Charming Juno was sitting on the bench with a disgruntled look, her arms irritably folded on her chest. She was nervously wiggling her foot in a delicate sandal, and next to her, a brutally battered hefty teenage slave was lying, his breath ragged and hoa.r.s.e. He was desperately leaning against the wall. He held in his half-opened hand a handful of teeth, cruelly knocked out. The other hand was twisted at an unnatural angle, all his fingers were broken. His black clothes were soaked with something wet, most likely with his blood, which confirmed the scarlet drawings sprayed on the wall and the floor. One of his eyes was smashed so bad that it disappeared behind the red swelling, the other eye had a bit better look. His face was bruised all over, his nose was broken in several places. His looks were enough to terrify anyone. Judging by his weak breath, the poor thing didn't have long to live.

Sashka thought that the lady would be kind to him, like an angel that she looked when they first met. He'd been feeling down because of the loss of potency but his depression disappeared as he was awaiting the lady's arrival to the site. His heart was beating in antic.i.p.ation of the training. He was sure to have wonderful dreams of his bright future after that, and a full stomach at last. But when the beauty finally came, all his expectations were shattered instantly. The lady with the expression of a maniac on her face furiously rushed at him, surpa.s.sing him both in speed and power. She mercilessly beat him up, not giving a chance for the resistance. Plaintive moans, cries of pain and pleas for mercy resonated across the deserted training ground. The image of an angel had burnt to ashes turning into the embodiment of a fierce demon. People can't be so senselessly cruel...

As a result, Sashka was lying half-dead on the floor. He understood that his life was coming to an end. All he wanted was to get away from that d.a.m.ned world, created to bring him pain and misfortune.

When Kyon saw the dying slave he almost choked with surging rage. The battered guy 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 but a thing for her, not a person, only a thing.

He could hardly cope with a fit of anger, and the desire to break Juno's neck grew even stronger.

Juno noticed the approaching "master," rose to her feet, sighed as if she was pulling herself together and then blurted out:

«Flitz had only shaved your hair off, nothing more! I... I didn't mean to... That just happened! P-please... Master... Do not punish me too much…» - tears were s.h.i.+ning in the girl's wide-open eyes, her voice trembled plaintively, her eyebrows knitted together. G.o.ds, for what merits did you grant her the skill to play the sympathy card at the hundredth level?

However, her sophisticated acting skills had no effect on angry Kyon. That evil girl had big problems with common sense. How could she be possibly seeking sympathy from him again, if her previous attempt had failed? He is not a guy to bite the bait.

«Shut the h.e.l.l up!» – Kyon rudely silenced her then walked over to the slave and poured Synergy into him.

Sashka raised his head and focused with difficulty his dull, swollen glance on the young man. His whole body had acquired supernatural lightness as if he was floating above the earth with invisible wings.

Kyon frowned, carefully examining the mutilated slave. He was in an unspeakable rage against the one who was to blame in all that suffering but with incredible difficulty, he held himself together. He was brought up in the strict observance of intergalactic norms, which state that any rational being has 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 Sashka and apologize.» – Kyon said quietly.

«Why should I? He is a thing that belongs to me!» – Yet, the order made the delicate girl obediently approach maimed Sashka and kneel. - «Please, forgive me…»

The half-dead guy could not believe his ears and eyes. Did the heavens decide to apologize to him?

«Louder! Again! Head against the floor!» – Kyon demanded in a hoa.r.s.e from rage voice.

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

Kyon gritted his teeth, touched the back of the guy's head and severed some vital nerves with Synergy so that he would not suffer. The body of the poor fellow went limp and fell sideways, enjoying his final rest. Farewell to the innocent victim of the evil 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's... Synergy was spent moving through vessels, tissues, and the detailed scan of each cell would take hours. At least the poor fellow heard an apology from his murderer before dying. Perhaps if the afterlife really exists, his soul will be able to rest in peace.

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

The guy inhaled deeply a couple of times to calm down, then he quickly grabbed Juno by her long golden hair, wrapped it around his hand and tugged violently at himself. With a painful squeal, the girl was roughly lifted up and pressed against the young man's body. His hands held tight her slender body, one them cupped her tight b.u.t.ts, reflexively squeezing and groping her.

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 from the outside, the highborn lady was amazingly beautiful... The scent of her body was nicer than the fragrance of heavenly flowers. She had an effect of a good drug with a touch of aphrodisiac.

The girl in his arms twitched in disgust. It felt like a bucket of slop was poured all over her. It was such a nasty, humiliating feeling. Her face turned white like the first snow, she went limp in the hands of her tormentor and fainted.

Kyon pulled away from her sweet delicate neck. She pa.s.sed out too quickly. She wouldn't experience all the severity of her punishment. He'd have to repeat it again and more than once... However, when he looked at her bloodless face, the boy's heart sank. 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 the young body, bursting with life not so long ago.

{d.a.m.n it!} – The guy was worried about his victim's well-being. She promised that she would kill herself if he kissed her again, and she seemed to keep her word.

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

And yet it was too strange. Can a simple kiss bring someone to such a life-threatening condition? Maybe any n.o.ble lady will behave the same way if a slave hara.s.sed her? Dinah, for example, tried to beat him half to death, but she didn't exactly faint... Although he didn't kiss her the way he kissed Juno. The status of a slave is really too insignificant in this world, where each next stage of ​​development elevates you tenfold over the weaker ones, which leads to a constant increase in the difference in position.

Kyon remembered his life in the mine, or rather the hierarchy in which he had to survive. He was a slave, much below the status of his warden responsible for ten slaves. The warden was far below the leader, Byron. The big man was forced to kowtow to the supervisor. Supervisor Mob bowed before the delivery man Ran. Ran showed respect to Flitz, and Flitz would bow and sc.r.a.pe before any elder, and Juno as well, she's of the 1st rank, after all, while he's of the 2nd. Above her is only the Patriarch himself, and above him, is the Royal family... In this long chain of power and influence, he is at the bottom. And now, he dared to molest Juno. Judging from that point of view, it was all clear. It was like a dirty mortal dared to desecrate a living deity.

The guy came to the conclusion that the strong-willed and determined girl would commit suicide as soon as she got a chance. With her cunning and unique skills, it wasn't impossible to bypa.s.s the formation. In the worst case scenario, his status of the master of the Patriarch's granddaughter would suddenly become useless. He would be found and killed, properly tortured beforehand.

Kyon wanted to run his fingers hand through his hair in anger but he could only rub sadly his smooth bald head. The d.a.m.n girl gave him no peace. He had tons of problems with her. She is his everlasting headache with her set-ups and traps. And at the same time, she's the most unusual and amazing person he'd ever known. It was impossible to rehabilitate her. No pain, no humiliation worked for her. In the case of hara.s.sment, she would prefer death to shame. Why not let her die?

The guy was looking at the unconscious slave, he was filled both with a desire to take revenge for all her tricks and the threat to his life and deep thoughtfulness. There must be a way where she would be more of use than harm. Be that as it may, he did not intend to stay on edge in antic.i.p.ation of her suicide, while he was still in the mansion. Either he'd have to leave the estate, giving her a delayed order to kill herself, so that his secret went with her to the grave, or look for another option.

Once, he began to wonder how to protect himself as efficiently as possible while being her owner. In the end, he decided to use the orders cage, which, by the way, should work perfectly, but what other options were there?

He had an idea to impose on the girl a formation with pain transmission, but the code to create it was too complex for his stage of development. Besides, what's the use of it if the pain wasn't Juno's teacher?

He had the idea of wiretapping, but although its design is simple, it requires a lot of energy to create, and most importantly it needs a spatial attribute. It's beyond Kyon's power yet. Otherwise, he would have been using wiretaps for a long time, listening to and watching everything and everyone in the mansion. It's energy-consuming to perceive a sound signal, transform it into a pulse and send it to the brain. It's so much easier to control Juno's subconscious, the principle of which is the simplest hypnosis. He was still underdeveloped for creating audio, moreover video signal. But the future is promising.

He could also give her a ba.n.a.l order to kill herself if she tried to go against him or hurt him or kill him, but in that case, she could die at any second, because the subconscious could misinterpret the train of her thought. It happens to people quite often. This is an unpredictable time bomb that can detonate at any moment, a bad idea.

Today, he discovered that she cared for the Marina. Therefore, it would be possible to threaten her with a beating of her friend. Or even better he could make Juno beat her own friend if she plotted something wrong, but... Again, the mind is not perfect. Poor Marina could suffer, and he owed her his life. He will keep her safe.

As a last resort, he thought to impose upon her a formation which would kill her at his death, but... the Law of Formacy says that when the heart stops beating, the energy within the formations ceases to perform its functions, and when the soul is separated from the keys and leaves, the formation gets dispelled. Therefore, there's no sense in the killing formation, it won't work. Besides, Juno is well aware of this cornerstone of Formacy.

As for the quality of the formation, he had no doubt there. He couldn't improve it anyway as well as reapply because Juno's mind had already acquired resistance. He had to make do with the existing one. It was all about the girl... Somehow, she managed to bypa.s.s the basic laws of Formacy.

So it turns out that it's only dead ends around. His only hope, the cage of orders, showed its weakness and inefficiency. It was time to change something. It couldn't go on like that. He didn't want to lose his current position. He got there with a lot of blood, effort and, to be honest, not without, good luck. With Juno by his side, he had every chance to quickly become a powerful pract.i.tioner, construct a basis with a unique body, develop with the help of high-quality remedy, learn some powerful techniques. Without her, he'd have look for all that separately and maybe not without threats for his life.

There was a fair question: {Where did she have such willpower? The pampered offsprings of n.o.ble families are never so preposterously resolute and stubborn...}

Kyon recalled that dialogue between Juno and Jean when she said with firm confidence that she was much more talented than her sister and that she would soon surpa.s.s her. And indeed, no matter how developed her mind and psyche was, without such a desired goal she would have broken long ago. It turns out that the very goal "by all means to defeat her sister" gives her strength. Yes, does... That must be it...

The guy's eyes flashed brightly in the awareness of a 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 the patriarch's granddaughter's owner for quite some time without fear of being killed.

If the whip doesn't work, then the carrot should do the job. Especially, if Juno is in question.

He sighed heavily and poured Synergy into Juno so that she would recover as quickly as possible. He started training the movement technique, thinking over and planning down to the smallest detail.

He had to choose one of two options: 1) to order her to commit suicide in a couple of days while he leaves the estate and relies on himself. 2) to allow Juno to serve him in exchange for purifying her keys, at the same time ordering her to kill herself if someone finds out from her that he has this incredible ability.

In the first case, a new life was waiting for him, where he'd have to start from scratch. He'd have to look for opportunities to lay the groundwork for seizing power. He had no way of knowing how long it was going to take. It wasn't in his nature to take baby steps.

The advantage of the second option was that Juno would hardly commit the promised suicide. In general, she is unlikely to finish him off (the walking "opportunity" to surpa.s.s 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 to her mother and brother but no one else, that's for sure. However, it's not that bad. With his speed of development, her grandfather would be no equal to him, and no one else would be in the know. In the worst case scenario, he'd simply change his personality, just as he'd had 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 development allowed he'd apply the wiretapping formation to Juno. Then the threat to his well being would be minimal, almost innocuous.

But Kyon couldn't just give Juno something so incredibly valuable, considering that she was already in red according to his principle of "paying debts." It's like pointing a finger to the direction of a better stick to the enemy that is beating you to death.

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

It's like taking a loan to develop business, and then paying off the debt that has grown over time. Applied to his situation, he can force Juno into debt by rendering her the necessary service and in the future, make her pay for everything, with interest.

Kyon had always considered himself a rational person, but when it came to the beautiful and emotional, his logical train of thought sometimes turned into "reckless." His masters repeatedly reminded him of those two weaknesses of his.

«You're an idiot! Even the most flawless beauty costs only three hundred thousand credits! And if you use the discount coupon, even less.» - The old master instructed him but Laurel replied that it was the easiest thing to deteсе a fake. True beauty is created by the universe itself. Perhaps that is why Synergy favored hin. That shut the master up; the guy was really loved by Synergy - the quintessence of the Universe.

Laurel's words were complemented by his love of for mysterious cosmic landscapes, mountain ranges piercing the sky, immense seas, dancing of fire, water, and other elements, as well as beautiful girls and animals, of course.

In fact, the two weaknesses got him in trouble in this world. If Dinah wasn't too beautiful, he would give a d.a.m.n about her instead of giving in to the desire to personally warn the maid to avoid him. But he wanted too much to send the beauty who was clearly underestimating him a message. And did that get him? She came to get her revenge in the library. Fortunately, with no intention to kill him.

Even now that he was thinking to confront in cold blood the stupid beautiful girl and order her to stick a dagger in her own heart, he felt sick at 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. It seems, he is a s.a.d.i.s.t, after all...

Time was flying by.

While practicing, Kyon looked from time to time at Juno's face and his heart favored more and more the second choice, in which he would not have to kill her. It's not that her beauty completely deprived him of the opportunity to finish her off, by no means, it's just the second decision outweighed the first one. In the worst case scenario, he'd have to change his appearance. In the meantime, until Juno meets her grandfather, he might find a way to create a wiretapping formation.

Kyon had made the final decision - {I will pretend that I'm taking Juno as an apprentice. I'll purify her keys for her faithful service. In the future, when she has to pay back the debt, her respect for me will not allow her to turn into a spineless creature.}

He wasn't going to punish her for the misconduct with Flitz, for the time being. He was even going give her delicious "carrot." But she should have any illusions. It all means only one thing, her cup of misery will be full. His revenge is not going anywhere. The time will come when the grim reaper in his face decides to collect all the unsecured debts. For Sashka and himself.

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(Author's comment: In Chapter 0, you can find the structured hierarchy of energy, synergy, ranks and many other things, intrinsic to the world described in the book.)