Chapter 286 Torture
"15…16 hmmm a total of 18 classes only? Did I underestimate this raid group?" Kraft counted the number of highly talented adventurers that he and the Deep Ones had captured based on the System's recommendation.
The battlefield was a bloody mess. A literal bloody mess. The Deep Ones spared no mercy to any adventurer in the raid group. The sudden strike and awe were very effective for breaking the adventurers' standard group formations, and many of the Deep Ones managed to kill before going down.
This was naturally because of Mr Derpy. His enchantments benefitted the Deep Ones greatly, such as drastically changing the sandy terrain to a muddy one that allowed his minions to maneuver fast with their webbed feet but dampened the adventurer's movement. The Deep Ones even offered captured adventurers as tributes on a makeshift altar, which allowed Mr Derpy to further enhance the Deep Ones with magical buffs to their strength and endurance stats.
He even cast wide area of effect curses that were unblockable by the mages and clerics as his magic came from another world. The priest and clerics could not demystify and purify any of the mass curses due to either lack of time, lack of experience, or maybe lack of arms. (Since the Deep Ones loved arms as snacks.) The longer this Elder God stayed in the skies to govern the battlefield, the more despair the adventurers were showing which indirectly powered Mr Derpy even further.
"Despair! You pieces of breathing flesh, who lived only by hope will now die by despair!" Mr Derpy's voice thundered, and some adventurers who were at the backlines started to run away from the current battlefield. "Hahaha oh Derpy, you do have some cheesy lines, but there is indeed some truth to it." Kraft laughed while holding on to his belly.
"Especially when despair is like a drug. It lulls the mind into a state of indifference that you can do nothing to prevent it." Kraft said as he commanded Evon back before shooting it at another hunter adventurer on the hand. The hunter suddenly dropped his bow and started foaming while shaking his head violently which allowed the Deep Ones to pierce him easily.
"What kind of bullshit is this!?!?! This is not what was written on the bounty board!" A mage adventurer started to run alongside an assassin class adventurer, an advanced thief class via the borders of the ruins. The assassin did not say anything to his companion, but immediately stopped the mage adventurer from running the moment he sensed killing intent.
An arrow flew forward, but the assassin managed to parry it with his katar before retaliating by throwing a poison knife towards that same direction. The mage adventurer decided to help too, but before she could cast her magic fully, she suddenly felt a stab from behind her when the assassin was occupied.
The assassin looked back and saw a spear poking out of the mage's garb and through the centre of her chest, barely missing the heart, courtesy of Piercestriker. Slashreaver did not waste any time by instantly cutting the mage's head off with his sword as the goblins knew that mages with their heads attached were troubling foes. They babbled out too much magic back in the Goblin World causing mass destruction, hence removing the head was the most effective way to stop a mage from chanting.
The Assassin then realised that there were at least three goblin foes he had to fight against, but he did not know that these three goblins were not the same goblins from this world. Him underestimating them brought forth his downfall as he sped forward, doing a kill and dash technique he learnt as an assassin.
Unfortunately, both Slashreaver and Piercestriker blocked the katar attacks, and Piercestriker even tripped the assassin with his spear, causing him to fall embarrassingly. With the assassin's back facing them, Ripcaller simply shot two arrows simultaneously onto the assassin's neck, crippling him instantly. The other two goblins did not hesitate to plunge their weapons repeatedly into his body before dragging him and the mage's body away from that site.
Meanwhile, Ripcaller hid himself near a series of tall but broken pillars and used a cape doused with wet sand and mud to camouflage himself while looking out for any stragglers. That assassin was the tenth adventurer they managed to catch for looting purposes. It looked like the cultivator fights in complex forest terrain in Goblin Forest Instance taught them a lot in terms of ambushing.
As the battlefield started to get quieter, Kraft entered into the replicated room of Jin's consciousness in Jin's Terrace House with the eighteen adventurers he had caught. (The room did enlarge by itself as more adventurers were being brought in!) The adventurers were tied down with chains at a corner of the room and with a clap by Kraft, a bloodied wooden table appeared in the middle of the room. He first dragged Hark the Lord Knight and leader of Hocus Pocus to the table.
Hark tried his very best to struggle but the chains became even tighter as he struggled, not to mention, he was not able to cast any instant spell as his magic powers was not working.
"Sorry mate for disappointing you." Kraft still had his mask on as he effortlessly lifted Hark onto the bloodied wooden table. The chains that were binding Hark released and realigned themselves causing Hark to be tied to the table.
"Ah, I missed this table. So many memories…" Kraft had a gentle smile on him as he slid his fingers along the rough edges of the table, before he opened one of its cabinets. It was a small metal hammer with a wooden shaft, which he used to knock at Hark's armour.
The armour immediately came off, leaving Hark in his undergarment and the armour reassembled itself at the side of the room being hanged up on a mannequin. His belt came off too and with it, a bag of holding. These items were the Dungeon World's version of something like Jin's storage ring.
Kraft opened it with his magical hammer, and he looked inside of the bag. "Wow. So much money. and rare, unique loots too. Hey, did you guys know that your boss is hoarding all the good stuff for himself?" Kraft casually took out a few items, which made Hark squeal under the chains that were covering his mouth.
"Did you say I can have it? How nice of you!" Kraft's delighted expression caught Hark off guard for a moment before he suddenly heard three loud bangs. For some reason, he did not feel any pain... only to see the same pink champagne coloured fox licking his face. While Hark was unable to understand what exactly Kraft was doing to him, the adventurers at the corner were horrified, petrified and stupefied. Two black foxes were essentially biting and chewing away at their leader's innards, and he was not screaming at all. In the contrary, his face seemed to suggest that he was somehow enjoying this treatment.
Tsu and Kai were feasting not only on his intestines, but also absorbing the magical energy of the Hocus Pocus leader. Kraft let them enjoy their meal, until they stopped for a moment to look up to him. At this point, there was nothing stopping him from extracting every memory of Hark's life. Kraft took out a three pin skull fixation device and attached it to the table before drilling holes to hold on to Hark's head. Hark was not feeling anything, in fact, he was feeling extremely high from all of Evon's licking. In the meantime, Kraft took a syringe that had a very long needle and slowly inserted into his head, gathering some fluid while chanting away foreign words that the adventurers at the side did not understand, making them even more afraid.
Upon having reached 666 ml of fluid, Kraft stopped, discarded the needle in a bin beside the table and placed the syringe with a stopper on it in a suitcase that had a foam filling for 17 other syringes. The foxes stopped what they were doing and came down from the table while the chains gradually wrapped Hark up before teleporting him elsewhere. He would return him back to the dungeon world, but no one ever said anything about the "where".
"So…Who's next?" Kraft placed his hands at the back with a peaceful amiable smile towards the seventeen other adventurers, many whom had started to cry, beg and even piss on the floor from witnessing Hark's procedure.
"What has been seen cannot be unseen… well it could be forgotten. Depending on how much you wish to cooperate it could be over quicker or slower. Whatever the case, I assure you it is painless… at least for me~heh heh!" Kraft had waited some time before adding to his last sentence. He enjoyed the look on their faces. Giving some hope only to turn it to despair… He casually grabbed hold on the chains of a female hunter like he was choosing apples in the supermarket and the procedure started all over again.