Chapter 180: Not wait

I, for the first time, tortured a man. The experience was more complicated than I had thought. To make people talk, eh? People who potentially had the information you were after? But you have to make sure they don't either lie or make up some nonsense to you? Pain alone couldn't be enough. More than pain, they had to feel a sense of desperation so intense so that the whole process went the way it was supposed to.

Since it was my first time, it made sense that I was far from being an expert. Not that I wanted experience in this craft, but I had nine more pieces of cloth from criminals to go with anyway. So I twisted the man's neck and was done with it.

I got up, dusted off my clothes, and broke out of the run-down house. To get myself some friends.

From then, I ran from house to house in order to gather information. As I had thought before, I knew the information I wanted probably wasn't lying anywhere around here. If a thief guild still existed in Roerdenville, it might as well be somewhere else. Rumors had it that the siege of a master thief's secret mafia could be found in the lawless area, but you couldn't always trust rumors. Still, I had time on my hands anyway. So, navigating through the many dark roads of the lawless area, I bumped into prey, time and time again, hoping they would have a clue about that thief group of people.

I needed the information first. So I did as the old man quickly taught me. Along the journey, the System earned me the title "Hellish Torturer." Needless to go into the details about how I was given this name. People, man and woman alike, yelled, cried, and shrieked as I played with them, breaking one piece off of them after the other.

There were just lots of mice, and I happened to be a cat, meow.

At some point, I had three pieces of cloth left. The next house was the one presently in front of me. A shack like any other in this wasteland. One of many. Stuffed in between two similar dilapidated houses, which were left deserted, the pile of broken wood sat in front of me, almost creaking in the cold breeze. Through a window, I made out a light coming from a room.

It was when I understood that this habitation was different. I came here to break somebody, but I didn't find any such somebody to break. Two souls were in here, and they belonged to two children: A wee kid and a young lady, neither of them was a criminal.

To navigate from house to house, I followed the high sense statistics and my enhanced dog-like sense of smell—my sense stats read 96, and I had [Enhanced Flair] as a passive. From a faint sense of direction, I first picked up the trails where I basically assaulted the criminals, then tracked them back up to their places where I performed my duty for the night.

In this case, the criminal must have been a night worker. The trail landed me at the murderer's house, but from there, I sensed a less strong smell that guided me off in another direction again.

The shack belonged to a whore. She was the first criminal I witnessed who twisted a dagger in some old man's chest before stealing his coppers and leaving. But the whore herself wasn't home. Her duty kept her elsewhere during the night, apparently. So, the flickering, timid light I saw through a window wasn't hers.

Just as I thought that, it was put out. My footsteps were heard on the creaking front porch. Sounds of a stranger were heard right at their house: The wee boy first cried "Waaaw! Auntie's already back—" and the young lady hushed her kid brother. I was right at the step of their door, but I unfortunately wasn't this auntie person.

"Whaaat? I'm telling you she—" The kid was ready to protest, but he was hushed again, this time severely.

A young lady and her kid brother, alone at night with nothing to defend themselves against any trespassers of the lawless area. Those footsteps couldn't be their aunt, the girl pointed out with a faint whisper. The sound of the young lady's voice was seriously low.

If not for Mana Perception, I couldn't hear her. But I did: Most likely, she said that those steps belonged to some drunk customer of their aunt that came to piss at the step of her door. That sometimes happened.

Ah, but I was afraid the young lady was wrong, too, however. First off, I sure wouldn't just take a piss right there, and even if I wanted to mark my territory here, I wasn't an old drunkard. Still, the sister urged her kid brother to keep silent for a minute.

Lights were out. The plan was to make it look like nobody was home. The old drunkard would go back on his way when he was done, as if nothing ever happened. Then, the wee boy would be happy to fool around with his toys again, and the young lady would go back to her reading.

"...Only, for now... shuuush... you hear?"

"...Mm...hm..."

It was at this time that was when I tried to slide the door open, though. And that was when the door repeatedly shook, in the night, unable to open up because of the lock. Then, that was when both theories were confirmed wrong:

I couldn't be either the aunt—I would have unlocked the door with the keys—and I couldn't be the old drunkard, because I was trying to step in. The boy and his sister froze when they heard my steps, from outside, climbing up their shack, and getting to the windows upstairs.

When I found one window wasn't locked, a long moan of the creaky-rotten wood rang through the silent house. Some more footsteps were heard inside the two kids' abode.

From then, I didn't mind the two children much. Upstairs was all right. The trail of the odor I picked was more intense right there. A room. Was it the owner's? What luxury. The bedroom was perfectly empty if not for the timid presence of a dusty shelf and a few old-looking books, a night table, and sacks of hay next to one another to make a bed.

Cobwebs were hung as decorations. Poverty resided in. There were a bunch of rags and clothes, and my sense of smell told me that it bore the same unperfumed odor as the red piece of cloth I held in my hand.

"Good," I placed a knee to the ground, "so this is what that's about." Whoever owned the cloth in my hand must have come back home to wait for interrogation time as I planned, but then went out again. "And the two littluns downstairs talked about this... aunt person working late at night? Something like that. So that's that." Should I wait, should I not?