Ace entered a special code using the keyboard in front of him. His fingers were moving so fast as if he was a hacker, and not a doctor like Hiro had heard from some story of others. After he finished typing the long code, Ace pressed the button that had just flashed red on his left, and the room suddenly made a loud noise.
Zing! Zing! Zing!
As if there was a fire in the room, suddenly the sound of a siren of a fire engine rang out. The gate that the five of them had passed before seemed to move closer together, as if it was confining the five of them in that place. Then, an iron board slowly appeared in the middle of the room that had caught Hiro’s attention earlier.
Zing! Bang!
The iron seemed to have a very strong magnetic force while Dimitri’s body was iron that was very easily attracted by the magnetic field. Before Hiro could blink his eyes, Dimitri’s body had already floated and hit the iron board. The man was stuck to its surface.
Dimitri couldn’t move. His feet and hands were attached to the iron surface as if they were locked tightly there. Even though Dimitri didn’t show any signs of pain, it was clear from his face that he was scared.
“Let go of me. Have you forgotten that I am also your friend? What are you doing with this thing to me, Ace?!” Dimitri shouted, still able to speak fluently. However, even though his saliva came out profusely, Ace didn’t care.
Ace walked out of his seat to approach Dimitri. He patted Hiro’s shoulder from behind and signalled for the man to follow him. Hiro didn’t know what was going to happen. However, from the obvious fear in Dimitri’s eyes, the man seemed to know what Ace was going to do to him.
“I have great faith in you, Dimitri. Niklaus and Alaric, they both told me about the betrayal you did behind my back again and again, but I never believed them one bit because I trusted you more than anyone else,” Ace mumbled as he stood before Dimitri’s body who was unable to move. The man’s chest bobbed from the sudden fear that engulfed his body tightly.
“I really hope that what I saw a few minutes ago wasn’t you,” Ace added without looking Dimitri in the eye, as if he was still trying to deny the reality that was too heavy for him to accept.
Ace suddenly spread his arms in the air, and the next second, his twin swords appeared in both hands. Seeing that Ace had taken out his weapons, Dimitri sensed that his position was increasingly in danger, and he shouted again.
“Let me go! Let me go! I am sorry, okay? I am sorry! Please let me go!” he shouted as he continued to plead. His voice turned hoarse as he kept on screaming, as if his voice for the day had run out and no longer remained in his throat. Hiro felt a little pity, but he still wanted to know what Dimitri would receive next.
“You know I can do this, don’t you, Dimitri?” Ace pressed his index finger on the metal surface where Dimitri’s body was trapped. It looked like he was tapping it three times, and then a transparent panel appeared in front of Ace. The position of the transparent panel was behind Dimitri, so Hiro could still read what was written there.
Hiro approached to peek at the panel that just appeared. And the panel turned out to display the level of the pain sensor that could be adjusted. The current pain sensor level listed was 100% or the pain was very real, like the pain experienced by humans in the real world. It was the default setting given by the system and normally it couldn’t be changed.
However, within that transparent panel that Hiro was looking at… Ace moved his index finger to increase the pain sensor level to 150%. And from the bar that was still empty, Hiro was sure that the maximum scale was 300%. That meant the pain could be increased by 3 times the normal pain that could be accepted by humans.
“No please. Don’t do this.” Dimitri was still pleading, but this time his voice seemed to be stuck in his throat.
“I am not gonna kill you. You know that I really hate player killers because I am a doctor, Dimitri. However, since this is a game, I can still accept it. I won’t kill anyone outside of the event that allowed it to happen,” Ace explained, reminding Dimitri of his likes and dislikes at the same time. Even so, as Hiro glanced at Ace’s eyes, the man’s two eyes actually looked like a bloodthirsty killer when Ace looked at Dimitri right now.
“Please.”
“I was surprised too, Dimitri. I didn’t expect to bring you into this room again for interrogation. I never thought of interrogating my own best friend. Pathetic.”
“But it’s okay. I know that you already know how my interrogation works, so I don’t need to explain the rules, right? As usual Dimitri, I hope you remember this one.”
Dimitri looked like he was gulping down his saliva with difficulty. He was really terrified. His body trembled, but the iron restrained him was too strong so that he couldn’t do anything at all. He was helpless.
“So what exactly have you done with those terrorists, Dimitri? Have you forgotten that they exist to ruin this game? To bring my father down? Do you really want that to happen?”
Dimitri bit his lip. However, when he realized that the bite was painful even if he did it himself, he immediately stopped the gesture. “I, you know I couldn’t possibly do that to Uncle Jeff.”
“Boom! Wrong answer!”
Splat! Splat!
“Arghhhhhhhh!!!”
With a very quick movement, Ace swung his two swords crosswise at Dimitri’s chest until his chest had a long slash that was bleeding in X-shaped.
However, with the pain increasing, Dimitri screamed very loudly with his eyes almost popping out of their sockets.
“Tell me… what did my father do to you that you planned to bring him down behind my back?”
“I—”
Splat! Splat!
Dimitri didn’t even give an answer yet, but Ace had slashed him again like someone who had a grudge for a long time. Right now, Hiro felt Ace’s actions would not help them get any information they needed, and he patted Ace’s shoulder to stop the man.
“Let me handle this. You know that involving emotions in an interrogation is bad and subjective, right?”
Ace looked at Hiro with his eyes that had changed like possessed by a demon. However, with all the mixed emotions right now, Ace, who was basically an adult, decided to get rid of all those feelings and leave everything to Hiro.
“You are right. But please, don’t be too kind to a traitor.”