Book Three – Chapter Five – Part Eight – The Act of Subterfuge and Sabotage

Itarr briefly wondered about telling Servi the truth. While she hadn't manipulated any emotions in a while, it was because she literally couldn’t. Instead, she chose to keep a close eye on Servi’s emotional composition. Thus far, it had only slightly changed. It was the same as when she decided to join the Mafia. The only thing Itarr could think of was that the two emotional compositions of Servi had started vying for control of her body.

One belonging to the Servi Itarr had known for the past few months, and the other belonging to whatever was inside that mysterious cage. It was good versus evil, and Itarr didn’t know which was which. She believed she knew a way to fix things, but she couldn’t put any of them into play until Momo was rescued. Not only because she would be a vital part of the recovery factor, but because Itarr realized that saving Momo would be the only way to remove the emotional locks that prevented them from drastically changing.

Believe in Momo, Servi. She’s our best friend. I know she—

“I’m not mad at her. I’m not even disappointed. I should’ve told her sooner. Much, much, sooner. I can only hope she’ll forgive and take me back. If she doesn’t, I….. No, let’s not think of that right now….”

That's right, we don’t need to think about those things. Our first priority should be saving Momo.

“Agreed. Itarr?” Servi looked down at her ID while she gripped the doorknob. It was a position she had been in for quite a few minutes.

Yes?

"I’m glad you're here. Talking to me. I don’t feel alone anymore. That also means I don’t have to sleep with Carrie anymore. I hated doing that. I didn’t want to lick or touch her... I just wanted to be needed. But… I’m needed by you, right?”

That's right! I need you, Servi!

The torn girl smiled. “All I need to do is hold my ID close to me while I sleep.”

What are you going to tell Carrie?

“Nothing. When it’s time for me to sleep with Carrie, I’ll use Kaasuvuoto to fill her room with sleeping gas. I’ll probably have to strip her, so she thinks we actually did something, but that's all. I don’t need her anymore. I only need you.”

And Momo, too.

"Yes, and her…"

I know we should get a move on, but I want to hear what you’re going to do about Old Man’s granddaughter.

“I don’t know. A part of me wants to leave her be, and the other wants me to learn Lux Dei Omnipotentis. However, I don’t owe her or him anything. Why should I spend my Potential on a single-use skill for some girl I don’t know? Do I want to help her? Do I even want to help her?”

I don’t know. Itarr wrote, then the Goddess stopped writing and just started talking to herself, even though her voice wouldn't reach anyone.

Please, I promise to tell you absolutely everything, but it has to wait.

“I don’t know if you can do this, but try not to let it leak out of Deset.”

I’ll do my best. By the way, I’ve been letting it build up in this room. The moment you open the door, a whole bunch of gas is going to rush out like a flood. I have it on sleeping gas. I don’t know how long it'll last, so we might want to be quick.

“Got it. Use Telekinesis to fly the ID in front of me. Are you ready?”

I am!

With a confident nod, Servi opened the door. A tremendous amount of yellow gas exploded out, instantly blanketing the entire room in a matter of milliseconds. Servi glanced at Old Man.

“He was already asleep before, so I don’t know how effective Kaasuvuoto is,” she said, opening the door to the hallway.

Walking through it, she heard a dull noise to her left. It was Carrie, lying on her side in a way that looked uncomfortable. One hand was thrown across her body while the other was flat against the floor. Her tail limply laid pressed against her back while the faintest noise of respiration echoed about.

“Seems like it’s working. And quick, too. Let’s go!” Servi jogged around the corner and saw a few Mafia members walking about. They struggled to stay awake. Some were cutting their fingers. One Elf stabbed his dagger into his thigh, but the gas was too strong. Kaasuvuoto was a Rank 1 skill, after all. If it didn’t act fast, then it would be useless.

Making her way to the cafeteria was child's play. The skill said the user would not be immune to the gas's effects, which included being unable to see through the yellow fog, but Servi had no trouble whatsoever. Itarr explained that it was because her True Immortality registered the gas's appearance as something harmful. She didn’t know the exact specifics, but it was like her eyes had a filter that visually erased the fog.

“That’s amazing! Itarr, you’re amazing!” Servi said, shouting a bit louder than she wanted to. She glanced at a Kobold, who'd fallen asleep against the wall. The sudden noise didn’t do a single thing. Suddenly, she had something she wanted to test out.

Taking out a dagger, she spun it around her fingers before stabbing his neck. He made a noise, but that hulking yellow body never quaked.

It seems that pain can’t wake them. I wonder if they’ll wake immediately when the gas disappears.

“Let’s find out,” Servi said. She proceeded to kill the Kobold and absorb his body before wandering through the twin doors leading to the cafeteria.

Servi walked over to the blue Singi, who unfortunately had a taste for eyes, and lifted him. She tossed him a few meters, sliding on the tiled surface until his head cracked against the wall. Itarr knew what Servi wanted, so she went ahead and absorbed the gas in a small localized area while changing its instructions.

Almost immediately, the Singi woke up clutching his head. He glanced at Servi and stumbled back.

“Wasn’t I eating? Why’re you here? And what’s with that yellow fog?” he asked.

Servi ignored him and spoke to Itarr. “Seems like you were right. Hey, tell me everything you know about the Mafia. I suppose it’s a long shot, but do you know where the Rank 5 base is?”

“Mafia? Why the fuck should I tell you? You made me eat eyes!” he exclaimed.

“No, I didn't. I killed that Kobold because it was going to help me in the long run. And now that you won’t answer my question, well, it's more likely you don’t know a single fucking thing, so I’m going to have to kill you.”

“WAI—” he started to say before his head hit the ground. Servi had brought out a sword and gave him a quick death. It was the least she could do. After absorbing the two parts of his body, Itarr configured Kaasuvuoto to flow freely again.

That’s good to know.

“It is, but they might wake up regardless. We have to find the 6th’s room,” Servi said. She ran down the hallway where she killed Salcedo and opened the doors she didn’t have the chance to earlier.

They were rooms belonging to the Numbered, but none that she was interested in. The first was empty except for a half-empty bottle of wine, while the second had 24 stacks of wooden plates in the corner. After a thorough search, they found nothing. Kicking the door, Servi ran back to the fork in the road and took the other direction.

She came across a similar hallway, but there was a massive door located at the end. It was black and metal, with an imposing keyhole in its doorknob.

“I’ll check that later. Let’s check out these rooms.” Servi opened the first of four doors via absorption. Inside, she found a room full of weapons and a tiny bed that held a sleeping Kobold. A 9 was engraved in his back. His large body was covered with cuts and scrapes, evidence of the bar fight he was recovering from. Servi glanced around for a note or journal but didn’t find one.

“Shit! I wanted to frame him.”

Servi, remember the Kobold you killed a few minutes ago? There was a letter on him. You can copy his handwriting.

“That’ll be good enough.” After projecting herself inside the ring, she hastily wrote a letter with brutish strokes and dirty angles. It was about how he couldn’t take it anymore and wanted to end his life. Before he did, he wanted to take revenge on the Mafia that ruined his purpose by poisoning the area using a gas he had acquired from a 6th. Servi wrote that it ended with him hoping the gas chocked everyone to death.

“Even if it doesn’t make sense, all I need is for them to believe something is seriously wrong. And the odds are probably in my favor. I’d imagine at least some Kobolds are borderline crazy, especially if they joined the Mafia,” she said, slitting his large throat with one of the daggers she found. “It’s not like they’re going to be alive at the end of the week. The best I can do is make it painless. Honestly, I shouldn’t even do that. It should be painful and horrifying. I should be ripping their chests open and clawing out their hearts and innards.”

Save that for the Boss. He deserves it for what he did.

“Agreed. That bastard's death will not be painless. Now, let’s go.” Servi wanted to absorb the weapons but stopped herself. It wouldn’t do any good in the long run. She ran out of his room after taping the letter to his door.  With haste, Servi entered the next room. It was locked, but that wasn’t a problem for Telekinesis.

It wasn’t a Kobold, but an Elven woman laid half-covered up. Her soft hands gripped a large, phallic object made of smooth metal with a flared base. After a quick search, Servi found nothing except a few bows and some arrows. Other than the green walls, the room itself wasn’t anything special. Like before, Servi wrote a fake note by copying Eletri’s handwriting. It was a suicide letter, saying that she was threatened by a 6th into having sex with him. She couldn’t live with it, so she helped her Kobold friend by assisting him with gathering the gas used to put all of Deset to sleep.

Servi was out of the room after slitting the Elf’s neck. Taping the note to the door, Servi entered the third room to find it empty. The fourth was more of the same. With failure knocking at her mind, Servi left the last room and walked to the imposing metal door at the back of the hallway.

“Guess we only have this one. Based on how it is, I bet the 6th is behind here.” Like Servi guessed, the door was locked. “Absorption is the ultimate key,” she said, strolling through the empty doorway. With a quick snap, the intimidating piece of metal took its post once more.

Servi saw a staircase near the back, so she did the next logical thing and ascended it. At the top, she found another iron door. After absorbing it, strolling through, and putting it back, she grinned.

“I do believe we found what we were looking for,” Servi muttered. Four doors stood in front of her, but they were likely decoys.  She only had eyes for her goal, which stood at the end of the corridor.

‘Room of the 6th,’ it said. Servi wasted no time at all and ran for it. Her footsteps echoed off the red walls and black floors; no doubt the brooding color scheme was a pathetic attempt to mentally devastate anyone who was brought here.

She didn’t try the door, choosing to absorb it outright since it was easy, and stepped inside.

I don’t know what I expected, Itarr wrote, but it certainly wasn’t this.

It was a torture room. With tools to Servi's left and tools to her right, the whole room was full of tools. When she looked up, Servi was a bit surprised to see bloody instruments of torture stuck to the roof above her.

Of them, she saw clamps, knives, metal prods, glass shards, and glass cages filled with creepy crawlies of numerous legs.  Her nose swiftly picked up various candles that gave off a variety of different scents, yet True Immortality took care of that. A startling contraption caught her eye.  There was an odd machine filled with heavy iron balls and weights.  A single piece of leather connected it to a dagger attached to the end of a whip.  Judging from the massive amount of dried blood, it was one of the more lethal pieces of torture.  It even put the machine Carrie showed off on Servi's first day to shame.

On the table a bit further away, she saw liquids in all different colors and uses. The number of items in her vision was unfathomable, but Servi knew, somehow, that they were all used to inflict untold pain on the poor bastards who were unfortunate enough to be brought here.

It was a sight that not even the devil would care for: something he wouldn’t even give a second glance to because it was even beyond his wildest imagination.

But Servi simply smiled. Then chuckled, then laughed. She walked forward, using Absorption to store any items that would impede her path, and stopped in front of the earless Singi. A bloody hammer laid gripped in his hands. A soft smile, one of happiness, blanketed his calm face.

Such a face did not belong on someone responsible for the nearby vile display of unspeakable cruelty. Servi stayed her urge to kill him and walked over, absorbing more torture tools in her path before stopping in front of two hunks of meat stubbornly clinging to life. They were being held by a barbed wire attached to the ceiling via their wrists.

She recognized the Elf with the lightning bolt scar to be Eletri. More accurately, the Elf with the multiple disfigurements. She didn’t know what tool he used, but Eletri’s forehead was covered in raw wounds that hadn’t stopped bleeding. Her face, black and blue, was missing some strips of skin a few centimeters wide. The red of her muscles and the whites of her teeth were visible in some spots.

Like a leaky faucet, a wide wound dripped blood to the cluttered floor below. Servi saw something strange and pressed her finger to a wet spot.

“Yeah, Carrie did that one. She did say blood from the neck is the best,” she said.

Is blood tasty?

“I don’t know. Probably not,” Servi answered Itarr before continuing her examination.

Eletri’s chest was bare, showing off a single breast and a nasty, blood-soaked black cloth. It seemed that someone, Servi’s guess was the 6th, used a knife to cut off Eletri’s right breast. The makeshift bandage was a pathetic attempt to stop the bleeding.

How awful…

“Don’t be like that. This is the Mafia, remember? It seems to me they do shit like this all the time. She’s lucky it was him and not me that got ahold of her.” Servi summoned a sword from her ring and held it up. Eletri’s other injuries, a sharp double-bladed knife stuck up through her maidenhood and the nailed bat inserted up her rear, were too much to look at anymore. With a hurried hand, Servi gave the tortured Elf an eternal rest.

Dana was strung up next to her. In terms of torture and pain, she had undeniably lucked out, but that only applied when compared to her deceased sworn sister.

Her ten fingers, all snapped in half, had the skin and muscle scrapped off. The cracked white bones were like small white pellets in a sea of crimson that was the floor under her. Her nose, which had been snapped in half and removed via a rusty wire, taunted her a few centimeters away. Both eyes were raw and purple, and Servi saw a tiny bug digging around the whites of her eyes. She glanced back at the different jars of insects and shuddered.

Dana’s chest was also exposed, much like Eletri’s, but one could argue she was worse off there. A big black bug had died after piercing Dana's breasts, nipples, and stomach with its five legs. Servi didn’t know if they were poisonous or not, but it didn’t matter. A red soul floated over to Servi’s ring and made itself at home.

The poor Elf had chosen that time to depart for the afterlife, though one could argue her death was an accident since the 6th enjoyed torturing. It could’ve been the blood loss, the snapped fingers, the missing nose, the bugs, the sharp dagger jabbed into her belly button, the chili powder-covered phallic object that was deep inside her fruit, or the nails embedded into her legs and thighs that did it. If anything, all of them could've contributed to her death.

If she felt bad for being the cause, Servi didn’t show it. She wordlessly absorbed Dana’s body and turned to the 6th. Using Telekinesis, she lifted him up and tossed him against the wall, slamming into a shelf and falling to the floor.

What was that for?

“He’s going to die, but I want it to last. When he wakes up, I want him to be in pain,” Servi replied. She walked over to a long couch and sat down. The rolled-up blankets and pillows nearby signified it was where the 6th slept. “So this is what he sees when he wakes up… Maybe I should kill the bastard now.”

She shook her head and stood up. “No, that can wait. Let’s get what we came for. I guarantee that dresser over there has something. You look too. Remember, we need something with his handwriting.”

Got it. I can’t do much, but I’ll do what I can.

A few minutes later, Servi smashed the dresser in anger. She found what she was looking for. More accurately, Servi had discovered many things, actually; notes and letters to Deset’s Numbered, a grocery list, and an update on the hole's status, but it was nothing the worried girl could use to find Momo. A small part of Servi wanted to acquire instructions on contacting a 5th or maybe a hint to their base's location, but she had found nothing.

“Perhaps that fake fucking cat is smarter than he appears? No matter. We still have time,” Servi said, picking up a piece of mahogany wood the dresser was made from. She used Telekinesis to fly the 6th to her and smashed his arms with the reddish-brown wood she held. It shattered, both the wood and the arm, and Servi released Telekinesis at the right moment so he could fly back into the wall. His body landed on his wrist, making it snap back at an unnatural angle.

With nothing else to do, Servi projected her consciousness into the ring and forged a note.

This is to the Dwarf.  You know who you are. You did well to kill the Kobold and Elf during the faux attack on Deset. Destroy this letter after you read it. I command you to kill Carrie and the two Humans with her when the deal is done. Kill your buyer and the two Elves, too. If you bring the money and drugs back to me, I’ll guarantee you a position as a 6th. Be warned, though, that any attempts to use this letter against me will be met with my full force. You do not want to know what I have in my torture room to use against you. Do not make me do to you what I did to Dana and Eletri.

Will that work?

“Maybe. Look, the handwriting is the exact same. All I have to do is plant this on the Dwarf when I force him and the two Elves to attack us. He said he could take care of this on his own, right?”

That is what the bald Dwarf said.

“Then if he fucks it up because of what the 6th said, combined with what happened to Dana and Eletri, a 5th has to come by. If not, then I don’t think anything will make that happen, and we’ll be on our own. But by making it look like he was responsible for the reasons why the Kobold and Elf killed themselves, he won’t be able to talk himself out of it.”

I hope it works. We just need the location of the 5th's base, right?

“That’s right,” Servi said, walking out. She had gotten what she needed. The only thing left to do was make her way back downstairs to the cafeteria, and from there, go back to her room.

“You two didn’t fall asleep?” asked Carrie. Servi had Itarr stop Kaasuvuoto when they reached the cafeteria and had to act all concerned once everyone started to wake up. She ran into Carrie, gave her a hand, and walked back to their room.

“I was already asleep,” said Old Man, holding back a yawn.

“I was on my way to the cafeteria after taking a nap. I wasn’t thinking of anything at first, but it felt weird when I saw everyone on the ground,” Servi said. She leaned back in her chair as a cup of coffee touched her delicate lips.

“The 6th should’ve called an emergency meeting by now.”

“You’re not invited?” asked Servi.

“Not for the super important stuff. Only those who are Numbered 6 through 8 are allowed to attend. I was only allowed to attend the meeting this morning because you were the one the observer gave the letter to,” Carrie said.

“Did you go to the torture room?”

“I did. Fuck, the 6th is even more depraved than I am. The bastard used these bugs, right? He forced them to bite Dana’s tits. Hahahaha!!! You should’ve heard her scream. Oh, this is the fucked up part. Those bugs secrete an aphrodisiac. By the time I left, that fucking Elf was begging for a cock.” Carrie laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world.

Instead of getting mad at her, Servi pitied her. She thought there had to be a reason why she acted the way she did. Her fixation with blood and women, torturing and inflicting pain, as well as her crude way of talking, had to be related to something horrific Carrie endured in the past. While it wasn’t vital to her, Servi was a little bit curious but realized there’s no way she would ever get close enough to her to find out. Even if she did, Carrie would be dead in four or five days.

“Where’s the room at?” asked Servi.

“You don’t need to know that. It’s a place only us Numbered can get to when we're invited.”

Servi looked down at her ID and read the words that appeared.

I guess his room was the torture room. Seems a bit odd and strange considering he has to sleep there.

“Why the fuck are you staring at your ID?” Carrie asked, standing up. She walked around and bent down, placing her head on Servi’s shoulder. Her hands explored around a moment, rubbing and groping Servi’s stomach before settling on her breasts.

“You drink blood, and I stare at my ID. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?” Servi replied.

“No, not really,” Carrie found Servi’s nipples and pinched them, forcing her to falsely moan in response. Old Man stared for a moment before turning away.

“Carrie, I said at night. Does it look like night to you?” Servi stood up.

“Fine, but I expect you to make it up to me,” with one more pinch, Carrie walked back around the table and sat down. Her fruit in between her legs began to drip its savory love juice. Squirming, she did all she could to hold back the urge to storm off to her room and strip naked before pleasuring herself with the thick, smooth handle of her spear.

Just then, a Numbered Servi’s never seen before barged in, prompting Carrie to say every curse word in the book at the intruder.

He had a 10 carved into his palm, and he profusely apologized. “Sorry, 9th, but there have been two murders: a Kobold and an Elf, both Numbered. The 6th is asking for every Numbered to assemble for an emergency meeting,” he said.

Carrie stood up. “Two more? Whatever happened to Salcedo?"

“9th, I don’t know. It’s currently ruled a suicide,” replied the 10th. His orange cat-like ears twitched.

“I see. Williana, Old Man, if I’m not back in time, just head to the common room and wait,” she said, slamming the door before Servi could nod.

“What’re you going to do?” asked Old Man.

Servi pointed to the coffee machine. “I’m gonna grab another cup and wait. Who knows how long this drug deal will last. Don't want to fall asleep during the job, am I right?"

Thirty minutes later, after consuming three more cups of coffee and running out of beans, Servi sighed. “Sure is taking her a while,” she said.

“…”

Servi looked over at the beds. Old Man was fast asleep.

It seems like he sleeps a lot.  Itarr noted.  Servi only nodded and wished she had another cup of coffee to pass the time.