The freezing ground and the endless pain wracking his body jolted Manxter awake.
The place seemed to be some sort of cellar, steeped in a cold, damp chill. Icy droplets rolled across his skin in countless beads, making Manxter shiver. His pupils quickly sharpened and focused.
"Right… our ambush before — it failed. And I've become a prisoner… Prisoner… how laughable…"
Manxter felt the searing pain in his thighs and arms, along with the sensation of having no teeth left, leaving his mouth feeling hollow and empty.
"You're awake?"
By the dim, yellowish lamplight, Manxter could see the nobleman who had defeated him today standing right before him. The man's expression was perfectly calm, without a trace of joy, yet it filled Manxter with an instinctive dread.
"You're… dead! You're dead!" Manxter's body trembled, his voice distorted and strange, the words emerging misshapen from his gap-toothed mouth.
"Oh? Is that so? Just because of you?"
Leilin's face was full of mockery. "Or perhaps… because of this!"
Rrrip! The fabric on Manxter's arm was torn away entirely, revealing a branded holy symbol — a strange sigil composed of a dagger and a blood pattern, representing a powerful deity.
The God of Murder — Cyric. In Leilin's memory, though this god possessed great power, he preached murder and conspiracy, delighting in stirring up regional conflicts. Among the gods, he was essentially a troublemaker.
But even so, the church of a true god was clearly a colossal force for Leilin at his current stage.
"Stop trying to fool me! At most, you merely worship the God of Murder. The great God of Murder wouldn't spare his attention for a mortal, let alone a failed good-for-nothing like you!"
Believers died on the continent all the time, but unless they were saints or high-ranking priests, the gods couldn't possibly keep watch over each one. As for ordinary believers, that went without saying.
Unless Leilin committed some act of desecration against a believer's soul, the god would not grow angry or send down divine punishment.
This deep understanding immediately froze Manxter's expression, which then turned ashen.
"Talk! How many more mad dogs like you does that useless son of Marquis Louis — Tim — have under his command?"
Having successfully broken through the other's psychological defenses, Leilin immediately threw out an even bigger bombshell.
"You know?!" Manxter cried out in alarm, which only confirmed Leilin's suspicions. "So that's how it is! The intelligence Tabris gave was indeed the truth — Marquis Louis has been behind everything all along!!"
"Since you already know, you must understand — you can't beat them…" Manxter cackled. "Even if your talent for magic is astonishing, even if you have the rank of a sixth-level wizard, in the eyes of those great nobles, you're nothing…"
It was clear that his previous defeat at Leilin's hands still gnawed at him.
As for the "sixth-level wizard" bit? Leilin was quite pleased to see the other man had guessed wrong, and he had no intention of correcting that misconception.
After all, compared to the reality that he could cast zero-level spells without limit and was unaffected by the Weave, the notion that he was simply hiding his true wizard rank was far more convincing — and it helped him avoid exposure.
"Enough! I don't have time for idle chat with you. Now, I need you to tell me everything — how many people Tim has under his command, where they are, when the pirates plan to make landfall, and all their arrangements on the continent… Everything! Everything you know, you must tell me!"
Leilin's expression turned cold, and a sharp gleam shot from his eyes.
"Heh heh… I won't talk even if you kill me! So what if it's torture? Bring it on!" Manxter was acting utterly shameless now.
Thieves and assassins like him had clearly undergone special training — they had a high tolerance for pain.
"It seems you're quite confident in your ability to endure?" Leilin glanced at Manxter, his eyes seemingly filled with something like… pity?
"Very soon you'll learn just how wonderful a thing death is, and that everything you've endured until now was nothing…"
The joints in Leilin's fingers cracked with a crisp sound.
When it came to tormenting body and mind, there were probably fewer than a handful of people in the entire world of gods with more experience than him.
His astonishing surgical skill and mastery of Potionology meant he could easily keep the other person alive, to say nothing of the power of spells to influence the mind.
Very soon, the other man would discover that having the option to die was a blessed thing indeed.
A sinister light flickered in Leilin's eyes…
In truth, Manxter broke quickly. After only three hours — before Leilin had employed even a hundredth of the techniques in his arsenal — the man was crying and begging, confessing everything he knew, asking only for Leilin to finish him off immediately.
Once Leilin had confirmed he'd wrung every last scrap of information from the man and verified the truthfulness of the intelligence, he didn't kill him outright. Nor did he continue tormenting the poor wretch. Instead, he simply tossed him back into the dungeon.
A test subject of this caliber — a fairly high-level professional — was hard to come by.