Sorcerer in the Marvel Universe

"Don’t bother me. Handle it yourself!"

The recording ended, but Evenson’s voice seemed to linger in the room.

For several seconds, nobody spoke.

Evenson sat there with a blank, wooden expression, looking as though his soul had just left his body.

He coughed once. Then again.

"Right. Well..." He rubbed his hands together, his face tightening with embarrassment. "That’s just a recording. It sounds a lot like me, sure, but that doesn’t actually prove it was me."

"Boss..." Sarah raised an eyebrow. "Actually, about that, Lord Kil’jaeden anticipated this exact problem. The spell has a way of verifying—"

"I said it wasn’t me!"

Evenson shot to his feet and slammed both hands onto the table.

"How hard is this to understand?! Are we really going to keep arguing about it?"

His eyebrows were drawn together, his eyes practically bloodshot, and his expression had taken on the look of a man contemplating murder.

Oddly enough, nobody was intimidated anymore.

Evenson took several deep breaths, forcing himself to calm down. Then he turned toward Taylor with the weary patience of a man trying to explain basic arithmetic to a particularly stubborn demon.

"Fine. Let’s assume, purely hypothetically, that I really did say that."

He pointed a finger at Taylor.

"Listen carefully. Hypothetically."

"Right."

"Even if I told you to handle it yourself, you still didn’t have to handle it like that!" Evenson slapped the back of one hand against the other in exasperation. "Look at you! You dressed yourself up like the final boss of a horror game, and then you went around turning people into minced meat. The method was excessive, the public reaction was terrible, and now the entire city is talking about you!"

Taylor frowned.

"But, Boss..."

His voice was deep and stubborn.

"I have a blood feud with those people!"

Evenson stared at him.

"A blood feud?"

Taylor nodded solemnly.

"What did they do, dig up your ancestors?"

"Hmph!"

Taylor’s eyes widened with righteous fury.

"Last night, we were performing on the street. We came up with a new act. Dumen would lie on a bed of nails, we’d put another board on top of him, and then we’d do the whole ’smashing a rock on his chest’ routine."

Evenson stared.

"The crowd loved it. They were throwing money at us before the show even started!"

They were throwing money at you because they wanted you to stop before somebody died, Evenson thought, rolling his eyes.

"Get to the point."

"Right."

Taylor nodded heavily.

"We were putting on a great show when those bastards from the Scorpion Gang suddenly showed up and started shooting everywhere. They scared off our entire audience!"

"Oh."

Evenson considered that.

"Having someone ruin your business is certainly irritating. But you already collected the money, didn’t you? No need to wipe out an entire gang over it."

Taylor sighed as though recalling a terrible tragedy.

"That’s what we thought too. We were going to pack up and go home."

He clenched his fists.

"Then one of those idiots fired an incendiary round. It landed directly in our collection bucket."

Evenson blinked.

"Our hard-earned six hundred dollars," Taylor continued mournfully, "went up in flames."

"I see."

Evenson smiled.

It was a very pleasant smile.

For one brief moment.

Then he exploded.

His hands moved so quickly they blurred. He seized Taylor by the throat and slammed the powerful demon guard against the table with enough force to make the furniture groan.

Taylor’s eyes widened.

Evenson’s face had twisted into something truly horrifying. His eyes were bloodshot, his lips trembled, and his entire expression suggested a man who had just discovered that someone had personally burned down his retirement fund.

"You..."

His voice shook.

"How could you let them die so easily?!"

Taylor barely had time to react before Evenson started shaking him by the throat.

"What about their souls?!"

"Boss—"

"Why didn’t you bring their souls back?!"

Evenson shook him harder.

"Six hundred dollars! Six hundred freaking dollars! And it just disappeared?!"

His fingers tightened.

"I’ll turn them into paste! I’ll grind them down, stretch them into threads, and—"

Krea stared at the scene in utter disbelief.

Six hundred dollars.

That was apparently the price of eternal damnation.

Good grief. The cost of crime in this city is getting ridiculous.

"Ghk..."

Evenson abruptly released Taylor.

He collapsed into his chair, breathing heavily.

Krea hurried over and began rubbing his chest.

"Easy, easy. Don’t get yourself worked up. Take a breath."

She patted him gently.

"Look at the bright side. You’ve already figured out how to make money. You can earn it back."

That finally seemed to help.

After a moment, Evenson managed to get his breathing under control. He gave Taylor a sideways glare.

"Fine. I won’t count this as a mistake."

He sighed.

"But now I have to deal with the aftermath."

"The aftermath?"

Taylor tilted his head.

"Are you worried someone recognized me? That shouldn’t be a problem. I disguised myself pretty well last night!"

"Oh, speaking of your disguise..." Krea suddenly looked interested. "I was wondering about that."

She studied Taylor.

"You covered your entire head with that sack. How could you see anything?"

She paused.

"Wait. Don’t tell me..."

Her gaze shifted toward Troopsey.

"Are your visions linked? Does he see for you from nearby?"

Her eyes widened.

"Some kind of Rinnegan?"

Evenson nearly laughed.

Lady, your imagination needs supervision.

"You never noticed that Taylor isn’t actually that tall?"

"Huh?"

Krea looked confused.

Then she remembered the figure from the previous night.

The creature had been nearly three meters tall.

Taylor, even in his full demon form, was only around two and a half meters.

"So where did the extra height come from?"

"Heh."

Taylor grinned and finally revealed the trick.

"The sack wasn’t covering my head."

He pointed at it.

"It was covering my horns. I stuffed some padding inside, wrapped it around them, and secured it with wire. From a distance, it looked like an enormous head."

He tapped his collar.

"My actual head was down here, right around the collar. I could see through the opening without any trouble."

Taylor sounded rather pleased with himself.

"It concealed my identity and made me look taller. Pretty clever, right?"

"Not bad."

Krea nodded, genuinely impressed.

For all his brutality, Taylor apparently had enough sense to think about hiding his identity.

"Heh."

Evenson gave a humorless laugh.

"Taylor."

"Yes, Boss?"

"I have one question."

Taylor waited.

"Were you wearing shoes last night?"

Taylor froze.

He looked down at his feet as the realization slowly dawned on him.

After transforming, his normal shoes obviously wouldn’t have survived.

"...I don’t think so."

"You weren’t."

Evenson nodded wearily.

At this point, he didn’t even have the energy left to get angry.

"Then congratulations."

He pointed toward Taylor’s feet.

"You walked around with those enormous demon hooves sticking out in plain sight. Anyone who knows you could identify you immediately!"

Taylor looked down.

Then he looked up.

For once, he had absolutely nothing to say.

...

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