Gathering Husbands with a System in a Game Like World [BL]
Chapter 44: what is a red flag?

Chapter 44: what is a red flag?

The chain hit the stage with a sharp metallic sound.

For one heartbeat the hall held still. Then everything broke.

Guards rushed immediately to the platform. Buyers shoved toward the exits. Weapons cleared sheaths across the room, the sound of steel filling the entire room. The Curator was already gone from the place he had been standing.

Kai looked at Elias and could practically see the man drooling in Gorran’s form, feigning for a fight.

"Look, i know you are itching for a fight but take off your disguise first off" he looked at dexter "you too runt"

"What do you take me for, a senseless brute? ofcourse i knew this" Elias said with an eyeroll and a huge sigh.

"Do you now?" Kai asked menacingly, Elias didn’t answer he simply reached up, pinched the illusory ring, and drew it off. Gorran’s face melted away, leaving his own sharp features and cold eyes, slowly he began to revert back to his original height gaining his inches back.

Beside him Dexter exhaled once. His Fox ears pushed through his hair, and his tail uncoiled behind him as the human disguise fell apart.

Kai however, remained unchanged. The dark hair and freckles held; there was no quick way to undo them here.

Elias’s mouth curved.

"Aren’t you going to take off your disguise sweet?"

Kai shot him a look but had no time to answer.

Instead he turned his attention to Caleum.

Caelum moved.

He stepped into the open aisle and the space around him emptied. Three guards came at him together. He cut once. All three dropped. Another man lunged from the side; Caelum’s blade met the attack and the weapon snapped. He did not release any loud surge of power. He simply walked forward, and anyone who entered his range fell.

Kai forced his way through the press of bodies toward him. A mercenary swung at his head. Kai caught the man’s wrist and drove him backward into a pillar hard enough to crack the stone.

He reached Caelum’s side just as another wave of guards tried to close in. Caelum glanced at him, blue eyes calm even in the middle of the violence.

"Nice look."

Kai blocked a descending sword with his forearm and felt the blade shudder.

"How did you even recognise me?"

"I would know you under worse disguises than this." Caelum turned, cut twice, and two more men collapsed. "The freckles are new and so are your abilities, seems you have been busy since we last saw"

"Yeah.." but he was cut off by the whistle of a spear flying towards them. Kai smashed it aside with his fist. The shaft splintered.

"Very very busy.." Caelum added

[Notice! Host’s emotional Affinity with Husband Candidate 001 has experienced a glorious increase of over 40%]

Wait, does this mean he likes strong, independent people?

[That could be a likely probability, from this point on you are now primarily one of his objectives]

Kai almost screamed in joy, his first miraculous break through was with the one person that matters most out of the four. Dexter didn’t count, he was love struck from the moment they met and he didn’t have to do much to keep him around either.

He turned to Caelum

"Yeah...i have been busy, you know Adventurers gotta train and stuff" he said proudly and Caelum laughed.

"And to think you were so timid and devastated the first time we met. I mean can you imagine... everyone hated you!" He laughed once more and Kai blushed, embarrassed.

"Yeah... don’t remind me of that, that’s a red flag" he said in a low voice, Caelum tilted his head confused.

"What is a red flag?" He asked in genuine curiousity, Kai looked at his unreadable face to see if he was actually joking and turns out the Most powerful knight of his era didn’t know exactly what the concept of a "red flag" was. He let out a deep chuckle and stiffened it up immediately.

"I am not telling you Draven, you have to find it out by your self"

"That’s unfair Kai, just tell me, what does it mean?"

"Nope am not telling you"

"Awww"

"Anyways you were sitting in the hall the entire time and no one recognized you?"

"I was." Caelum’s voice stayed even while he stepped past Kai and disabled another attacker. "I followed the same trail you did. The artifacts. The disappearances. It led me here."

"You could have said something earlier."

"And given away both of us? No." Caelum’s blade flashed again. "You were already inside. I watched. When the Curator put a living person on the stage, I decided watching was over."

"That makes the two of us, but my team thought othet wise" kai said gesturing towards dexter and Elias who were having the time of thier lives tearing up the individuals around them.

"Interesting team you got there" Caelum said, kai chuckled

"Yeah, tell me about it"

Around them the hall remained a storm of shouting and steel, but the space the two of them occupied had become strangely clear. Most fighters chose easier targets.

Kai turned his attention outward, towards the others. He caught only fragments, as it was all a rabble of confusion, two brutes given absolutely freedom to go wild.

Elias moved through a knot of guards and left them on the floor without expression. Dexter appeared and vanished between bodies, striking and tearing them all open laughing manically whilst doing so...Then the crowd closed around them and Kai lost sight of them again.

He turned back to Caelum.

"Your friends sure do know how to leave an impression"Caelum said, staring at the scene with a sceptic look.

"They are not usually like this, it’s just a bad day for them" Kai defended, the system chimed.

[Notice! Unconventional lies might risk Affinity progression on candidate 004 please do not..]

Shut up...

[Noted]

I have never seen someone so nosy.

[Analysis complete]

Huh? What Analysis

[Environmental clues suggest that these whole arrangement has taken a formation of something bigger on the way]

"The prisoner. The violet light. This whole place is a formation." Kai said immediately.

"I know." Caelum’s eyes flicked toward the stage where the bound figure still glowed. "That is why we cannot simply run."

A heavy axe came down between them. Kai met it with both hands and forced the weapon aside, teeth gritted against the feedback through his arms. Caelum finished the attacker with a single precise cut.

"Why do l feel like you are holding back," Caelum said.

"If I don’t, I break more than the enemy." Kai Said.

"how does one acquire strength bigger than them?"

"Gotta ask a magical entity that one day"

"A magical entity? Is that where you got it from?" Caelum asked, intrested.

"I don’t know" kai said and scurried off.

The pressure in the hall suddenly spiked. Violet light flooded upward from the platform. Every corrupted artifact answered. The floor shuddered.

[Warning.]

[Warning.]

[Formation activation detected.]

Kai staggered. Caelum’s free hand closed around his shoulder and steadied him.

"Stay with me."

"I’m here."

The first violent wave of the formation’s awakening passed. The immediate circle around them thinned. Bodies lay still. The remaining fighters had pulled back toward the exits or the deeper shadows. For a short moment the fighting near them dropped to scattered clashes.

Elias stepped into the open space first, blood on his cuffs, expression almost bored. Dexter followed a second later, ears angled back, tail low, a thin cut across one cheek.

Caelum’s gaze moved over both of them and returned to Kai.

L

Elias wiped his blade on a fallen guard’s coat.

"We’ve met. Sort of. You were the quiet one in the crowd until you weren’t."

Dexter studied Caelum with open curiosity.

"Sword Sovereign. You’re taller than the stories."

Caelum inclined his head a fraction.

"And you are the fox who has been leaving interesting trails across the city."

Kai looked between them.

"How long have you two known each other?"

Elias raised an eyebrow.

"Us? We don’t. We know of each other. Different circles. Same city."

Dexter shrugged.

"Assassins and thieves hear the same rumours. I knew the Sword Sovereign had entered Voltra. I didn’t know he was sitting three rows behind us."

Caelum’s eyes returned to Kai.

"And you. How long have you been walking into places like this?"

Kai let out a short breath.

"Long enough to stop being surprised when they collapse."

A deeper tremor ran through the floor. Violet light flared again from the stage, stronger than before. The prisoner’s body arched against the remaining restraints. Cracks spread across the stone platform.

Caelum’s expression hardened.

"The formation is still activating. Whatever the Curator planned, it has not finished."

Elias’s smile thinned.

"Then we should finish it first."

Dexter’s ears flicked toward the widening cracks.

"Or get out before the building does it for us."

Kai stared at the stage, at the violet light climbing the walls, at the place where the Curator’s voice had last come from the dark.

The choice was already being made for them.

The ground split wider.

And the true shape of the Curator’s work began to rise.