The Bargainer 9 (Patreon)

The Bargainer
Chapter 9

-VB-

‘I didn’t mean to do that,’ I thought to myself as I felt my tongue swell and then lengthen inside my mouth.

Moments ago, I asked for a portal to a barren world, which Doormaker made for me, and led the Wards through along with Legend. The world in question was a dry desert world with nothing significant about it except for its lack of human race, and this place was this Earth’s equivalent of the Atacama Desert.

However, my magic fucked up a little and … lengthened my tongue.

So now, I had a very uncomfortably long tongue in my mouth that impeded my speech. I had this whole speech about how the training was going to go and what I expected them to learn from our training session. Oh well, I’ll have to do it after I beat the shit out of the punks.

I nodded to Legend, and the man nodded back before walking through the portal, which closed behind him.

I just rolled my shoulders and made the “come at me” gesture with my hands.

“Wait, we’re just going to start like that?” Mouse Protector asked me. “No speech or anything like that?”

“Yeah, aren’t we supposed to get some instruction?” Chevalier added.

I dropped my hands in annoyance before -.

---

Jennifer yelped when Beast jumped at her with his fists pulled back. She teleported right over to Chevalier, because she had him tagged, and froze when she saw Beast’s right fist lashed out faster than she could register and strike the ground.

And the rock hard ground cratered.

“U-Uh…” she muttered as she suddenly felt a little weak in the knees.

If that hit her, she would have died!

“What is your fucking deal?!” Rail, one of her Ward teammates, shouted as he brought out his Tinkertech shockwave gauntlets to bare. “You could’ve killed her!”

Beast snorted. Then he suddenly exploded into white smokes that expanded fast and covered them all, obscuring everything around them.

“Fall back!” Chevalier took over, shouting his command. The rest of the Wards followed their leader’s command and all of them got out of the smoke. The smoke itself began to dissipate quickly… and Jennifer felt her jaws drop when she saw what emerged from it.

Standing twice as tall as the tallest among the Wards, Beast had transformed into a monster with rocks for skin and four arms. Oh, and his teeth were long and he had many of them.

She gulped.

He roared like a lion. Gravels by her feet trembled and bounced on the ground because of how loud he was.

Someone else laughed hoarsely. “What the fuck is this…?”

And then the Beast attacked.

---

Having transformed into an Upper Level demon I encountered back in the Blue Exorcist world, I gave them a scare before going on the offensive again.

Chevalier rushed up to meet my challenge. He shouted as he swung his “Tinkertech” sword at my punches. Despite how light it was for him, I found my strikes bouncing off because of how dense and hard the sword was.

The gauntlets boy jumped into the fray. Unfortunately, he and Chevalier weren’t as coordinated as they would have liked, and began to lose ground against me.

It was here that Miss Militia and Mouse Protector began to harass me. Miss Militia didn’t even bother with rubber bullets, going straight for a Thompson and laying down the fire on me. Mouse jumped in and out, teleporting and tagging. She repeatedly struck what she thought were my weak points, like the joints and eyes.

But I was a demon of Gehenna in this form. At the end of the day, their spirit-less attacks were meaningless!

-VB-

It took them two hours before they gave in, and by that time, my tongue ad turned to its original size, so I could talk!

I allowed my transformation to go away, and sat down near them.

“That was fun!”

“Fuck you!” Gauntlets boy snapped between his gasps.

I laughed.

“So what did you all learn today?”

“Learn?! We learned jackshit except that you are a strong cheesegrater, because you shredded us like mozzarella!” This was Mouse Protector.

“Eh,” I shrugged. “I could have gone harder.”

“Wait, that wasn’t your best? There’s seven of us!”

“I usually fight city-destroying monsters.”

A pause.

“L-Like Endbringers?”

“Endbringers aren’t interested in slurping up your biomass to make more of itself, so no. No, the guys I fought are more interested in corrupting your soul, turning you into one of them, or both at the same time while they murderfuck you.”

All of the Wards stared at me, and though I couldn’t tell what all of them might be thinking because they covered their faces, I would go out and guess that some of them were shocked.

“That demon form I used to fight you all at once? That’s one of my newer and weaker forms. I don’t even know all of the abilities it has.”

“Then your best is…?”

“Merely seeing it might make you have a heart attack.”

“It is a mouse?”

“Damn it, MP,” someone muttered.

“What?! I had to ask!”

“No, but I do have a mouse form that lives near lava.”

“... Is it cute?”

“MP!”

“We’re going off on a tangent. Why do you all think that you lost?” I asked again. “Though you can only trust me, I used a form that I had less experience and understanding of, but against nine of you, I still won. Why is that?”

Chevalier pushed himself up. “We weren’t coordinated.”

“That’s one reason,” I conceded. “When you and the gauntlets over there fought, you couldn’t take advantage of each other’s attacks. In fact, you got in each other’s attacks frequently.”

“We didn’t have good enough weapons? Because the mouse-caging Youth Guard prevents us from using anything effective?”

“Yes… your sword was dull,” I agreed.

“I used a SMG on you with live bullets, but they failed to penetrate.”

“And that means…?”

“We weren’t strong enough?” the silent Ward, the one with a cowl over his head and fired some kind of black energy blasts, spoke up finally.

“Exactly,” I replied. “I am a firm believer in power. Without power, you cannot service justice. Without power, you cannot protect the people. Without power, you are no less a victim than the people around you.”

“But power corrupts,” Miss Militia replied with a defiant glare.

“If that was the case, then you should be very wary of Legend. He might be a cannibal.”

Someone snorted.

“No, power doesn’t corrupt. It unshackles the restraints you and society put on yourself. If you give power to the kindest person, then they will very likely remain kind. However, your average person is not kind by nature,” I added. “And that includes me and all of you.”

“What does this have to do with how we couldn’t win against you?” the gauntlets boy groused, disgruntled.

“Simple. Power is the foundation upon which you act. I won because I am, without a doubt, stronger than all of you. You are all here as heroes-in-training, great, but if you don’t have the power to back up whatever it is that you want, then you are no different from a civilian.”

“We’re strong, you’re just ridiculously strong!”

I laughed. “Yeah, that’s right,” I replied mirthfully. “But what if I was the enemy? An unscrupulous villain?”

They looked at me and no one said anything.

“You will all be training with me for a full month, and I will make you all stronger by the end of it,” I promised as I stood up. “Door,” I whispered, and the portal appeared again. “Now, get on through. I’m sure all of you are tired.”

The Wards complied tiredly, but to my surprise, Mouse Protector remained.

“Yes?” I asked.

“How do I get stronger?” she asked me.

“By training, of course,” I replied easily.

“No, not like that. How do I get strong really quickly?”

“... Why do you ask?”

“Because I’m a hero. I have someone I want to protect.”

“Boyfriend?”

“N-No! I don’t have a cheesy boyfriend yet! No, I mean… my parents.”

“Ah…” I uttered. “Why ask me?”

She put a hand on her waist and gave me the silent look, if only in body language.

“Well, I do,” I replied. “But it’s NSFW,” I admitted as I ushered her through.

“What, like sex?”

I laughed as I pushed her through the portal. “Exactly that.”

She looked me up and down. “I might be down for it~.”

…

Well, I wasn’t expecting this.