ButcherPete
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Chapter 98: Unspoken Clause
🕑 Added 2025-07-29 01:30:12 +0000 UTCIt had been a week since Abigail last heard from Cashmere.
No update. No coinflip messages. No clever riddles hidden inside locked spellboxes he usually sent for her to decipher, just to be dramatic.
Only radio silence.
And that silence itched behind her ear like a whisper.
But there was no time to dwell on paranoia. Not when she was knee-deep in moss and ankle-deep in blood.
The cavern stirred around her, humid and sharp with the scent of iron-rich soil and fungal rot. Vines the color of old oak crawled up the stone walls. Deep in the dungeon’s heart, beneath the stalactite covered ceiling, the thing she’d come for trembled on its stalk.
A flower. Crimson, twitching, with a yellow eye in its core that blinked like a heartbeat.
But the real problem wasn’t the flower.
It was what slept beside it.
A mass of muscle and mangled fur stirred. Thick as a wagon. Covered in runes that pulsed with red hot energy. Its snout lifted, bloodied and scarred, nostrils flaring as it caught her scent.
A Blood Bear.
An A-rank demonic beast. Territorial. Equipped with an insatiable hunger for warm prey.
Abigail clicked her tongue as the system chimed before her eyes.
DING
[
You are now within optimal death range. Would you like a tutorial on efficiently dying alone in a cave?
]
She didn’t even blink. “Still not funny.”
DING
[
Congratulations! Your sarcasm resistance is increasing. +1 {Witty Comeback}. Kyokyokyo!
]
“Great. Real helpful.”
Her hand twitched to her side, fingers brushing the engraved scrolls on her belt. Each one held a magic sigil. No chanting needed, just a snap and cast. But even then, she had to be careful, she only had a trickle of mana left to work with, her internal reserves throttled ever since that damn curse sunk its claws into her body and soul.
A crippled being and a compromised system.
No readouts. No diagnostics. No helpful cooldown alerts. Only jokes and lies.
Still, she was alive. Which meant she was smarter than the curse.
The Blood Bear bellowed and stood tall. Its claws cracked like the bones within were snapping. Eyes, red and feral, locked on her. In the silence that followed, it charged.
Abigail threw her weight sideways, scraping her shoulder against the stone wall as the beast slammed into where she’d been. Rocks shattered, dust rose. She slid on one knee, twisted the scroll in her hand, and flung a spell across the cavern floor.
A sigil ignited, a combustion trap of compressed heat. The bear’s rear leg clipped it mid-lunge and exploded in a spray of fur and blood. It howled, off-balance, skidding.
Abigail lunged forward.
Her free hand flicked another scroll, invoking a magnetic spike that slammed into the wall and yanked her toward it like a slingshot. She shot past the beast, twisting in midair to release another glyph, this one stitched into the inside of her cloak.
It ignited behind her, a burst of concussive sound.
The bear roared again, disoriented. Its ears bled. It swiped blindly, claws carving deep gouges into the rock.
She landed, boots skidding, and winced as her vision dimmed slightly.
Too much mana. Again.
Her cursed system blinked.
DING
[
Supreme Hero is at 11% mana. Would you like a health potion, maybe a hug?
]
“I’d settle for your silence.”
The Blood Bear charged again, lower this time, learning.
So she gave it something new.
She backstepped, traced a quick glyph in the air with her finger, small, precise, and practiced. She then whispered a chant.
“[Pink Echo]”
A seal detonated beneath the beast, sending an illusion clone of Abigail sprinting left. A new spell of Abigail's creation. Why she named it such, none knew.
The bear took the bait. Abigail spun right, drew a sigil-blade from her thigh sheath, a narrow crystal knife bound to a flame rune, and slashed across the exposed hind leg as she passed.
The beast buckled.
And Abigail didn’t slow.
She climbed its back mid-stumble, vaulting up the fur like a staircase, the bear twisting under her weight.
At its shoulder, she jammed the blade deep and detonated the rune point-blank.
A muffled blast lit the chamber. The bear slumped with a hiss of cooked meat.
She leapt off before it hit the floor, rolling once before coming to a stop on her back, gasping.
[
Victory Achieved!
-3000xp
Would you like smug acknowledgment or should we just replay the dying alone in a cave joke again?
]
“Just shut up,” she groaned.
The flower swayed again.
Abigail pushed herself to her feet, shaking. Her fingers trembled with the effort of keeping conscious. Her mana circuits buzzed with emptiness.
But the flower was still there.
And so was she.
One step at a time, she reached out and picked it. Carefully. Gently. Placed it in the containment jar without a word.
Only then, after the silence returned and the cavern stilled, did she frown.
“Still nothing from Cashmere…”
She glanced at the comm-crystal he gave her. No flickers. No updates. Nothing.
Her gut twisted in a way that had nothing to do with curses or mana depletion.
Something was wrong.
But she wouldn’t panic. Not yet.
The next step would be finding someone who could trace signals between realms. Someone who could tell her if the comm’s silence meant distance…
…or danger.
As she waited, she set up a small camp.
The fire crackled softly in the cavern, casting gentle flickers of amber light against the stone walls. Abigail sat with her legs tucked beneath her, one hand outstretched toward the flames, the other resting on her thigh, cradling a worn satchel. From inside it, the containment jar that housed the flower she just harvested peeked out, alive, twitching faintly, like it were still tasting the blood in the air.
The Blood Bear’s carcass still lay slumped near, its blood leaking across the cave floor. Abigail’s breathing was steady now, but her mana was still dangerously low. Her circuits felt frayed, like overworked wires beneath her skin. The residual sting along her dantian throbbed with discomfort, but not alarm.
Still alive. Still moving forward.
She let her chin drop slightly as she exhaled. One more ingredient to go. Then the plan could begin.
Her plan.
The one she didn’t want anyone else involved in, but couldn’t execute without one very specific devil.
Her gaze fell to the flame again, but her thoughts drifted to a room of cold faces and stiff robes, to a wooden-floored court that reeked of incense and silence, and the young man she had raised as her own sat across from her that same day, eyes too uncertain to meet hers.
Six months. She had bled in silence for six damn months fighting to get Damien back. Council after council. Debate after veiled threat. Legal battles, public appeals, private compromises. When the Second Prince finally announced Damien could choose to return or stay, Abigail had dared to believe it was over.
She remembered the hollow click of her heels walking toward that estate. The way her breath had steadied.
And the way it shattered when Damien chose to stay.
She hadn’t let it show then. Couldn’t. But when she returned home that night and sealed the door behind her, her magic wanted to flare out and crack the walls.
Now here she was, trying to do something… reckless. No, strategic. Something that would protect Damien no matter who he aligned with. Something that could bypass the red tape, the blood contracts, the curses disguised as loyalty sigils.
But to do that… she needed information. Real information. About her.
Hannya. That pink haired devil priestess. The girl Abigail had met six months ago. The same one who now had ties to the Court of Gilded Woe, if her and Cashmere’s suspicions were right.
She chewed the inside of her cheek, glancing at the last unburnt sigil scroll tucked into her belt.
A Court meant a Judge. And a Judge meant a six-star devil.
"And a six-star devil can break all curses." she muttered to herself, eyes narrowing at the firelight.
That wasn’t entirely true, but how could a mortal know?
And only devils could get into Hellnia right now. The main gates had been closed for over 600 years, broken and sealed in the wake of the last Demonic Horde War, a time before her. Though, rumors whispered of them repairing soon, only heroes and nobles were privy to such secrets.
Even when she had met Hannya, it wasn’t in Hellnia, it was during a summoning gone wrong by a young warlock girl named Corrine.
Corrine, Damien’s former friend.
That was the day Hannya first appeared.
It had ended badly. Destruction and chaos everywhere.
Beings like her, devils, were hated by most humans. Propaganda saw to that. Creatures of chaos, of corruption. Abigail had believed it once, too. She had to. As a hero, it was doctrine. But time, and pain, and unsightly faces like Cashmere’s had made her question what was real.
Abigail grimaced and stirred the fire with a small twist of mana, even though it burned her circuit slightly to do it. She hissed quietly, withdrawing her hand, but the sting gave her something to focus on.
She didn’t like needing Cashmere’s help. He was opportunistic and infuriating in every negotiation, but he got results. And after the last six months, she'd learned results mattered more than pride.
Still, she couldn’t help it.
She felt it now. A quiet anxiety she didn’t recognize at first, something she had no name for.
Why did she keep worrying about him?
Her eyes narrowed.
He’d only been gone a week. She wasn’t his keeper. He was capable. Greedy, yes, but not stupid.
She pulled her cloak tighter and leaned back against the cavern wall.
Still, something about it gnawed at her. Maybe it was what Damien’s choice had left behind, an ache for connection, for not being left again. Maybe she just didn’t want to lose another person, even if they were only a business partner.
She sighed and looked up at the natural ceiling above her, thinking idly of Cashmere’s smug grin, of the ridiculous way he’d flip that golden coin of his before making a deal-
Then, her comm-crystal pulsed.
Abigail sat up immediately. She almost dropped it fumbling from her belt.
The image flickered into view. Her breath caught.
“Cashmere?”
The projection stabilized just enough to show him slouched against a jagged rock wall. His suit was torn, dirt streaking his golden scarf. His usually slicked-back hair hung loose and tangled around a horn. There were bags under his eyes, but they still gleamed with that insufferable sharpness.
“Abigail,” he said hoarsely, as if even speaking hurt. “Good news. I’m not dead.”
She leaned closer. “Where are you? You look-are you underground?”
Cashmere smiled faintly. “Let’s just say I’ve found a quiet place to reevaluate some business decisions.”
“You’re hurt,” she said. “And you’ve been silent for days. I thought you-”
She stopped herself. She didn’t say it.
His eyes squinted at her through the static. “Miss me already?”
“Hardly,” she lied. “Just wondering if I’d have to renegotiate all our contracts with your estate.”
He gave a dry laugh. “Sorry to disappoint. Still alive, still valuable.”
She studied the feed closely. Behind him, the stone looked old. Devil-forged.
“You’re still in Hellnia, aren’t you?” she asked quietly.
His smile faded.
There was silence.
And then he said, carefully, “The Priestess has already evolved.”
Abigail’s heart skipped.
“...What?”
“I can’t send much over this channel. Just know this, don’t trust the old reports. Don’t trust what we thought she was. Something’s… different now. Worse.”
The signal crackled again. “And…Abigail?”
She blinked. “What?”
“I can’t… stop the signal. Greed’s mark is spreading.”
He looked down at something out of view. His voice was almost a whisper now.
“I don’t think I’m coming back…unless…”
A second pulse lit up on the crystal. A demonic sigil, ornate, floral, and searing red, appeared in a flash of arcane heat. Hannya’s summoning mark. Sent directly to her.
Abigail stared at it.
Then Cashmere’s voice returned, low and strained.
“I don’t need a payment anymore.”
A pause.
“Look…I need a favor-”
The crystal dimmed.
Abigail stared at the darkened surface for several seconds, the echo of his voice still alive in the circuits of her mind.
Then she stood, slowly, tightening her cloak and staring into the fire.
“Damn you, Cashmere.” she muttered.
The comm-crystal flickered again, crackling dimly with distorted color. Abigail’s fingers moved on instinct, grabbing a piece of broken bone from the remains of the Blood Bear’s cracked tusk. She knelt by the firelight, sweeping aside cooled ash and dust to redraw the faded spell array in the dirt.
Her hands trembled.
“Come on,” she whispered, voice low. “You’ve patched hero sigils with prayer thread before. This is just Cashmere... just a devil from Greed...”
Sweat clung to her temple despite the chill. The fire’s crackle felt distant, secondary to the hum of arcane strain as she whispered corrections under her breath, fingers carving sigil lines with urgent precision.
The spell flared.
Imperfectly.
Sparks jumped from the array. Light pulsed red, then gold. The connection surged.
“-so I’ll be needing that favor sooner than expected,” Cashmere finished, his voice snapping back into clarity as though the transmission hadn’t cut at all.
Abigail exhaled shakily, sitting back on her heels. Her legs tingled from kneeling, but her heart beat steady now. “Favor?” she echoed, brushing soot from her fingers.
Cashmere coughed. Somehow, he looked worse than before, she noticed his coat was also half torn, his hair clung to his face with grime and sweat, and there was some kind of ritual gash at the side of his temple stitched shut and slowly healing with shimmering thread. His tone, though, stayed light.
“Yes. A small one. I need you to file a business audit.”
She blinked.
“For who?”
“For me.” He smiled with the weight of ten thousand lost coins. “Golden Investor: Cashmere 10th Avaritia.”
Abigail froze.
“That audit needs to be submitted at the Grand Palace of Greed in east Neel,” he added, already anticipating the protest. “And it has to be made in person.”
Her hand hovered above the sigil in the dirt, uncertain whether to break the connection or reinforce it. She felt as if her heart was caught in a knot, twisting tighter the longer she thought. Greed’s Grand Palace. Of all places. Located beside the Devil Spire, The forbidden link to Hellnia. Guarded. Watched. And still blockaded.
“And you want me to go?” she asked.
“You’re the only one I trust to walk through that place without tripping every cursed safeguard from here to Hellnia. And if you use that hero identity of yours, you might just get through the outer gates.”
She didn’t answer right away. Her eyes darted to the side of the cave, calculating. From her location, it was a month on foot, maybe faster if she paid through the nose for a divine courier sigil, assuming she could even get one now that her registry had been flagged after the Blood Bear encounter.
If she was found in the Greed Palace?
Her status as a hero, gone.
Her access to certain archives, burned.
Her name, dirtied.
Her eyes narrowed. “You do know that if I’m caught anywhere near that place, especially submitting something on behalf of a devil, my reputation is done. They’ll brand me a sympathizer.”
Cashmere seemed to read her thoughts. “I know you don’t owe me this-”
Abigail wiped the side of her hand against her cheek, frowning. “Don’t get noble on me. You’re not dying today.”
His eyes widened slightly, before chuckling softly with professional mirth.
“I mean it,” she said, firmer now. “You get out. You survive. You dig whatever hole you need to. But I’ll do this. I’ll submit the audit.”
Cashmere’s image tilted his head. For once, there was no sarcasm on his face. Only something quiet. A little stunned.
“You’re not even asking what’s in it for you?”
“I already owe you more than I can repay.”
“But this... Abigail. If anyone finds out-”
She stood slowly, brushing her legs off, then looked directly into the flickering crystal. “I don’t care about my reputation right now.”
“Why?”
“I just watched someone I raised like a son choose a golden cage over my hand,” she said. Her voice was quieter now. “So maybe I’m done playing safe games.”
Cashmere looked at her in silence. Then he smiled. A small, less-mannered expression than usual. “You’ve changed.”
“So have you. You look like shit.”
“I feel like shit. But I’m flattered you noticed.”
She allowed herself a smirk, but it faded quickly.
“...What exactly happened?” she asked, her voice more strained than she meant it to be. “I thought you were just investigating Hannya’s identity and looking into Apple Fever. Cherrymaid rumors. All of that.”
Cashmere’s image in the crystal leaned back slightly, his smile gone. “That’s how it started.”
Her fingers dug into the dirt beside her, still trembling from the spellwork. “So what changed?”
“I was following a lead, an odd one, buried in a post-raid interrogation from the Capital Council.” He tapped his chin. “The Dream Faction ran a rogue raid on the Hazy Mountain. Not officially sanctioned. The only survivor was a boy that came back…wrong. Muttering about roots and masks, kept repeating the word ‘Gramps’... wouldn’t respond to anything else.”
Abigail’s eyes narrowed. “From Hazy Mountain?”
“Indeed.” He answered.
“Hannya.” She concluded.
Cashmere nodded, his voice lowering. “That was what my gut told me, and her influence is spreading faster than we thought.”
He continued bitterly. “ I volunteered to go in. Right to the Hazy Mountain and deeper. Instead of just poking around, I ended up meeting her directly.”
“Directly? With no proxy?” Abigail asked, blinking. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
“I was being thorough,” he said dryly. “Didn’t think she’d curse me for asking too many questions.”
Abigail stiffened. “What did you ask?”
His gaze slid away from the crystal for just a second. “Doesn’t matter. It was a question that touched something buried too deep for now. Something I wasn’t ready to dig up. Telling you might do more harm than good.”
Her breath hitched slightly.
“And… I didn’t escape her, escape them.” he added. “She let me go. My coin triggered, I panicked. The curse she gave me wasn’t a sentence. It was a warning.”
A silence hung in the air. The fire beside her cracked louder.
“You think this audit will help?” Abigail asked quietly.
Cashmere’s brow quirked. “I think the only thing that scares the Greed Faction more than me dying is me going bankrupt. And if this audit goes through, it might unravel the curse. It’s Greed’s own brand, twisted through her somehow. If I can’t break it from here... maybe you can from the source.”
“That sounds like a will, Cashmere.” She jabbed, more instinct than encouraging.
He smiled again, more tired than smug. “Then consider this the first time I’ve ever trusted someone to carry it.”
The comm-crystal then dimmed with no goodbyes.
Abigail stood by the fire alone, the sigil still glowing faintly in the dirt behind her. She didn’t say anything for a while.
But her hands didn’t tremble anymore.
The fire snapped loudly beside her, a final ember popping out of the pit and landing near her foot.
She watched it smolder as her hand brushed the edge of the crystal.
The favor should’ve been too much. Should’ve been a dealbreaker. She had every right to back out, walk away.
But she didn’t.
And neither of them said what that meant. Not out loud.
Not yet.
She then turned toward the darkness ahead.
It was time to move.
Comments
Butch Perterson
FUCK DONT
CringeWorthyStudios
And slowly, my filthy feral shipper heart awakens. Like a paradoxical tenet, it shouldn’t work and yet it does. You did this to yourself Pete.
Butch Perterson
I SEE THAT NOW
Sanetless
You just gave the shippers ammunition, YOU FOOL!
Butch Perterson
EXACTLY LOL COSMOROS MADE ME THINK I PUT TOO MUCH TENSION IN THE SCENE
Prent
companionship and comradery have the greatest strength when born of the greatest desperations
Butch Perterson
STOP
Wintermelody
Thanks for the chapter
Cosmoros Subs
Now a hero crushing over a greed devil.
