CHAPTER 53: AN ARRANGEMENT (2)

"I mean it! Even the Gray Leash... And all gangs under our banner... I will give them all to you! You will be our new leader! I... I will be your servant!"

When hearing Eben’s proposal, Ash took his time thinking about it.

Then, after a quarter of a minute had passed, Ash nodded his head.

"Alright, and... no."

His last word sent warning signals to Eben’s mind. His heart raced once more, and sweat poured out to the back of his head.

"Wait! Please! Tell me! What do you want? Just tell me! I will do my best to get them for you! Please don’t make me go through that again!"

Ash’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

"Umm... You got me wrong. What I mean is, alright, I’ll forgive you and stop attacking you and your men, but no, I don’t want to take over your whole operation. What I have now with the Strong Arm boys is enough. Can I propose something else instead?"

A sigh of relief escaped Eben’s chest. The tension finally left his body as he rested his whole body on the vine structure Ash had made to prop his body up.

"Yes, please. Tell me, what do you have in mind?"

Ash then proceeded to list out his proposal.

"Instead of taking over your group and other groups under your banner, I want you to just continue running it. But you or anyone from your group should never meddle in my matters or anything related to me without my permission."

Eben nodded his head vigorously.

"I want you to keep the current status quo on the outside, make it seem like I just took over Strong Arm and now I work under you.

But I don’t have to answer to you at all. I will do whatever I want.

And you will, secretly, help me do whatever I ask you to. With no conditions attached. The best you could do without compromising our cloistered dynamics."

He nodded once more. No words of complaint left his mouth.

"For that last bit, if I tell you otherwise, then you will do whatever I ask you to. No matter the circumstances.

Do we have a deal?"

Just a quick listen to Ash’s offer would make it clear to anyone who has a working brain that it was no different than what Eben had said in the first place.

Grey Leash would be under Ash’s control, and Eben would literally be his servant.

He would have to answer to Ash whenever he spoke the words.

The only difference was that Ash wanted to keep that a secret, and no one besides the people currently present and who had a good enough hearing would know about this.

But of course, Eben had nothing to say.

It was actually better for him since he would be saving his face with Ash’s arrangements.

Everything that happened tonight would be impossible to cover up.

The other 2 main gangs that ran the slums with him would soon hear about what had happened to Grey Leash and Strong Arm.

But the truth could be twisted.

There might be news about the truth, but Eben would flood the slums with his own version of the truth that people would never know what had actually happened.

So without a split second of hesitation, Eben accepted Ash’s deal.

Knowing his life was now out of the grave for now, Eben finally regained his strength to stand on his own.

"As a sign of goodwill towards our future cooperation, I will help you a little," Ash said as he made his way towards the barely alive men who had to deal with the vine brothers.

Their bodies were already weak enough that they were barely hanging onto life, so Ash decided to just use a non lethal poison instead.

The good old hallucinogenic mushroom came into play as Ash spread their spores to invade the bodies of these men.

Of course, his mana was contained inside the spores.

The barely alive men, the men who were struggling to even show their pain anymore, slowly but surely, stopped groaning.

The pained expression, the dead look in their eyes, disappeared as they changed to something else.

The mushroom spores did their job exactly the same as what they did to Ash the first time he came in contact with them.

The sweet images, beautiful dreams of their release from their sufferings played in their heads.

The longing to close their eyes and accept their desire to finally rest overwhelmed them.

The dead look in their eyes began to change to one of longing.

The groans of pain were gone, replaced by a deep, genuine smile that these men rarely wore.

As half a minute went by, a lot of them began closing their eyes.

They were entering the tranquilizing embrace of eternal rest.

And if they did close their eyes, they would truly go there.

Even Ash couldn’t do anything to take them back.

However, Ash didn’t let them go there in the first place.

Seeing the people start closing their eyes, Ash began summoning his own crimson vines.

Different from Crimsy, his own vines were already modified with the bat’s DNA.

Not only did it spread necrotic venom, but it also sucked the blood of its victim.

The sensation of having one’s skin torn open, then blood forcefully drawn from it was enough to wake up an unconscious person.

And that was exactly what Ash did.

Every time the people began closing their eyes, Ash would just prick them with his crimson vines, shocking them awake once more and keeping their souls inside their bodies.

Of course, Ash was careful enough to just let the tip of his crimson vines touch them for a split second lest he wanted to kill these people by causing them blood loss.

By the end of it, all the people had survived the 60 seconds they needed to survive to pass Ash’s baptism.

Strength returned to their bodies as the pain from their rotting skin and flesh was no more.

Ash helped them close their wounds to prevent them from leaving a trail of blood wherever they walked, and he also added the wolf fang venom and the bloodberry poison for them.

He already felt the connection between himself and these people.

There was nothing he needed to worry about them ever using their powers against him.

All the people in the area stood still, their eyes were locked onto the sight in front of them.

He had never seen something like this in their whole life.

Their half dead comrades, barely able to take a breath to keep themselves alive, were now standing back up on their feet once more.

Despite their bodies looking like they were walking corpses, they were functioning just fine.

They talked to each other, even hugged one another, as they had just realized they didn’t die.

No words could come out of the onlooker’s mouth.

Even Eben could only stare silently.

Thousands of questions popped into his mind, but he didn’t dare to utter what was on his mind.

Ash watched the people who had just joined his family return to their comrades, letting them mingle with the others to tell them that these people were really normal.

Ash then walked back towards Eben.

He realized mid way ’healing’ the people that his ’gift’ shouldn’t be talked about carelessly for now.

So he needed to make sure that no one would do such a thing.

"Eben, for your first task, can you take me to your base? Oh, and please tell all of your members to gather at the base. I have something special to give them."