Chapter 91: 95. Impudent Part 4

Karise wants to stop Orin, but it's too late. She can only watch him almost fly forward.

If Orin kills someone, especially a human, he's going to draw too much attention. If the guards get over here and find a dead young man, they won't know who killed him, or why as Orin and Karise would have left by then. Drawing that kind of attention tonight could lure in problematic eyes. The guards might start scouting the perimeter of the square for any bad elements.

Maybe they’ll even pay more attention to what’s happening over at the apartment complex and send people over there. The Twin Moons were already playing a delicate game as it was. Of course, Karise is fully unaware of the fact that the guards are on the side of the Twin Moons today, so she fears them doing detective work.

As Karise thinks about all the possible outcomes of Orin’s impulsive move, Orin tries to hit Ajax in the head with the dull side of his blade. He would prefer to knock Ajax out, but his strike was more of a test of Ajax's prowess to begin with. Furthermore, he’s not going to get Karise and himself in trouble by killing Ajax. He swings his sword in his right hand from above.

Ajax can see the blade coming as his perception slows down towards the oncoming danger, his pupils shrinking. He consciously forces his body’s innate power into his muscles and bones, redirecting it away from his senses. In the middle of Orin’s swing, he grabs the part of Orin's blade connecting to the sword hilt with his thumb, index and middle finger, delicately.

He doesn't like the nature of its green, obviously magical glow. He decides to get rid of the weapon altogether.

Where his fingers touch the blade, he rapidly absorbs heat, chilling the metal his fingers are directly touching to far below the freezing point of water to perhaps the freezing point of air. He figured out the trick to absorbing heat from a small surface area over the past month while training with Shaula.

As a result, there is a centimeter-long interval where the metal of Orin’s blade freezes too quickly, its malleability turning to brittleness. However, Orin doesn’t notice his blade changing temperature slightly as all the cold applied to only the sliver that Ajax had touched.

Ajax draws his fingers back and then lets the blade hit him in the top-left side of his head.

Orin caught the movement of Ajax’s fingers, but was unsure what Ajax did to his sword. He does see the results however. As soon as the dull side of his blade strikes the top of Ajax's head, the blade snaps off, leaving him holding a sword hilt with nothing else attached to it.

The blade lays on the ground, the end of it cold enough to condense water as ice on its surface. It was as if the broken off part of the blade was dipped in liquid nitrogen and shattered after being unable to handle the impact of striking Ajax's face.

Ajax's head does not look damaged or bruised in the slightest.

Orin was not expecting this. As he stands there dumbstruck, Ajax grabs the back of his neck with his right hand and pulls Orin forward. He carefully, making sure not to apply too much force, puts Orin into a headlock. He makes sure to cover his mouth as well to prevent him from shouting in pain or for someone to rescue him.

He sits down while moving his arms into a rear naked choke on Orin. He starts suffocating him. The crowd nearby is murmuring upon seeing the outcome.

Ajax attempts to downplay the one sided fight in front of them.

"Haha, don't worry, everyone. I'm just trying to calm him down. I don't really know what I did for him to attack me like that, so I'm being careful here, that's all…"

He smiles somewhat nonchalantly while Karise looks on, her teeth grit. She fears that even if she were to try and attack him with Orin as a hostage, she would not be able to hit him with her dagger.

Orin tries to pull Ajax's arms off his neck, all in vain. His breathing is cut off. Within a couple minutes, he could be knocked out. Ajax whispers to him.

"So, can you tell me what you were doing here? Or rather, what you’re planning to do ‘elsewhere’?"

Orin only continues to grunts in frustration trying to pull Ajax's arms off, to no avail. His face turns red. He isn't panicked, but he can feel that Ajax has, through his chokehold, cut off the blood flow to his head. He's starting to feel sleepy already. However, Ajax was never trying to kill him, only restrain him.

"If you calm down, I won't put you to sleep, how about that?" Ajax whispers.

Orin starts to slow down. If he can stay awake he can still do something, but nothing is going to happen if he's unconscious and at the whims of his enemy.

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"There, was that so hard?" Ajax whispers. Then he shouts to the crowd, trying to alleviate their concerns. "See everyone? He's just a bit drunk, that's all! He's starting to calm down."

Orin loosens his arms to his side and slyly gestures for Karise to walk slightly closer, though not too close to be perceived as a threat to Ajax. This time she starts speaking, trying to appear unconfident and wavering.

"...What the fuck do you want?" She asks, with a slight tremble in her voice that she added consciously.

Ajax, not knowing her plays, believes that she's under actual stress and fear; now would be the best time to ask her a question in his opinion. He wants to know a lot of things. But, he is curious about something. 

"Well, hmm… you know, if you wouldn't mind. Just tell me this. Did that man really steal from you?"

Karise looks over at Orin. He signals with his eyes for her to stall Ajax at least a little. She takes a deep breath as if preparing herself.

"Y-Yes, it was completely unprovoked, and–"

"Excuse me, stop right there. I can hear your heartbeat, uh… sorry, what's your name?"

"..."

She decides not to share. Ajax sneers.

"Whatever. I can hear your heartbeat, Ms. Loser Dumbass, and–"

"Karise, it's Karise, alright? Ugh. Are you a child?" Karise crosses her arms in annoyance. Ajax simply ignores her last comment.

"Thank you. Karise, right, I can hear your heartbeat. You're not telling me the truth, at least not the full truth."

This is a bluff. Neither he nor Shaula can tell just by heart rate whether someone is lying. Shaula has her own method of figuring out a person's state of mind, but he hasn't learned it for himself. Anyways, Karise doesn’t know about Ajax’s full bag of tricks so he decides to bluff right now.

"I don't know what you're–" Karise starts, but is interrupted.

"Thump, thump, thump, thump…" Ajax starts saying "thump" to the pace of her actual heartbeat. She subtly checks her wrist and realizes that he's not far off.

How is he able to… why are his senses so heightened as a human?

Karise stands confused for a few seconds. Still, she cannot just keep denying things forever; she doesn't know what Ajax is capable of just yet, nor does she know what makes him lose patience. In the interest of effectively stalling…

"Ok! Ok… he actually… didn't… steal from me." She pretends to speak hesitantly. Though she wonders if her act really works against Ajax, a supposed lie detector made flesh.

"Then, what… were you trying to do with him? Why were you trying to send him to the 'gallows' or whatever you were trying to do?" Ajax’s eyes sharpen.

Orin feels the arms holding his neck become cold. Within seconds, they become too cold, as if death itself has him in a headlock. Karise notices Orin start to sweat; his expression twists into a subtle fear.

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