Grin strode into Meli and the others' dilapidated base.
The lingering fear from the depths of her soul made Meli keep backing away until she hit the wall.
This girl kept glaring fiercely at Grin, looking as if she might bite him at any moment.
Grin crossed his arms and said provocatively, "What are you looking at? Look any more and I'll gouge your eyeballs out and stomp on them like bubbles."
"Bring it on, you bastard!"
With nowhere left to retreat, Meli had no choice but to brace herself and pounce like a cornered rabbit.
Fortunately, Grin had the height advantage. He pressed down on her head, and no matter how Meli swung her arms like she was rowing a boat, she couldn't reach him.
As Meli's body kept swaying, the bandages on her body gradually drifted toward Grin.
Grin found the right moment, grabbed both ends of the bandages, and gave them a sharp tug.
The originally loose bandages tightened with a "shoo" sound. Grin took the opportunity to wrap them around Meli's wrists twice before kicking her onto a pile of straw in the corner of the room.
"I'm gonna k-kill you!"
With her mouth restricted, Meli's words were slurred, and she squirmed on the ground like a caterpillar.
Grin looked down sarcastically and said, "And I'm gonna b-beat you to death."
The little caterpillar was even cosplaying as a Shaanxi local.
Elsa leaned against the doorframe, her raven-feather-like long hair falling loosely.
A few strands of hair brushed against her fair collarbone with every breath, tracing a lazy and seductive curve.
The corners of her eyes naturally drooped, which should have given her a gentle appearance, but now her pupils were filled with a half-smiling light, like the casual flick of a cat's tail before catching a mouse.
"Alright, Mr. Beast should probably explain his reason for coming, shouldn't he?"
Grin looked Elsa's graceful figure up and down, secretly thinking she was a real femme fatale.
As expected, the more beautiful something is, the more dangerous it often becomes.
However, Elsa's figure was indeed the best Grin had ever seen, even Priscilla couldn't compare.
Grin casually pulled over a chair and sat on it backward, saying with a sigh:
"As for me, I'm here to show you a way out. But just in case, you'd better listen while kneeling."
Snap!
Grin snapped his fingers.
At the same time, Elsa and Meli suddenly felt a pain in their stomachs, as if something had grown countless roots and pierced into their stomach walls.
"Ah... my stomach..."
Meli curled into a ball, her knees pressed tightly against her abdomen. Every breath was accompanied by a tugging pain in her stomach.
Survival instinct drove her to keep clawing at her throat.
"Blegh—"
Vomit mixed with saliva flowed from the corner of her mouth. The spasms in her abdomen made her whole body tremble uncontrollably, and her consciousness gradually blurred in the waves of intense pain.
Elsa stumbled and supported herself against the stone wall, slowly sliding down until she was prostrate on the ground.
For a moment, she looked a bit like a downed teammate in PUBG.
Perplexingly, a delirious smile of enjoying the pain appeared on her face.
"Oh my, Beast-kun, when did you poison us? The cake and the potion were clearly checked."
"It's not poison, just some magical seed powder. And my Divine Protection happens to be able to seal the vitality of these powders."
"If you do anything against me or try to break the seal I've placed, your stomachs will go 'poof' and be burst open by wildly growing vines."
This powder was scraped off magic beans. Unlike ordinary plant seeds, magic bean powder still possessed terrifying growth capabilities, just on a smaller scale.
And the Blessing of the Forest can control the growth speed of these powders.
To remove it, the vitality within the powder can be directly extracted, making it lose its activity.
Just like that pair of siblings; the residues can then be expelled from the body through metabolism.
Elsa looked thoughtful and struggled to lift her face, asking in a flat tone:
"In that case, are those siblings on the road still alive? Glamorous people like you shouldn't attack innocent passersby."
Grin looked down at Elsa. From this angle, he could see a nice view.
"You used them to test the poison. Even if they died, that debt should be on your head."
Elsa supported herself against the stone wall and stood up shakily.
"Haha~ When people are hungry, they can even eat poisonous, rotten food."
"If someone had used a cake to make me test poison fifteen years ago, I wouldn't have hesitated for a second, even if I would have died immediately after eating it."
Living in that kind of environment, dying from a sweet tree cake would have been the best possible ending.
The little boy could be used for hard labor, so he'd likely be kept by his father's side.
As for that little girl, she would most likely be sold in a few more years.
Elsa forced her spirit, which was about to be scattered by the pain, to hold on. She drew her Kukri and prepared to cut open her own abdomen to remove the source of the problem.
Grin frowned at this and advised, "You're a girl, after all. There's no need to be so ruthless to yourself, is there?"
Snap.
After Grin finished speaking, he snapped his fingers again.
The pain in the two women's stomachs immediately receded like a tide.
Elsa's movement froze, and she smiled, "It's been a long time since I was treated as a woman. Aren't you going to make your move, Green-kun?"
"Since your mission failed, you would have been hunted by the organization anyway. And I'm also curious what you two would look like after turning into lower life forms."
Grin leaned one hand against the back of the chair and nonchalantly revealed the secret of their organization.
"Who exactly are you?" Meli, struggling on the ground, suddenly trembled upon hearing the word "organization."
She stopped squirming, revealing a pair of pupils filled with a hint of fear through the gaps in her bandages.
Elsa's smile didn't change, but her eyes darkened a bit.
Both she and Meli came from the same assassin organization, named "Gusteko."
The leader of this organization calls herself "Mother" and possesses the terrifying ability to change the forms of living beings.
If a mission fails, there's a high probability they'll be deprived of their five senses by "Mother" and turned into unconscious frogs or rats.
"I'm becoming increasingly curious about your true identity, Mr. Beast. You wouldn't happen to know 'Mother,' would you?"
"I have a name, Miss Elsa. My name is Grimm Andersen."
"Grimm Andersen? It sounds like a fake name."
Grin chuckled softly at her words and inconspicuously tapped on the magic mirror hanging at his waist, as if hinting at something.
With the tap, the magic mirror shook off a small amount of glowing stardust, which disappeared into the night wind in an instant.
"What does it matter if it's real or fake? What's important is that I can help you avoid 'Mother's' liquidation. After all, you wouldn't want to turn into a frog or a rat, would you?"
Elsa's half-smiling casualness completely vanished, replaced by a cold scrutiny.
First, he had seen through her Cursed Doll ritual, and now he appeared to know the "assassin" organization inside out.
This guy always kept himself on the side of the hunter.
"And the price? There's no such thing as a free lunch, especially from a greedy guy like Green-kun. The price certainly won't be low."
"You don't seem very afraid, Elsa?"
Grin rested his hands on the back of the chair and looked at Elsa with some surprise.
Meli was shorter and standing downwind, so she inadvertently inhaled a lot of the hypnotic factors released by the magic mirror.
She shuffled over to Grin's side and struggled to push the bandages away from her mouth against the chair leg.
"Elsa is different. She's like 'Mother,' an unkillable monster who still has value to the organization. The only one who will be punished is me..."
Meli's tone was a mix of fear, anxiety, and a stubborn refusal to accept her fate.