novelraw Chapter 1029: Interrogation
Chapter 1029: Interrogation
The underground dwellers had generously provided a place for the interrogation. Clearly, their neutrality wasn't absolute.
Scattered shackles, the stench of the dungeon. Derek MacAllister, stuck to a sticky web, was bound to a stone pillar.
Nunes fastened the leg shackles and stepped back toward Lu Li.
“Your name.”
Derek MacAllister refused to answer, believing that giving his name under interrogation would bring shame to his family.
“Where is the exit for the first stage?”
Derek MacAllister remained silent.
“Let me.”
Ida took over for Lu Li, her segmented limbs rustling as she approached Derek MacAllister.
“Monster—”Scythe-sharp, curved limbs sliced through the air, piercing Derek MacAllister’s cloak and sinking into his flesh.
“Go ahead, try saying that word again...”
Ida drew close to Derek MacAllister’s face, whispering maliciously. It was as if her personality had shifted—or rather, this was her true nature: arrogant and cruel.
“Monster... Aaargh!!!”
The limb embedded in his shoulder twisted, bunching the cloak into folds as Derek MacAllister’s screams echoed through the dungeon.
“Tsk... I thought the scions of the Bloodline Families were all so clever. Or is it that... you aren't afraid of pain?”
Her serrated forelimb pushed agonizingly slow into Derek MacAllister’s flesh. Ida was savoring his pain, his screams.
Heinz Ellis watched with a complicated expression. He understood Derek MacAllister’s pride. In the public eye, the Bloodline Families had always been superior beings among the nobility of Midnicht, both in status and in mystery.
It was a pity they were natural adversaries, both in the tournament and in reality.
Six centimeters of the forelimb sank completely into Derek MacAllister's shoulder. Blood ran down the appendage, dripped from its tip, and pooled in the dirt below.
“I didn't realize exorcists were such vile torturers,” Derek MacAllister gasped, ignoring the actual torturer, Ida, and staring defiantly at Lu Li.
“Seizing the mining district and murdering contestants, and you have the right to say that?”
Ida, feeling provoked at being ignored, slowly withdrew her limb, inflicting maximum torment and pain.
The serrations tore at his flesh. Derek MacAllister convulsed, his pain turning to rage as he hissed:
“Betrayal shames the family! Death would be an honor!”
His loyalty to his family was fanatical.
“You only think that because... we've just begun.”
The faceted eyes hidden beneath the hair on her forehead glinted with arachnid malice. Ida shifted her body, revealing the ugly, vicious pattern on her spider abdomen as her spinneret moved toward the bloody wound.
“For example... when thousands of my children hatch inside your body, releasing a venom that dissolves your flesh while you're still conscious. Your flesh and bones will melt into liquid, you'll feel yourself turning into a sleeping bag, and you'll hear the sound of your very soul being sucked out...”
Derek MacAllister’s pale cheeks twitched, but he kept his lips pressed tightly together and remained silent.
“Stop.”
Just as Ida's spinneret was about to touch Derek MacAllister, Lu Li stopped her.
Torture wouldn't make him talk, and they shouldn't become enemies.
But they were running out of time.
Derek MacAllister’s comrades above could grow suspicious at any moment if the wait became too long. However, they could also be setting traps.
Ida retracted her abdomen and retreated to Lu Li's side, once again becoming obedient and loyal:
“I was deceiving him. I am still alone.”
“Pasha Rivas and Tot aren't here yet,” Lu Li said, turning his head to look at Nunes.
“...I’ll go look for them.”
As the frowning Nunes was about to leave, Lu Li stopped him and handed him two of the Merchant's eyeballs.
Once Nunes had left the dungeon, Lu Li looked at Derek MacAllister, who was enjoying a rare moment of peace.
“Tell us about the exit for the first stage, and I will let you go.”
“An exorcist’s word... you dare to trust it?” Derek MacAllister said mockingly, but a hint of relief after his ordeal lay hidden beneath his tone.
Perhaps even a tiny bit of gratitude.
“That’s for me to worry about.”
Just then, a tremor began, interrupting Lu Li's interrogation.
The tremor continued, seeming to make one's heart and soul beat in time with it. In the brief silence after it faded, Derek MacAllister uttered a long, proverb-like phrase:
“‘It is as if it has always been beside us, like a misplaced object, like something omnipresent’... That is the clue I know. Whether you believe it is up to you.”
Derek MacAllister fell silent, saying nothing more.
“You'll stay here for now, until your comrades come to rescue you.”
Lu Li took out a hemostatic potion with a carefully affixed label that read, “Do not drink!” He approached Derek MacAllister and sprinkled it on the bloody wound.
“My name is Derek MacAllister...”
It was a whisper only Lu Li could hear.
Lu Li remained composed and left the dungeon with his allies.
“Can we trust what that guy said?”
Ida began picking off the ripe growths hanging from her body.
“At best, it’s a Saying, similar to the ones the underground dwellers use. At worst, it’s half-truth, half-lie,” Lu Li replied.
“And what if it’s false information?”
“No one would lie to an exorcist,” Kate, who was holding the musket, interjected with inexplicable confidence.
“But how do we tell which part is true and which is false?”
“We’ll catch another one.”
To the underground dwellers, Lu Li’s ‘client level’ was high, and combined with a generous reward, they unhesitatingly accepted the commission to ‘go to the surface and lure members of the Alliance of Bloodline Families into a mine shaft.’
But at that moment, Lu Li looked toward the abandoned mine shaft that led outside.
Nunes, who had gone to find Pasha Rivas and Tot, hadn't returned either.
He summoned a Merchant to appear, but the Merchant quickly returned from the In-Between, bearing bad news.
His contact had also lost connection.
“Do you know that mine shaft?”
Lu Li asked the underground dwellers walking beside him.
“It’s useless. There’s nothing but rocks in there!”
The underground dwellers clearly didn't know that the abandoned mine shaft had been eroded by flowing mud, creating an exit to the surface.
With three of his comrades missing, Lu Li temporarily halted his plan and entered the abandoned mine shaft with the others, backtracking the way they came.
After passing the fork in the tunnel, Lu Li turned his head and looked at Heinz Ellis.
“They didn't come this way,” Heinz Ellis replied.
They continued forward, and just as they felt they were nearing the end of the path, the curtain of flowing mud appeared.
But they didn't see Nunes, Pasha Rivas, or Tot.
Almost-dry splatters of mud were scattered underfoot, but the miner’s lamp and fluorite lamp were nowhere to be found.
“Did they go back to the surface?”
As Ida muttered to herself, another tremor rose from the depths of the earth.
As crumbling rock and dust rained down, a strange phenomenon suddenly enveloped the area.
The flowing mud blocking the mine shaft rippled like a hidden curtain of water, slowly parting to the sides. It revealed a gloomy passage hidden behind it, one that led deeper into the abandoned mine.
A distant tremor echoed from within, forming an indescribable summons.
“Something inside is calling to us...”