"Moron..? Wait, is this the guy that attacked the Lady?" Jess asked with a deep frown, glancing over toward the three corpses laying on the tables in front of the cell, and Eiro immediately nodded his head, "Yes, that's him. He's part of the same organization as Evelyn. He seemed pretty strong, but he was apparently quite an idiot and wasn't aware of what I could do, so I was able to beat him relatively easily. I think stat-wise he's strong, but he's not particularly skilled, if that makes sense."
"I... I guess it does? But what about these guys? Why are they here?" James asked with a concerned expression, "They're not just random people, are they..?"
With a slight sigh, Eiro shook his head immediately, "I'd have thought you would notice. But no, they're not just normal people. I was the one that killed them, but that's because they're part of the same organization as this guy. Albeit, on a far lower level. They're small-fries, really. Any of you could take on ten of these at once."
"I see... But why did you think I would have noticed?" The Light Elf asked confusedly, looking at them, "Am I supposed to know them or somethin'?"
Eiro stepped over toward one of the bodies and lifted the arm of one of them up, before spreading mana around this man's skin. A few moments later, a white, glowing pattern with a slight blue tint appeared on the man's wrist, "This is a special spell meant for identification purposes. It's technically similar to the system that's been imbued into our Guild Cards, just a bit of a variation." Eiro explained, "This stuff can't be faked, sadly. And this one won't last too long anymore either, so I can't just cut off a strip of skin and pretend I'm this guy."
"Right, sorry that I didn't pay attention to the subtle spells placed onto their wrists instead of the fact that there are random dead bodies in front of me." James replied as he clicked his tongue with his arms crossed, and Eiro just shrugged a bit in response, "Fair enough. Well, either way, we just have to wait a bit until-"
And just as Eiro was speaking, the thing that he had been waiting for happened just at the right time. The man in the cell woke up.
"Eh...?" He groaned loudly, immediately trying to grasp his arm and neck in pain, but Eiro just smiled broadly as he squatted down in front of the cell, "Ah, don't worry, I made sure to heal you right up! Just that I'm not particularly amazing at emergency-treatment, so it might still sting a bit." The demon pointed out, and the young man slowly turned his eyes toward Eiro in confusion.
"Wh-What did you do to me, you lowly-" He exclaimed with a deep, hateful glare and a raspy, broken voice that came from his half ripped-apart throat, but Eiro quickly interripted him by slightly manipulating the rock ceiling and floor above and below the solid steel bars in front of the cell to make the bars creak loudly to interrupt him.
"Hah, you really are an idiot. How did you even get to a stage where you were given two of those special items? Gloves that let you shrink down anything you touch as well as a ring that lets you slow down time, as well as a special implant that slows down time for you in case you die, so that people can come to help you out. That's about it, right?" Eiro asked with a slight grin on his face, and the eyes of the man in front of him took on a rather pleasant form. A form of shock, fear, and despair.
"Well then, seems like you're speechless, huh? Finally, I thought you were being a bit annyoing before. Let me explain the way we're doing this to you in very, very, very simple ways that even a complete and utter piece of trash like you will understand to you. You will answer my questions, or else you will experience a lot, and I mean a lot, of pain." The Demon pointed out, but the man just glared back at him, "I'm not gonna tell you a-anything!" He yelled out, and Eiro sighed loudly and scratched the back of his head, "Hm... Shit, I really didn't expect that answer." Eiro pointed out, "But well, I guess I can give you some time to think it over first. I'll leave these guys so that you're not as lonely, alright?"
With that, Eiro slightly propped up the upper bodies of the three corpses on the table, and positioned their heads so that their dead eyes were just staring right at the man's face.
"Ah, and by the way, tell those guys to make that damn time-slow item a bit weaker... It was pretty annoying to catch enough of them to meet the limit perfectly..." Eiro pointed out, as he grabbed a cage that was standing behind the tables and brought it over toward the cell the man was sitting in. He opened the cell door and stepped over toward the man. With a slight, subtle smile, Eiro opened the cage in his hand up and emptied it out over the man's head, before pulling the cage away from the things currently dropping toward the man.
They were roughly two dozen rats, that were falling toward the man in complete slow-motion, "Ah, and I emptied out their stomachs completely and gave them a little bit of a... well, it's a drug that made them super hungry and aggressive, haha. Don't worry, you won't be affected by the item's effect, I made sure of that."
Eiro pointed out as he looked at the pile of angry, hungry rats falling toward the man. There were just a few metallic threads connecting all of them together, and one of the beads had the 'safety slow-motion' item connected to it, which was spreading it out toward all the rats. It seemed to have a limit to how many things it could slow down at once, and it seemed like these two dozen rats perfectly hit the limit.
"Hm, I think they should be able to at least nibble through your skin by the time I'm back. Don't worry, I'll know when they go too far, so I'll stop them. You won't die here tonight." Eiro explained with a slight laugh, and then went ahead and left the cell again.
He made the others leave the room in front of him and then quickly followed, listening while the man was pleading Eiro to come back before these two dozen rats would begin to start feeding on him in utterly painful slow-motion.
And when he left the room, he realized that Jess, James and Krog were staring at him in disgust, so it seemed like Eiro had to make something clear, "What, you would prefer having psychos like that run around all over the place? Don't worry, those rats weren't drugged and they're not hungry at all. They're docile rats that the slime and I were running some tests with two weeks ago. They can be perfectly commanded. I told them to scratch him, but in the way they're experiencing time, it's just going to be like they can scratch him three or four times before being pulled away again."
"But... it's still torture... Isn't it...?" Jess asked, and Eiro looked toward her with a nod, "Obviously. Psychological torture. I'm trying to make it so that he's so scared of me that he will tell me whatever I want to know. I can't do that with hugs and kisses."
With a groan, Krog looked at Eiro and walked toward the stairs, "I think her point was that torture is wrong, one way or another. It's just..."
"Inhumane?" Eiro asked bluntly, "Heh, you know, I get what you mean. But you know what's also inhumane? Making a Lesser Imp that was exhausted to begin with walk for hours without any rest, before practically hanging him by a tree so that the only way he wouldn't choke to death was by standing on his tip-toes the whole time. A single slip would have killed him, most certainly. That's not torture?"
With a deep stare, Eiro looked at James, who slowly realized what he was talking about while looking down at the ground, "That was different, I was just thinking of all the things you probably did to other people at that point, and I-"
"At that point, I had never dealt a single point of damage to anything. I was a simple level 1 Lesser Imp. The worst thing I did at that point was spit on another Imp behind me. I didn't even kill a bug, as far as I'm aware. I was the literal definition of 'innocent creature'." Eiro pointed out. Honestly, he wasn't particularly angry about what James did to him back then anymore. He got over it, really. But what did piss Eiro off was the way that these guys kept pretending like Eiro was worse than every criminal that people have ever produced.
With a deep growl, he looked at the Light Elf, "You're right, this is different. You know why? That man in there is pure and utter trash, that's part of a trashy organization. Those three dead people laying in there... I took a look at their bodies, they were experimented with beyond compare. Externally they're fine, but internally, they don't have anything human about them. No human organ, not even human blood. That symbol I showed you wasn't a member-ID, it was a way for those guys to differentiate their tools from one another. Their slaves. He tried to kill a nature goddess in the middle of town, and nearly killed me and my children. Had you fought against him, you may as well be dead right now as well. Now tell me, out of these two paths, which is worse? The one where a conceited little brat tortures an innocent living being for self-gratification or the one where a pissed off asshole tortures literal scum in order to get rid of even more scum for the sake of the next generation?"
James stood there, at a loss for words. It seemed like he literally didn't know what to say anymore right now. Eiro expected James to get angry and fight back, which may have been more satisfying than what happened next instead.
"Yeah... you're right. I'm sorry." James admitted, "I have no right to judge you. I'm not a good person myself... I do have the torture skill, even if I never really wanted to have it. I'm not a hero, I'm not the good guy in this. But at the very least, I want you to admit that neither are you." With a genuine tone in his voice, James looked at Eiro, who now in turn was at a loss for words.
He didn't expect this kind of response. It was in a tone that Eiro heard only once from James, and that was during that conversation about Eiro and James' pasts they had in the cave in the Goblin Village. He sounded sad, and somewhat scared.
"I know I'm not the good guy in this, trust me. I'm not the hero, but I don't think I'm the villain either. Rather, I would like to be a third power in this world. I told you before, but I want to abolish the system of Heroes and Monster Kings. The former has his party of the strongest people in the world, the latter has a group of strongest monsters in the world, the royals. And I want to become a third force of nature like 'Hero' and 'Villain'. I won't force you to do anything that's against what you think is right, so I'll just ask the same of you three, so..." Eiro started, and the three people in front of him stared back at Eiro, prepared to listen to the suggestion he was about to make, "...won't you become forces of nature along with me?"
