917
In an instant, a fine layer of cold sweat broke out on the back of MI9's "chief."
"Not enough?"
Three people weren't enough? What else would he have to pay? What would this bottle take away next? The moment he began thinking along these lines, he felt as though someone were whispering in his ear: There are plenty of other things you can give, such as your friends, your other subordinates, your family. If you can't bear that, you can choose to send away your subordinates' families. They're already dead, after all... If you don't choose, someone's life might be taken at random next. It might even start with those closest to you.
The uncanny implications of that simple sentence nearly made his scalp explode. The instant he felt his life was about to be threatened, he chose to play dumb and evade the issue for now. "Then take me before the emperor."
After saying this, the chief began waiting for an effect similar to Spirit World Traversal, or perhaps for another secret passage to suddenly collapse open as it had earlier-a pipe that wasn't flooded, allowing him to enter the depths of the mausoleum.
In any case, making all the water here disappear outright was impossible.
He waited a while, then suddenly heard two successive splashes from the direction of his subordinates. A feeling abruptly arose in his heart, as though a weight had dropped from it. His guilt and remorse lasted only briefly before he heard a cry of alarm from what was probably his only surviving subordinate. The steady light began moving in the distance, accompanied by calls for him.
At the same time, with the deaths of those two subordinates, he distinctly felt that something seemed to have been "broken."
It seemed something had been