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Coming for Torture
Like Luca had reported, it wasn’t long before a tiny, old man wearing a black robes that covered his entire body appeared and guided me to a certain room.
The underground room was about the size of a closet with a lone chair sitting in the center. On the wall hung various weapons intended to hurt people, including pliers, swords, axes, and branding irons.
“How about it, kid. Whaddya say we rip the nails out of your hands and feet? Oopsie, don’t start begging and screaming halfway. Don’t you know the sounds of your screams of pain and terror will echo in my heart—”
“Enough with the formalities. Hurry up and start,” I said, interrupting the torturer who was rambling in ecstasy after tying my arms and legs to the chair.
“What an impertinent child. But that courage will soon morph into despair.”
An eerie smile crept onto his face as he neared me with something that looked like cutting pliers.
“Gunununuu!” he groaned and tried so hard to rip my nails off that he turned red in the face. He tried changing the angle and a different set of pliers, but he couldn’t even inflict a single wound. On the other hand, one of the pliers had bent, and the other one was now useless.
I yawned. “I’ve gotten a bit tired. Well, let me know once you get them off.”
I don’t think my curiosity will be satisfied any further by watching this. I yawned again and closed my eyes.
The next thing I knew, the torturer let out a thunderous roar as his head was slammed into the wall, now just twitching like a squashed frog.
“Ah, my bad,” I said.
I probably sent him flying when I lifted a finger while half-awake. It’s been a while since I accidentally destroyed something while half-awake. I should be more careful.
I silently casted 【High Heal】and healed his wounds in an instant.
“I-I……”
Having regained consciousness, the torturer looked back and forth at his surroundings before locking eyes with me.
“Good morning.”
The torturer might have finally understood the situation, because blood began draining from his face until he was deathly pale.
“Come on, what’s next,” I said.
He then tried to cut off all of my fingers, but in the end couldn’t even make a scratch.
But there was a problem here. It felt like a furry animal was brushing its fur against my fingers, so naturally I got ticklish.
I let out a strange laughter and subconsciously put force into my finger which forced the knife out of his hand. The knife shot past his face and stuck itself in the wall, gouging out part of his ear in the process.
He let out a shriek and began writhing on the floor in pain.
“Sorry, sorry. It’s just that it was so ticklish.”
I once again casted 【High Heal】onto his wounds.
“W-who……” he stuttered.
“You’re the torturer. I’m the torture victim. Nothing more, and nothing less. Now, let’s begin.”
“I-I just remembered something I had to do—”
I began casting the high rank wind magic, 【Whirlwind】, to stop him from changing his mind, and deep scratches left their mark on the stone wall in an instant.
“I don’t permit you to end the experiment prematurely. Are we clear?”
“Ua……” he cried as tears began forming in the corner of his eyes.
“Now, let’s go on to the next one!”
……
…………
………………
“Wow, so the next one is severing my limbs with an axe. That sounds like it would be pretty effective.”
The torturer shakily held his axe over his head, tears and snot streaming down his face.
He lowered the axe, but it simply bounced off my shoulder and spun in the air, lopping off the torturer’s right arm before lodging itself into the stone floor. Blood sprayed everywhere, and the torturer shrieked and began writhing on the floor.
I casted 【High Heal】and healed his wounds.
“Come on. Next one,” I excitedly urged him.
“Hiii!” he shrieked.
The torturer finally cowered and began trembling all over white pleading for me to stop.
I’ve gotten a bit tired of looking at this torturer. Maybe it’s a good time now.
“Okay. I permit you to switch.
And with a queer voice, the torturer fled the room.
“Hey, don’t just leave me tied up here……” I mumbled.
“So, how’d it feel? Let me know, would you?”
“D-d-demon! Demonnn!!” screamed the seventh torturer as he sprinted out of the room.
What the heck. I was just asking questions like ‘how does it feel to torture someone’, ‘doesn’t it weigh on your mind’, and ‘do you tell your family.’ Seriously, youngsters these days are so sensitive.
Fifteen minutes after the final torturer fled the room, I sensed several presences nearing me through Analyze Environment.
Woah, they sent the next one in pretty quickly. How thoughtful.
After a moment, they slammed the door open and flooded into the room.
“Thanks for coming, torturer-dono. Now, let’s hurry up and start. Hm?”
I realized the person in front was a girl with red hair done into a ponytail.
“What the heck, it’s just Luca-kun……” I said dejectedly.
So it’s over now. That wasn’t very interesting.
“Grey Millard. You……” she trailed off in shock. She shook her head back and forth, sheathed her sword, and turned to look at me with a grave face. “Please follow me.”
She set off.
We exited the grounds of the Department of Justice and entered a luxurious, 5-story building.
Inside were familiar faces, although one was quite unexpected.
“Your Excellency, the prime minister? Why are you here?” I asked.
“Margrave McBurn managed to calm down all the Commerce Guild members and we earned their full cooperation you see. In the end, they, as well as the expeditionary force and various nobles, all pooled together their information and found a crack in the witnesses’ testimonies.”
“What did Duke Cyrus say about this?”
“That this was all nonsense, so his Majesty ordered for you to return to Sutherland as soon as possible.”
“I see. That was fast.”
I expect the undead to arrive at Sutherland’s northern gates tomorrow morning. Although, the mastermind might be thinking that everything’s going along smoothly, as they don’t know I have a teleportation ability.
“Grey, I’m sorry. I apologize as a representative for the nobles,” the prime minster said, bowing.
The number 2 in the empire was apologizing a kid who wasn’t even a noble. Everyone just stared in confusion at this strange scene.
“No, don’t worry about it. The time was quite worthwhile.”
“Worthwhile? I really want to know what gets you going.”
I guess I shouldn’t say that I even used myself as a subject for torture experiments now.
“Yes, well, let’s just say it’s the history that humanity has built up,” I said.
Luca just shook her head.
“Grey Millard-dono, I’ve heard about the circumstances from his Excellency, prime minister Elle. Please forgive our lord,” said a giant man with a mohawk who looked like he came out of a 1990’s manga as he bowed towards me.
“Don’t worry about it. And you are?”
“I am the deputy mayor of Thermax, Zirken Midrun. Nice to meet you.”
“I’m Grey Millard. Nice to meet you too.”
I extended my hand out and shook hands with him before looking back at Luca—I had asked her to investigate something. Depending on her results, I might have Duke Cyrus exit the stage that is this world.
“It was as you expected,” Luca began. “The current mayor of Thermax and the attorney general have just departed for the capital for a business trip. They’re both relatives of Duke Cyrus. Same with the carriage in front of the Cyrus estate. From grilling the driver, I found out that several torturers were on board, leaving tonight.”
I see. That means—.
“A ton of undead are drawing near?” I confirmed.
“Yes.”
Luca lightly nodded. I quickly noticed an intense wave of unease wash over everyone in the room. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked.
In any case, as I expected, Duke Cyrus has committed the greatest taboo a ruler could possibly commit. His exit is all but confirmed now.
“How many undead are there?” I asked.
“The scouts have counted about 30,000. They’ll probably arrive here by tomorrow morning,” the prime minster quickly answered.
“There’s merely 3000 soldiers in Thermax; there’s no way we can win against an enemy ten times our size,” one said.
“It’s over for this town. We need to start evacuating the citizens,” another added.
“But where? We might just be playing into Duke Cyrus’s hands, and he’ll pull the rug from under us later on. And where would we find a town that’ll accept all our citizens?”
“Then what should we do!? Just let our citizens become undead fodder!?”
“Nobody said that. Just that we need to be more realistic!”
Amongst the heated argument, his Excellency, the prime minister, just fixated on me.
“Would you be able to get out of this predicament?” he asked.
“Regardless of whether I could or couldn’t, there’s no other choice.”
There’s just ten hours left until tomorrow morning. There’s just not enough time to set up pitfalls. I guess I have to deal with all the undead on my own.
However, for insurance’s sake, I’ll leave the minimum number of people here and have everyone else evacuate. Most importantly, I want as few people as possible to witness my magic.
“The problem is where to evacuate the citizens though……”
It’s only here that my homeland’s insignificance really nags at me.
“No need to worry. I received a secret letter from his Majesty for this very moment. In the worst case, I’ll be there too, so the lords can’t complain about a temporary evacuation. Where’s the closest place we can evacuate to?” asked the prime minister.
“Amgazem,” someone answered.
As expected of his Excellency, prime minister Elle. Once the potentiality of an evacuation became a reality, he immediately launched into a plan.
Still, I said I would exterminate all 30,000 undead by myself, by why didn’t anyone raise any objections? That’s a bit strange.
—And so, a 12-year-old boy named Grey Millard and 30,000 undead faced off against each other.