Chapter 142: Tracing the Attack (6)

Desir’s party had gathered in a hotel room.

The windows were covered with black cloth, allowing no sunlight to enter, and soundproofing magic had been deployed to prevent the sound of the interior from leaking out. The furniture had also been pushed against the walls already.

Desir sat in a chair and watched the Fifth-Circle wizard from the lab, Totlina.

She was tied up tightly to the chair by rope and glared at Desir with a venomous look.

She had already abandoned all further attempts at resistance against them.

After coming back to her senses, she originally made a few attempts. She had even attempted to use magic, but every time she tried to, Desir just inverted her spell. A wizard unable to invoke magic was simply helpless, so she couldn’t do anything else to resist. The spells inversions also served the purpose of breaking her spirit.

“There’s a lot I’d like to ask you.”

Desir spoke softly.

“If you want to live, you’d better answer the questions without a hitch.”

Totlina still had a cynical look on her face.

“What if I don’t want to answer?”

“Then I’ll have no choice but to resort to torture.”

“Do you really think you can open my mouth using such a crude method like torture?”

“That’s something you’ll have to see for yourself.”

“Why don’t you just kill me? You won’t get any information from me, boy.”

The thought of confessing due to ordinary torture didn’t even cross her mind. She was an army figure. From the onset of their career, once they demonstrated a certain amount of ability, defense against torture had been drilled into them.

“Then, I can’t help it.”

Desir strolled around Totlina stopping behind her without any further words. He then tightly re-bound the rope that was restraining her. She would not be able to shake even the slightest in the chair now.

Totlina spoke after laughing maniacally.

“You know what? You’ve touched a force you shouldn’t have touched. You’ve made a very big mistake.”

Instead of responding to her words, Desir put his hand on her back, after putting a gag in her mouth. These actions were performed swiftly and accurately, almost professionally.

“I’ve experienced this situation hundreds of times. They were all like you at first.”

Desir had experienced this situation hundreds of times. The Shadow Labyrinth was different from the Shadow Worlds that humanity had started to get a good grip on, and the information regarding it was very scarce.

In an environment where intelligence gathering is of paramount importance, the act of interrogating prisoners soon became a routine.

To survive in the Shadow Labyrinth, to protect one’s companions, there was no room for mercy on the enemy. So the interrogation techniques developed over a decade in the hell of the Shadow Labyrinth were incomparable to those available in modern times.

Through Desir’s hand resting on her back, Totlina’s mana circle began to resonate with his mana. Totlina felt her mana move uncontrollably. Her mana circle trembled little by little.

The fine tremor began to grow little by little before eventually raging beyond containment. Her mana rotated like mad, threatening to cause her body to blow up.

“… Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

Screams came from Totlina’s mouth. She had noticed what was happening to her.

The moment she realized it, her eyes turned bloodshot.

Circle Break.

A phenomenon in which a mana circle fails to overcome the excessive use of mana and is destroyed.

Desir was controlling the mana circle of Totlina, forcing the phenomenon to be induced.

Blood flowed out of her mouth as she screamed. An unimaginable burst of rage consumed Totlina.

She cried out.

Everything she had accumulated in her lifetime was being destroyed right now. Desir spoke, as if knowing how she felt.

“Don’t worry. You won’t feel the pain properly if I destroy it right now.”

Her mana circles were resonating and causing tremors at the maximum frequency, just short of where they would explode. Desir kept her mana circle under tight control. The pain of the process was similar to one’s heart being torn apart.

“… Argh… !”

“This is probably the most pain you’ll experience in your entire life. Right now, one of your mana circles is about to blow up.”

Unable to overcome the pain, Totlina’s eyes rolled up. But Desir would just leave it at just this much.

[Awaken]

Totlina’s mind snapped back into clarity.

[Concentration]

Her sense had been reactivated and heightened. Tortlina struggled, but her body was tightly bound to the chair. In the face of such physical pain, no matter how much the mind of a wizard was trained to withstand it, this was a pain she had never experienced an equivalent to in her life.

Desir removed his hand off her back and loosened the rope a bit. He then posed a question to her.

“Who led the study on Homunculus?”

“… It… It’s… ”

Totlina hesitated.

Desir, however, did not hesitate in the slightest. He immediately gagged her again and began manipulating her mana circles again.

“No… !”

The screams resounded again. Desir looked down at her dryly. It was a very businesslike look with no emotion at all.

It seemed to show that if he put his mind to it, he could repeat this forever. He eventually stopped the torture after a little while. While the actual time he could spend bringing her mana circle to a frenzy without having them explode was not too long, it felt like an eternity to her.

“Who led the study on Homunculus?”

“I’ll tell you… I’ll tell you, so please… stop… stop.”

Desir gave her a moment to recollect herself.

Totlina was eventually able to pull herself together. When she was barely able to speak normally, she opened her mouth.

It was as if she was in a hurry to speak and not be involved anymore.

“It’s the King’s orders. The production of Homunculus is under the order of the King. The army just carries out the King’s orders.”

“There’s no way he suddenly ordered the production of Homunculus without being given motivation to do so.”

“The beginning of the plan came from a man that arrived from abroad.”

Totlina began recollecting the series of events. A man from a foreign country arrived carrying a large fortune. He offered the King of the Magic Kingdom a promise at eternal life and asked for a private audience to discuss the finer details of the plan.

In the private meeting, the man became a faithful vassal of the King and proposed a plan to manufacture Homunculus.

“The creation of complete life. At first, no one believed the crazy story, but he showed us all the research he’d done so far. This proved the possibility of his work succeeding as well as its potential. The problem was that it was damn difficult to get the materials.”

“That’s how the Homunculus manufacturing plan was implemented. Of course, experimenting with human life isn’t exactly ethical, so we carried out our research in secret… ”

“As a result, only a small number of people in the military know of the exact information.”

[You have significant information behind the homunculus manufacturing plan.]

Hearing the quest alarm sound served as confirmation that what he heard was true. The truth of the information had been understood to some extent. The mysterious man had already reached the very core of power in this kingdom.

Unfortunately, it seemed that he already had full control over the Magic Kingdom, ruling it from the shadows.

Knowing this much, Desir had one question remaining that had been bothering him for so long now.

‘How is such an important figure not known to the world?’

He has never heard of such a person in his previous life. It was hard to know exactly what happened when the leadership of a country was seized within a short period of time, and the existence of such a huge leader in the plan had not been publicly revealed at all.

“Tell me everything you know about that person.”

“The prophet. He made others refer to him as that. And he is excessively rich. He’s also very unpleasant to look at, at a glance. I don’t know any other information besides that.”

He asked for various other things, but she didn’t know anything else important about the Homunculus. The only things she learned while running a research institute were related to the daily operation of the lab and things she had learnt through her own research while reaching the Fifth-Circle.

“How did the Homunculus gain the power to ignore causality?”

Totlina opened her eyes wide.

“… You already know that much?”

“Answer my questions.”

“I don’t know the exact reason. It requires cooperation between an alchemist and wizard to make a Homunculus. The power to ignore causality stems from the alchemy side.”

Ruling out possibilities one by one, a sudden thought cropped up in Desir’s head.

“What does Kei Hazmaryun have to do with the manufacturing of Homunculus?”

“Kei Hazmaryun? Do you mean that sword-wielding jerk? Why are you curious about him?”

“… ”

“No, wait a minute! Don’t put your hands on my back! I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you!”

She shouted, her body shaking as if she were having a fit, as Desir removed his hand. After a moment she gulped before answering.

“Kei Hazmaryun is a courier that delivers us material. They leave on expeditions to find rare material under the King’s command. He doesn’t even know what he’s looking for.”

“He’s looking for materials without knowing what to look for… ”

“By the King’s order.”

Desir recalled the conversation he heard upon landing in Altea…

* * *

“Commander Darren Aleph, we successfully obtained ingredients, so you don’t have to visit us like this.”

“Well done for completing this mission with such a body that is utterly devoid of magic.”

* * *

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Only then did Desir understand what the conversation between Kei and Colonel Darren signified.

He was relieved. If he were the enemy, he would certainly have been the worst and the strongest foe they could likely encounter.

“Was the original main quest to carry the research materials of Homunculus? I guess this means both main quests revolved around the same issue after all.”

While Desir was organizing his thoughts for a moment, Totlina spoke again.

“I told you everything I could. Stop asking me questions now.”

“No, I still have one more thing to ask.”

Desir, who had organized all of the information he had heard, spoke to Tortlina one again.

“The information you’ve been sharing so far, let’s go through it again from the beginning.”

Desir asked Totlina again to confirm everything he had heard so far. Asking his questions again to determine the truth of the information, by ensuring that it was consistent with the previous answers.

As a result, slight differences emerged in parts of Totlina’s previous answers.

“I knew it.”

“No, wait! It’s… It’s a… !”

Des1r tortured her again whenever such a discrepancy appeared between her current answer and the first one.

—-

Chapter brought to you by CP.

???: …

ED2: Purplemen101

TLC: N/A (this could be you!)

QC: Dr Lock