Shock Therapy
The sound of rain hammering the window cut sharply into ears buried beneath folds of flesh, barely visible. His mind, submerged in a dull haze, and the heavy head that had been drooping downward, lifted with great effort.
“Ughhh… This is why I shouldn’t drink this damn cheap booze.”
With a short groan, Biff slowly opened his eyes at the boundary between darkness and faint light. The hangover headache was no joke, so his wrinkles were twice as deep as usual. To Biff, it was common sense that hangovers were cured by pouring in more alcohol, which would make them as docile as a beaten dog. So, to ease the headache, he reached for the flask of cheap whiskey in his coat as usual.
At that moment.
“…Hm?”
His hand stopped dead, as if caught on something. Biff frowned at the strange pressure around his wrist and had no choice but to swallow hard. Something long and black, reminiscent of animal entrails, was wrapped not only around his wrists but also his legs and torso. Like a snake constricting a mouse, like a spider wrapping a fly in its web, the black substance bound him with relentless tightness. The sensation against the bare skin of his wrist was cold and slick—a revolting blend of snake and leech that raised goosebumps across his body.
“What the fuck! What the hell is this!?”
As he thrashed in disgust, the armchair beneath him creaked in agony, as if begging to be put out of its misery. Biff suddenly noticed the sound echoing far louder than it should.
“…Wait.”
A silence fell, accompanied by a chill racing up his spine. Biff steadied his trembling chest and looked around. A barren room with no furniture, and the damp, moldy stench drifting from the edges of shadowed darkness. As he whipped his head around frantically, faint lights blooming from the floor caught his eye.
“…A pentagram?”
The red lines tangled across the floor formed a five-pointed star. A candle stood at each point, flames flickering slowly in time with the rain. Whenever the light softly illuminated the floor and walls, the shadows warped into bizarre shapes along the surface.
…Gulp.
Biff’s alcohol-soaked brain finally registered the gravity of the situation. Only then did he realize this was not his comfortable room. And that he was now standing in the middle of some kind of ritual.
At that moment—
“Oh. Are you finally awake, Mr. Caretaker? Just how much did you drink to sleep for an entire hour? Do you have any idea how hard I worked to stop Raven from suggesting we rip out your fingernails to wake you?”
From the darkness beyond the fragile candlelight came a polite, high-and-low voice typical of a child whose vocal cords had not fully developed. At the same time, Biff’s eyebrows furrowed deeply as memories resurfaced.
“You… You’re that kid from back then, aren’t you?”
He spent every day drunk, so his memory was not the best, but it was not so poor that he would forget the voice of the foolish little customer who had cheerfully tossed him two hundred thousand dallants. Biff immediately recognized the speaker’s identity.
“Kid?”
The low voice returned, clearly displeased. “Is it truly wise to address me that way right now? I’m not so sure.”
“This kid doesn’t know how scary adults can b…e?”
A single red eye gleaming brightly even in the darkness, and two red points staring down at him mechanically from four heads higher.
“….”
The moment he met that gaze, Biff realized something had gone terribly wrong. He instantly quenched his boiling rage and shut his mouth.
A voice came, sounding mildly surprised. “I thought you had no sense at all, but apparently it’s not completely absent. Well, with at least that much awareness, it’s no wonder you’ve survived this long.”
“Shut up and tell me what you want.”
Biff’s sharp words were met with an incredulous reaction.
“What do I want? Are you seriously asking that, Mr. Caretaker? No, it would be more accurate to call you a scammer. The worthless scammer who dared to steal the precious two hundred thousand dallants I earned with blood, sweat, and tears.”
A figure emerged from the darkness, radiating quiet fury. A black robe that a gloomy necromancer might wear, red eyes emitting a murderous glow from beneath the pulled hood, and a small black bird perched on the shoulder that somehow felt familiar.
“…That—that thing!”
Numerous black arms and figures twisted as if torn apart and devoured by beasts. In the suffocating abyss, the intermittent screams of the dead, the stench of blood and sulfur and death. An indescribable terror.
“Ughhhhh…!!!”
Seeing Kkachi perched on Yuri’s shoulder, grooming its feathers, Biff recalled the living hell he had endured in the pitch-black darkness and began convulsing violently enough to shatter the armchair.
“Haa. Why are you suddenly acting up again…?”
Just when it seemed they might actually communicate, Yuri let out a deep sigh at the sight of Biff rampaging like a wounded beast. Her eyes glowed red, equal parts fatigue and irritation.
Yuri raised one hand.
—Swish!
She seized the shadow rising from her sleeve. It instantly hardened into the shape of a solid club.
“Calm down…!”
Without hesitation, Yuri brought it down on Biff’s head.
Thud.
“Ughk.”
With a heavy sound like pounding meat, a line of blood began flowing from Biff’s forehead. At the same time, his convulsions ceased. In fact, he no longer moved at all.
“…Hm?”
Yuri was taken aback. She had only meant to deliver an appropriate shock to make him docile, just as the old Raven had done when training the lunatics he kidnapped. But this was beyond docile—it looked like he had been knocked unconscious.
A low exclamation came from behind.
“Oh… That was a very clean knockout, Contractor.”
“…I didn’t mean to. Hmm… I thought I hit him as lightly as possible. What went wrong?”
“In my opinion, he’s an ordinary person without the goddess’s blessing, so his durability is rather low. If he were a lunatic, he probably would have become moderately docile.”
“Ah! I didn’t consider that… Next time I’ll have to swing with a little less force.”
Biff had once been an adventurer who reached the third tier in his active days, but that was not a particularly important story, so it would be omitted.
“Still, fortunately he isn’t dead yet, so we can simply wake him again.”
“Then we should use ‘that’ thing Sion prepared for us…!”
“Indeed. Using ‘that’ should perk him right up.”
Nodding at Raven’s words, Yuri approached Jackson, who was trembling intermittently with his head bowed, and poured holy water onto his forehead.
Then.
“Kyaaaaaaaack!!!”
Biff twisted his entire body like a slug doused in salt and let out a scream loud enough to rupture eardrums. This was closer to resurrection than recovery. Wasn’t the effect a little too good?
While Raven was nodding in admiration at the holy water’s remarkable efficacy.
“Eek!?”
Faced with the wild-boar-like seizure right in front of her, Yuri let out a delicate scream like a middle-schooler hit with a jump scare in a horror movie and swung the club at Biff’s head once more.
Thud!
“Kuhk!”
Then, with an unpleasant sound, Biff’s head drooped like wet laundry. Fresh blood dripped steadily from his bowed head onto the floor.
“Ah.”
“Ah.”
“Kkyuu….”
As the wild boar grew docile, the room filled with a chorus of varied exclamations. Something resembling a sigh was mixed in, but it was buried beneath Biff’s grotesque, phlegm-filled groans and tremors and went unheard.
‘…Can we really extract any information today?’
Kkachi carefully checked the scammer’s pulse, then quietly swallowed a sigh while watching Raven shake his head and Yuri urgently pouring holy water on the scammer’s forehead. Along with the sound of rain battering the windows, the night grew deeper.
“…Huk!”
“Are you awake now?”
“W-where am I?”
“…Raven, you don’t look so good, do you?”
“The treatment was perfect. Probably.”
“Ughk! Monster! It’s a monster!”
“Is it not?”
“…In this state, it seems a bit difficult to recover the two hundred thousand dallants.”
“Hmm. Should we search for that eccentric magician who handles human biological samples?”
“Oh, there are magicians like that?”
“If we look hard enough, there should be at least one, no? There is no limit to human malice, after all.”
“Indeed….”
“Please save me, I beg you! No, please save me!”
“Hmm? We would love to save you as well, but… it isn’t easy to save a scammer who claims not to know the whereabouts of our two hundred thousand dallants, is it?”
“I’ll remember! I’ll recall everything, so just give me some time… please!”
“Oh, you’re much more cooperative than before you lost your memory? Good. Then please recover your memories as quickly as possible. I’m starting to feel sleepy.”
“Yes! Yes! Please wait just a moment, just a moment!”
“Wait, I think I might be able to help.”
“Uhhh….”
“…Hm? You, Raven?”
“Yes. I know something that can help a patient suffering from short-term memory loss like this.”
“Ooh, as expected of Raven… So what is it?”
“It is simply….”
It was called shock therapy.
Saying this with complete confidence, Raven drew the Injector from inside his coat.
“Aah.”
At that grotesque and horrifying sight, Biff—who had already lost half his memories from the repeated blows to his head—saw his vision go black in an instant.
“Now then. Where should we begin?”
—Click.