Chapter 107: The Cookie Scandal
Eli's fear was not an act.
He had seen Celestial Dragons kill people over things so absurd they barely qualified as reasons at all. A glance that lasted too long. A body placed in the wrong part of the road. A face they disliked. A mood that had soured for no reason. Sometimes there was no cause beyond whim.
That was what made them truly terrifying.
It was not only their cruelty, but the authority behind it. The Celestial Dragons could kill commoners on the spot, strip a person of freedom with a word, and turn anyone they fancied into a slave. And if someone resisted?
They died.
That was all.
So Eli, like everyone else in the civilian district, feared them from the bottom of his soul.
He pressed himself lower behind the stacked cargo and whispered one last warning.
"Saint Clarence is infamous, even among the Celestial Dragons. The common people know his name because wherever he goes, innocent people die. Whatever happens, do not let him notice you."
Then his voice cut off.
The procession was close now.
"They're here," he hissed. "Kneel. Right now."
He dropped silent the next instant, not daring to say another word for fear of drawing attention.
Then, glancing sideways, he saw Axel and the other two still standing calmly in the shelter of the corner.
A surge of anger almost broke through his terror.
Are these three insane?
"Do you have a death wish?" he wanted to shout. "If you want to die, die somewhere else! Don't drag me down with you!"
But no sound left his throat.
He could not understand them at all. In his eyes, kneeling for a few minutes was nothing. Pride was worthless if it got you killed. Let your knees touch the ground, let the noble pass, then stand up and keep living. That was the sensible choice. That was how ordinary people survived.
Still, there was one small mercy.
They were tucked into a narrow corner beside the crates. Out of the open street. Out of the obvious line of sight. Men like Saint Clarence usually did not bother inspecting every crevice like a rat-hunting cat.
At least, that was what Eli prayed.
The Celestial Dragon's procession rolled fully into view.
The people kneeling nearby pressed themselves even lower. Some were trembling badly enough for their shoulders to shake. Others looked like they had stopped breathing entirely. No one dared move. No one dared speak.
Saint Clarence sat high atop his human mount and looked down at the kneeling crowd with naked disgust.
To him, their submission was not something to be pleased by. It was simply natural, the proper order of the world. He was the descendant of one of the Twenty Founders, born with what he believed was divine blood. What was strange about mortals bowing their heads before him? That was what they existed for.
The commoners did not occupy his mind for long.
His real annoyance was his mount.
The man dragging him forward had once been a pirate captain with a bounty of one hundred million Berries. At first that had pleased Clarence. It sounded impressive. It sounded rare. It sounded like the sort of thing another Celestial Dragon might envy.
But after a few days, he had grown dissatisfied.
The mount was too slow. Too dull. Too weak. Not novel enough. Not amusing enough.
A discarded toy already halfway to boring him.
Clarence curled a fist and brought it smashing down onto the top of the man's head.
The blow was casual.
For a healthy fighter, it might not have meant much.
But the former pirate captain was no longer healthy. He was battered, starved, shackled, and long past the point of exhaustion. The punch made his whole body jolt.
"I've changed my mind," Clarence said petulantly. "We're going to Human Auction Number One."
The man on the chain obeyed at once, forcing his limbs to turn and change direction.
Clarence sneered.
"You really should be replaced. You can't even serve properly as a mount anymore. Maybe they'll have something more interesting at the auction."
There was no fear in the pirate captain's face when he heard that.
Only a grim sort of relief.
The people lining the street saw it. They saw everything. The brutality. The humiliation. The casual talk of replacing a human being like worn-out furniture.
And still none of them moved.
Not because they were heartless.
Because they were afraid.
One person's suffering was a tragedy. Standing up against it was suicide. That was the equation Sabaody forced onto the weak every day.
Then, as Saint Clarence shifted course, his eyes caught something out of place near the shadowed corner ahead.
A bubble.
And inside it—
Cookies.
His face tightened.
The sight offended him for reasons no sane person could have explained.
"Over there," he ordered at once. "Go that way."
The main body of the procession turned toward Axel's hiding place.
Axel, Issho, and Hawkins were still partly concealed behind the tall cargo stacks. From the street, only a sliver of the corner was visible. They had not yet been seen.
"He's coming this way," Axel said quietly.
"Mm." Issho's voice was low, but beneath it lay a weight that was hard and cold. Even without sight, even without looking, he had already heard more than enough. The despair in the crowd. The contempt in Clarence's voice. The chain dragging across the ground. It had all reached him.
Eli saw the Celestial Dragon's new course through a narrow gap in the crates and nearly went numb.
He did not even dare run.
He could only crouch there and wait for death, resentful and despairing in equal measure.
And then it hit Axel.
The bubble. The cookies. Hawkins' earlier warning. The one tossed into the road.
That was it.
That had to be it.
So that was what Hawkins had meant.
Fate, my ass, Axel thought darkly. This was less "fate" and more "weaponized annoyance."
Still, he could no longer deny that Hawkins' divinations worked in their own maddening way.
Clarence's path was clogged with kneeling civilians, so his black-suited guards rushed ahead, kicking people aside to clear a route. The people they struck did not resist. Most barely dared cry out.
Before the Celestial Dragon could reach the corner, a sharp crunch sounded underfoot.
Smack.
Clarence looked down.
One of the pirate captain's hands had come down squarely on a crushed cookie.
Crumbs smeared across the man's skin.
For a heartbeat, everything froze.
Then Clarence's face twisted in revulsion.
"As if that wasn't enough!" he screamed. "You stepped on filth? With my road under you?"
He sounded less like a noble and more like a spoiled child moments away from a tantrum.
The former pirate captain stayed low and silent.
Clarence was already beyond reason.
"I don't need you anymore! Stop! Stop at once!"
He half rolled, half wriggled off the man's back, using another slave as a living stool to get down without touching too much of the ground himself. The instant his feet landed, he looked as if the world itself had insulted him.
He stared at the hand with the cookie crumbs and began kicking the fallen pirate captain over and over.
"As my mount, you stepped on something like this? Filthy! Filthy! Disgusting!"
He was shaking with rage now.
"Worse, you made me pass through this dirty place because of it! Unforgivable!"
At last he drew a pistol.
"That's enough. I don't need you anymore."
Everyone understood what that meant.
So did the pirate captain.
He had probably known for a long time that death would come sooner or later. But this time, unlike before, there was no resignation in him. No blank acceptance.
There was fury.
A last, desperate, ugly spark of it.
The moment Clarence aimed the gun, the pirate captain snatched up the shattered cookie crumbs from the ground and flung them straight at him.
Clarence had not expected resistance.
Not from a slave. Not from a mount. Not from something he considered furniture.
The crumbs struck his clothes, his face, his bubble helmet.
For one stunned beat, the whole street went silent.
Then Clarence shrieked.
A high, horrified scream tore out of him.
"Ahhh—!"
His bodyguards rushed around him at once while the pirate captain used the chaos to scramble away, staggering more than running.
He was still wearing the collar.
There was no real escape left to him.
He knew that.
But perhaps, in that final moment, dying while having resisted once was better than dying obediently on his knees.
Clarence's expression turned murderous.
He stared at the fleeing figure with such hatred that it seemed absurd. As if the man had done something far worse than endure torture, chains, and degradation.
As if throwing crumbs back at his owner had been the true crime.
He might have killed the pirate on the spot if he were thinking clearly.
But he was not.
He was covered in what he considered filth, and that had become the only thing his mind could hold.
"I'm going back," he snapped, voice shaking with disgust. "Now. Immediately."
He jabbed a finger toward the fleeing pirate captain.
"You lot. Catch him. Drag him to my palace. If he isn't there by the time I finish bathing, every last one of you is useless."
He climbed onto another slave's back without hesitation, as casually as stepping onto a stool, and turned the procession around.
.....
[If you don't want to wait for the next update, read 50 chapters ahead on P@treon.]
[[email protected]/FanficLord03]