Cid looked up at the sky, now almost entirely covered in sunset glow. He raised a hand to press down the white top hat on his head, pushed up the black sunglasses on his face, and watched pedestrians pass by outside the window.
He swirled the tea in his cup, glanced at the time, then turned toward the dark figure that had suddenly appeared at the entrance of the private room.
"It's inside?"
After the dark figure took a seat, Cid asked with a grave expression. The real goal of his day out had finally arrived. Asia, Ophis, and the others, who had been following him all day, had already been shaken off with some random excuse.
"Yes."
Once seated across from him, the man calmly pointed at the black case he had placed by the door. It was a huge case, a full meter tall.
"Did you open it?"
Cid glanced at the case, then withdrew his gaze and looked coldly at the man before him.
"...Please trust our professional standards, sir."
Under Cid's stare, cold sweat instantly broke out on the man's forehead. He hurriedly lowered his head and tried to explain himself.
"...Then get lost."
After more than ten seconds of silence, Cid looked away and spoke in a low voice.
The man gave no reply. With Cid's permission, he quickly stood and left the private room, not daring to offer another word of defense.
The sound of the door locking rang out. Cid did not move right away. Instead, he waited for another dozen seconds, checked his surroundings, then stood, removed his sunglasses, placed his hat on the table, and walked over to the black case. He placed a hand on the lid and opened it.
"Wonderful..."
Looking at the object placed inside the black case, a plastic chair that looked like it belonged in a streetside café, Cid let out a sound of praise.
Yes, what lay inside was not some world-destroying superweapon. It was merely the greatest chair in the world, forged and synthesized from all kinds of rare materials, costing him a full twentieth of his little treasury.
That earlier scene, which had looked like something straight out of a spy movie, was only something he had staged on a sudden whim. For some reason, that delivery man had been scared stiff. And he still had the nerve to work in black-market transport?
Spending that much money on a chair might seem a little stupid, but Cid did not think so. Without exaggeration, the cost of this chair was enough to buy an entire commercial street on Itogami Island.
Likewise, since he had spent such a fortune, the chair was absolutely worth the price.
He took out the chair, placed it on the floor, and sat down. Feeling that smooth, jade-like texture and its pleasantly warm temperature, Cid let out a comfortable hum.
Of course, if that were all, it would never have cost that much.
Thinking this, Cid applied a little force with his palms on both sides of the chair. In an instant, the two sides of the chair were crushed to pieces.
Cid did not care in the slightest that something made at such a staggering cost had been damaged. He simply and calmly poured Magical Power into it. The next second, the shattered parts were pulled back to their original positions, and after a flash of light, the chair instantly returned to normal.
Perfect texture, warm in winter and cool in summer, self-repairing, and an extremely long shelf life. Was there any chair in this world more perfect than this?
Thinking this, Cid smiled proudly. Back when he first read the description of this material, he had fantasized about this dream chair. Unfortunately, he had been too poor at the time and had to give up on the plan.
So now that he had money, he naturally placed a custom order without hesitation.
Cid enjoyed it for several full minutes before finally standing up. Holding the chair in one hand and the accessories he had removed earlier in the other, he walked out of the shop.
He had no intention of hiding it. Cid felt that would only make things more suspicious. After all, unless someone's brain had short-circuited, who would ever think the plastic chair in the hands of some guy on the street was a priceless treasure?
"Thud!"
The sound of a wooden club striking the back of his head rang out. His body, weighing over a hundred pounds, left the ground under the huge force from behind. Before he could react, the chair flew from his hand, and a burlap sack dropped from above, covering him. The world, dyed crimson by the evening sun, instantly fell into darkness.
"How is it? Did he struggle?"
"Relax. You know how good my control is. He's fine. He'll just be unconscious for a while."
"That's good. We've been following him all day. I don't want anything going wrong at the last moment."
"Tsk, it's fine. Everything's going according to plan."
"Stop getting smug. Hurry up and leave. Don't forget, the nun following him is now a candidate Saintess of the Church. If we drag this out and she finds us, we're finished."
"True. Still, we got lucky. This guy actually left the Island Guard and that nun on his own. Wonder what he was trying to do?"
Inside the burlap sack, surrounded by darkness, Cid blinked as he listened to the male and female voices outside. He wondered whether he should make a sound and kindly remind them that he had not fainted.
Forget it. No matter how he looked at it, they clearly had bad intentions. Still, following me for an entire day... Did someone set their sights on me and have me kidnapped?
Without making the slightest sound, he unconsciously rubbed his chin. Amid the jolting movement, Cid was thrown upside down onto someone's back, and he keenly picked out the words "following him all day" from their conversation.
Magical Power flowed into his eyes, and through the burlap sack, he clearly saw the male Beastman carrying him and the female Vampire walking beside him.
...I don't know them.
After thinking for a few seconds and confirming that he did not know either of them, Cid once again began considering the possibility that someone had targeted him.
Even after he was thrown into the trunk, Cid still could not figure out who would directly hire two people to kidnap him.
Well, it did not matter. He would know once he followed them there. This was only a kidnapping, after all.
When faced with most trouble, Cid's approach was to stop thinking about things he could not understand and let matters take their natural course. Besides, this was not the time to worry about details. He was being kidnapped!
Ah... how many chances did a person get in life to be kidnapped? Especially a kidnapping that looked like a completely undeserved disaster, one where he did not need to worry about anything going wrong and could kill as freely as he liked.
Finding a comfortable position, Cid took advantage of the fact that the two people outside had no X-ray vision. He pulled out his phone, sent Asia a message saying he had been kidnapped, and used it to pass the time on the road.
As for the chair he had dropped outside earlier, there was no need to worry. He had already marked it with his Magical Power. Even if that chair ran all the way to Hell, he could still fish it back.
Come to think of it, they followed me all day, didn't they?
While scrolling through his phone and waiting, Cid suddenly thought of that and showed a strange expression. He had to admit, his precautions had been pretty thorough. He had been followed for a whole day without them noticing anything wrong.
As for being sent flying, that really was not worth caring about. If he wanted, he could raise a hand and unleash enough power to overturn mountains and seas, but that did not change the fact that he only weighed a little over a hundred jin. If he wanted, changing that to half a jin would not be impossible either.
Time passed second by second. Feeling the car stop, and especially seeing the signal on his phone drop straight to zero, Cid turned off the screen and put the phone back in his pocket.
From outside the sack came the sound of the trunk opening. To Cid's surprise, the Vampire and Beastman outside did not relax just because they had reached their base. Instead, they became even more cautious and showed no intention of letting him out.
Not that it was any use. Through the sack, Cid had already seen everything he should and should not have seen along the way.
It looked like an experimental facility.
The floor and walls were made of steel plates, combined with certain special materials that provided extremely strong secrecy. Not that it was any use.
Wow, what a strange body.
A very odd-looking person in a skintight suit walked through the corridor. Since Cid had partly activated his eyes this time, he could clearly see the person's warped body. It looked like... the result of postnatal human experimentation.
So... did some illegal organization take an interest in me and kidnap me because they want to use my body for some kind of human experiment? Please don't. If it's that simple, I'll be really disappointed.
Although no one could see him, Cid still put on a sorrowful expression in the pitch-black sack. This was his first kidnapping. He was not asking for something beyond logic, but at the very least, there should be a few Dragon God-level opponents.
With nothing to do along the way, and seeing no sign that the other side intended to let him out, Cid took a candy from his pocket and put it in his mouth, preventing himself from making noise out of boredom and revealing that he had not fainted.
After walking for a while, Cid saw a prison that looked completely out of place in the facility. It seemed this was where he was going to be locked up. This was so boring. If things kept going like this, he really was going to start killing.
Seriously? You're this cautious?
Before opening the sack, the two people outside did something that left Cid dumbfounded. They put on masks to conceal their identities. Though still completely useless, it was already surprising enough. This was their own base.
While he was stunned, the two outside had already untied the sack. Cid instinctively pretended to be asleep and let them throw him into the cage.
"Everything went smoothly. He still hasn't woken up."
The Beastman looked at Cid inside the prison and spoke with a smug face.
"Or maybe he already woke up and is only pretending to be unconscious. But that doesn't matter anymore. He's already in our hands, and this cage suppresses magic.
"So if you're awake, just lie there quietly and don't move. You'll suffer less that way."
The female Vampire was not quite as arrogant, but not by much. She spoke with complete satisfaction, saying words that, in Cid's eyes, were no different from raising a flag.
Still, after hearing her say that, Cid did feel the flow of Magical Power inside his body become sluggish. It felt even stronger than Cao Cao's magic suppression. At most, he only needed... no, he could only use one percent of his Magical Power now. Against Cao Cao, he still needed one point five percent.
"Come on, boss lady, stop testing him. I already told you, my power control is pretty good."
Are you serious? I didn't feel anything except the sound, but judging by how loud that was, anyone else would have had their head blown open.
The Beastman, completely unable to hear Cid's inner retort, proudly claimed credit in front of the female Vampire. The female Vampire merely clicked her tongue, turned to leave, and urged him along.
"Hurry up and go. They'll be here soon. Even though the Doctor's calculations say there won't be any problems, this concerns our future. Whether we can seize this chance depends on him."
"Got it, boss lady."
After the sound of their footsteps faded, Cid opened his eyes in the dark prison. With Magical Power circulating through his vision, everything in the darkness was perfectly clear, but Cid did not care about that. He was simply thinking about what he should do now.
"Wait to kill, start killing, wait to kill, start killing, wait to kill, start killing..."
He took the candies from his pocket one by one and counted them, using them to make the choice for him.
How should he put it? According to what the female Vampire had said, the people who kidnapped him had not arrived yet. If he started killing now, he might let them get away. But if he did not start killing... his phone signal was blocked, and he was very bored.
Also, he hated this kind of pitch-black environment with not a single trace of light.
"Start killing, don't start killing, start..."
He suddenly got stuck at "don't start killing." After silently rummaging through his pocket and failing to find another candy, Cid's expression turned strange. Looking at the pitch-black surroundings, he let out a bored sound and lay down on the floor.
"No choice. I'll wait a few hours. Hopefully nothing happens during those few hours..."
As he sighed, he rolled over on the smooth floor, only to stop instantly. He looked at the already activated space-attribute Magic Circle in the void, then at the spatial node that had just so happened to open right in front of him. Cid fell silent.
Come to think of it, he did not have to stay in this boring place and wait. He could go out for a stroll first, then come back through this spatial node.
He did not need to worry about the aftereffects of the spatial tremors he caused so often, nor did he need to worry about whether the spatial node would disappear. He could tear the spatial node off first, keep it with him, and take it out when it was time to use it.
The only two questions were why this spatial node had opened right in front of him so conveniently, and how he would know the exact time to return.
After thinking for a moment, Cid flung out a strand of Magical Power, sending it through the gap under the door outside and lodging it at the end of the corridor. That way, as soon as someone came over, he would sense it immediately.
"Mm-hm..."
Letting out a smug hum, proud of his ability to improvise skills by hand, Cid stepped forward, reached into the void, seized the space around the spatial node, and tore it away.
As for considering the possibility that this spatial node was a trap, first of all, if the other party knew his abilities, how would they dare capture him? And even if he ruled out ten thousand possibilities that were more likely than this one, and the other party really was stupid enough to send people to capture him despite knowing he had this ability, it still would not be a big deal. At worst, he would flatten the entire base and be done with it.
"So... off I go."
Cid smiled and spread open the piece of space he had torn away, then strode into the spatial node at its center. His field of vision changed.