Volume IV: Compromise and Struggle Chapter 23: Tithe
Pushing open the room door, Ed nearly tripped as he entered the room. A tall corpse lay behind the door, no helmet or mask, curled up on the ground like a prawn, dressed in a black mercenary combat uniform, and the surrounding floor tiles were soaked in blood. He just slept and died in a pool of blood.
Ed glanced at him, then at the wall next to the door. The walls were clearly marked by impacts, bullet holes, and splatters of blood. This dude may have been knocked into the air and killed with a single shot. Ed felt that he might be the leader of this group of small mercenaries, and that he had now ended up in the same fate as his teammates.
Being brought to such an extent by a killer, the quality of the private armament of the top gangsters in Stuttgar is only to such an extent, it is really miserable, and it needs to be rectified urgently. He thought that if the price was attractive enough, maybe he could go over and apply for a coach or special consultant or something. It's definitely a pretty enjoyable extra.
Licking his lips, Ed looked up and looked inside the room. This place is not at all like a hospital ward, but more like a top-notch suite in a luxury hotel, the kind for distant cousins of the royal family. The ceiling here is about two stories high from the ground, or maybe two hundred floors. Huge floor-to-ceiling windows surround a large balcony with bookshelves. In the west corner of the room squatted quietly, carefully, a pure black piano made of inkstone, in the middle of which was all kinds of glass and bleached wood furniture, and the most eye-catching thing was probably the desk about the size of a golf course, and the super mural that could network the stars and the sea together.
If there's one thing Ed thinks is the most outrageous, it's that he didn't even see the pool here. He wanted to amuse the sharks and green-haired turtles that swam around.
Then, Ed saw her.
It's impossible to say that Ed didn't have a brain to make up for her before this. A person will always do this subconsciously in similar situations, but the picture of the person that appears in his mind will always immediately shatter like a mirror when he actually appears in front of him, and then you can no longer remember what it used to be like. Your whole will be filled with the Buddha-figure in front of you.
The first thing Ed saw was a back. She sat on the edge of the hospital bed with her back to him—if the hell bed could have been—the high stool was not already there next to the bed, but she had moved it somewhere else. Because of her obscuration, Ed couldn't see what was going on with the person in the hospital bed. In fact, he couldn't see what was going on with her.
Her hair was too long, cascading down her waist like a waterfall, but it shouldn't be no longer than her knees, almost the length that touched her thighs. Unlike Eliqi, her hair was not very straight, but a slight natural curl that resembled waves, with a deep, imperceptible purple tinge in the darkness. In the middle of the back half of her long hair, there was a bright purple headband, which tied her long scattered hair in that position so that it would not fall too loose.
Ed was familiar with that kind of hair tie, as was often the case with some long-haired female mercenaries he had seen before. Because of this, he saw her shoulder, and he saw one of her arms. Then, as she turned, as she looked back this way, he saw half of her body.
How so...... She didn't surprise him too much, but she made him stand still, as if struck by a black bolt of lightning, and his body stiffened and could not move again.
For a woman, she's a little too sturdy. Compared to some of the truly scary muscular hunks Ed had ever seen, her muscles weren't exaggerated, just a little thicker than Ed's, but because she wore the kind of simple shirt that exposed her arms, her arms looked a lot stronger than they actually were. Similarly, it also makes her boobs look a lot bigger.
Her boobs were just too big. Especially for Eddard, who has always been mixed with poor breasts like Marcy, the impact of the woman's boobs in front of him is especially huge. But in comparison, she has other things that are more shocking to him.
Like Eddard, this battle-hardened, sladen guy doesn't have any expression on his face, and people like them don't have too many expressions under normal circumstances, and maybe sometimes they have forgotten the reason for crying and laughing, and they have forgotten the throbbing of love and hate. But there's one thing they have in common and what no one else has – their eyes.
It was her eyes that struck Ed like lightning. Those strange black eyes with silver in them, those eyes like a deep cold pool, those eyes like cold blades, those eyes that made him feel familiar, and fell into a dream in a trance.
He remembered those eyes, he remembered those looks. He knew he would never forget, even if he had always dreamed of it. He knew that sooner or later he would be ruthlessly pulled back there, back to the past he knew, whether he wanted it or not.
She sat there, even though she didn't say anything, didn't do anything, just looked at Ed with her lips closed coldly, quietly, coldly, and already made Ed's empty chest echo with the sound of a long-lost heartbeat. He took a deep breath, a smile on his lips, and felt the blood in his body heat up unconsciously.
"Hello." He said, "I have seen you at last, Miss Shilo." ”
The woman did not answer him, or rather, did not answer him in words. She looked at Ed and got up from beside the bed. She was taller than Ed had imagined, much taller, half a head taller than Ed himself. Her bangs were long, thick, and a little fluffy, covering her entire forehead, as well as her eyebrows, revealing only a pair of narrow, emotionless eyes, while also making her face look a little small. She wears black leather gloves on her hands, a simple white tactical chopping sleeve that exposes her arms, and a black long-legged leather pants on the lower body, the strong muscle lines of her thighs can be faintly seen through the shiny trousers, and at the bottom are the high-uppers leather boots that are common to mercenaries, and a belt with a large metal buckle and double the width is tied around her waist.
One of her hands was clenched tightly, and the other was holding a pistol, which was still stained with blood. In fact, she had a lot of blood all over her body, on her arms, leather pants, gloves, hair, and one cheek. The splattered drops of blood turned her into a work of art, into the bloody art itself. She is a living killing machine.
The two looked at each other, and silence and silence filled the space. Ed tilted his gaze and glanced behind her. The one lying on the bed...... Luckily, he was still alive, but his mouth was covered in blood, and he was gasping for breath in pain and horror, staring at the woman in front of his bed with wide eyes, and then at Ed. Ed had never seen such a helpless and funny look in his life, especially from the eyes of a man about his age.
Immediately, though, Ed refocused his attention on Tiro. The slackness just now was actually a fatal mistake. In front of him stood a predator at the top of the food chain, and he also had a weapon in his hand that could kill him at once, and if he didn't concentrate enough at this distance, he wouldn't have had time to die to see the little angel with the halo on his head flapping his wings and blowing his horn at him.
Then he saw the hand he was holding casually flick and throw some small bloody objects onto the carpet beside him. Ed's eyes were sharp, and he could see the little things before they hit the ground.
Some teeth, some teeth that are obviously being cared for every day with very expensive toothpaste. Eddard could certainly imagine how they got into Tiro's hands, and I'm afraid the woman had been working patiently as a dentist for Pafrenza before he came in. At the same time, he didn't see any related utensils in the room, indicating that she should have pulled them out one by one with her bare hands.
The gunshot rang out at the right time, just in time, at the very moment when Ed's eyes were drawn to the teeth that were landing in the air. Ed felt that this shot was really beautiful, and it couldn't be more pretty. Because if it were him, he would also choose to shoot at this moment.
But...... That's the problem. When you are so familiar with something that it has become a part of your life, then you will establish a very subtle connection with it, so that you can incredibly avoid the harm it may cause you at certain times.
Ed dodged the shot. He hid so well that it seemed that out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the movement of the tithe, or maybe it was just the instinctive behavior of his body, maybe his brain didn't think about anything at that moment, and he didn't have time to think about anything. He rolled quickly on the floor, picked up a black pistol that had fallen next to the corpse, and then got up and pulled the trigger.
No aiming, no pause. The bullet seemed to have eyes on its own, and with a "bang" it flew away the dangerous prop in Tilo's hand aimed at Ed. But that didn't seem to be enough to stop that rabid dog. The moment she took off her weapon, her other hand quickly swept towards the back of her waist, and a curved cold light flashed.
The instinct to fight boiled in his blood, and Ed's movements didn't stop either. He held the gun in one hand, and the second bullet was directly bored and fired into the other hand of the tithe.
The sound of metal clashing sounded, followed by silence. Titi stood still, not moving forward, his gaze calmly and sharply fixed on Eddard. Ed didn't move again, looking at the tithing with the same indifference.
The sword was still in Tishe's hand. It was a very short knife, a short, sharp black claw blade with a hook and loop at the end that could be passed through with the index finger. The hook and loop of this knife seem to be able to only be passed through the index finger and fixed in the hand, because the only way to hold this knife seems to be the backhand. Ed doesn't use this kind of knife, he used to use more daggers and short knives. It's hilarious for someone who can't use it, but it's as terrifying as the Grim Reaper's scythe in the hands of someone who is proficient.
Ed had wanted to knock it out of Tilo's hands with a single shot, but it was still in her hands. It was as if the woman had adjusted the direction of the blade at that moment, allowing the bullet that hit it to break her in half.
If that's the case, then the horror of this rabid dog may be beyond Ed's imagination.