Chapter 391: Torture, Information, and Detachment (1/2)

Despite bouncing around his cell for half a day like an oversized baby in a diaper, Kaven Mor the Hill Shaman did not give the information Angora wanted.

In the end, he was considered half a chosen one-even though he was not one in an orthodox sense. His outstanding powers came from the Lord of the Peaks’ generous strengthening of his believers when his wager against Xi Wei began as a hasty, last-minute effort. Still, half a chosen one was a chosen one, and held a higher position in their church. On the other hand, for a god like the Lord of the Peaks who had no formal religion, his chosen one would therefore show up in a form of someone holding the position of village chief.

The threat of his bestiality being known to all could not force Kaven Mor to betray his allies either. Betraying allies was usually no big deal for the hill-folk since they were bandits who knew nothing about morals, and friends were made to be betrayed. However, with two churches in conflict and the clash itself involving their gods, betraying his allies now was not too different from betraying the Lord of the Peaks.

That was exactly why Kaven Mor decided to grit his teeth and weather through it even if his name would get dragged through the mud.

However, that was within Angora and Xi Wei’s calculations, which was why Angora read about the other torture techniques included in the reference materials for his quest. For example, there was the technique of painting the person’s soles with bee honey and have goats or other livestock lick it, a torture technique which killed humans from laughter back on Earth.

Another was to bury a person beneath the ground, open a hole in their head to pour in mercury, forcing them to struggle amidst extensive pain and wanting to break out of their skin and leaving it in the mud—that was most likely just a rumor since it was unrealistic for Earth, because humans would die when mercury was poured into them and they had no chance of crawling out of their own skin. However, this world has sacred arts for healing, and even if no clerics would be willing to cooperate with such inhumanity, Angora could simply rely on several bottles of cola to achieve the same effect.

Likewise, skinning was even more cruel in this world. After the victim was tied up, they would be kept alive through sacred arts or potions while their flesh was peeled off piece by piece, tormented by the extreme agony without the chance of dying in the process…

The more he read, the more Angora himself felt uncomfortable.

If his faith was not so strong and Xi Wei had never done something so outrageous, the reference material would have been evidence enough that the God of Games was an evil god demanding ritual sacrifices.

It also left Angora rejoicing that he did not bring Vela with him to the dungeon. She would have nightmares even if she was a girl from a border town who was much stronger than the delicate city girls of Tunaya.

On the other hand, Kaven Mor directly fell apart. Begging for his death in his cell, he started bounced around again as if trampolining (which looked like a cheerful scene to outsiders) before eventually giving up and revealing all the information he had, hoping he could exchange that for sweet death.

And once he got his hands on the first hand information, Angora promptly uploaded it on the Player forums and accomplished the quest Xi Wei assigned him.

The situation was actually not complex, and indeed simple and straightforward.

There were three major hill-folk tribes near the Valla Empire that could threaten the Sky Horizon, the weakest of which was the major tribe led by Kaven Mor himself, which had less than three thousand standard warriors. Around eighteen hundred were captured by the Players in the battle before, and of the remaining twelve hundred, half were killed on the spot while half had fled, and were basically useless.

However, when Kaven Mor launched his assault, two of the tribes further away were rapidly advancing to the Crookes’ refugee camp as well.

Those two tribes boast a combined population of twenty-five thousand, although they had less than ten thousand warriors. Still, it would be troublesome even if they really joined forces to assault the Sky Horizon.