"Good evening," is the best way to begin a funeral procession with a polite greeting.
"Ha-ha, how polite they are," laughed the large man, clapping his hands loudly. He was in the center of the elite team, behind which several hundred well-equipped people had gathered. "Give up the palace, or we'll send you all to feed the worms!"
- It is amazing that in such troubled times you decided to kill and rob those with whom you share the same land - what interesting people, commendably demonstrating their rotten natures.
- Huh? What did you just say? Do you think that if you look scary, we'll be scared of you? - the red-haired guy in their company spoke, pointing a blade at me.
"He's dangerous..." the lower lich said unexpectedly to everyone, stepping back.
- Him?
"When I cut him into pieces, he'll be much cuter," the only girl in their company pointed at me.
— You know, there is a word — «Sparagmos». In ancient times it was used to describe a person who was sacrificed by being divided into parts — to the amused exclamations of some of the five, I raised my elbow and activated the artifact at maximum speed, releasing a deadly beam of light. Time was ticking by in split seconds, so I had to try hard to make the beam draw an arc of the right size and length.
Something like an elbow strike, only with the laser activated.
As a result, only one person survived from the huge crowd, while the others were cut into two, four or six pieces. It all depended on what the beam passed through: arms, legs, torso or all at once. But not all died. Their leader was able to predict my action and fall to a level where the attack missed. Due to the large coverage, I did not change the beam's trajectory for one nimble target.
- Your fighting instincts are worthy of the most sincere praise.
- What? This is... - a large man with tattoos all over his body suddenly rose to his feet and looked around. Watching as his comrades, still not recovered from the shock, began to clearly feel "that something was wrong" in their bodies. The first to move, better than the others understood the cause of the discomfort. A banal lack of limbs. But what was hard to imagine was the lack of fountains of blood. The cuts closed rather quickly due to the high temperature of the beam from the Sparagmos artifact. The wounds cauterized instantly, causing the smell of burnt meat to appear. A normal person would instantly empty his stomach upon learning of its source. - Bastard!!! I am Zero, I will punish you!
"You're impulsive," I shrug, calmly approaching closer.
- Iron skin! - some kind of defensive technique that strengthens the body. - Kill with one blow - to him from One-Punch Man as from the Moon to Mars.
The man's fist burst into flames and aimed straight at me.
However, calling the technique devastating is only half the battle. You need to prove it with action, so I calmly intercepted his blow with my palm, then squeezed it tightly, grinding his knuckles into dust.
- Argh, creature!
- You are a strong man, so I want to ask you a question. What will break first. The body or the spirit? - My other palm abruptly grabbed the opponent's bald head, starting a new crush. It felt like his head was being clamped in an iron vice.
— A-a-a-a! Let go!
It's a pity... It was worth squeezing a little harder and sharper, as the head burst, like a ripe watermelon from a hammer blow. After all, the spirit broke before the body, because the enemy began to beg for mercy.
"You-you… are a spellcaster?" a group of adventurers who soon approached asked me with fear about my affiliation.
"I try to keep my body in shape, sometimes doing exercises in the morning," I answer calmly, as if there was nothing remarkable about my strength. "I remember that in my very early years, the secret of physical health was revealed to me," or in a past life.
- S... secret? - the adventurers pricked up their ears, although it was obvious that they were uncomfortable being among a pile of corpses. The smell was not the most pleasant either.
"One hundred push-ups, one hundred squats, one hundred press-ups and ten kilometers of running," I said with slight irony, recalling the enemy's previous attack, which caused a breakdown in the pattern and a lot of doubts. I had to add, "Every morning, without a single miss."
- Ha... ha... - I think I broke the psyche of the tank in their group.
"Power…" and spoiled it a little for the leader.
*
The rest of the night passed without sleep, and that's without even the vulgar context. There were too many problems to solve, of which there were plenty due to my official appointment as the princess's regent. Fortunately, everything went without oaths of allegiance and kneeling. Everything was modest and angry on the part of the nobles, but they had already come to terms with my candidacy and new position. Few of them wanted to repeat the fate of the Eight Fingers. More precisely, five, the rest were hiding somewhere, but I had no desire to look for them. The Demiurge had found them long ago, sending me to help... most likely the most useless members. Consider him sent to slaughter, like pigs.
And what bothers me is the almost calm reaction of the adventurers to the murder of the rebels. Usually, for the sake of decency, they would object to something or show disapproval on their faces. I had to talk to them in half-hints to find out interesting details. It turned out that there were details. These adventurers themselves killed members of the Eight Fingers. And the reason is quite simple - drugs.
Drugs are the perfect means of enrichment and influence among criminal groups. They seem to be widespread in all worlds, because people are eager to be dependent on something. If not on loved ones and their dreams of becoming closer to the stars, then at least on white powders. It is extremely unfortunate, but nothing can be done about it. In the future, regardless of the reason, any participant in a drug cartel, as well as the consumer, will face the same punishment. The harsher the punishment for the seller and the buyer, the faster it will be possible to eradicate the infection completely.
We have a medieval society, where natural selection rules. Medicine is not developed to the gene level, at which it is possible to fix a genome broken by drugs. Therefore, it is desirable to get rid of unfavorable elements, capable of breeding even more unfavorable elements. Probably, such a rule will be established after the growth of greater influence, and in "peacetime".
It will take my research team a couple of hundred years before we can make genetic engineering accessible to everyone. Umbra's hands are good with genes now, but there are only a few such specialists, and they all live in Nazarick. Training new personnel, as well as creating suitable equipment and putting it into production... Too much time. Yes, definitely, no matter how cruel it is. It's better not to break something, so that you don't have to fix it later. Especially such a capricious product as a human.
Not only I understand this, but also adventurers, only in their own way.
Blue Rose was happy about my negative attitude towards the Eight Fingers' drug activities - and shared hostility is a great way to bring people together. As for other areas of criminal activity, like the illegal slave trade and so on, to be honest, everything is rather ambiguous here. We live in a harsh society where people are willing to go into slavery for the sake of stable food and a roof over their heads.
For example, peasants have five children, but they can only feed four. And so that the fifth child does not die of hunger, he is sold into slavery, supporting the life of the remaining four, and preserving it for the fifth, even if condemning him to much worse living conditions. As they said there... A sold slave is better off under a man than underground.
It's wrong, but making rash decisions is not the answer.
It is necessary to create jobs for all segments of society…
The country needs a catastrophic amount of reforms. And here it is necessary not to play the role of an all-powerful know-it-all, stretching the thread to democracy and other tumors of my past world. No, it is important to conduct an authoritarian regime of government, gradually developing the territory and enriching the people, but keeping them in fear. Otherwise, you can not trump your knowledge, but call trouble upon yourself with it. Why do revolutions happen in the world, mass uprisings for inequality and oppression by gender? People have been given too many rights and freedoms, shown permissiveness, allowed to decide for themselves - where to point the weapon. And the people are not all smart and educated. Let's say some smart guy with a "moustache" comes to tobacco, and raises the people for a coup. And the guards? So the people in their "right" - they say, express their will.
Politics is complicated, brutal and bloody.
But I am not one of those who, when choosing between small and large bloodshed, will remain on the sidelines.
It is better to shed a little blood than to drown in the resulting ocean of blood.
After spending about five hours with Renner discussing state affairs, I had to return to Nazarick, leaving my ward to guard my asset. She was not very happy about this. After all, she has to deal with a still inferior creature. However, the princess's intellect made a favorable impression on both of us. And the girls have a lot to talk about face to face. Judging by their sour looks at each other.
And I have a lot of work. And somewhere there is a mountain of urgent matters. But it is better not to rush from one thing to another in a panic, causing a fuss, but to calmly sort everything into its place. Therefore, in Nazarick, I first visited my research lab on the third floor. After talking with the research staff, I came to the conclusion that the mutated omega slime was ready to absorb part of the creature from the third research complex. This was great, so in my joy I reported that Demiurge himself, the guardian of the seventh floor and my deputy after all, would soon bring them a special box with a sample. The Umbra Hands will discuss with him a test drive on using our favorite on lizardmen.
Message: "Demiurge, I'm waiting for you in front of the entrance to the research complex on the eighth floor. You've shown yourself well, so a worthy reward awaits you," and there's also a bunch of plans that need to be discussed with him, but he grasps them on the fly, which is good.
I'm sure the award ceremony will go like clockwork. And then a conversation with Rubedo, and preferably, to get everything done before the morning. I still have to discuss the financial situation in the kingdom, which is, to put it mildly, so-so. Like all the other institutions of power in Re-Estize. At least it's good that this is not some kind of complex Adeptus Mechanicus, but a primitive, but still complex feudal set of rules. It's easy to get to the bottom of them and understand: how to fix or change everything. Maybe I should contact Albedo? No, she's definitely busy with very important things. Okay, for now I'll be testing the limits of the princess's talent. Anyway, I don't intend to lose even one soldier in this war. They are, as was the case in the modern era, mostly for beauty and pressure on other countries with their structures. It seems that a lot of money is spent on the army, little benefit to society, but without them there will be no society. A paradox.
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