[The Earl]

Due to the nature of things that he’d seen just within a single day of keeping surveillance of the Earl’s mansion, Leon had been reluctant to read through the file that Talia compiled on the target’s history.

After keeping surveillance of Joe’s mansion, to Leon, it was no longer a case of personal vendetta for Rex’s death anymore.

Now it was a case of removing a tumor from society, even if this society is the Omnicore Federation.

The moment Brick and Daren’s mini operation became a success though and Daren gave him direct access to Bourdillon Entertainment’s underground world, Leon knew that he couldn’t procrastinate any longer.

Whether he liked it or not, the operation was moving forward and to ensure its success, he had to participate in it.

Talia compiled the file in a way that it could be read in document format and for it to also be listened to in audio format.

In the end, he decided to listen to it in audio format.

He exhaled, then he clicked on the digital file that was encrypted and protected from Omnicore’s interference.

Click!

Leon listened.

Within just a few minutes, he realized that Earl Joe’s history was vastly different from his current life and lifestyle.

He didn’t start in a bombastic manner like Leon expected. Instead, the Earl started from a very modest background.

Heck, it was far from a modest background even. It was a humbling one.

Leon soon realized that for someone from such a background to have risen this high in life, no matter how he did it, in a way despite how bad it was, the story was inspirational.

’Inspirational...’ Leon never knew he could think of a word like this side by side with the Earl after everything that he’d seen today, yet here he was.

But this was if you only see the surface history.

He smiled darkly. Unlike the regular widespread history of the Earl that was spread out there, Talia’s own was detailed, digging deep into his past, not just the inspirational parts but also the dark and morbid parts.

Well, unlike his current title stated, Joe Curry didn’t start as a noble, not even a Baron.

He didn’t start as a SIN-less either in Neo Solace, rather he started as a Slave.

Buried alongside his past is the truth that his biological mother was a slave. While she was being transported to Neo Solace as part of a slave caravan, one of the guards protecting the cargo raped her and she became pregnant with him.

Then, she was just 14. She was just a girl.

Later in her Lord’s house, when the noble realized that his slave was pregnant, angry, he beat her up and then dumped her on the streets of Neo Solace in the outer ring.

The noble expected her to die, but Sharon, Joe’s mother didn’t die.

She was resilient.

She survived the streets of Neo Solace’s outer ring alone, nursing herself and her pregnancy till she gave birth as a 15 year old.

Taking care of a child in Neo Tokara as a SIN-less was already hard enough, doing so as an underage girl who was already a mother and who is an abandoned slave was 100 times harder, yet somehow she did.

To survive, Sharon became a whore in Neo Solace.

With her first earnings as a prostitute for the countless oppressed and horny Geneforms in the outer ring, she visited a local hospital and had her womb tied so she won’t be able to get pregnant again.

From then on, she focused on herself and her son, doing everything possible to keep the both of them alive.

She loved him.

But good things never last. 4 years later, when her former owner realized that she now had a son that was 4 years old, he came to claim recompense for the money he lost for purchasing a pregnant slave.

The noble, a Geneform who was a mere Baron showed 0 compassion for her as he decided to claim her 4 year old son as compensation.

Sharon couldn’t fight back with the law. Afterall, she was SIN-less.

Unwilling and desperate, Sharon stood her ground to fight for her son, and that day marked her last day in the world.

The Baron’s guards killed her in cold blood in broad daylight, and he left with Joe as his new slave.

Joe watched his mother as she was murdered in broad daylight as a 4 year old, yet nothing happened.

Why? Because she was a Slave, because she was a Geneform who could not rise beyond her peers.

And Slaves? Slaves have no right in Omnicore territory, even worse than mere SIN-less.

That day, Joe was scarred.

That day, as a 4 year old, Joe learned his first bitter lesson that stuck with him even as he wasn’t yet mature enough to truly understand what happened.

Joe took his mother’s place and grew up as a slave, faithfully serving his master. But deep down, an emotion simmered, festering like a cancer... hatred.

But from a young age, he knew how to hide his intense emotions.

Though he couldn’t truly fathom the depth of his hatred yet, he would learn it gradually with time as he grew up.

His Lord didn’t maltreat him much because he was always hardworking and always did whatever he was asked to do, even if sometimes the requests were morbid like being turned into a sexual tool as a child to relieve stress.

Joe was bruised, he was battered, he was traumatized.

Yet he endured it all, quietly learning the trade from his master- the trade to be crooked, the trade to be shrewd and to make money by all means.

By age 10, he made his first money from a small business venture that he secretly started, selling comic books to SIN-less kids who grew up in the outer ring as a rare source of entertainment past the government propaganda.

Like expected, it blew up and by age 11, secretly, he made his first 1000 Neo Credits.

By age 12, he made his first 4000 Neo Credits and that was when his master finally caught him.

That day, Joe learned what true pain is as not only was his business venture destroyed, but he was lashed so hard that scars were left on his back, scars that lasted till today. Scars that always reminded him of his morbid past.

After that day, Joe matured.

He no longer rebelled, he no longer fought his fate, he became the perfect competent slave for his master, helping him to manage his growing business empire while his master’s children became incompetent wastrels.

3 years later, when Joe was 15, a fatal incident happened and all 13 of his master’s children died in a fatal food poisoning incident.

Officially, it was a fatal incident. Unknown to his master and the rest of the world, 15 year old Joe was the one who poisoned all 13 children. And by doing that, Joe eliminated his master’s entire lineage and potential heirs.

15 year old Joe was already planning for the future.

He did this knowing that over time, his master unique sexual tendencies already made him become a full-fledged gay, meaning it was impossible for him to get new heirs. He couldn’t get an erection around women anymore.

No one in the world knew the truth of that incident till today, except Talia and Tyla who pieced the clues from Joe’s written book- "The Art of killing your Oppressor".

To learn about him, they went as far as reading his books.

They discovered that the book actually detailed parts of his own life.

At age 18, Joe’s master died a tragic death after a rival businessman supposedly sent an assassin into his bedroom to kill him at night.

That was the official story.

The true story? Joe killed his master, having secretly spent his master’s money to purchase a tamed Neon Beast- an F Rank Python whose venom is lethal enough to kill a grown Geneform in seconds.

The Baron was an F Rank Ascended, but against the Python, he stood no chance till he died one of the most painful and tragic death imaginable.

When the police checked the mansion, they found a flash drive hidden in the Baron’s safe and inside it was his will.

And for some reason, the Baron bestowed his entire will to Joe!

That was when suspicions arose for the first time.

There was no evidence, but everyone with a brain could tell that something fishy happened somewhere but with no evidence, no one could stop it. And just like that, the world accepted it.

It was the coldest revenge arc that you can ever think of.

And that became the spring and foundation for Joe’s rise. Within a single night, the slave became a Baron.

At the age of 18, Joe became a millionaire.

And well, forced to mature through years of trauma and learning from a master of the crooked world, Joe thrived even from age 18.

Instead of regressing, his master’s empire which was now his blossomed.

As he grew in age and grew in power, stacking more money than he could ever spend in his lifetime, all the repressed feelings and emotions that he kept locked up for years finally started spilling out, turning him into one of the most racist Geneforms and also making him violent.

He was not racist against Synths or A.I Constructs though, he was extremely racist against his own race.

To him, he was only a Geneform outwardly.

Inside, he saw himself as a Synth. Synth were the true nobles.

The main reason why he hadn’t done the consciousness transfer process to become a Synth yet was because of Epsilon’s update to the World Laws that were enforced 70 years ago, forbidding ineligible Geneforms from consciousness-uploading and switching races to become Synths.

The other reason why he hadn’t done the consciousness transfer process is because of the pleasure derived from sex.

Over time, he grew obsessed with it.

In the open, Joe was a successful business man, a philanthropist but underneath it all, he grew his master’s underground empire far bigger than it was when he was alive, becoming a true trafficking Kingpin.

He became filthy rich.

As Joe grew, to fit his image and to fuel his ambition, he reluctantly decided to marry a wife to fit the image of what is right in Omnicore society.

This plus his meteoric rise in the business world from his known legal enterprises, at the age of 31, Joe became an Honorary Earl.

That was the height of his career achievements.

He became a true noble.

He was now even bigger than his master ever was, yet Joe had no intentions of stopping. Over time, his desires became insatiable.

Like his infamous favorite quote- ’A man makes his own luck’, Joe had no intention of stopping. He wanted to keep on growing, and growing, and growing till he became the richest man in the world.

Till he became a Duke, then a Vice President, a President, and eventually the new Director-Prime of the Omnicore Federation!

In the Federation, the mere thought of overthrowing Epsilon is heresy, but Joe was never one to follow rules.

Rules didn’t bring him to where he currently was, breaking rules did.

He was that ambitious and that was his ultimate ambition.

But such reckless ambition and work has its drawbacks- the stress, both physically and mentally.

This is why Joe became obsessed with unwinding through sex, and this is why he had so many mistresses in Neo Solace. This is why he raped his slaves casually, both men and women.

And this is why on the 25th, he already added it to his schedule to secretly visit his favorite mistress to have a great time to celebrate his recent success.

Why he was doing it secretly?

Well, just like him, his wife was a psycho in her own way. She feared him, but Joe knew that she wouldn’t hesitate to kill his mistress once she knew of her.

She’d done it many times before.

And since he loved this specific mistress of his, this was why Joe decided to hide her from his wife’s radar.

...She was the chief cornerstone of "Operation Killing Joe".

...

That same night, within the outer ring of Neo Solace, right after his mini operation with Daren, Brick went to pick up a smuggled package.

After, he went to deliver the package.

Standing in a dark and isolated alley with a hood covering his new face that he configured with the CH Mask, he waited and soon he heard footsteps.

Thud... thud...

A person also wearing a black hood like him walked into the alley.

Despite trying to hide her features with her big black cloak, Brick could still easily tell that it was a woman.

She looked around in a shifty manner, clearly wary and scared then she scurried over to him. "Are you the one?"

Instead of answering, Brick handed her the package wrapped in a black bag.

She took it hesitantly. She looked around again warily, then she quickly opened the black bag and found what was inside- a bottle of perfume.

She heaved a sigh of relief and looked at Brick. "The money?"

"It’s already in your account".

BEEP!

Her smartphone beeped at that exact moment, making her flinch.

Without saying another word, she turned around and dragged the hood closer to hide her face before scurrying out of the dark alley.

...

That same night, inside a luxurious hotel room, Tyla made a call to a contact that was only circulated among nobles.