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Chapter 106: The Cost of Doing Business(Part 2)
🕑 Added 2025-08-15 13:00:22 +0000 UTCThe boardroom was still silent when Gula moved.
High above the Grand Temple’s territory, her golden eyes cut downward, fixing on the heart of their empire as if she could see directly through the walls and ledgers to the marrow of their wealth. Her smile grew sharper.
Then she raised a single finger and pointed to the ground below.
“[Nibble].” she said.
The word rippled through the air with heavy weight and brutal teeth.
Below, the corrupted ground answered. The now black earth shifted, its texture loosening until it became black sand. At first, it simply rolled, trickling in tiny streams toward the edges of certain buildings. But then the streams swelled, climbing up the outer walls in jagged waves.
The sand rose into hulking hills around the chosen buildings; sharp-edged and irregular, each one resembling the outline of massive, gaping maw. And then, like a monstrous jawline, the hills slammed inward.
The sound was a deafening crunch.
Entire structures within the temple, offices, vaults, and trade houses. Vanishing in a single bite. The jagged teeth of black sand clamped down, shattering walls, pulverizing floors, snapping entire sections into nothing. Debris and bodies alike dissolved before they could even fall.
The next bite took another building. And another.
Gula’s laughter echoed over the devastation.
“Kakaka!”
From the central building, the shareholders stared, every last one of them rooted to the spot in horror.
“She’s… she’s eating the territory!” Mint whispered, her usual composure stripped away.
“What do we do?” Beryl asked sharply, eyes darting between Dollar and the chaos below. “At this rate, she’ll chew through half our assets before we can mobilize!”
Before Dollar could answer, something new began to stir at ground level.
From within the heaps of black sand that marked the fallen buildings, shapes began to push upward; figures clawing their way into the open air.
They stumbled out, grey-skinned and slack-faced, their movements wrong, jerky and unsteady like marionettes on tangled strings.
Witherspawn.
The shareholders had never seen their kind before. Tall, thin, with limbs too long for their frames and fingers like brittle knives, they gave off no breath, no heat.
The air around them wilted and dried.
Then one of the creatures brushed its hand along a toppled market cart. The wooden planks blistered, then cracked. In seconds, the entire cart had withered into black sand, dissolving into the same hungry hills that had destroyed the buildings.
The shareholders did not know their name, but they understood their purpose the instant they saw them work. And they realized, with dawning horror, that these were not summoned things, they were made.
A result of the cursed sand.
Made from the devils and demons that had been inside the buildings when the sand consumed them all.
The Witherspawn rose, silent and obedient, until they formed a loose formation across the blackened ground. They did nothing else. They simply stood, waited.
High above, Gula’s golden eyes flicked toward the still-standing sections of the territory. Her grin widened.
She pointed again.
“[Gnaw].” she commanded.
The word cracked through the air like a whip.
The creatures moved.
Each step they took crumbled the ground into black sand. Each touch of claw or palm drained walls, bodies, and anything else they brushed into the same nothingness. They advanced slowly, unstoppable in their steady pace toward the heart of the Grand Temple.
Gula’s laughter rolled again, but this time it carried words, her voice pitched so all could hear.
“Kakaka! Come out, Greed! What’s wrong, hm? Hiding because you’re scared? Is the great Father God cowering because it’s tax day?”
The words struck like a hammer.
Some shareholders stiffened in outrage. Others looked away, discomfort gnawing at their pride. None spoke the truth aloud, but all knew she wasn’t completely lying. Avaritia was weakened today. His godly powers paying a price and his tenet unavailable.
And without it, the Grand Temple was more vulnerable than it had been in centuries.
Dollar stepped forward, his presence snapping the room’s paralysis.
“Enough staring,” he said, voice clipped. “If we want our territory to stand, we defend it. Together. Every share, every hand, every ledger. Now.”
One by one, the others nodded.
Even the most timid among them understood, if the territory fell, their fortunes would burn with it.
The table vibrated faintly under their feet as another building outside collapsed into black sand. Somewhere in the floor below, bells of mobilization began to ring. Guards barked orders.
No one noticed the small sigil glowing faintly beneath the great table, tucked in the shadows, its pink light pulsing a little brighter with every passing second.
The terrace trembled.
At first, the shareholders thought it was another ripple from Gula’s destruction below, but then they noticed the table.
The small pink mark etched into the wood was glowing now, no longer the faint shimmer it had been earlier. It pulsed like a heartbeat, each throb matching the rising panic in the area, as if feeding off the despair.
Mint leaned closer, frowning. “That’s not hers,” he muttered, eyes flicking toward Gula in the distance. “This… isn’t Gula’s magic.”
The glow swelled violently, flooding the room in feverish light. It was suffocating, like the pressure before a storm breaks.
The sigil began to rise from the table, lifting into the air in a perfect circle of twisting, thorn-like script. It spun faster and faster, then stopped dead, facing downward as if it were… searching.
Its light swept across each of them, then locked on Dollar.
His breath caught. “Why me…?”
Before he could move, the sigil shot forward like a spear.
“Dollar!” Ledger’s voice cut the air.
She didn’t hesitate. She threw herself in front of him, arms wide, taking the blast full in the chest. Amongst the group, she was the eldest.
And she knew how important he was…to the territory’s gains and their father god.
The circle shattered into a rain of pink sparks that sank into her skin. For a heartbeat, she stood perfectly still,eyes wide, breathing shallow.
Then her pupils rolled back into her head.
Her body went limp…
And then it moved.
The temperature dropped sharply. The air around her shimmered with a dark pink haze effect, warping pressure and reality, like a nightmare given form. Her limbs bent unnaturally as she stepped forward, each movement like a broken doll.
She then screamed.
And the battlefield below reacted instantly.
A wave of oppressive mental power radiated from her, hitting friend and foe alike. Soldiers staggered mid-swing, their eyes clouding over. Some dropped their weapons and clawed at the air as though swatting invisible insects. Others screamed, striking at allies they suddenly saw as monsters.
In the streets, Witherspawn froze mid-advance. Then they began to convulse, their limbs twitching in unnatural spasms before lunging at random targets, sometimes their own kind.
Seeing this change, Gula shook her head and giggled. A delicate hand covering her mouth as she watched the chaos with mirth. Hannya sigil was supposed to only guide her here, but it seems she wanted to test her new mysterious spells as well. She found it cute.
The shareholders recognized the pattern of the spell, mental contamination, illusions, invasive fear magic. But the precision… the cruelty… this was no ordinary enchantment.
Mint’s voice was tight. “That’s a curse. Enigma-class, parasitic control. Whoever cast it knew exactly where to hit us.”
Ledger’s head tilted back sharply, and her mouth opened wide, but this time no sound came. Instead, her shadow on the terrace floor grew, stretching outward until it touched the railing.
Then it slid over the edge and spilled into the streets below like liquid.
The shadow erupted into jagged silhouettes, twisted, childlike figures with blade-like limbs and hollow faces. They darted between soldiers, whispering unheard words that sent grown warriors into fetal positions, sobbing.
The pink light in Ledger’s veins pulsed again, and a second wave of effects rolled out. Buildings in her line of sight began to warp, windows melting, doors twisting into screaming mouths, rooftops bending as if in pain. Those inside pounded on the walls, unable to escape the hallucinations trapping them.
Dollar cursed under his breath. “We have to stop her! Now!”
“We can’t kill her!” Mint snapped.
They struck nonetheless.
“[Hostile Takeover]!”
“[Liquidity Surge]!”
“[Market Crash]!”
Businessmen combat arts slammed into Ledger’s moving body. But every time, her unnatural reflexes bent her away from fatal strikes. She didn’t block, her body phasing through their deadliest attacks, like the curse itself refused to let her be hit decisively.
Below, the chaos deepened. The Witherspawn, even under the fear magic’s influence, continued to advance when they weren’t tearing into each other. Their touch still withered everything they grazed, turning it to black sand, but now panic spread even faster thanks to the hallucinations Ledger was broadcasting.
What's worse, the sigil within her seemed to drink in the chaos… or maybe despair around the host, expanding the range every second.
A soldier sprinted desperately from cover straight into a Witherspawn’s grasp, smiling as though running toward a loved one. He was gone in seconds.
Another squad fired a volley of enchanted projectiles into the horde, only to realize they’d been aiming at their own allies.
The black sand hills swelled higher. The pink-tinged shadows intertwined with them, shaping the dunes into towering maws that snapped at anything nearby.
On the terrace, Ledger moved through her peers like a phantom, every brush of her fingertips sending waves of disorientation through them. Dollar staggered as his vision split into overlapping scenes, one of the battlefield, one of himself drowning in an ocean of shredded banknotes.
Beryl’s weapon wavered in her hand. “We can’t contain her,” she said, voice shaking. “Not like this. We’re losing everything.”
Gula, floating high above, laughed loud enough to echo over the chaos.
“Kakaka! Look at you all, scrambling over a few little curses. Your precious territory’s rotting under your feet!”
Her Witherspawn continued their march, filling the gaps Ledger’s havoc created. Entire city blocks crumbled into black sand and pink shadow. The Grand Temple’s outer district was becoming unrecognizable.
The shareholders fought on, but every step forward felt smaller than the one before. Ledger’s curse-driven strikes cut through their formations without effort, and her illusions bled into their coordination, turning strategy into chaos.
But then, abruptly, everything stopped advancing.
Not the fighting, not the screaming, but the spread of the chaos.
It was like an invisible wall had fallen across the battlefield.
The black sand at the front shuddered and froze. The pink shadow recoiled, sizzling where it touched an unseen barrier.
A ripple of gold bloomed in the air before the terrace, a single coin spinning lazily. Then another. Then a dozen.
Within moments, a vast sea of gold coins hung between them and the assailants, turning in perfect unison. They formed a curtain across the field, reflecting the chaos back in distorted fragments.
The Witherspawn reached for the barrier…and their hands smoked. The decay in their touch was gone. The gold stripped it away.
From the far end of the ruined district, high above the carnage, a figure appeared.
Tall, suited in immaculate gold and black. His presence was not loud, but absolute. The air seemed to straighten under his expensive aura.
He moved until he hung in the air directly across from Gula.
His eyes wide in anger and incredulity. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“Piggy…?” He clenched out through gritted teeth. “You actually dare? What is the meaning of this?”
Gula chuckled, low and dark. “You finally crawl out of your hidey hole now huh, Penny Pincher? Too costly to stay away now? Kakaka!”
Her smile widened, fists cracking dangerously as they clenched.
Finally, her meal had arrived.
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