Chapter 348: A New Game IV
---
The heir looked at him with sharpened interest. He asked, "Will he?"
Sekhmet replied, "Yes."
Mihos’s eyes narrowed further. Then suspicion came, it was quick and unpleasant, it moved through them.
"Do you have some kind of mind control skill?"
The guards around the camp shifted almost invisibly at that.
Stephen’s face became very still.
Lady Seraphiel’s gaze moved from Mihos to Sekhmet.
Mihos went on at once, his voice was colder now that the possibility had entered the road. "Let me warn you. You cannot take him by force. You cannot use mind control. He goes with you only if he chooses to go with you willingly."
Sekhmet’s expression did not change.
"Why? Are you scared? I have my ways."
That answer did not comfort anyone.
Especially not Kess.
Mihos’s mouth curved without warmth. "Fine. Show me."
Then he turned his head slightly. "Stephen. Watch for any sign of chaos energy coercion or mental compulsion by any chaos tools / artifacts."
Stephen inclined his head once. "Of course."
Elena said nothing, but her attention sharpened too. If Sekhmet intended some hidden method, she wanted to understand its shape. Seraphiel’s face remained unreadable, which meant she was even more interested than the others.
Kess, meanwhile, had gone hollow from outside. His thoughts had become a corridor with no good door.
If he stayed with Mihos, he would die.
That part had settled into his bones already. The heir might not kill him tonight on the road, not in front of Sekhmet and Seraphiel and the camp. But later? Tomorrow? In the coming days under some private punishment disguised as discipline? Absolutely possible. Perhaps even likely. He had returned humiliated. He had been made to run. He had failed to bring back a clean answer. He had embarrassed the main line. Especially Mihos Dawn.
If he left with Sekhmet, he might die too.
Perhaps not by Mihos’s immediate hand, but by the game. By Iron House. By what would come after if Sekhmet failed. A lower branch rising against supported enemies and a main-line heir who had turned blood feud into entertainment did not promise longevity to newly acquired servants.
And the worst of it was this. Kess did not yet fully trust Sekhmet to win.
Sekhmet might be strong, yes. He is dangerous, yes.
But Mihos was stronger, and the people under him were strong too. And this game would not be only Mihos. It would be Iron House, resources, money, materials, hired killers, traps, merchants bought in shadow, tools supplied through main-line boredom. If Sekhmet lost, then Kess would die at his side. If Sekhmet won, perhaps he still died later under some other noble correction.
Both paths led him into the dark. His mouth had gone dry. His hands had become too aware of themselves. He did not know what to choose.
That was when Sekhmet spoke inwardly.
"System. Turn Kess into my blood puppet."
The answer came at once.
[Ding! SYSTEM Notification: Target recognized.
The target is the same rank as the host. Chaos rank three.
Force Blood Puppet activation available.
Proceed?]
Sekhmet replied, "Proceed."
[Ding! SYSTEM Notification: Force Blood Puppet conversion initiated.]
The road did not flare. There was no visible light. No dramatic pulse. No wind. That was what made it worse and better at once.
Three gods stood within reach of the moment.
Lady Seraphiel.
Elena.
Stephen.
And yet nothing in the air announced what had just happened.
No one felt a strike of force. No one saw a thread. No one heard a name of power spoken aloud.
The system moved beneath all visible structure, far below the ordinary reading of Chaos technique. The same rank made the process cleaner and easier for the system. Sekhmet’s will only had to claim the line and tighten it shut.
Kess felt it. Not as an invasion. Not as a blade entering the skull or a hand reaching through his mind to rearrange furniture.
The effect came more dangerously than that.
A moment of sharp stillness. A pulse beneath his heart. Then absolute certainty.
Not confusion. Not compulsion in the crude sense. It was a certainty.
The fear that had just filled every corridor in his mind folded inward, and in its place something cleaner stood up. A line. A direction. A truth so immediate and deeply seated that all the noise around it became secondary.
"Sekhmet Dawn is my Master."
Loyalty arrived not like a new chain, but like a buried instinct finally allowed to name itself properly.
Kess dropped to his knees.
The movement was so abrupt that even Mihos’s closest guards visibly flinched.
He bowed his head toward Sekhmet and said, with complete clarity, "Master Sekhmet. I am your loyal servant."
For one full heartbeat, no one on the road spoke.
Then the silence became shock. Real shock.
Bat Bat’s eyes widened so far they nearly became philosophy.
One of the rank-three maids actually forgot to breathe for a second.
The second maid looked toward Elena immediately, because if even Elena looked surprised, then the whole road had shifted into something no one had prepared for.
Elena did look surprised. The truth was she didn’t show it properly. Only slightly. It was enough.
Stephen’s face, usually the safest face in any room, had gone completely still in the way old retainers only went still when their understanding of a situation had been forced to restart from the beginning.
Lady Seraphiel’s eyes sharpened like cut glass.
Mihos stared at Kess as if the servant had just grown another head.
Nobody had felt anything. That was the part that made the moment dangerous.
There was no visible mind technique. No obvious hypnosis. No pressure wave. Nothing for the gods on the road to catch, block, or name.
And yet Kess had fallen to his knees and pledged himself as if the truth of that loyalty had been waiting under his ribs all along.
Mihos recovered first, or at least anger did.
He asked, "Are you out of your mind?"
The line snapped across the road like a whip.
Kess did not even turn his head.