Chapter 171: Slave Contrac (1/2)

“I’m unable to speak but communication is possible with lifeforms via psychic means.”

As the evil eye made mention of his talents, it couldn’t help pitch his head high with pride. Unfortunately for it, it wasn’t exactly in the best position to be proud and it swiftly realized this as well. Soon after it did that, it lowered its rounded body in what looked like a show of humility.

However, since it was able to communicate, that made things a lot simpler. In the interest of time, I immediately opened up with the issue everyone had on their minds right now: “Let’s hear it then, exactly what is going on here?”

“Esteemed Lust Demon, can you elaborate on what you meant by [exactly what is going on here]? I’m unable to comprehend your question.”

‘Oh my, it actually knew how to play dumb as well.’ The next moment, a sinister smirk crossed my lips as I turned towards a slightly distracted Weslin: “Want to have another round with that squash ball?”

“What’s a squash ball?” Asked a surprised Weslin.

“Mimiya wants to hit it too, Mimiya wants to hit it too!” Mimiya on other hand was pretty quick on the uptake. Without needing an explanation or even a reply for that matter, she grabbed the meatball and rushed off towards the nearest wall like a gust of wind…

‘How is that even squash ball? That’s just american football, you potato!’

After another round of friendly ball games, I had her release the meatball for the time being.

“So, still breathing over there?”

“Still alright…still alright…if you can give me some more souls…” Came the evil eye’s telepathic response after hearing my slightly rude question.

“I heard dying is a lot easier.”

‘…I swear, does this meatball not realize that all I need from him is the ability to answer questions? To think its skin is actually thick enough to ask for more souls, does it look like I’ve forgotten about our grudge already?’

“No, no, I still want to live…” Hearing the dangerous tone in my voice, the evil eye immediately started begging for mercy: “Does the esteemed lust demon not have questions to ask, please go ahead, please.”

“If you’d just been a little more obedient earlier, you could’ve saved yourself a world of hurt. Some meatballs just love to get beaten up.” After that snide comment, I promptly questioned him about his origins along with whatever matters I wasn’t sure about.

“Do you have any other companions?”

“No, it’s just me.” It quickly answered. “Us evil eyes are actually a race of lone wanderers. While we are in the lower star levels, we cooperate with each other to hunt for food. However, once we evolve into three-stars, we leave the clan to form our own enclaves seeing as we now had the ability to fend for ourselves.”

‘So they are lone wanderers, and by lone it meant that they wouldn’t stay with other clan members but that didn’t mean they would stay alone forever.”

While the evil eyes were still in their infant stages, their mind control abilities weren’t strong enough to control the other races so they mostly stayed together. However, once they evolved into three-stars, their psychic abilities grew strong enough that they could start enslaving others to defend them.

This ability sounded pretty impressive and it naturally piqued my interest as well. Thus, I continued down this line of questioning: “Since your race tend to wander alone, how do you all reproduce?”

“We are hermaphrodites and can reproduce asexually.”

At that, a strange thought jumped into my mind, “So you’re both the pitcher and the catcher at the same time?”

While it didn’t understand the meaning of those terms, it clearly got the gist of what wasn’t really a bunch of complex terms in the first place. It immediately sent a correction telepathically: “No, no, we’re hermaphrodites”

“…” ‘Either way, it just means you don’t have sex, right? Nerd.’

Following that, I continued asking a whole swathe of questions which the evil eye answered one by one, though the answers he gave weren’t really that important anymore.

The reason why the Abaddon rodents gathered en masse like that was because it was controlling them from behind the scenes. Throughout the whole process, only the head rodent , also known as the potato who tried to negotiate with me, knew of its existence.

Thinking back on that, its surrender terms probably would have included information on the evil eye. Unfortunately for both of us, I ignored it directly otherwise this evil eye wouldn’t have been able to ensnare us so easily.

As for those bone spears, that was another matter which arose from the death of that head rodent. The evil eye had implanted a soul mark on the head rodent, it was this soul mark which transferred the news regarding the head rodent’s death back to it after activating upon said death.

Thanks to that bit of foresight, it not only learnt of the rodent’s demise but also that its nest might end up in trouble. Thus, as a last minute measure, it ordered the remaining rodent lieutenants to have their subordinates craft those bone spears as a defensive measure.

As for why it didn’t do so from the start, it was afraid that the rodents would expand too quickly after gaining such an advantage and that could potentially derail its plans. Given that there were limits to its psychic power, it was only natural that it wouldn’t be able control everyone should such a thing happen.

‘So it was basically thinking like an emperor from the past where the more ignorant the masses were, the more advantageous things were for those in power. That’s how all that confucian nonsense about showing loyalty to your monarch took root. If the masses got too smart, you couldn’t even bone a couple of women or kill a bunch of pigs without ending up on some trending news article on the web…oh, I seemed to have gone off topic again.’ (TL: Word count w***e.)

The Door of the Dead was the evil eye’s last card in his deck. In fact, the door was the very reason why he enslaved these rats and built a nest nearby. The evil eye wanted to leave the Prison of the Dead just like us but it didn’t dare to do so alone. Because it wasn’t a moron, it surmised that the rumor about four-stars being able to leave might have been false. Thus, it decided to forcefully breach the exit, hence all that nonsense with controlling the head rodent.