A Random in Re:Zero

Loop 6 - Part 42

Finally, I turned to Elsa and Meili.

"Hey, it's been a while."

"Hi, hi⁓!" Meili greeted me energetically. "You look more ruined than last time!"

"That sounded very personal, brat." I smiled to hide my annoyance.

"What do you want?" Elsa cut to the chase and asked curtly about my intentions. "Let's get this over with."

It hurt to be treated so coldly by someone who was my wife in another timeline, but I managed to remain stoic.

"That's right, you still owe me a favor... Well, I'll be blunt: I want you two to work for me." I pointed to her and Meili.

The two of them seemed surprised for a moment. Then Meili burst out laughing.

"Oh, that was a good one! You're a great comedian!"

"I'm glad to hear it, but that wasn't a joke. I'm serious."

Elsa clicked her tongue.

"If that's what you want, I shouldn't have bothered waiting for you. You're wasting your time." She stood up. "Now, we have a mission to complete."

"Do you think it's not worth leaving the assassins' organization to join me?" I inquired without flinching. "I'll pay you much better than they do."

"That's not important, it doesn't matter at all⁓." Meili shook her head and summoned her mabeast. "Abandoning the assassins would cost us far more than any amount of money."

As Elsa regained her 'fangs', Guiltylowe burst into the dining room, huffing and puffing furiously. Frederica tensed and activated her partial transformation, ready to fight again.

"You two are always going to give me trouble." I sighed.

Just as Elsa was preparing to attack, her body lost all its strength and she collapsed to the ground. Meili noticed this and ordered her pet to attack, but I had already stepped in front of the Guiltylowe.

"Stay still." I ordered in an authoritarian tone.

To Meili's bewilderment, the mabeast backed away and bowed meekly in submission.

"Good boy."

"How did you do that?!" She shouted at me, indignant. "Only I can control them!"

"Do you really think so?" I smiled. "And Petra's the naive one?"

Well, since I possessed a large amount of miasma, my presence was both alluring and dominant to other miasma users. In my life as a hunter, one of the things I learned was that this corrupted essence could be used not only as bait or a disinhibitor, but also for many other purposes.

One of those uses was to dominate mabeasts with my aura. I couldn't give them complex commands, but I could completely neutralize them, taking away their will to fight or flee. Of course, this wouldn't work on mabeasts that were too strong or intelligent, but everything has its limits.

I saw Frederica lunge at Elsa, taking advantage of her defenselessness to inflict as much damage as possible. In the blink of an eye, I appeared in front of her and blocked her claws.

"Master Leandro! Why are you protecting her?!"

"You wouldn't understand even if I explained it to you." I gently pushed her back. "Everyone here should calm down and speak civilly—"

My voice cut off in a gasp as I felt a knife pierce my back. I'd let my guard down with Elsa. The power of Sloth Authority, in its limited form, wasn't capable of restraining two such powerful individuals at once.