Chapter 9
Just as Musclehead was congratulating himself on being so clever, something behind him made him stumble and nearly fall.
At the very last moment before the boss caught up with the girl, a flash of green light flickered in her hand. Musclehead then watched with his own eyes as the boss’s health bar rose by a chunk.
“What the hell?”
Stunned by the sight, Musclehead wore an extremely odd expression. He wasn’t even watching where he was going anymore, too busy staring at the boss’s reaction.
And the boss’s reaction filled Musclehead with particular “joy.” When it reached the girl, it abruptly veered off course and lunged straight at him.
“Shit!”
Realizing that the boss had really locked onto him, Musclehead cursed and took off running.
Watching him flee in such a sorry state, with the boss hot on his heels, Mo Xi shook her head helplessly and sighed.
“We’re all speed bumps. Sooner or later, a boss with absurdly high stats will run us over.”
Mo Xi had only decided to heal the boss because of her wild imagination.
In Mo Xi’s view, the worlds of the Paradise weren’t game worlds. Everyone had a clear mind of their own, and given that, there was no guarantee a boss had to be hostile.
Of course, Mo Xi felt that her idea had a good chance of working partly because she’d gotten along pretty well with the mistress over the past few days (questionable).
Under normal circumstances, the mistress should have beaten Mo Xi up too, since Mo Xi had been pretty brazen when she extorted her earlier.
But the mistress’s intelligence had been reduced to 1 by the Eye Corruption, so there was no point expecting too much from an idiot.
Listening to the rumbling grow fainter, Mo Xi thought for a moment, then promptly ran toward the banquet hall. If that man and the boss hadn’t interrupted her, she’d have reached it already.
Still, looking at the battered walls riddled with holes, Mo Xi couldn’t help complaining, “With this boss charging around the castle like that, could the whole place suddenly collapse?”
No one answered her strange question, and she didn’t stop to wait.
A moment later, at the banquet hall.
Looking at the luxurious banquet hall before her, Mo Xi felt a little less pressed for time.
As the area closest to the castle’s main entrance, reaching this place meant she was practically one step away from escaping the castle.
Of course, she wasn’t the only one who thought so.
As a hurried set of footsteps drew closer, the door at the rear of the banquet hall suddenly burst open. A somewhat familiar figure rushed in, slammed the door shut behind her, then slumped down against it.
Looking at the bespectacled girl, drenched in sweat and utterly exhausted, Mo Xi raised an eyebrow. She’d assumed Musclehead’s stunt had gotten all the other contractors killed, but it seemed there was still a survivor.
While Mo Xi watched the bespectacled girl, the girl—who’d barely managed to catch her breath—finally noticed the figure standing at the other end of the banquet hall.
When she realized it was Mo Xi, fear surfaced on the bespectacled girl’s face.
Noticing this, Mo Xi blinked, then deliberately slowed her pace and walked toward the girl one step at a time.
“Eek!”
After enduring a desperate escape through the castle, the office worker’s indiscriminate self-destruct attack, and the blonde woman’s betrayal of her teammates, the bespectacled girl couldn’t help shrieking as she struggled to get up.
But her body, which had just relaxed and gone limp, had no strength left in it. All the bespectacled girl could do was watch Mo Xi approach her one step at a time.
The Paradise had no rule forbidding contractors from attacking one another inside a world. In other words, Mo Xi could kill the bespectacled girl right now and take the loot chest she dropped.
Once she realized this, the light gradually faded from the bespectacled girl’s eyes. As if accepting her fate, she looked up at the crystal chandelier above the banquet hall.
But after waiting for a long while, the bespectacled girl didn’t receive the attack she’d expected. Instead, Mo Xi waved several potions in front of her.
The bespectacled girl’s eyes lit up at the sight of the “healing potions,” and she turned to look at Mo Xi.
But the moment she did, she was so terrified she nearly jumped out of her skin. Mo Xi’s face held an eerie mix of satisfaction and appreciation.
The bespectacled girl could only stammer out, “I... I don’t like girls, but if it’s you, I could make an exception...”
Before she could finish, Mo Xi hurriedly cut her off. “Wait, wait, wait. Did you get the wrong idea?”
Seeing Mo Xi looking at her with an exasperated expression, the bespectacled girl only then belatedly realized that Mo Xi probably hadn’t meant it that way.
“Then... then what do you want?” The bespectacled girl looked at the “healing potions” in front of her, then at Mo Xi.
Mo Xi cleared her throat and lightly tapped a finger on one of the potions’ wooden stoppers. “Ahem. I can see you’ve got quite a few injuries, and I happen to have some potions to spare, so...”
“So...?” The bespectacled girl cautiously looked up at Mo Xi.
“So I was thinking of selling these potions to you. Since this is a transaction inside a world, the price is about 20% higher than the standard rate. Are you okay with that?” As she spoke, Mo Xi began preparing a trade contract.
Seeing that Mo Xi really only wanted to sell her potions and had no intentions of that sort, the bespectacled girl pressed her lips together. For some reason, she felt a little disappointed.
When the bespectacled girl didn’t refuse, Mo Xi quickly used the contract template provided by the Paradise to finalize all the terms of the deal.
With the Paradise acting as guarantor, a contract was absolutely binding regardless of whether the two parties knew each other. It was the only thing contractors trusted.
Still, Mo Xi had heard that some powerful veterans could exploit loopholes in the Paradise’s rules to come up with utterly outrageous contracts. That took real skill.
A moment later, the bespectacled girl took the contract and read through its terms. The more she read, the more something seemed off.
Noticing her hesitation, Mo Xi, who was waiting nearby, asked at just the right moment, “Is there a problem?”
“No... no problem. I just think the penalty for breaching this contract is a bit too steep,” the bespectacled girl explained slowly.
Mo Xi smiled at that and explained pleasantly, “It’s just to prevent any conflicts between us later on.”
Mo Xi didn’t think her words sounded threatening at all, but to the bespectacled girl, they immediately translated to: “Hey, if you don’t sign this contract, I’ll kill you right now.”
After some friendly discussion, Mo Xi happily sold all the potions she couldn’t take out of the world to the bespectacled girl for 20% above the standard price.
As for whether the bespectacled girl would regret it later or ask someone to make trouble for Mo Xi...
No problem. The contract Mo Xi had drawn up contained a full seven clauses covering that sort of thing. If the bespectacled girl did nothing, she wouldn’t be in any danger, but if she retaliated afterward...
A fine of 300,000 Paradise Coins would teach her the meaning of honoring a contract.