Chapter : 473

  He didn’t laugh. He didn’t reply. He simply rose to his feet, a silent, final dismissal of their pathetic attempts at defiance and negotiation. He had offered them the easy way. They had, with their predictable blend of brutish pride and grasping greed, refused it. A shame. It meant he would have to resort to the harder way. For them.

  He turned his back on them, walking a few paces away, as if contemplating their offer, as if considering his next move. The brothers exchanged a nervous, hopeful glance. Was it working? Was he considering their offer?

  Lloyd stopped, his back still to them. He looked at the ruptured, steaming cauldrons, at the foul, bluish sludge that coated the floor, at the pathetic, unconscious forms of the workers buried in the sea of soap foam. He thought of the child with the angry red welts, of the terror in his mother’s eyes, however feigned. He thought of his own team, his loyal, brilliant team, and the cold, sickening knowledge that one of them had betrayed him, had sold their shared dream for a few pieces of silver.

  The cold, controlled focus of the Major General solidified into a hard, sharp, and utterly unforgiving, anger. He had tried to be the strategist, the interrogator. But the weight of the betrayal, the sheer, grubby vileness of the crime these men had perpetrated, demanded a different kind of response. It demanded not just answers. It demanded a confession. A confession wrung from them by a power they could not comprehend, a pain they could not endure.

  He slowly turned back to face them. The brothers saw the shift in his posture instantly. The quiet, almost conversational, figure was gone. In his place stood a judge. An executioner. The white mask seemed to glow with a new, colder, more menacing light.

  “It seems,” Lloyd’s voice was no longer a whisper, but a low, dangerous rumble that seemed to vibrate through the very stones of the cellar, “that you do not yet appreciate the gravity of your situation.” He raised a single, gloved hand. “Allow me,” he said, his voice a promise of impending, absolute pain, “to clarify it for you.”

  The interrogation was no longer about finding the truth. It was about breaking the will. The weight of their coming confession felt heavy in the air, a physical thing, and Lloyd knew, with a grim, cold certainty, that he would get his answers. One way, or another.

  The atmosphere in the subterranean factory, already thick with the chemical stench of failure and the psychic residue of terror, became a crucible of willpower. Lloyd stood before the two bound brothers, a silent, white-masked arbiter, his patience worn thin, his initial attempt at a logical, threat-based interrogation having shattered against their unexpected, and deeply infuriating, wall of defiance.

  Joseph, the bull, spat another glob of bloody saliva onto the soapy floor, his eyes, though wide with a primal fear of the lightning-wreathed goddess still standing sentinel nearby, held a core of brutish, stubborn pride. “You can threaten us all you want, you masked bastard,” he growled, the words a low, pained rumble. “We ain’t rats. We don’t squeal.”

  Jacob, the schemer, had recovered a fraction of his cunning, his terror now channeled into a desperate, wheedling attempt at negotiation. “Think about this, my lord… Ghost… whoever you are!” he pleaded, his voice a high-pitched, sycophantic whine. “You kill us, you learn nothing! Nothing! But spare us… work with us… and we can be of use! The man who helped us… he is powerful! Dangerous! You will need allies to face him! We can be those allies! We can…”

  “Silence,” Lloyd’s voice was a flat, cold command that cut through Jacob’s frantic babbling like a shard of ice. He looked down at them, not with anger, not anymore. That was an inefficient emotion. He looked at them with a kind of weary, clinical detachment, the look of a scientist observing two particularly stubborn lab rats who refused to navigate the maze correctly.

  Chapter : 474

  He understood their defiance now. It wasn't born of courage. It was born of a different, greater fear. They were more afraid of their mysterious informant, their patron, than they were of him. The man who had given them the formula, the man who had called himself Jager, had clearly offered them more than just a business opportunity. He had offered them protection, yes, but he had also, undoubtedly, offered them a very clear, very brutal, understanding of the consequences of betrayal. These two pathetic merchants were caught between a rock and a hard place. On one side, a terrifying, white-masked vigilante with a personal thunderstorm for a sidekick. On the other, a shadowy, powerful benefactor who had likely promised them a fate far worse than a simple, clean death if they ever spoke his name.

  Their loyalty wasn't loyalty. It was a calculated risk assessment, and for now, he was still the lesser of two evils in their terrified minds.

  A fascinating, if deeply irritating, psychological dilemma, his internal Major General noted dispassionately. Conclusion: The perceived threat from the unknown variable (Jager) currently outweighs the perceived threat from the known variable (myself). To extract the required intelligence, I must recalibrate their perception of the immediate threat. I must become the greater evil.

  A slow, cold smile touched Lloyd’s lips beneath the blank white mask. A demonstration was in order. A lesson. One that would be far more persuasive than his earlier classroom performance, and significantly more… visceral.

  “You have made a poor calculation, gentlemen,” he said, his voice a quiet, almost gentle, murmur. He took a slow, deliberate step towards them. “You believe your mysterious friend can protect you. You believe his threats are greater than mine.” He shook his head, a gesture of profound, almost pitying, disappointment. “You are mistaken. His threats are of a future pain. The pain I offer… is immediate. It is absolute. And it is, I assure you, exquisitely, creatively, personal.”

  He stopped directly before the two bound men. He didn't summon his chains again. He didn't need them. He simply raised his hands, palms open. He looked at Joseph, the brawler, the man of brute strength.

  “You pride yourself on your strength, don’t you, Joseph?” Lloyd whispered, his voice a hypnotic, chilling purr. “Your power. Your ability to dominate, to intimidate, to break things.” He focused his will, his Black Ring Eyes flaring to life behind the mask, their luminous bluish-white rings a terrifying, alien glow in the greasy yellow lamplight.

  He didn't project a ring. He didn't try to seal Joseph's senses. He did something far more subtle. Far more cruel. He reached out with his Void power, not the Ferrum Steel, but the Austin control, and he placed a single, invisible, metaphysical seal. Not on Joseph’s body. But on the very concept of his physical strength.

  Joseph’s eyes widened in sudden, confused terror. He felt… nothing. A profound, terrifying weakness washed over him, a sudden, inexplicable draining of all the power from his limbs. His muscles, which had been tense with defiance, suddenly felt like waterlogged sacks of grain. The strength he had relied upon his entire life, the brute force that was the core of his identity, had simply… vanished. He tried to flex his bicep, to feel the familiar, reassuring bulge of power. Nothing. He was as weak as a newborn kitten.

  “What… what did you do to me?” he gasped, his voice a thin, reedy squeak, the terror in his eyes absolute.

  “I simply… turned it off,” Lloyd replied softly. “A demonstration. To show you that the very things you believe define you, your strengths, are merely permissions that I can revoke at any time.” He then turned his glowing, terrifying gaze to Jacob.

  “And you, Jacob,” he murmured. “You are the clever one, are you not? The schemer. The alchemist. Your mind is your weapon.” He smiled, a gesture that was utterly, terrifyingly, without warmth. “Let’s see how clever you are when you can’t think.”

  He placed another seal. Not on Jacob’s senses, not on his strength. But on his ability to form a coherent, logical thought.

  Jacob’s face, which had been a mask of wheedling, terrified cunning, went slack. His eyes unfocused, a look of profound, almost bovine, confusion washing over him. He opened his mouth to speak, to plead, to bargain, but only a string of nonsensical, babbling syllables emerged. “The… the fish… it sings… in the key of… purple…” he mumbled, his own mind suddenly a foreign, incomprehensible landscape. He could not connect a thought, could not form a sentence. He was trapped, adrift in a sea of meaningless, chaotic noise.

  Chapter : 475

  Lloyd looked down at the two broken men. One, a powerhouse rendered as weak as a child. The other, a schemer reduced to a drooling imbecile. It was a brutal, absolute, and deeply, profoundly, unsettling demonstration of the true, insidious power of the Black Ring Eyes.

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  He let them stew in their private hells for a long, silent minute. He watched Joseph struggle uselessly against his bonds, his powerful muscles refusing to obey him. He watched Jacob babble to himself, lost in a world of purple-singing fish.

  Then, he released the seals.

  Strength flooded back into Joseph’s limbs with a sudden, jarring rush. Coherent thought crashed back into Jacob’s mind with the force of a physical blow. They both gasped, panting, their faces pale with the aftershocks of their respective torments. They looked at each other, then at the silent, white-masked figure before them. The last vestiges of their defiance, of their hope, of their foolish loyalty to their mysterious benefactor, had been utterly, comprehensively, scoured away. They had just been given a taste of a power so far beyond their comprehension that it might as well have been the wrath of a vengeful god.

  Lloyd crouched down again, his voice still a quiet, gentle whisper. “Now,” he said, the sound making both men flinch as if from a physical blow. “Let us have our conversation again. And this time, I expect you will be far more… forthcoming.” He paused. “Who is Jager?”

  —

  The cellar was a chamber of broken wills. The Croft brothers, who had moments before been clinging to a desperate, defiant silence, were now just two shattered men, staring up at the white-masked figure with the wide, vacant eyes of those who have gazed into the abyss and found it staring back. The psychological torment Lloyd had inflicted with his Black Ring Eyes had been more effective than any physical torture. He had not just broken their bodies; he had invaded their minds, temporarily stripping them of the very essence of their identities—Joseph’s strength, Jacob’s cunning. He had shown them, with chilling, absolute clarity, that he could unmake them with a single, silent thought.

  Their wall of defiance had not just been breached; it had been atomized. The fear of their mysterious benefactor, Jager, a fear that had seemed so powerful moments ago, was now a pale, insignificant shadow compared to the raw, existential terror of the man who stood before them.

  “Now,” Lloyd’s voice was a low, calm murmur, but it echoed in the silent, stinking cellar with the force of a judge’s gavel. “Let us try this again. Who. Is. Jager?”

  Jacob Croft, the schemer, the man whose mind had so recently been a chaotic soup of purple-singing fish, broke first. A high-pitched, keening whimper escaped his lips. Tears, thick and greasy, streamed down his pale, terrified face, carving clean paths through the grime.

  “I’ll talk!” he shrieked, his voice a ragged, desperate plea. “Gods, I’ll tell you everything! Anything! Just… just don’t do that again! Don’t put me back in the… the noise!”

  Joseph, the brawler, shot his brother a look of furious, betrayed contempt. “Shut up, you sniveling coward!” he snarled, though his own voice trembled, the memory of his sudden, absolute weakness a cold, crawling thing in his gut. “Don’t you dare! You know what he’ll do to us! To our families!”

  “What he will do?” Jacob screamed back, his voice cracking with hysteria. He gestured wildly with his head towards Lloyd. “What about what this one will do?! Did you not feel it, brother?! He turned my mind to mush! He can unmake us! Jager will kill us, yes! But this… this thing… it will erase us!”

  The raw, primal terror in Jacob’s voice, the absolute conviction of his words, seemed to finally shatter the last, stubborn vestiges of Joseph’s brutish pride. He looked at Lloyd, at the blank, white, emotionless mask, at the quiet, terrifying stillness of the figure before him. And he finally, truly, understood. They were not dealing with a man. They were dealing with a force. And it was a force that had already won.

  Joseph’s broad shoulders slumped in utter, comprehensive defeat. The fire in his eyes died, leaving only the grey, cold ashes of despair. “He’s… he’s right,” he mumbled, his voice a hoarse, broken whisper. “It’s over.”

  Lloyd watched their final collapse with a cold, dispassionate satisfaction. The threat recalibration had been successful. The demonstration had achieved its objective. He crouched down again, his voice still a quiet, almost gentle, murmur. “Then talk. And do not lie to me. I will know if you are lying. And the consequences for lying,” he paused, letting the implication hang, heavy and cold, in the air, “will be… permanent. Start from the beginning. Who is Jager?”

  Chapter : 476

  Jacob, his face a mask of tear-streaked terror, began to talk, the words spilling out of him in a frantic, desperate torrent. It was a pathetic story of greed, of ambition, of two small-time criminals who had been given a chance to play in a game far, far beyond their league.

  “He came to us a month ago,” Jacob began, his voice trembling. “Just… appeared. In this very office. Out of the shadows. Just like you.” He shuddered at the memory. “He called himself Jager. Said he was a… a broker. An agent for a powerful, anonymous client who wished to see the new Ferrum soap venture… fail. Spectacularly.”

  He described Jager. A tall, thin man, always cloaked, his face always hidden in shadow. His voice was quiet, cultured, but his eyes… Jacob shivered again. “His eyes… they were not right. They glowed. A faint, sickly, green light. Like… like swamp gas.”

  A Black Spirit user, Lloyd’s mind supplied instantly. The pieces were beginning to fall into place.

  “He offered us a deal,” Jacob continued, the words tumbling over each other in his haste. “He gave us everything. The formula… not the whole thing, but the basics. The idea of using a softer lye for a liquid. The concept of the pump. He even provided the initial funding. Twenty Gold Coins. A fortune! All we had to do was set up the production, create the counterfeit, and flood the market with it. He said… he said his client wanted to ruin the AURA brand’s reputation before it could ever truly be established. He wanted to poison the well.”

  “And you agreed,” Lloyd stated, his voice flat, devoid of judgment.

  “We… we were fools!” Jacob wailed. “The money… it was too much to resist! We saw a chance to be rich, to be powerful! We never thought… we never imagined…”

  Lloyd’s patience, which had been stretched thin, finally snapped. He was tired of their pathetic excuses, their sniveling confessions. He had the core of what he needed—the name, Jager; the description, a Black Spirit user. But he needed more. He needed leverage. He needed something to take back to his father, to the King. He needed a thread to pull that would unravel Jager’s entire network.

  And he knew, with a sudden, chilling certainty, that their fear, while potent, might not be enough to make them give up their true master. He needed to show them a power so absolute, so overwhelming, that the fear of Jager would seem like a child’s nightmare compared to the reality of the god of thunder standing before them.

  He stood up slowly, the quiet, gentle interrogator vanishing, replaced once more by the cold, implacable arbiter of consequence. “Your confession is… noted,” he said, his voice a low, chilling whisper. “But it is not enough. You are holding something back. The name of the noble house that funded you. You lied about that earlier. You will not lie about it again.”

  “No! I swear!” Jacob shrieked. “It was just Jager! We don’t know who he works for! He never told us!”

  “A likely story,” Lloyd replied, his voice a silken, disbelieving murmur. He turned his blank, white gaze towards the far end of the cellar. “It seems,” he sighed, a sound of profound, theatrical disappointment, “that a more… pointed… question is required.”

  He raised his hand.

  The air in the cellar, which had been thick and foul, suddenly became crisp, charged, electric. The low hum of contained power, the scent of ozone, returned, a hundred times more potent than before.

  He focused his will. He built the blueprint in his mind, drawing upon the vast, raging river of power he shared with Fang Fairy. He envisioned the spear. Not a javelin this time. Not a small, surgical instrument. But a full-scale, devastating, and utterly, comprehensively, terrifying, Lance of Judgment.

  The air before him tore apart. Not with a shimmer, but with a silent, violent, reality-bending rip. A point of light, so brilliant, so impossibly white-hot it was painful to look at, appeared, then elongated, solidified, into a weapon of pure, divine wrath. It was a spear of solidified lightning, ten feet long, thick as a man’s arm, its surface a churning, incandescent vortex of blue and white energy, its tip a point of such absolute, terrifying power that it seemed to be consuming the very light around it. It did not hum; it sang. A high, keening, cosmic note that vibrated in the bones, in the soul, the sound of a star being born, and dying, in the same instant.