Chapter 172: Squarely in the face (1/2)
Yelna was too late.
Her thundering kick landed squarely where the Star Emperor was standing... The only problem was, the man already moved away by the time the girl landed.
”Ugh, that was close!” the surprisingly young man exclaimed as he dusted off his robe. ”But where is all this aggression coming from?” he asked, leaning his head to the side.
”I can see through him,” Yelna said before dropping her guard and relaxing. She simply stood in her place, roughly ten meters away from the man she just attacked.
”Great, that will save us some effort,” Markus said with glee before turning his head to the man that replaced the high interrogator from before. ”The Star Emperor, I assume?”
”I don't really like this name,” the man roughly in his thirties shook his head with a troubled smile. ”This title makes people think as if reaching my level was the end of the path, while it's actually only a beginning,” the man smiled, relaxing just like Yelna a moment earlier. ”But I believe it's my turn to question now. What the hell is going on here?”
”I'm sorry, but I missed the part where that's your business,” Markus replied harshly. After a single sentence from Yelna, he adopted a dismissive attitude towards the man. ”Now that we know you cannot match my wife, I don't see a single reason to explain my plans to you,” he added, looking down at the man.
”And there it goes, passive-aggressive tone!” The youthful man exclaimed, raising his hands to the sky. ”Why are all the villains like that?” he asked the skies and actually waited as if he expected some kind of answer to actually come. ”Would it kill you to just be polite for once?” he asked, squinting his eyes in the first reveal of a portion of the rage that was brimming in him.
”You have guts to accuse us of being aggressive after your subordinate threatened us,” Markus countered before locking his hands behind his back. 'If Yelna can see through his moves, then this fight is already over,' Markus thought, putting his mind at complete ease.
”I will severely punish him for that... Or so I would say if I didn't know the worth of loyalty,” the Star Emperor countered on his own but ultimately withdrew his hands back. ”I can already understand what he did and why he did that. As such, I can only hope you will understand that everyone is equal in the face of the law,” the man announced, finally dropping the pretense of laidback attitude.
”We just want to leave the city and go explore the desert,” Markus shrugged his shoulders as he opened his mouth. ”Surely, you are not going to claim that your laws restrict foreigners from leaving this place?” Markus probed, slowly reaching the limits of his patience.
While it was obvious that the locals wouldn't let such a massive group enter the desert at once, Markus expected all the resistance to cease within just a few minutes.
For every minute they spent talking on this side of the gate, they would have a minute less to travel through the desert.
'If we don't hurry up, we will add one more day of sleeping in the sands rather than in the houses at the camp,' Markus thought as he looked up to gauge the position of the sun in the sky.
”There are surely no laws stopping one from leaving my dominion,” the young man exclaimed as if he wasn't going to press the issue at all. ”But it's a different matter altogether if you are moving sizeable quantities of goods and wares outside of the human realm,” he added, slowly allowing the aura of his power to circulate around him.
Noticing the change in the air around the man, Markus cast a glance at Yelna. But the girl didn't act weirdly, still standing relaxed out in the open.
”We only took the supplies necessary to stay in the desert for a while,” Markus shook his arm, still trying to solve the situation without needless bloodshed.
He wasn't against the idea of fighting per se. The former saint simply considered this solution as too wasteful time-wise to actively seek it out.
”Do you want to say that your people are going to eat wood?” The man asked as he glanced over the many carts that Markus' organized crowd brought with them. And while those carts were hidden within the crowd, it was clear that this man had no problems peering into their content.
”I'm not sure if you ever visited the desert yourself, but wood is a scarce material there,” Markus replied, squinting his eyes in annoyance. ”While it's desert, the nights out there are cold. Without fire and something to burn in it, half of those people would freeze to their deaths,” Markus said before shaking his shoulders. ”Is that really what you want for them? So that half of them won't ever return while the remaining half will be permanently scarred due to frostbites?” Markus continued to throw his accusations.
'If my guess is right, then at least half of his power comes from the reverence of the people,' Markus thought, keenly observing the situation.
The entire ruse with Yelna attacking the man right off the bat was another ploy aimed at obtaining more information about this particular opponent.