163 Just a Pill of Sugar (1/2)

”You are a damn psychopath!” *cough cough* Cried the black robed man while in deep shock.

Daniel rose back up on his feet, while simply saying ”I see, another round then..”

”WAIT! PLEASE!”

But Daniel did not stop. Instead, he made one of the thorns float in the air, and fly straight into the man's freshly healed side.

The man could feel the flesh of his chest being torn apart once again, and the spiked thorn make its way in between his ribs.

*AAAAAARGH* ”PLEASE STOP!”

A second thorn flew into the man's body, and cut right into the opposite side of the man's chest.

The pain was unbearable, and the man was about to lose consciousness, unfortunately, the moment Daniel heard the screams stop, he let out a small lightning bolt that shook the man awake.

”ENOUGH PLEASE!!” Shouted the man in desperation.

This time, Daniel stopped. He once again took a knee in front of the man, and said ”You've killed a fair amount of people in my house.. And somebody ordered you to.. If you tell me the truth, I'll stop.. Lie to me once, and I won't come back for half a day.”

The man was utterly terrified. He had been interrogated more than once before, and resisting to torture was something that he had been trained into. Unfortunately, he had only met torturers which would have some regard for his life, or that actually seemed interested in hearing him out.

With Daniel, it was a different story. It looked like Daniel would simply kill him on a whim..

That was Daniel's tactic. He didn't want the man to think that his information was too important for him to not be killed for it, and in fact, it wasn't.

There was a sort of logic in the practice of torture with the purpose of extracting informations.

One could try the nice approach, which consisted in trying to convince the person that had been captured that his employers did not care about him, that they would be able to protect him and his family, and that collaborating would be the only chance of having a happy ending that he would ever have.

Another tactic was to threaten the prisoner's family, but that only worked if the person's identity was known to his captors, or if he even had someone to be threatened with..

The third method, was to go straight to the physical violence, but that would have a risk of the prisoner to shut himself in, and give away fabricated informations just so that the pain would stop.

All of these approaches had one thing in common.. The torturer would not want the prisoner to die. Of course, these tactics might have worked on a sane person, but Daniel had decided to approach the interrogation differently. He could tell the difference between a lie and the truth if he put it in a way where saying the truth meant gaining karma, and lying meant losing it.

That was the reason why he had said what he had just said. If the man accused somebody innocent, he would lose karma, while if he accused the culprit, he would gain it, or his karma could not change.

That was one of the ways Daniel had found to manipulate karma into working for him.

”Okay.. okay.. Look, the guy I got this job from is a broker for killers.. He owns a shop of alchemical ingredients and instruments in the northern marketplace..” Said the black-robed man through heavy breaths.

Daniel immediately noticed the dark red number that floated above the man's name decrease slightly. He was telling the truth.

”Who gave this to you?” Asked Daniel after making the small black box appear in front of the black-robed man.

”I've made it myself.. It's not that hard.. Flammable minerals separated from highly flammable gases in liquid form, and encased in a metallic box. That's why I've been given this job.. The objective I was given was to make as much damage as possible.”

Daniel became pensive for a few moments, then, he said ”How do I approach this broker? What kind of power does he have close to him?”

”He is a middle man.. He has a couple of low level goons and nothing else. Tell him that you want to commission a hit job..” Responded the back-robed man.

”It wasn't that hard now, was it?” Asked Daniel with a faint smile on his face.

The man suddenly felt uncomfortable. He looked at Daniel's smile, and said ”What now?.. I know nothing else..”

”I know..” Responded Daniel, before lifting the two thorns in the air, and using his control over them to pierce right into the man's brain, killing him on the spot.

He then left the pocket dimension.

-----

It was now time for Daniel to attend the lecture in the academy.

Despite the problems with his company, he couldn't afford to miss any of the lectures. He still needed to make a good impression on his instructors, after all, the school belonged to a group that was part of The Poisonous Rose.

He also didn't know if the news of the attack to his company had spread within the school, and if people from The Poisonous Rose were aware of it, he would want them to see that he was capable of properly dealing with his problems.

So, as if nothing happened, Daniel showed up to the lecture, and took a seat in between Alesia, and Serf.

Daniel could see the eyes of half of the class directed at him. The voice had clearly spread, and many were surprised of seeing him there.

In a couple of minutes, a tall and partially bald middle aged man entered the classroom. Daniel immediately recognized him as the person which had conducted the lecture a couple of days earlier.

”I seriously hope the lot of you put your mind into practice. Remember, even though the assignment was to practice making sugar pills, those are methods you will have to use during the production of most alchemical products. They are the very basics procedures..” Said the man with a firm and loud voice.

He then turned to look at the first person in the front row, and added ”You, come.. Show us what you've learned.”

The person that had been called, was a young woman to which a gold badge had been assigned during the registration.

The instructor made the ingredients appear in front of her, and then, let her demonstrate her progress.