Chapter 283: Labyrinth of Change: Labyrinthos (12)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 283: Labyrinth of Change: Labyrinthos (12)
As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t exactly have a hobby of enjoying torture.
Of course, at some point, the screams of those pieces of trash started sounding quite pleasant, and seeing those arrogant bastards trembling with terror-stricken eyes began to bring me joy.
But still, I’m not some psycho who enjoys violence for the sake of violence.
Yet, strangely enough, the moments I spent beating our little con artist were nothing short of delightful.
Every time a joint snapped, those eyes that seemed so steadfast would waver. Every time I ripped out a fingernail, he would scream.
However, torture is ultimately just a form of stimulation. If you push someone until they’re truly on the brink of death, their reactions gradually weaken. Our con artist was no exception; his screams and struggles were growing feebler by the second.
Even the Chairperson, who had been egging me on to keep going, seemed to think I was taking it a bit too far and tried to stop me. She likely thought I was going to kill the guy in a fit of emotion.
I had no intention of doing that, though.
In the midst of it all, his will hadn’t completely broken yet. Our con artist looked up at me as if asking if this was finally the end.
Right, you were always that kind of guy.
You were strangely quick to give up on other things, but when it came to artifacts or your own stubbornness, you showed a tenacity that bordered on madness.
You stayed consistent until the very end—the bastard who died after telling one last goddamn lie.
“Wait…! You’re planning to use even that!?”
The Chairperson gasped in horror when she saw what I pulled from my pocket. But whatever. I can always get more of these later.
The moment I opened the bottle, a refreshing scent that hadn’t faded in the slightest despite the passage of time wafted through the air. As I splashed a bit of the contents onto him, the wounds on his body began to vanish at a rapid rate.
An Elixir.
An otherworldly panacea whose recipe hasn’t even been fully discovered.
A top-tier spirit medicine that can heal almost any wound with just a fraction of a dose, and can even enhance physical functions if fully consumed.
And I was pouring it over a man who was practically a half-dead wreck just so I could continue the torture.
“…Huh?”
Of course, no matter how potent an Elixir is, a few drops can’t fully heal that many injuries.
At most, it brought him from the state of a near-corpse with every bone in his body broken back up to the level of a critical patient.
In the 1st Timeline, Elixirs were my emergency medicine, but they were also tools for torture.
Even those who aren’t afraid of simply dying can never endure the sensation of approaching death over and over again.
It was one of the few lessons I learned while being beaten by those trashy fallen heroes.
“You look better now. Shall we start again from the beginning?”
And just as expected, his once-firm eyes began to shake uncontrollably.
If my guess was right, he was about to give up.
“I… I think I lost. Can we please stop now?”
He really never misses a beat. Seriously.
“I’m glad you’ve made a wise choice, even if it’s late. It hurts a lot, doesn’t it?”
As I used a bit more of the Elixir to heal his wounds, I felt as though a look of horror had dawned not just on him, but for some reason, on my companions as well.
I mean, honestly, I didn’t want to go this far either. But based on my experience from the 1st Timeline, you have to go to this extent for him to give up when it comes to artifacts.
Especially since it’s an artifact of the Elven royalty that he considers a treasure—did they really think he’d just hand it over obediently?
“Woof!”
Only my Wolf approached with a bright smile, as if asking if it was all over, bringing the grueling torture session to an end.
“Disciple. Honestly, do you know you seemed a bit like a pervert?”
…Master, how could you slander me like this without understanding my deep intentions?
“Junior was a bit of a pervert.”
“Rather than a pervert, So-hyun was just… a bit scary.”
Why does no one understand my heart? It was truly a sad state of affairs.
…Was it a bit much to wreck him while using an Elixir?
* * *
Most humans, after having needles driven into every joint and their bones snapped in directions the human body isn’t meant to bend—especially when it’s done by someone else’s will rather than an accident—naturally remember that fear.
Unfortunately, Licht was not the type of person to remember fear from such things.
He had experienced similar things when he sneaked into a Desert Orc village to steal the chieftain’s sword, or when he was nearly killed by a Hunter Guild’s pursuit after stealing a map to a dragon’s treasury.
In fact, those times might have been even worse.
Therefore, what Licht surrendered to was not the violence itself, but the attitude of the person wielding it—that boy.
The world was full of people who couldn’t empathize with the pain of others.
Hell, you didn’t even have to look at the world; Labyrinthos was crawling with psychopaths.
But this madman was cut from a different cloth.
He wasn’t certain, but he had a feeling that this lunatic torturing him might have actually been an act of “kindness” in some twisted way.
It wasn’t just because he had perfectly healed his wounds after the torture was over.
Sure, healing him with an Elixir to the point where there were no lingering side effects was a kindness of sorts, but there seemed to be another reason.
For one, perhaps because he had been unilaterally assaulted before he could even do anything, the way the boy’s companions looked at him had softened ever so slightly.
At the very least, they had mellowed out enough that they wouldn’t immediately kill him the moment he tried something.
And despite having beaten him so enthusiastically, the boy now showed a strangely apologetic air as he led him to the artifacts.
…If you’re so sorry, just let me go.
Maybe he had gone crazy from the beating, but he actually felt like the boy wouldn’t kill him even if he tried to run away. What more was there to say?
“Hey, stop daydreaming and walk straight. Unless you want your bones broken again.”
See? Since he isn’t saying he’ll kill me, there really might be something to it.
…But so what? I’m about to have the treasures I earned from my hardest adventure yet snatched away.
Those goddamn bandits.
They should think about earning things through honest adventure like I do. How can they think about stealing something someone else worked so hard to steal?
“Don’t even think about taking a detour to escape.”
“…What would be the point of running away from someone who wrecked Wild Dog and has a pathfinding artifact?”
Right. If I had known Wild Dog had been taken down, I wouldn’t have acted so cocky in the beginning. Where the hell did a guy like this suddenly drop from?
Despite his grumbling, they kept walking and eventually arrived at his hideout.
…It’s such a waste. Should I try throwing a fit and saying I won’t give it up?
Do they have any idea what I went through to get that?
As if reading his mind, the boy spoke to him again in a very chilling tone.
“…Hey, you con artist. To be honest, I don’t really want to kill you. I don’t want to break you mentally, either. That’s why I only played around at a level you could endure.”
“Excuse me?”
The platinum-haired girl walking beside him reacted before Licht even could, her voice full of disbelief.
That was what someone who didn’t want to break someone mentally did…? Then what the hell does he do to people he does want to break?
Licht was curious, but he didn’t want to end up having to take another dose of Elixir, so he suppressed his question.
“But I made a few promises. Unfortunately, when I weigh them, my promises are a bit more important than your mental health.”
Ah, this was a warning.
It was a sort of sentence—a declaration that if he tried anything funny or showed even a hint of resistance, the next time wouldn’t be so easy. He would do the most horrific things possible without actually killing him.
“So just hand it over quietly. It’s not like I’m taking all your artifacts, right?”
The problem was that he was trying to take the things that meant the most to him.
Seriously, when I think about the trouble I went through to get this, there’s no way I can just hand it over so—
“I’ll really let you go if you just give me the bow you stole from the Elf village, the Branch of the World Tree, and that one diary.”
…Huh? Wait, what? The treasures of the Elf village? How did he know I had those?
No, wait. That wasn’t what was important right now.
Licht turned around, wondering if the boy was mocking him, but his expression was incredibly serious and cold.
Which meant he wasn’t lying.
It was strange. The reason he had resisted so fiercely wasn’t because of the Elven treasures.
Since his most precious artifact had reacted to them, he naturally assumed they had come to take that artifact. But the Elven treasures?
Of course, those were also a huge waste, but honestly, compared to the artifact he had in mind, they were items he could afford to give up.
“…What are you staring at? You don’t want to?”
Honestly, I don’t. Unless you’re a pervert who enjoys the feeling of having your lover stolen by someone else, who would be happy in this situation?
Still, it wasn’t the worst-case scenario.
He steeled his trembling heart with the mindset that the lesser of two evils was better.
He couldn’t afford to let it show and have the boy realize he was hiding an even better artifact.
Just as he was about to cautiously open his treasury, which he usually kept sealed—
“Uh…?”
The treasury erupted in light.
* * *
…I think this bastard is hiding something.
That strange smirk was definitely the one he wore when he gained an unexpected profit.
Specifically, he usually made that face when he saved money on drinks by lying, or when he scammed someone into getting a rare artifact for the price of a cheap antique.
Well, it’s obvious.
Inferring from his personality and the current situation, he probably thought I was here to take an artifact he cherished, but since I asked for something he was willing to give up, he’s acting like that.
Well, I could just wreck him and take it all, but I don’t have enough ill will toward him to go that far.
Aside from being a major scammer, he’s someone who hasn’t really killed many people.
I’ll let it slide.
I don’t plan on seeing him again anyway, and after torturing him, taking things that weren’t in the original plan feels a bit too much.
Of course, for a split second, I did think that since I’d already gone too far, maybe I should just go full villain.
“Hey, hurry up and take it out, what are you—”
Just as I was about to ask what he was doing, the object he was fiddling with suddenly burst into an intense light.
For a moment, I thought this madman had finally thrown his life away because he couldn’t bear to lose an artifact, but his panicked expression didn’t seem like a lie.
When I signaled the Chairperson and she shook her head, I knew for sure.
Above all, the light right now was only flashy on the outside; it didn’t feel particularly threatening.
In fact, it almost felt like it was… welcoming something.
No, it was probably just the light from an artifact. You might wonder how it could feel “welcoming,” but just looking at it, I somehow felt that the light was quite glad to see us—specifically, me.
And even as he tried desperately to stop it, the artifact floated up and drifted right in front of me, revealing its form.
What he had been touching was a reddish gourd.
“N-No…!!!”
Since he was touching it, I thought it was a treasure chest or something, but a gourd?
[What is your name?]
I don’t know how, but I could feel that this was a Master Ceremony, started by the artifact to choose a new owner.
“…You wouldn’t let me receive a Master Ceremony even if your life depended on it!”
I tried to tell the con artist, who was staring at me with dead eyes, that I had no intention of stealing the artifact. But unfortunately, the artifact had no intention of letting me go and continued to block my path.
[What is your name?]
“…It’s Kang So-hyun.”
[Kang So-hyun? Is it really Kang So-hyun?]
“Yeah, but I have no intention of becoming your mas—”
[Answer.]
“Huh?”
[You did it, didn’t you?]
In that moment, both he and I felt that something had gone horribly wrong, but it was already too late.
The red gourd suddenly began to suck me in with incredible force.
“W-What…!?”
“Stop…! Stop it! Purple Gold Red Gourd…!”
The Purple Gold Red Gourd…?
No, wait. Why the hell is Sun Wukong’s gourd showing up here…!
As an accident that neither he, I, nor my companions expected unfolded, a past conversation I had with him suddenly flashed through my mind.
— Huh? My hardest adventure? I thought you said you weren’t interested before?
— Haha, it was definitely when I raided the dungeon called the Treasury of the Heavenly Palace. The requirements to apply for the raid party were so strict, you have no idea how hard it was to forge my certifications.
— The item I found there is my greatest treasure. What is it? I won’t tell you, because I feel like the Boss would demand I hand it over.
Right, I remember now.
This bastard.
He never told me what his most precious treasure was, but he did have a flask he was strangely fond of.
I should have realized it when a guy who didn’t care about anything that wasn’t an artifact cherished a simple “liquor bottle” so much.
[From now on, we shall begin the Master Ceremony.]
I thought about trying to endure it with Reinforcement, but if I forced myself to resist, the suction would only get stronger and cause chaos in the surroundings.
It seemed better to just go in alone.
Seriously, it would have been a disaster if I’d brought the kids.
The current party members should be fine.
“I’ll be back in a bit.”
As soon as I finished speaking, the other party members tried to grab me, but there was no way they could catch someone who had already leaped toward the gourd.
With that bizarre experience of being sucked into the gourd, my consciousness gradually faded into darkness.