341 Interrogations
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Shade and Allan had been watching over the city ever since the children went to sleep. They left Faylen and Nepheline alongside Sylphy’s Uncle protecting the tribe while they came here to investigate as they had planned to. However, something ended happening while they wandered around the city. Explosions, several explosions.
In seconds, they reached the orphanage, finding it unscathed, that wasn’t a surprise for them as Faylen had set up a powerful high tier barrier without the orphanage even noticing, although it was merely Tier 5, it was good enough to protect from mostly anything people in this city could offer as a threat.
Higher tiered barriers cost more Mana and are more complex to conjure to do it on the go as she did, and often don’t allow for people to walk inside and outside either if they’re allowed by the caster. The more restrictions and special conditions given to a spell, the more burden they take on the conjurer at the time of invocation.
When they reached the orphanage, they were ready to capture them men, but ended finding Sylphy’s Plant Monsters catching them instead. These were monsters she could create through seeds she enhanced using her Magic, but they never expected them to have special conditions to transform and emerge only when intruders with bad intentions appeared. Of course, they were not permanent, and usually withered away after a few hours of being created.
Although they seemed captured, they were using knives to cut the vines, so Shade acted quickly and called forth one of his oldest Dark Spirits, a Phantasmal Spirit capable of creating chains made of darkness that could chain a person’s soul. The spirit was merely named Grief, and he had the tendency of groan like a zombie.
After having gathered the culprits, the two quickly turned off the fire that had spread into the unprotected surrounding buildings and left the place, entering an abandoned house and sealing it with a magic barrier, throwing the culprits inside a room and quickly beginning interrogations. The orphanage’s residents had heard the explosion though, and walked outside the place to investigate what was going on, finding nothing and then quickly going back. Explanations were perhaps going to be delivered by Shade and Allan the next morning.
“Thank you Grief, you can go rest now.” Shade said, as Grief gave a phantasmal groan and went inside of Shade’s Soul Scape. Shade was a man of less words, so he left the interrogation job to Allan. The two had a very peculiar chemistry, Allan being the talkative “good cop” while Shade was the silent “bad cop”.
The culprits quickly had their mouths freed from the robes covering them, as Allan sat down in front of them with a smile from ear to ear. He seemed frightening to their eyes, and rather intimidating despite trying to act nice.
.....
“Now, now, just like Shade, I am very pissed for what you just tried to do... Why in your right minds would you try to burn down a house filled with little children?!” Asked Allan. “Who sent you here? And who gave you those Spell Jewels?”
“W-We won’t speak!”
“Y-You don’t intimidate us...”
“We came here prepared to d-die anyways!”
“Hooohh? Is that so? Are you sure about that? And what after that? you think I will let your souls go away to the afterlife easily?” Asked Shade with a malicious expression, the prisoners quickly felt chills run down their spines, feeling completely paralyzed by his deathly stare!
“You saw what my friend used to capture you, right? That was a Dark and Death Spirit! Guess what, he’s slightly proficient in death magic... You know what that means?” Asked Allan. “He can touch souls!”
“Uugh...”
“Gulp...”
“W-Who are you?! The boss never told us there were such strong magicians in here! Did you protected the demons with that barrier?! Who the fuck are you guys?!”
One of the prisoners suddenly began asking questions, as Shade gently patted his shoulders, and then, his hands suddenly turned semi-transparent, as if they were phantasmal hands.
“Phantasmal Grasp.”
FLASH!
Shade’s hands suddenly grasped the prisoner’s soul, making him tremble in fear and pain like he had never felt before. The pain of the soul, after all, could be dozens of times stronger than physical pain, simply grabbing a soul already inflicted pain as commoners often had very weak souls!
The ability to strengthen and cultivate a Soul was something not widespread at all, so only a few knew how to make it stronger. Entire continents had no idea about such methods; therefore, people’s souls were often outstandingly easy to play around with for someone proficient at the death element such as Shade.
“Gyyyaaaah! P-Please stop touching my soul! It hurts! IT HURTSSSS...!”
“Then speak and I shall spare your soul!” Shade roared dominatingly, as the man quickly nodded, shocking everyone else.
“You bastard! Don’t say a word!”
“Are you going to sell us?!”
“Bear with the pain, coward!”
“Hoh? Do you want me to touch your souls too?” Asked Shade with a smirk, Allan himself feel like sweating bullets due to the intimidating presence of his friend sometimes.
At the end, it only took a single one of them to get intimidated for all their secrets to be revealed. The man ended telling them everything they asked for happily after realizing the agony of having been touched with his soul. The rest of the prisoners also went through the same torture and ended speaking anything the other missed too.
“So you’re telling me you were mere civilians some years ago and ended turning into this underground organization after the war?” Asked Allan. “Why?”
“Because we lost everything...”
“After the war, many villages were destroyed, those demons were merciless... barbarians!”
“Many of our family members perished, some of our comrades had their entire families slaughtered...”
“We were not even soldiers, but they pillaged us and burned our homes... The war made them grow desperate and hungry, some even... ate people!”
“Demons... they’re all monsters!”
“They shouldn’t be living in our city!”
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