn it!} – Kyon worried about his victim's well-being. She had promised that she would kill herself if he kissed her again, and she seemed to have kept her word.

Kyon laid Juno on the bench and put his ear to her chest. Her heart was skipping a beat, her breath uneven. Apparently, she was in shock of the 4th degree. It could be fatal for an average person.

And yet, it was too strange. Could a simple kiss bring someone to such a life-threatening condition? Would any noble lady behave this way if a slave harassed her? Dinah, for example, tried to beat him half to death, but she didn't faint... Although, he didn't kiss her the way he kissed Juno. A slave meant really nothing in this world, where each next stage of cultivation elevated the strong tenfold over the weak, creating a constant increase in status.

Kyon remembered his life in the mine, or rather his way of survival within the social hierarchy. He was a slave below his warden who was responsible for ten slaves. The warden was far below Byron, the leader. The big man had to kowtow to the supervisor. Supervisor Mob bowed to Ren, the delivery man. Ren showed respect to Flitz. Flitz would bow and scrape before any elder and Juno with her 1st rank while he had only the 2nd. Only the patriarch himself was above Juno in the Stone family. The Royal family was above patriarch Stone, though... In this long chain of power and influence, Kyon was at the very bottom. And he dared to molest Juno. Everything was clear from this point of view. A dirty mortal desecrated a living deity.

This strong-willed, determined girl would commit suicide if only she got a chance. With her unique cunning skills, it wasn't impossible to bypass his formation. In the worst-case scenario, his status as the patriarch's granddaughter's master would suddenly become useless. He would be found and killed, properly tortured beforehand.

Kyon wanted to run his fingers through his hair in anger, but he could only rub his smooth bald head. The damn girl gave him no peace. He had tons of problems with her. She was an everlasting pain in the neck with her set-ups and traps. And at the same time, she was the most unusual and amazing person he had ever known. It was impossible to rehabilitate her. No pain, no humiliation worked on her. In the case of harassment, she would prefer death to shame. Why not let her die?

Kyon was looking thoughtfully at his unconscious slave girl. He was filled with a desire to take revenge for all her tricks and threat to his life. There must be a way where she could benefit him. Be that as it may, he did not intend to stay in the mansion like a cat on a hot tin roof, waiting for her suicide. Either he would leave the estate, giving her a delayed order to kill herself taking his secret to the grave with her, or he had to find another option.

Becoming her master, Kyon had to protect himself as efficiently as possible. He had created the cage of orders that should have worked without a glitch. What other options did he have?

Kyon considered a formation with pain transmission, but the code to create it was too complicated for his phase. Besides, what was the use of pain if it wasn't Juno's teacher?

Wiretapping required a lot of energy despite its simple design. Most importantly, it needed a spatial attribute that was beyond Kyon's power yet. Otherwise, he would have been using wiretaps all this time, eavesdropping and watching everything and everyone in the mansion. Perceiving a sound signal, transforming it into an impulse and sending it to the brain was an energy-consuming process. It was much easier to control Juno's subconscious, the principle of which was the simplest hypnosis. Kyon's cultivation level didn't let him create audio or video signals, but the future was promising.

Kyon could give Juno a banal order to kill herself if she tried to go against him or hurt him or kill him. She could die any time, though, because the subconscious could misinterpret the train of her thought. It was an unpredictable time bomb that could detonate at any moment, a bad idea.

Today, Kyon had witnessed that Juno cared for Marina. He could threaten her to beat up her friend. Or even better, he could make Juno beat her dear friend if she plotted something against him, but... Again, her mind was not perfect. Poor Marina could suffer in the end, and Kyon owed her his life. Kyon wouldn't let anyone touch a hair on Marina's head.

As a last resort, Kyon thought he could use a formation that would kill Juno if he died, but... The Law of Formacy says when the heart stops beating, the energy within the formation ceases to perform its functions. When the soul gets detached from the keys and leaves the body, the formation gets dispelled. Therefore, there was no sense in the killing formation, it just wouldn't work. Besides, Juno was well aware of this cornerstone of Formacy.

Even if Kyon had no doubt in the quality of his formation, he couldn't improve it or reapply. Juno's mind had already acquired resistance. He had to make do with the existing formation. It was all about Juno... Somehow, she could bypass the basic laws of Formacy.

There were only dead ends. The cage of orders, his only hope, proved to be weak and inefficient. It was time to change something. Things couldn't go on like this. Kyon didn't want to lose his current position. It had cost him a lot of blood, effort and, to be honest, good luck. With Juno by his side, he had every chance to quickly gain power, create a unique body, evolve with high-quality medicine, and learn some powerful techniques. Without her, he would have to grow by himself, which was rather dangerous.

Kyon wondered: {Why does she have such willpower? The pampered noble offsprings are never so preposterously resolute and stubborn...}

Kyon recalled the dialogue between Juno and Jean when she said with firm confidence that she was much more talented than her sister, that she would soon surpass her. No matter how cultivated Juno was, she would have broken long ago without her goal. It must be the desire to defeat her sister that gave her strength. Indeed... That must be it...

Kyon's eyes flashed brightly in the awareness of the new, risky, but mutually beneficial solution to the current situation. It was a kind of compromise, something that didn't require any effort from his side but allowed him to enjoy the benefits of being the patriarch's granddaughter's owner for quite some time without fear of being killed.

If the whip didn't work, the carrot should do the job. Especially if Juno was in question.

Kyon heaved a deep sigh and poured Synergy into Juno to wake her up as quickly as possible. He started practicing the movement technique, musing over everything in the smallest detail.

Kyon had two options to choose: 1) to give Juno an order to commit suicide in a couple of days after he left the estate, relying on himself. 2) to let Juno serve him in exchange for cleaning her keys, at the same time ordering her to kill herself if she told anyone that he had this incredible talent.

In the first case, a new life was waiting for him. He would have to start everything from scratch. He would have to look for opportunities, lay the groundwork for seizing power. Only heaven knew how long it would take him, and it wasn't in Kyon's nature to take baby steps.

As the advantage of the second option, Juno wouldn't commit the promised suicide. She would stop trying to finish him off (the walking "opportunity" to surpass her sister).

Of course, there were certain disadvantages. Sooner or later, Juno would free herself from his control and tell everything to her grandfather, perhaps even her mother and brother, but no one else, that's for sure. However, it was not that bad. With his cultivation speed, her grandfather would be no equal to him pretty soon, and no one else would be in the know. In the worst-case scenario, Kyon would have to change his personality. By that time, he would have received the head start he needed from the Stones. After that, they could turn the whole world upside down, looking for him. Besides, as soon as his cultivation allowed him to use the wiretapping formation on Juno, her threat to his well being would be minimal, almost innocuous.

But Kyon couldn't just give Juno something so valuable. She was already in red according to his principle of "paying debts." It was like asking the enemy to take a better stick.

And then Kyon remembered one of his masters, who taught him how to rationally build his relations with the right people, especially with those whose relations were built solely on the losses and profits of both parties.

It was like taking a loan to develop a business and then paying off the debt that had grown over time. Applied to his situation, he could force Juno into debt by rendering her the necessary service. In the future, he would make her pay for everything with his interest.

Kyon had always considered himself a rational person, but when it came to matters of beauty and emotion, his logical train of thought turned into reckless ways. His masters repeatedly reminded him of his two weak points.

«You're an idiot! Even the most flawless beauty costs only three hundred thousand credits! Even less if you use the discount coupon.» - The old master instructed him, but Lovr replied it was too easy to deteсt a fake. True beauty was created by the universe itself. Perhaps that's why Synergy favored him. That shut his master up. Synergy, the quintessence of the universe, did favor him.

Lovr really loved mysterious cosmic landscapes, mountain ranges that pierced the sky, endless seas, contemplating the fire, water, and other elements, as well as beautiful girls and animals, of course.

These two weaknesses got him in a lot of trouble in this world. If Dinah wasn't so beautiful, he wouldn't give a damn about her. Instead, he wanted to warn her personally to steer clear from him, to send the beautiful girl a message. Dinah clearly underestimated Kyon. And what did that get him? She came to get her revenge in the library, fortunately, with no intention to kill him.

Even now, it was agonizing even to imagine having to order Juno in cold blood to stick a dagger in her heart, which was quite contrary to his desire for revenge. However, when he imagined beating and torturing her with no chance to kill or mutilate her, it felt... so good. He seemed to be a sadist, after all...

Time was flying by.

Kyon looked from time to time at Juno's face, and his heart favored more and more the second choice, where he didn't have to kill her. Not that her beauty didn't let him kill her, by no means. The second option had outweighed the first one. In the worst-case scenario, he would only have to change his appearance. In the meantime, he might find a way to create a wiretapping formation before Juno met her grandfather.

Kyon had made the final decision - {I will take Juno as a student, at least that's what she will believe. I'll be cleaning her keys for faithful service, and when it's time to pay back her debt, she will respect me enough not to turn into a spineless creature.}

Kyon wasn't going to punish her for the accident with Flitz, not now. He was going to give her the delicious "carrot," but she shouldn't have any illusions. Her cup of misery would be full one day. His revenge was not going anywhere. The time would come when the grim reaper in his face would collect all her unsecured debts - for Alec and for himself.