Chapter 159: From Annihilation to Interrogation (1/2)

In the end, Loren wondered if they used more force than necessary to deal with the bandits.

Attacked from the front and the rear by Tizona’s fire and Gula’s Gluttony power, the bandits weren’t able to regroup for a retaliation. They fell into disorder with no need for interference from Loren and Lapis, couldn’t properly fight back, and ended up either being burned to ashes or becoming food to some invisible stomach.

“Don’t kill them all, alright? Leave some that look high-ranked.”

Loren reminded. Tizona was worried about the fire spreading and had been fighting as carefully as possible, but Gula was in high spirit and without his warning, she might had eaten them all.

“I’ve no clue what high-ranked people look like though?”

“Those that look fatter, or have better equipment, or similar.”

“They al’ look the same to me.”

“The ones who don’t come out to intercept us and draw back inside.”

“Is that so?”

Choosing some better-looking bandits, Gula made them lose consciousness without even touching them. Loren was concerned about how much of this could be explained by the magician ruse, but Lapis didn’t seem to care, and Tizona was too preoccupied with her own battle to even look in Gula’s direction, so they could probably feign ignorance when asked.

Loren himself didn’t have to use his sword at all. Even though some bandits attacked Lapis and him, all could be handled barehanded. Lapis never left his side, and didn’t engage in the fights.

The sounds of battles began to calm down and before long, they completely stopped. All that remained were piles of charred corpses and countless gouged marks on the ground. Only one part of the structure left almost untouched.

There should have been nearly a hundred bandits at this depot, but only about ten were still alive after the battle. The others had all been burned or eaten. Loren looked around the battlefield and believed that none had escaped. Even if some had been able to, their number would be too few to form a group, and they probably would return to their HQ or end up dead on the road somewhere.

“I’ve left some alive like you said. What do we do with them?”

Gula asked while lighting up the magic lights. She had eaten some of their spirit, causing them to lose consciousness. They would not wake up until Gula gave back what she had eaten, or until they had recovered the loss by themselves. She had done the same to him before, so Loren understood its effect very well.

“Let’s interrogate them, shall we?”

There was no other answer to Gula’s question. The town asked them to deal some damages to this depot, and what they had done was more than enough. They could end their job here and go back, but Loren thought that if they had gone through all the trouble to destroy one depot, they might as well get some intel about the bandits’ HQ.

“You plan to do that again?”

Gula asked with a frown and shivered, but Loren shook his head. When they intercepted the town raid earlier, Loren had captured and interrogated one of the bandits to acquire intel about this depot. However, he was just an ex-mercenary turned adventurer and torturing wasn’t his job.

Generally, only the tortured was subjected to pain during a torture session, but the act also took a toll on the torturer’s physical and mental strength. It wouldn’t be the case if the torturer liked it, but unfortunately Loren didn’t. In short, he was not very willing to torture someone either.

Loren picked one amongst the surviving bandits and tied him up. After checking multiple times to make sure he couldn’t move, Loren told Gula to wake him.

“Dun want to, y’know.”

Gula grumbled while returning what she had nibbled from the bandit. He regained consciousness, but seemed unable to grasp the situation he was in at first: he looked around with vacant eyes and squirmed on the ground. When he finally caught on, he struggled like a worm and shouted:

“You! If you think you can just walk away doing this to me…”

“I am thinking exactly that. Why don’t you look around yourself?”

Loren kicked at the bandit’s stomach, making him cough violently. He pulled him up by the head so that he could see his surroundings more clearly. Seeing how his base had been changed, the bandit lost his words and stopped making a fuss.

“You seem to have understood the situation now.”

“How the hell did you…”

“We are the ones to ask questions, not you.”

Loren replied curtly and lightly (from his own point of view) slammed the bandit’s head to the ground. Bone and meat hit the ground with a dull sound, and the bandit’s head bled. The wound wasn’t deep, but head wounds always tended to bleed more. The blood started drippomh down the bandit’s face, and he groaned in pain.

“Well, I only want to know one thing. Where is your HQ?”

“And what will you do when you know?”

Loren slammed his head again, this time with a bit more force. Being hit once more, the shallow wound opened again and blood flowed more profusely.