Chapter 570: Moose
"So Tasia never returned."
The man spoke perfunctorily. He already knew the answer as it had already been several days since they had sent her. There was no need to confirm it because the answer was obvious.
This man was the current City Lord of Gothamshire, City Lord Braxwell. He had a deep scar running from the left corner of his lip through his right eye, even going as far as to take a portion of his scalp with it, leaving behind a sharp bald patch. It was clear that the Summoning had taken its toll on this man, but the fact he was still here standing spoke volumes all to its own.
"It doesn't matter," his right-hand man, Shah, spoke. "That just means we're dealing with a man who's easily manipulated."
Braxwell didn't reply to the jealousy-laced comment. He wasn't a fan of allowing crime to run rampant in his city because that sort of disorder could easily come back to bite him.
As much fun as it sounded to have as many women as he wanted, whenever he wanted, cities that ran themselves that way quickly found themselves running into the ground.
Who would have thought? If you surrounded yourself with toxic men, some of the sludge would eventually come back to bite you.
There were plenty of his close soldiers who wanted him to "gift" Tasia to them, hinting so in obvious and also not so obvious ways. But the moment he took one step down that path, he would inevitably take another, and then another.
By then, how would his city live up to its name?
That wasn't to say that he thought himself to be some moral arbitrator of justice. After all, he had planned to kill Tasia on her way back so that their exact whereabouts wouldn't be leaked. He had also thought that he had treated her well enough and even protected her more than enough times that she would trust him in this matter.
But who would have thought that Tasia was actually a step ahead of him?
Braxwell was quite meticulous. He picked Tasia not only because she was charismatic but because they had enough rapport that he believed she wouldn't think twice to take his words at face value. In fact, there was even a time in the past where he had to punish Shah for trying to take things too far with her.
But it seemed that he had been played by her charms as well.
As for Shah's words... well, he wasn't sure if he could take them at face value either.
Although the logic was sound on the surface, there was no denying that Tasia might have useful information as well. And who was to say that she was even still alive right now?
They were also just making the assumption that Tasia distrusted them. What if it was Sylas who just didn't allow her to return?
"Brax, we've hit paydirt."
A gruff voice opened the tent flap to enter. He was a man who looked like a lumbering giant, standing at almost eight feet tall. And yet, despite his size, his hands and feet still looked twice the size they should have been to remain proportional.
This was City Lord Moose. No one knew his real name or if his parents really had named him that.
He was actually quite a rare existence because he commanded not a city of Humans but one of Demons. Not only that, but before the Summoning, he had a genetic condition that resulted in his giantism. And obviously, while that was a problem on an Earth without a cure... in this world, it made him someone most would avoid fighting at all costs.
Braxwell stood. "The mine?"
"Yup."
"You came personally? What happened? Why didn't you send a runner?"
City Lord Moose looked like the gentle, simple giant type, but anyone who was fooled by that appearance would quickly find themselves in a pile of mush. Of the three of them, Moose was probably the smartest, and that was precisely because he played into the stereotype so well.
As expected, Moose blinked in confusion as though he didn't understand why Braxwell would ask such a question.
Inwardly, Braxwell sneered. If he hadn't seen certain things that day, he would have fallen for this act as well. If he wasn't cautious around this man, he too would find himself dead.
Braxwell didn't choose to press. He signaled to Shah and they both stepped out of the tent to find a group of bear demons standing off to the side.
The bear demons, a lot like the pig demons, had the heads of the animals in question. The rest of their bodies were mostly humanoid, but the bear demons had dense hair coating their bodies. They didn't look like bears standing on their hind legs, but rather like mountain men with the heads of bears, and yet were also probably twice as hairy as the hairiest human on Earth.
Their eyes were dense orbs of black fog, and if one looked at the claws on their hands and feet, and even their teeth themselves, it would look the same.
This gave the demons a particularly sinister edge, and yet for whatever reason... they followed Moose without question.
There was no doubt that this was highly confusing to the likes of Braxwell and the last of the three City Lords, Ditya-a short man who looked more merchant than warrior. Demons were even fiercer than beasts. A beast might ignore a Human given the circumstances, but a Demon's one and only goal was the eradication of the Human population.
So why did one of them follow Moose?
What was even more shocking than this was the fact that Sylas was still unaware of this.
Moose had sent a normal human to negotiate with him. On top of this, he had a facade city up that Sylas had assumed was his only city.
It was rare that Sylas made a mistake like this. But the simple giant had succeeded.