Chương 210: The Time For Fun

"Ah, fina–lly–ly awake, are w–we? You made–made us wait""Huh…?" Mister Intruder seemed wholly confused for a few moments, but his eyes quickly shot wide open as he instinctively tried to struggle against the restraints, that was until he was seemingly struck by a sharp pain so sudden and intense that he stiffened up before all of his muscles grew limp, his chest heaving up and down in shock. That was the sign that he had tried to circulate his mana.

Unfortunately for him, Leou didn't want any incident to happen, so she had rolled out the whole nine yards of equipment to restrain a victim. This poor guy couldn't do a single thing that could be to his benefit, or to the benefit of the one he was working for. This was evidenced by what he tried next… Since he couldn't break free, the best following option for an agent like him was to take himself out, but he couldn't do it.

I guess he attempted to suffocate himself, but did not realise that there was something on his face whose entire purpose was to stop him from doing exactly that.

"Y–You are just embarras—ssing yourself" These little gadgets were quite handy. This fool couldn't circulate mana. He couldn't pull one over me by taking out the trash that he was, and he couldn't move. All he could do was listen, speak, see, and entertain. I tapped my hands together, the sound of clinking steel filling the room as I pulled my hood off my head.

"Wait… You're that bitch's bodyguard!"

"First of all–all…" I 'lightly' punched him in the guts. It wasn't light in the sense that it didn't hurt. It was light in the sense that I didn't propel his intestines against the wall–I needed him to stay alive after all, but it definitely hurt quite badly. Heheheh… Must feel weird for a mana addict to not have a layer of magical enhancement to prevent himself from getting hurt by slightly bumping into something… Well, perhaps this didn't apply much to him.

As a low-life agent of a noble, he had clearly been forced through intense training to be worth being used as a tool. Nonetheless, his training definitely didn't involve getting punched by the greatest machine in existence without the assistance of mana. It almost looked like he was about to eject whatever he had last eaten because of the punch, but he was able to hold back.

Lucky him, puking inside the mask, preventing him from ending his pathetic life would be quite the problem, considering that I wasn't going to remove it under any circumstances. I mimicked the sound of clearing my throat to get his attention and picked up a 'Voice Box Recorder' I had removed from my body in advance.

He didn't seem to have noticed just yet, but this room–Which was just an empty space within an area of the sewers where workers could walk around to fix problems–Had been furnished with tables, and many wonderful tools. Since I had been trying to use my upgrades more recently, I had decided that it would be a good idea to record a whole lot of words to be able to throw out more comprehensible sentences at people.

My regular voice was pretty good, but the glitching it could sometimes go through could be pretty ridiculous. I still didn't really know why I sounded like that. In my 'Molten Steel Form', I could get it that I sounded like a freaking devil who had crawled out of hell, I was just a mass of super-heated liquid steel with arms, a maw, and eyes. In this state, I could get that my voice would come through as distorted… But in my 'Base Form'? I didn't quite understand what was so wrong.

If I really focused and prepared my sentences well in advance, I could speak with what was basically my human voice with only a moderate amount of clanging, and the glitches also stopped when I was singing for some reason. Nonetheless, this was meant as a test. I could control any 'Voice Box Recorder' with precision, so if I shoved enough words into its… Database … Database, then I should be able to speak more clearly. I held the small voice box up to the man's face.

"What. Is. Your. Name""Oh… I–I didn't th–think to make the tone–one questioning""Fuck off! I won't tell you anything!"

"Even. If. I. Dismantle. You. Question. Mark""I. Have. All. The. Equipment. Needed. To. Make. You. Hurt. Hurt. Hurt""Do your worst! You won't get anything out of me, you damned monster!"

"Rich. Coming. From. You" This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. It had to be said, this guy wasn't just ugly. He was repulsive to an abnormal level. I don't think it would be possible to make something uglier than him. Such atrocities had to be made by nature's randomness. A sapient mind couldn't possibly fathom such awfulness…

As far as I was aware, there wasn't any at the moment, but if there were a Monster Monarch with a land of their own, this guy would be able to walk in unopposed with a face like that. Somehow, he had both a beak and a human-like mouth, both overlapping one another as though they had tried to fight for the spot when he was still being built inside his mother's abdomen, and in general, he was bloated and misshapen all over the place.

There wasn't one kind of defect that I couldn't spot somewhere by looking hard enough–And this guy had the gall to call me a monster? I fit better into sapient society than you do, fucker!

"C–Come in" Xlown didn't even open the door. She just melted through the keyhole, waving her arm at the captive while it was still partly liquid-like. Her little stunt was just for fun since the door opened anyway, as I had also brought Mari down here. The idea was simple: If she really wanted to stay with me despite only being a human who didn't have any combat capabilities, then she needed to prove her allegiance.

She had already shown some good progress in the area of mechanistry and was actually progressing faster and faster the more she learned, but if she really wanted to be a part of the group despite not being a part of the family, then she needed to do more than be a mechanist.

"Keep. Your. Hands. Steady""I. Want. Him. To. Squeal. Like. A. Pig" Mari was visibly nervous and hesitant, definitely not the kind to ever do anything even remotely violent. Which was odd, considering that she was obsessed with me… But Xlown had travelled a while with her, and seemed to know how to properly motivate the caretaker.

"No need to be so twitchy about it, Mari-Mari! Torturing this guy is just a step closer to getting into my mother's good graces… And look at him! Look him in the eyes! He tried to harm Miss Leou's interests, and when we all tried to stop him, can you guess what he did?"

"Huh…"

"He fought back! Can you imagine that? Fighting back against us? When we are the luminaries? The bringer of lights? The true heroes of the story? This man is true evil personified. He dared to go against us and even tried to fight my mommy!" Mari was understandably a bit confused, since fighting back was obviously the logical thing for anyone to do when attacked, regardless of the reason why they were being targeted, or if they deserved it or not. It was perfectly normal to fight danger.

However, Xlown's argument did tug on Mari's heartstrings. It was a bit hard for me to read negative emotions when they weren't directed at me, but it seemed like the mere mention of the fact that he tried to fight me, and thus harm me, was enough to make Mari's hesitation begin to fade away. Yep, she's a real psycho. The actual kind. Mari walked up to a table covered in shiny and reflective tools that Leou had brought down here for us.

She had gotten them from Sahhi, and apparently, they were all carefully enchanted to be effective tools of torture. They inflicted maximum suffering, prevented bleeding, and applied healing to close wounds, on top of having the rather insidious effect of preventing the victim from adapting to the pain. Apparently, Sahhi was the sort to greatly enjoy this kind of torture that could stretch on for months. Which was why she was the nominated 'Truth Extractor' of the organisation.

I myself, as much as I enjoyed causing misery and agony, much preferred it when things didn't last too long. I get bored easily with such things. So I had a more brutish approach to the concept, but I also wasn't often looking for answers. I was just snapping bones and beating flesh for the fun of it. I didn't really believe that this bastard could be made to talk.

He had probably been drilled with the concept of never revealing anything to the point that it was second nature to him, but you never knew, and it was a good occasion to test Mari's obsessive love… Mmh… Hearing this sound from Nara, I felt like asking what she was thinking about, but the scalpel was driven into flesh as Mari showed a level of dexterity that was nothing short of completely unexpected. The captured agent screamed and struggled against the restraints, but he wasn't begging for it to stop or pleading.

He was just taking it all and letting it all out. … Besides, I think I also noticed what Nara was focusing on. Mari was producing a bit of negative energy. It was only a small amount, but I was rather sensitive to it… What was weird, though, was that the negative energy produced wasn't her own. It was very much akin to ambient negative energy that could sometimes be found in places like cemeteries or the like. Welp, I guess you were completely right, she wasn't sent my way for no reason…

But is it a coincidence that she survived the final trial and is somehow like this, or did surviving the final trial change her in some way? Was there a secret to being the first to live and tell the tale of my nightmares? Any clues on that, Nara? I am wondering the same thing, to be honest. Way too big a coincidence for the first to ever survive to not only fall madly in love with you, but to somehow turn out to have something to do with negative energy, and seemingly be a good mechanist…

One in isolation would have been fine, but all of them together? At least two of those have to do with her surviving the nightmare trial On record, I think those two are the negative energy and mechanistry. It would just be weird for it to involve uncontrollable affection Well, of course, you believe this. You wouldn't want the love story you made up in your head to have been fabricated, right?... Perhaps… Anyway, she's really doing some work on this poor bastard, huh?

But he isn't asking for any pause or offering any information. I think physical suffering won't make him break, but I have other ways to hurt him. I called out my ghostly little sisters, the six of them looking up at me with their adorable, smudgable little faces. Ever since I last made a proper check, they don't appear to have grown much. Except for Poppy, she didn't physically change, but she seems a bit more mature than before.

I don't even know how I am noticing this, since she's always been very mature, but I can just tell. She's probably in the midst of developing her spectral powers again. Out of the six of them, two in particular could–I believe–Deal significant mental damage to our dear little captive… But I am sure the captured intruder won't mind if they all practise their abilities on him. A living punching bag is always preferable to an inanimate one, right?

"Girlies, it's time to–to have–ve some f–f–fun!"