"Y… Yes, anything," she stuttered, couldn't handle his fiery and daring eyes, and lowered her head at the end of her words.
"Well, I'm not free anyway, so don't worry," he tilted up his lips before adding, "what I want from you to do is to… Lie!"
"Lie? About what? About you?" she didn't get what he was referring to. But soon enough, she knew what he wanted, and couldn't help but get more terrified of him.
"Lie about having most of the bids from before," William finally said what he wanted to do, "it happened in front of everyone's eyes… Those despicable dark spirit masters came at you and your group first. And they seemed to take interest in having your rings."
"Rings? But… But we still got them! We saved all of them!" Remy couldn't believe what William was asking her to do here. Out of all things, merchants were ready to do anything to maximise their profits, except for one; tricking and lying to their customers!
Doing this was like shooting at one's foot. So, she had to buy herself a little time, think about the right way to handle this disaster.
"Don't worry, we aren't going to take much anyway," William grinned, as if this was indeed something not worthy to be scared from, "just half, half is enough."
"But…"
"Listen, in such a grand battle, everything went into total chaos. You got nearly half of your people wiped out in that battle. All you need to do is to go back there, collect their rings, which is something I'm sure you already did, and then give me these rings."
"G… Give them to you?!!!" she didn't imagine her bewilderment from what William just asked before would have another boost just moments later.
William didn't just set his eyes over half of the loot, but he also wanted to get all the rings of her people. He was indeed right, at least half of whom she brought over got killed already. And she collected their rings, in addition to other rings with wealth to safeguard them.
But there were merchants in the middle of the dead ones. And their rings were like treasure troves! Giving such wealth over to someone like William, an outsider, was a new level of greed she never thought about before.
He wasn't planning to just take half the bids, but half of the rings with everything they got!
"Do I seem like I'm negotiating or something?" William's face turned all serious, with his faint smile disappearing. His single gaze made her body tremble, even taking a few steps to the back.
"What the hell did I get myself into?" she couldn't help but scream in her mind like crazy. When the Refos group got Trevor's words, a small battle happened internally. And she made sure to secure such a huge event to her side.
She never expected that what she fiercely battled before to get was going to turn into something toxic and volatile, very deadly like this.
"You are going to take out half the rings right now and give them to me," William paused before adding, "and from these, I want at least fifty merchant rings."
"This…"
"I don't care, even if you got to give me rings belonging to other merchants from out there, I really don't care," William shrugged, "this is a problem you have to solve on your own. In addition to that, half of the entire bids will be divided between you and me, fifty-fifty. Huh? What do you think? Pretty impressive, right?"
He laughed, and for a second there all she heard was violent and scary roars, not laughs, "I'm really just. Even if I'm doing evil, I'm still doing it in a style."
"But…" she gulped, trying to find anything to use to threaten William, to stop him from going on into this madness, "lots of people, no, all of the people saw you take lots of rings out there. Aren't you afraid they'll target you?"
"Target me? Hahahaha! As if I was the only one doing this," William's face was coated with a vicious expression, "it's all thanks to their little greed out there, sending out people to take part of the loot that they'd end up in such predicament," William paused, before extending his hand, "just do as I say, and leave such trivial matters for me to do."
"..."
Remy tried, tried her best to find a reason she'd use to scare William off. But from the latter's words, it seemed he was dead fixated on doing this madness.
William indeed was adamant at doing this, seeing in all this a just retaliation against all the forces who stood in his path before.
As for the amount he gave to the Refos group, it was simply a price he had to pay to silence them forever. He knew the overall amount involved here was enough to add riches over what a mighty group like the Big Seven already had.
They'd be crazy to refuse such a thing. And when they'd accept it, they'd turn into his crime accomplices. This was just going to be the first of their long-term relationship, as by this he'd be roping them to his side. And that perfectly served William's interest.
"Hurry up, I don't have the entire day to waste here," William shouted at her, making her body tremble again. As she had no other choice, she decided to follow what William asked for.
After all, if they managed to escape the enraged mobs after knowing about such lies, the entire group would get a scary amount of wealth!
Just as William predicted, the moment she started to think about her share of all this, her group's share of this trade, she instantly dropped any worries and hesitation she previously got.
"We got… Sixty billion spirit crystals… And we did lose a bit, but no more than five billion…" she paused, and the look she got from William was enough to make her gulp, "we tried our best before, but ended up losing a bit of our rings."
