"N-no, this can't be-!" Cried the woman, stumbling back in fear, cutting off as I slipped behind her and slashed the back of her heels to prevent her from running away.
Not that she could escape me even if I hadn't done that. I squatted down in front of her and smirked at her shell-shocked expression.
Oh, this had been my biggest and most desired fantasy for three straight years...turning the tables against a captor. In my old life, during my three years of torture as a lab rat, I spent most of my time dreaming and fantasizing about flipping the odds against my captors, while counting the days to keep my sanity intact.
Of course, it never happened and I eventually died in that lab, but now...I was finally experiencing that fantasy.
And it felt fucking cathartic.
"Well...how the tables have turned. Heh, this feels amazing," I sighed contentedly, before standing up and heading back towards the others.
They had all been left in awkward positions after being beaten up by that Wiut guy, the least I could do was straighten them out a bit.
"This is going to hurt for a bit, so just bear with me, okay?"
I started with Vi, slowly and carefully adjusting her position till she was laying on her back, with her arms by her side. After wiping off the blood on her face and stopping her nose from bleeding, I moved on to Instructor Trocuelo and did the same, followed by Gela, whom I was a bit less careful with.
Petty, I know.
But hey, she seemed to enjoy it in her own weird masochistic way, so whatever.
"Now then...what to do with you?"
She remained silent, her expression hard to read. It was a mixture of anger, regret and frustration, with a hint of fear.
So...what should I do?
I didn't really care about getting any further information about the Magic Research Group from her right now, I had already gotten plenty after all, right now I just need to find a way out as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, we couldn't leave right away, I had to wait till the effects of the toxin wore off for the others. I suppose I could just abandon them, but...I didn't want to.
The old me probably would have done so without a second thought, all I really knew back then was how to kill people.
"Well...I guess saving people doesn't feel too bad, either," I muttered to myself with a small smile.
"Wh-what?"
"Hm? Oh, just talking to myself, nothing for you to concern yourself over. So hey, I just got a brilliant idea. Have you ever heard the phrase 'get a taste of your own medicine'? You can probably guess where I'm going with this. This is the stuff you injected into us, right?" I inquired with a smirk, picking up the bottle filled with purple liquid.
She had used about a third of it on us.
"So, here's the deal. Your boss or whatever took away your teleport scrolls, so tell me how to get out of this cave, or I'll inject all, and I do mean ALL, the remaining contents of this bottle into your body."
"N-no! Don't do that!"
"Then talk."
"...I don't know. A-all I know is that it's within teleportation range of the area where we ambushed you all, but I h-have no idea how to get here without teleporting, I really don't! This spot is closed off from the rest of this labyrinth-like cave using monster-warding barriers, taking them down would lead to this spot being swarmed by the monsters, that's why we use teleportation scrolls to get here. That's all I know, I swear!"
She appeared to be telling the truth. I wasn't done quite yet though.
"Be more specific, what's the maximum possible teleportation range? As in what's the farthest distance we could be from that area?"
"U-um, it's somewhere between 70 and 80 miles, if I'm not mistaken."
Not good...covering that much distance while not even knowing which direction to go in was going to be tough. Not to mention that Hacte guy would be returning tomorrow, so it's not like we could take our time mapping this place. Assuming we'd be able to without getting overwhelmed by the monsters.
I suppose I'll just wait till the others recover and discuss it with them.
But, first...
"I appreciate you being so cooperative. Unfortunately, you didn't really give me anything useful, so you're still very much getting this stuff injected into you. But mainly because I really want to, I've really built up quite a bit of animosity towards you over the last few hours," I smiled, as I slowly injected it into her.
I was deliberately avoiding entering Bloodlust Mode, because I knew that I'd kill her instantly if I did. No...after all the trouble she's caused, she didn't deserve a quick or painless death.
It took a good seven injections to fully transfer the contents of the bottle into her body, after which I poked her to see if it had taken affect. Based on her agonized expression and the shudder of her body, it looked like it definitely had.
Without breaking any bones, I twisted and tangled up her limbs together till she sort of resembled a pretzel, and I then shackled her wrists. With both Achilles' tendons slashed, there was no need to shackle her feet.
Hm...I wasn't quite satisfied yet, though.
I picked up her dead partner's knife and slowly pushed it into the middle of her forearm, bit by bit, until...I violently twisted the embedded knife at a 90 degree angle, like turning a key, her mouth opened a began to let out a shriek of pain, before she seized up as the slight movement sent her body into pure agony.
"Okay, I think I'm satisfied! It'd be pretty interesting to see that guy's face tomorrow when he shows up to see that one of you is dead, while the other was chained by her prisoners, whom she let escape due to a careless and stupid plan. I'm grateful though, if you hadn't undone my shackles, escape would never have been a possibility. Dista, was it? Consider your current position as thanks for the...hospitality. Give my regards to your boss when he shows up tomorrow!"
I should probably be a bit less cocky since our escape was still far from guaranteed, but I just felt really ecstatic right now. Besides, it didn't really matter, based on the amount of pain in her expression, she probably wasn't listening to a word I was saying.
I then let out a sigh of relief as I sat down and waited for the others to recover. I was just about able to bear it, but this pain was seriously something else.
Well, at least it'll be the extent of our torture. There was still a lot to do before we were home-free, but we had gotten our biggest obstacle, the shackles, out of the way.
This spot was lit up using oil lamps placed at regular intervals, I decided to explore to see if I could find anything useful, spotting the monster-warding barriers as I made my way through. They had a purple tinge to them.
I came across an area that appeared to be their teleportation spot, I looked around for any scrolls that might have been left, but there were none. I stuck poison needles into the ground around the teleportation point...hopefully whoever next teleports here will step on them and die.
I sighed in relief as I found all our weapons, including my two blades and throwing weapons.
After I strapped them back onto my outfit, I found a small stockpile of canned food and glass bottles filled with water in a corner. I took a few cans and a couple of water bottles and headed back to the spot where we had been shackled.
There was still more than an hour before the Pain Amplifier would wear off, so I sat down and leaned back against the rocky, uneven wall.
I must have dozed off at some point, because I was suddenly woken up with a start by a loud gasp. I sat up immediately and turned my head towards the direction the sound had come from. Vi was sitting up, panting heavily as she appeared to be breaking out into a cold sweat.
She tentatively opened and closed her fingers, before flexing her arm, a look of relief washing over her expression as she stood up with no problems.
Within the next couple of minutes, the other two recovered as well. I probably still had a couple of hours to go, considering that they'd given me an extra dosage. While I could bear it, it was definitely slowing me down a bit.
Even for me, this much pain was hard to fully ignore.
"Everyone okay?" I inquired, as the color began returning to their faces.
"Heh...I thought I was going to die. That really...really hurt," Gela laughed weakly, looking rather worn out.
"I can't believe you were able to move at all, Kuro. That was...the worst and most painful thing I've ever experienced, nothing else even comes remotely close. I felt like I was losing my mind. I don't consider myself a spiteful person, but...I can't deny that watching you literally give her a taste of her own medicine made me feel a bit better," Replied Vi, with a faint smile.
"I have to admit...that was pretty terrifying. I had begun to give up hope there," Sighed Instructor Trocuelo.
Considering how intense that had been, I was lucky that none of them had lost their sanity, I can't even imagine how much agony they must have felt like they were in.
As they got back on their feet, I relayed the layout of our current location to them, as well as our barely existent chances of finding our way out.
"I see...so, if we want to venture out of this spot, we'll have to take down those barriers. It's risky...we'll be completely exposed to who knows how many monsters, all of which are much more powerful than we're used to back home, not to mention that we have no idea which way we're supposed to go in," Frowned Instructor Trocuelo.
"Let's take an hour or so to think things through, as well as eat something, we have these canned foods and water bottles I found. There might be something we've overlooked, let's save the option of venturing out into the cave blindly as a last resort, our final option if we can't come up with anything else," I suggested, sitting down and cracking open a can of fruit.
The others followed suit, except Gela, who headed towards the chained up Dista. She slashed her left hand at her head, severing a long lock of hair.
"What are you doing?" Asked a confused-looking Vi, as Gela picked up the hairs she cut off.
"I'm curious about her indirect torture style, I want to try using that doll to see if it does anything for me."
She headed over to the doll, stuffed the hair into it and found the Spell Scroll for it, before activating it. She then slashed it around the chest area, Dista's rstrained body tensing up as she did, her expression indescribable.
"Hey, my hair is still in there, take it out!" I called out, as I felt it too.
I had totally forgotten that my hair had been in that doll this whole time. She laughed sheepishly and pulled my hair strands out of it, before continuing.
About a minute later...
"This is boring...it was fun for like ten seconds," Sighed Gela, losing interest and tossing away the doll.
Alright, everyone seems like they were more or less back to normal. We then began discussing possible options on how to escape from here, but none of us could come up with anything.
Which was probably because there weren't any escape options besides randomly navigating this vast network of caves.
We had no idea how extensive it could be, nor which direction we should head in, we didn't even know if we were underground or not, or how deep down if so.
Ideally, I'd prefer to avoid taking down the protective barriers and heading out of this spot, but we couldn't exactly stay here either.
If only we knew which direction to go, that would at least be something.
No matter which direction we picked, we would have no way of knowing whether we were heading for a dead end or perhaps even deeper into the cave, our chances of finding an exit were pretty slim.
Wait, no...not every direction.
There was one direction that was almost guaranteed to lead to the outside. It was slightly risky, but it was definitely better than the alternative.
"Let's go up! Taking down the barriers and looking for a way without any clues is far too risky, honestly we'll all almost definitely die if we blindly try to make our way through the monster-infested darkness. In which case...Instructor, let's pool our lightning as much as possible and blast it straight up to drill a hole above us. Of course, depending on how deep underground we are and the stability of this area, the impact could cause a cave-in, especially if we fail to break through with a single shot. Still, it's probably our best bet right now!"
I had been able to drill holes using my lightning when I had been down in the Goblin caves as well as at the end of my fight against Misen during the Brawl of Glory. This time, I need to do it on a bigger scale.
Of course, there was every chance that we were just a few feet below ground and this was going to be overkill, but better safe than sorry.
"Hey, Birdbrain...cut off my hands," I instructed Gela, handing her my sword.
She neatly slashed them off at the ends of the wrists, blood pouring out as she did.
"You do that a lot...does it really make a difference?" Asked Vi, looking a bit queasy as she stared at my bleeding stumps.
"Yeah, my hands seem to act as bottlenecks that restrict the amount of lightning I can discharge, cutting them off gets rid of the bottleneck and I can increase my output. Right now, I can't afford to hold back even a bit," I replied, beginning to charge lightning inside both wrists.
"I can sort of relate, I can charge up and fire a lot better with my horns than my hands," Said Instructor Trocuelo, the tips of his ram horns crackling with lightning as he began charging up.
Not quite the same thing, but okay.
No gonna lie...it looked kinda cool, maybe I should have asked for horns when I was reincarnating...
Never mind that for now, I have to focus on the task at hand. Hmm, we'll need to converge our lightning blasts as much as we possibly could to maximize the effectiveness.
"Hey, Gela...use your talon to carve an X onto the ceiling, it'll be easier to fire at the same spot if we have a visible target."
She did as I instructed, before moving out of the way as I got ready to fire. The electric glow emanating from inside my wrists was getting brighter and brighter, as I moved my arms up and locked my aim onto the X on the ceiling.
Instructor Trocuelo stood next to me and turned his head up towards the target point as well, his horns glowing and crackling violently with intense lightning.
That seriously looked so cool...
"On three...," He said, "One...
...two...
...THREE!"
On his mark, I blasted out the immense amount of charged up lightning straight up with as much force and speed as I possibly could muster, while making sure to keep its shape and ensuring it wasn't too wide, to avoid spreading out and reducing the amount of force behind the impact.
His blast was also quite impressive, it was more powerful and intense than mine, though mine was faster.
Looks like I had made the right call, this felt like we were several feet below ground...I could still feel my blast drilling through solid rock. My blast began to weaken and the speed was starting to taper off as my continuous beam of lightning began to run out of steam...I strained my Mana circuits to keep it going for as long as possible, to push my blast through as high as I could.
I could see cracks beginning to appear above us, around the point of the blast...this place was able to collapse, there's no time to charge up a second blast...I had to break through with this!
Instructor Trocuelo also began to strain to keep his blast going, cracks appearing on one of his horns.
We both ran out of juice around the same time, collapsing to the ground as out blasts slowly petered out. That seemed to have taken a lot out of him, his horns were both bleeding around their bases, his face had multiple scorch marks and his left horn was cracked.
I felt pretty drained myself, that had used up a sizeable chunk of Mana.
Had...that been enough?
"Hey, look...I think I can see faint sunlight coming in from the top of the hole...we broke through!" Exclaimed Vi, he eyes lighting up as a dim, orange glow streamed in from the hole we'd drilled in the ceiling.
We...did it...we really did it!
The area around the hole continued to slowly crack and crumble, bits of debris starting to rain down on us. I quickly reattached my hands and stood back up.
"Looks like this place is going to collapse! Let's get out of here now, we can't let this chance slip by!"
"Wait, how are we supposed to get up there?" Asked Vi, avoiding a few falling rocks.
Crap, I had forgotten about that part, I wasn't sure exactly how far down we were, but it had to be several meters at least. We couldn't afford to just stand around with the rate that this place was now falling apart.
Let's see, what do we have to work with...Gela can fly, Instructor Trocuelo looked physically spent, and Vi could probably jump close to about half the distance to the top. I need to relay a simple and clear solution quickly, there's no time to be methodical or cautious.
I got it! Yeah, that could work...
"We don't have time to analyze this, so act fast! I can probably climb out on my own...as for you three, let's see...alright do it this way, Vi, grab the other two and jump straight up the hole as high as you possibly can, and when you reach the peak of your jump...Gela, that's when you take over, hold onto them both and fly the rest of the way up. Instructor...uh, try to not to be too heavy, I guess. I'll follow behind you guys."
"...it doesn't feel too good to be dead weight to my students," He sighed sheepishly, as Vi grabbed onto him and Gela, before bending her knees, straining her leg muscles to jump up as hard as she could.
I stepped back as she launched herself, shooting up the hole like a bullet. As soon as she did, I quickly fastened my throwing knives between my fingers using wire, as well as some on the front of my shoes, to use as climbing spikes by digging them into the surface of the inside of the hole. Meanwhile the cave was starting to collapse faster around me.
Time to go.
"Later," I waved at Dista, before shifting my focus towards making my way out.
I took a deep breath and jumped into the opening of the hole, using the knives fastened between my fingers to dig into the inside of the hole. I began to climb up as fast as I could, activating Lightning Boost at x2.5 to speed up my ascent as much as possible, trying my best to ignore the intense pain caused by the effects of the Pain Amplifier.
The cave-in was starting to speed up now, if I stopped for even a second, I would lose my grip and fall back down.
I grimaced as one of the knives on my right hand broke off and fell down.
With each time I stuck the blades into the surface to climb up, they grew more dull and blunt, requiring me to increase the amount of force I needed to put into each step, and slow down slowly but surely.
A couple of knives on my feet broke off too...
I was more than two thirds of the way up now, come on...just a little more!
The hole was now starting to collapse above me too, it was too unstable to climb now. In that case...
As broken rocks began tumbling down from above me, I sprang onto one and jumped up off of it, using the falling debris as footholds to keep my ascension going. I was going up faster now, but avoiding all of these falling rocks, even with Lightning Boost, was going to be impossible.
My left shoulder got dislocated as a rock slammed past it, I ignored it and focused on maintaining the accuracy my footwork. If I slipped or missed my footing even slightly, for so much as an instant...I would almost definitely end up tumbling down to my death with no way to recover.
Just a few meters left now...
As I closed the gap till the exit was just a couple of jumps away from my reach now, my right leg got crushed between two rocks from below the knee.
In a rapid, simultaneous motion, I drew out my sword and cut off my shattered leg from above the knee, straining my thigh muscles to slow down the bleeding, while at the same time putting all my strength into my left leg and jumping up off of it towards the opening above me with as much force as I could physically muster right now.
I rose towards it, time seeming to move in slow motion...
...it was getting closer and closer...
...the gap shrinking inch by inch...
...as I stretched out my right arm, desperately reaching for it.
With about half a meter left between my fingertips and the edge of the opening, I realized that I had reached the peak of my jump...I wasn't going to make it.
...I was about to fall back down.
I had nothing left to grab onto or jump off of, I was going to get buried under all this rubble once I fall back down.
I was tantalizingly close, but...it looks like I'll be plummeting back down onto the massive caved-in pile of rocks. I was well and truly out of options this time, there was nothing up my sleeve to get out of this situation.
I couldn't help but felt a twinge of frustration, as I began to drop back down.
Well...it had been a nice second life while it lasted, even if it hadn't been very long...
As I closed my eyes and my body began to slump, I was snapped out of my 'final' thoughts as I felt a hand grab onto my outstretched right hand from above, halting my descent.
...someone had caught me?
I then felt myself being pulled up and out of the hole, the person who grabbed me stumbled back, my vision obscured by the setting sun shining towards my eye.
I landed on my back, my eyes taking a moment to adjust to the fading sunlight. The evening air filled my lungs as the crimson glow of dusk enveloped the darkening sky. I was outside.
I stared up the sky in disbelief...
I had...escaped.
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