Patience wasn’t Grey’s strong suit. And though he quite liked pretty women, especially ones as pretty as this, his pride was actually more important to him.

Maybe you could catch him lacking like Amunet had. But what you weren’t going to do is look him in the face, bat your eyelashes, and expect things to go your way.

There were a lot of ways, though, that Grey did expect this punch might go.

The first was that maybe it was entirely ineffective, maybe there would be some great shield of protection around the Oracle, something her "goddess", if an empress of all things could be called that, would have given her.

Maybe there would be some great backlash and he would be sent flying back, maybe he would even lose an arm for his blasphemy.

What Grey didn’t expect was the young woman’s nose to flatten against his knuckles, for him to feel the cartilage of her delicate bridge snap, and for blood to fly out like a gusher as she, too, went flying.

The Oracle tumbled across the grass and then rolled to a stop, completely out cold.

Grey blinked.

Wind whistled by.

Then the world itself blinked as the sea of black and white that it had become suddenly snapped back into focus.

The nuns around looked confused as though they weren’t sure what had just happened, but then their eyes landed on the Oracle and went completely wide.

Shock and horror painted their faces.

"Sister Mai!"

They screeched and a large contingent of them rushed forward to try and "save" her, then seemingly realizing that they couldn’t possibly all cast heal on the same target at the same time, nor could they all crowd her body at once, a majority turned their attention to Grey with vindictiveness in their eyes.

Grey looked down at his fist. "Well, damn. Now I just look like an asshole."

The nuns roared, their head coverings flapping in the wind in veils of white as they raised their hands in a unified chant.

"Listen, ladies, there’s no need for all of this. We can still be friends. The church needs a paladin, right—?"

BANG.

A concentrated beam of light scorched the earth it passed over, approaching Grey so fast it felt like it hadn’t needed any time to build up pressure or momentum at all.

The nuns formed a unified front, their Holy Energy pouring into one another’s seamlessly.

’Shit.’ Grey thought to himself. This was actually a bit troublesome.

There weren’t many nuns, maybe only about two dozen or so. Their strength didn’t seem all that great either. Though the weakest of them was at the Established Class, the strongest Grey had sensed were all still in the Vector Class.

The Oracle...

Grey frowned as he finally realized he hadn’t actually sensed any power coming from the Oracle at all. Well, other than that odd time-stopping thing she did.

The realization that had he hit her any harder he might have punched through her skull dawned on him.

’I’m not opposed to fisting... but that’s the last sort I’d want to get involved with.’ Grey cringed.

Maybe he shouldn’t feel bad about killing someone who was trying to screw him over. But something felt different about it when he realized that the Oracle was just a helpless woman. It felt icky.

Grey’s body vanished before the beam could tear him in two.

He slipped to the side and burst into a run, streams of his Shadow Forces’ energy being left in his wake as he accelerated forward.

"Stop him!" one of them roared. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

The youngest of the nuns and the very one that had been cleaning his body raised her tiny hands and bit at the corner of her lips in concentration, a complex series of glyphs forming before her.

Grey didn’t even look up rushing into their sanctuary. This time, he wasn’t looking for naked women—not that he had been last time either. He just wanted his things.

Frantz could go fuck himself. The Dukedom was already going to try to make his life a living hell, so why would he leave here without taking what was his first?

Also, the idea of just sitting around waiting for punishment was ridiculous. He had things to do.

BANG.

A power slammed into Grey’s back, sending him tumbling forward and through the sanctuary’s doorway.

’What the fuck?’

Grey was in shock as he tumbled across the floor. The blow hurt like a slap to the back of the head, but it clearly wasn’t lethal to him. The real problem was that it had hit without him registering or sensing it.

How was that possible?

He hadn’t been looking at the nuns not because he was careless, but because his sixth sense was good enough to be a second set of eyes already.

Even if it had failed, though, he would have at least heard the energy before it landed on him.

But this time it felt like one moment he was just rushing into the little sanctuary they called home, and in the next he was tumbling across the floor.

He tried to pop back up to his feet, but he suddenly found his senses weren’t working properly. He tried to lift his right leg, but it was actually his left that moved, and when he tried to catch himself with his left hand due to the sudden odd movement, it was actually his right arm that moved.

They had completely rerouted his nervous system like they were jumping wires on a little circuit board.

’What the fuck...’

The feeling was so trippy Grey’s head began to spin.

’Okay, maybe I underestimated these nuns just a little bit.’

The sound of feet rushing after him echoed through the wrong ears. He was sure that they were coming from behind him, there was nothing in front of him. Yet, he was hearing the sound as though it was approaching from the front.

’You’ve got to be kidding me... Fuck my life.’

Something grabbed him.