Chapter 163 - Blood concoction(1): Into the swamps arc (18)

There was a hint of the victor in the smile surrounded by stiff cheeks on Amanda's, not the supple grin of a friend, but the joy of the enemy after the battle is won, but just as she did, another voice echoed through her mind.

"Alright, next question."

It was Arnold's voice.

Everything in front of her eyes returned to how it was when Arnold had entered her chamber. Amanda was once again slumped at her desk and Arnold entered into her room wearing wet boots.

The same conversation followed but Amanda's replies changed, she once again captured Arnold and killed him, but then everything started all over again and again... she was hallucinating, or to be precise, she was under Natasha's illusion.

In reality, Instead of sitting in the chair, Amanda was slumped on the floor, with Natasha's hands-on each the side of her head and her legs around her neck while Arnold stood in front of them questioning Amanda, and she truthfully replied to him regardless of what he asked. Amanda's eyes were glowing blue, while Natasha's eyes had turned black... when darker than darkness itself.

Arnold recalled how everything went down once he entered her chamber. Everything happened the same way as the scene that was continuously repeating inside Amanda's mind. Arnold walked up to the table and sat down across her, they talked, Amanda used her abilities and gave Arnold the fear and confusion status effects. She then flipped the table and knocked him down. He shot bullets at her, she stopped them and fired them back at Arnold and Arnold hid behind a pillar to save himself. But the reality was different from that point onwards.

Unlike Amanda's illusion where Arnold called upon all of his summons and she destroyed them one after the other, actually, Arnold didn't summon anyone in front of her but instead, he converted the entire room into his domain just like he did while fighting against Jake. But unlike Jake who had a system to help him and not allowing Arnold couldn't take control over his body, Amanda wasn't immune to it and thus Arnold used his authority over his newly formed donation to temporarily subdue her and called Natasha who took hold over the situation.

But controlling over someone who wasn't his summon, completely drained Arnold of his strength, which wasn't all that unexpected.

Out of all of his summons, Natasha was the only one who had the affinity and was the perfect monster to counter Amanda's affinity, which she did by putting Amanda under her illusion. In her illusion, she had defeated Arnold countless times, but in reality, she was at his mercy.

Arnold squatted down on her level and asked her the next question, "What is your actual rank?"

Arnold needed to know this because she had already fooled his [Probe] ability once, and because of the power she had displayed today Arnold was sure she was either S rank or above, it would be wastage to kill someone like her... or maybe not.

"I'm an S ranked warrior, you puny bitch!" Amanda smiled like she had been possessed by a ghost or something.

She just confirmed what Arnold was thinking, she had used her abilities to mask her true rank... at this moment Arnold wasn't even sure that her actual name was Amanda but it didn't matter to him either way. Amanda or not, she was the one who had been leading the White Family to experiment with their kin, hell she even sacrificed her brother for her 'noble' deeds.

She had already spilt the beans that she was only conducting the experiments to gain enough humanoid soldiers to overthrow the current regime and rule over America for her own selfish desires, and the first step towards that goal was destroying the Black Family along with anyone and everyone who stood against her.

"How long can you hold her like this?" Arnold asked Natasha.

"About... twenty... minutes... more..." Natasha mumbled.

"I need to think about what to do with her in the meantime, but first... Amanda, were you involved with the affairs of the church in any way?" Arnold asked her once again.

The moment she was put under Natasha's illusion, Arnold demanded Amanda tell him about each of her abilities, and one of them was mind control... at this point, Arnold had a hunch that Allen might not have been the only one who was involved with the affairs of the church and what she told him next made him almost kill her.

"Involved? You piece of crap, I was their true priestess! I had placed everyone in there under my mind-controlling ability," She laughed once again, "and you know what's the best part about it? All of these people who were under my control thought whatever they were doing, they were doing because of their own free will! But in truth, I was the one forcing them to do so. Like you beloved Alice and Allen, they still think they were the ones responsible for doing what they did, but instead, all of their memories are flawed. A pretty strong effect, don't you agree?"

She continued, "It's true Alice was working with Devon, way before I put her under my control but when she got to knew about his plans about killing off hundreds of thousands of innocent people and ruling over America, she got cold feet and tried to run away to inform the others about Devon's ruthless plans, but before she could do it, I placed her under my control and made her the dummy Priestess!"

Arnold's body went cold, but then all of a sudden the whites in his eyes turned a pure black, and as his iris glowered teal. Symbols, lines and dots formed in the iris, placed in a sort of manner. His nails dug deep into the palm of his hands, blood coming out of them. The [Devil's Rage] almost got activated by itself but Arnold managed to control his emotions in the last minute. Only the devil himself knew what Arnold would've done if somehow his most deadly ability had activated by itself. Arnold closed his eyes and slowly calmed himself down, but Amanda wasn't done yet.

"And what do I tell about Allen... his mind was already poisoned against his family, I thought it would've been sufficient to make him work for me but when I explained my plans to him and tried to get him to my side, he flipped out and tried to kill me, so I had to take him under my control as well, then I falsified the memories of Alice and Allen such that they believed that they had been working together for a long time and that they had been trained by Devon to destroy everything the syndicate has built over the years." Her face turned expressionless. She wasn't laughing anymore but Arnold could feel her smiling on the inside, "Having Allen work with a terrorist organisation was beneficial to me in more ways than one. He was like a well-placed pawn, whom I intended to make use of to defame the Black Family and cause them to lose their face in front of the world, but then you appeared and I was forced to move forward with the next part of the plan which was still in its premature state... it was time to get rid of your pretty little family."

Arnold was fuming... he was barely able to calm himself down. His stare was sharp as a knife, he didn't blink but kept staring at Amanda's face, thinking about even littlest of reasons to not kill her... not yet or maybe he should, he didn't care about it anymore. His eyes were filled with rage, anger boiling out his blood. Uncomfortable with the void in his eyes, he had filled it with an emotion he was more at ease with - raw anger. The unmoving gaze was accompanied by deliberate slow breathing like he was fighting something back and loosing. He was trying to fight back the urge of killing her.

He could've killed her with ease if he wanted to, but it would give rise to who another set of issues. Once he killed her, he could resurrect her back, but then he would have to do the same thing that he did with Natasha before giving her the collar. He would have to force Amanda to live inside his domain because there her abilities won't work on him or his summons, but he wanted her to atone for her crimes and get rid of her family and for that, he would have to make her confess in front of everyone else, which meant he would have to take her out of the void to do so as he didn't want the entire country to know about his ability.

However, he knew that the moment he did so all hell would break loose. She was stronger than all of his summons, the syndicate might be able to find a way to control her but at that moment Arnold didn't give a flying fck about it. He wanted to deal with her himself.

He thought about using [Blood Bond] that way she wouldn't be able to do anything that Arnold forbid her from doing, but the problem was... the ability was still in cooldown. It hadn't even been a week since Arnold last used it on Allen. But... he had something to take care of the situation right now.