16
Anger?
Non-existent.
He had long found that burden at home an eyesore.
All day long she looked half-dead, like a pill-box, and still had to spend the family's money.
If she could be sold off, that would simply be for the best!
"I wonder, Boss... how much are you willing to offer?"
Natsume Masahiro rubbed his hands, his face plastered with a flattering smile, looking exactly like a pug begging for scraps by wagging its tail.
Takeda looked at that wretched behavior of his, and the disdain in his eyes grew even thicker.
He smiled and extended two fingers, waving them in front of Natsume Masahiro.
"One hundred thousand."
"One hundred thousand?"
The smile on Natsume Masahiro's face paused slightly, before he quickly switched to a consultative tone.
"Boss, one hundred thousand... isn't that a bit too little?"
Takeda sneered, his gaze instantly turning icy.
"You think one hundred thousand is still too little?"
"Don't think I don't know that little girl is gravely ill and half-dead."
"It's already not bad that I can give one hundred thousand."
He withdrew his fingers, a hint of threat carrying in his tone.
"If you don't agree, I might just change my mind."
As soon as Natsume Masahiro heard this, his heart instantly grew anxious.
Without even thinking, he nodded and bowed repeatedly.
"I agree! I definitely agree!"
"Thank you, Boss! Thank you, Boss!"
Fearing that Takeda would go back on his word, he patted his chest and guaranteed,
"As soon as we get back, I will bring that girl Rinku to you!"
Right at that moment, the truck let out a harsh screech of brakes and came to an abrupt halt.
The vehicle stopped in front of a dense forest.
Takeda kicked the car door open with one foot and leaped down in a single step.
"Brothers, I am still thirty percent experience away from level thirty!"
He raised his arms and shouted, his voice resounding loudly.
"You guys work hard. If I can reach level thirty today, I'll take you all out for a big feast!"
"Awooh!"
The other underlings in the carriage let out a burst of excited howls, as if injected with chicken blood, howling as they jumped off the truck.
Carrying all sorts of weapons, they followed Takeda into the dense forest together.
Soon, the roars of exotic beasts and the battle cries of humans echoed from the woods.
Inside the carriage, Natsume Masahiro was instantly left all alone.
He was an Insect Master.
Because he had no money to cultivate his own bugs, those precious little things of his basically had no combat power.
Their only use was to use the bugs to decompose the corpses of exotic beasts after the battle ended.
This made it easier to find some hard-to-notice rare materials within the corpses.
Therefore, he generally did not participate in the battle process.
If he got too close and accidentally took a share of the experience points, Boss Takeda would also curse him out fiercely.
He had long gotten used to this feeling of being marginalized.
At this moment, sitting alone in the empty carriage, he was still scheming his own little calculations.
Once that burden Natsume Rinku was sold off,
and he paid back Boss Takeda's fifty thousand yuan,
he would still have fifty thousand left in his hands.
By then, he would definitely rely on this sum of money to make a thorough comeback!
He seemed to have already envisioned the scene of himself holding beauties in his arms and slaughtering every direction in the casino.
The smile on his face grew increasingly lewd.
He completely failed to notice.
Just as he was immersed in his own unrealistic fantasies,
one, two, three...
beetles entirely pitch-black with bizarre patterns growing on their backs were silently crawling up from the gaps in the truck's tires.
Like the most professional assassins, their movements were swift and silent.
They did not make the slightest sound.
The number of beetles grew more and more.
Like a moving black carpet, they quickly covered the truck's chassis, the carriage, and even the roof.
The entire process took merely a few tens of seconds.
Yet Natsume Masahiro inside the carriage remained completely oblivious to this.
A moment later,
he suddenly felt an itch on his neck, as if a mosquito had landed on it.
Natsume Masahiro subconsciously reached out to grab it.
However, what came from his fingertips was not the soft touch of a mosquito,
but a hard, slightly chilly chitinous texture.
His heart skipped a beat.
He slowly opened his palm.
A pitch-black beetle with bizarre purple patterns on its back was quietly lying in the center of his palm.
Its six segmented limbs were still twitching slightly.
The smile on Natsume Masahiro's face froze.
As a C-rank Insect Master, he was thoroughly familiar with the habits of various insects.
Yet the beetle before his eyes was clearly a kind of exotic beast.
The faint, elusive energy fluctuation emanating from its body made him feel a dread originating from the depths of his soul.
An ominous premonition surged into his heart.
He abruptly stood up from his seat, only then completely seeing the scene inside the entire carriage.
His pupils abruptly constricted to the size of needle tips.
The floor of the carriage had somehow been paved with these black beetles.
Dense and silent, like an army of death surging forth from Hell, they had long completely sealed off all his retreats.
"Ah—!!!"
Ultimate fear finally breached the dam of reason!
Natsume Masahiro widened his mouth, storing up a scream in his throat sufficient to tear eardrums!
However, the moment that scream escaped, it got permanently stuck in his throat.
The instant he opened his mouth,
a black shadow like an arrow released from a bow shot into his mouth with absolute precision!
That was a slightly larger flying insect, carrying a nauseating stench as it fiercely blocked his windpipe!
"Ugh... ho ho..."
Natsume Masahiro's eyes widened round, filled with terrifying bloodshot veins.
Both his hands clamped tightly around his own neck, wanting to dig out that damned foreign object.
Yet everything was in vain.
The sensation of suffocation gripped his life like an invisible giant hand.
His brain began to turn dark in waves due to a lack of oxygen.
At this very moment,
that black "carpet" on the ground moved.
Like a breached black flood, silently yet irresistibly, they swept toward Natsume Masahiro's body which was struggling violently due to suffocation!
The Insect Tide instantly submerged his feet, his calves, his waist and abdomen...
Tens of thousands of beetles attached themselves to his body, their sharp mouthparts frantically devouring his flesh and blood.
That was a bone-deep excruciating pain that could not be described with language.
Natsume Masahiro's body twisted and twitched frantically under the coverage of the Insect Tide.
He wanted to scream in agony, but could not make any sound.
He wanted to struggle, but his limbs had long been tightly entangled by the swarming bugs and could not move at all.
He could only watch helplessly as his body was devoured bit by bit by this group of demons from Hell.
Consciousness gradually sank into darkness amidst endless pain and fear.
The entire process took merely a few seconds.
When the Insect Tide silently receded,
in place, there was only a set of clothes gnawed into tatters, along with a few eerie white bones not yet completely devoured.
Not even a single drop of fresh blood was left behind.
All had been completely swallowed up.
Soon, a few more beetles crawled over and dragged those few white bones into the gaps of the carriage as well.
It was as if nothing had ever happened.
A moment later,
a figure walked out from the distant forest and hopped into the carriage with practiced familiarity.
That person had a head of somewhat cheaply dyed short yellow hair, baby fat on their cheeks, and a slightly plump build.
He turned out to be completely identical to the Natsume Masahiro who had just died.