Book Three – Chapter Seven – Part One – Prelude to the Banquet

Before Servi even spoke to the 5th, she had his neck in a vice grip and taunted him with seven icy-blue ropes. At the same time, she searched through her ID for the skill to suit her needs. She didn't think she would find it because it needed to hide both sight and sound. Now, Servi knew of a Rank 0 skill to hide herself from existence, but she needed it to either affect multiple targets or an area. If that was the case, then was it possible to use a combination of skills to achieve her desired effect?

Yes, it was possible. With the Rank 1 skill Veil of Obfuscation, Servi could mark an area and pick what things she wanted to be turned invisible. As for sound, Servi needed the Rank 1 skill Silentium Fluctus. Much like Veil of Obfuscation, Silentium Fluctus required the user to dictate an area. Once a section of space was marked out, any noise produced inside of Silentium Fluctus could not escape to the outside.

"You know... It's kinda funny," Servi spoke as she learned both skills. They were 130 Potential each, but Servi had so much saved up she didn't care about spending them. "Here I am, flipping through my ID while searching for the best skills like I'm a rich bitch at a market. The best part? I probably won't even use them more than once or twice. And I don't even have to worry about upgrading them because I can just stack them 400 times each." With a final tap on her ID, Servi used both of her recently purchased skills and blocked out the entire roof she was standing on.

If, at that particular time, someone was looking at the roof Servi stood on, they would see nothing out of place. If, for some reason, someone on the roof had the desire to scream to the Heavens Above using all of their lung power, no one would hear it. The stage was now set.

Servi turned to the 5th. "Now then, I don't think we are going to be interrupted at all. Let's have some fun, shall we?"

“5th...” Servi spoke as she tied the ropes around his arms and legs. Telekinesis kept her target floating in the air. “I’m not who I say I am, but that’s all you’re getting from me. Your shitty, pathetic, goddamn fucking organization stole something important from me, and I’m here to get her back. I had to put up with all kinds of shit, and I’m very fucking pissed off.” The moment the rope touched his skin, he suffered immediate frostbite. His arms and legs turned a deathly shade of blue, and intense, vocalized pain breached through her hold on his throat.

“Oh, that won’t do.” Servi used Remedium Lux and kept it going. It healed his body, but it didn’t stop the pain from being frostbitten. It could forever continue in a cycle until Servi stopped it. Her Skill Energy Regeneration was so quick and high that she could use multiple Rank 3 skills back to back, and she would gain everything she wasted in a matter of moments. A puny ability like Ice Rope wasn’t even a drop in the proverbial ocean.

The 5th’s face strangely contorted, and Servi immediately stuck her hand in his mouth. He tried to retaliate by biting down, but Servi’s massive stack of Protection protected her. The only damage he did was to his own teeth.

“You’re not trying to get out of here by biting down on a pill, are you? Can’t have that now, can we? Hahaha!!” Servi chuckled like a giggling schoolgirl. She crouched low and grabbed a rock. “I’m not the best dentist, so I hope this hurts. Shit, it better hurt a lot.”

She took the rock and scrapped it across his bottom-most row of teeth. Like carving wood using a knife, she scraped all of his enamel until he was left with nothing but his gums. The incredible pain forcing its way through his bound body was too much to handle, but he didn’t lose consciousness. Remedium Lux prevented that. His body was assured that he would be healed because that was what Remedium Lux was supposed to do, and therefore, it kept him awake and conscious.

Servi kept scraping until crimson covered the once gray rock, and she moved on to his upper row of teeth. But then she discarded the teeth-scraping object by tossing it behind her. Servi couldn’t settle for using a tool as a proxy to inflict pain because that was something she wanted to personally do.

Her strength had grown tremendously since the Warden Tournament. It wasn’t even calculable. Back then, she didn’t think she could pinch a tooth as if it was soft clay, but she could do it now. One by one, she plucked his teeth from their sockets, making sure to dig her index finger into the newly created wound for added pain.

“Hahaha!!!! How is it?! You fucking fuck! This isn’t anything compared to what I can truly do! I just wanna have a little fun before the real fun begins!!!! Hahahah!!!” Once the final tooth had been plucked, with warm crimson dripping from his mouth, she placed the tooth on her thumb and jabbed it into the 5th’s tongue. Servi scraped and dug back and forth until she had dug out a trench.

Like a schoolgirl talking to her crush, Servi relished the pain she inflicted. She admired it so much she had to take a few steps back. A puddle of his blood had probably soaked through the seams in the roof, and the ongoing fight between the Ice Ropes and Remedium Lux was still in a stalemate. Servi had only used a single stack to assure that his teeth wouldn’t grow back.

Suddenly, he found he could talk when he gasped for air, and his body allowed him to taste it. His first words were of him wanting to know what he had done to deserve such torture, but Servi only responded by pulling out a knife from her ring.

Her answer would be long and painful, and as the beautiful moon would witness this horrific scene of torture and mutilation, it wouldn’t compare to what came next.

Servi’s counterattack had only started, and it was a long way from ending.

In a hoarse voice, filled with slurred words, the tortured Elf begged for his life under the bright moonlight.

“Sorry,” his assailant said. “I have a list of questions I want answered. As you can see, I have no qualms about removing your teeth before we even begin. Are you gonna be a good boy and answer my questions? To be honest, I hope you resist. I’m curious to see how many times I can remove your fingers and ears before it gets boring. Though, if that happens, I’ll remove your cock and balls. I’ll squish them right in front of you. So tell me, motherfucker!! Are you gonna answer my goddamn questions?” Servi tilted her head and cutely smiled while hugging a knife to her chest.

“Yesh!!!! Yesh!!!!” he cried as tears flowed down his face and into his mouth. Their saltiness forced another wave of pain to surge through his already injured body. The feelings in his limbs had been the first consequence to the contrasting sensations of healing and freezing.

“Good! I’ll start off with something small. The building in New Arcton, the one with the fuck off levels of defense. What is it used for?”

“It’s a bank. A church…nothing but a ba-- church… AAA—” Servi didn’t like his answer, so she snapped off his right index finger like a child breaking a stick. To prevent him from screaming, she jabbed her arm in his open mouth and cracked his jaw.

“DON’T FUCKING LIE TO ME!!!! Shit, that was too much! But bank? Church? A combined bank and church? The fuck does that mean...?” Servi started out shouting before trailing off into muttering. A quick Remedium Lux later, those injuries, and only those injuries, were healed.

“Fine…. Boss… Boss...was there…”

“Shit, I was right. Hey, you’re not lying, are you? Better make sure.” She snapped off the same finger and healed it a moment later.

“Boss…….” he whined. “H…e there….”

“Itarr, maybe we should’ve attacked it," Servi said while tossing the 5th's detached finger in the air like a ball. Then she dropped it and stomped, crushing it while grinding her heel into it.

Maybe, but the chances of the Boss getting mad and killing Momo were high, wasn’t it? But now that we know he’s there, we can go and save Momo! Servi's ID appeared and floated in front of her.

“That’s right. I guess I would like fighting that Kobold.” Servi turned to walk away before realizing she had the chance to access more information. That was the reason she turned around, but it wasn’t the reason why she ripped her victim's arms from his body and smacked him across the face with his own hands.

“He…isn’t..there…anymore...” Those four little words were all it took for her rage to flare alive.

Her rage fueled her strength, and it took Itarr casting 184 stacks of Remedium Lux to keep the 5th from dying. That meant all of his wounds were healed up, and his teeth had been regenerated. Even the pain had subsided.

We need him alive! Servi!

“Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Hey!” Servi grabbed the newly healed 5th and fractured his jaw between her fingers after dropping his severed arms. “Where the fuck is he?! Where is he?”

He had enough freedom to spit in Servi’s face. “I don’t know! Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell a goddam—AAA—”

Servi grabbed his head and squashed his eye sockets with her thumbs. Next, she took her knife and carved off a piece of skin that stretched from his wrist to his shoulder. Servi dangled it in front of the 5th's eyes even though his sight was robbed from him. Then she smacked him with it, leaving a horizontal splash of crimson that joined the blood dripping from his eyes.

“Tell me! Tell me! Tellmetellmetellme!!!!!” She waited a total of four seconds before scalping him. Servi wasn’t gentle with her knife work, either.

“He—I—, I DON’T KNOW, BUT I KNOW HOW—" He didn’t know how he did it, but the 5th managed to squeak the words out.

“Tell me, now! Or I will rip your ass out through your fucking mouth!” Servi took the skin that had his number and forced it down his mouth. She allowed him to keep his teeth, but it wasn’t a blessing. Servi closed his mouth shut and forcibly grounded his teeth together. It wasn't until he whimpered the word ‘signal’ that she stopped and backed away.

“Signal…Saturday…don’t…know…signal…forest….outside…of…town... Every..body…at…6..AM. Arrive…at…9..AM…heal..me…I’ll…say..everything..I…know…pain…is..to..much…”

“I swear to everything you stand for… Should you say something I don’t want to hear, I will rip your teeth out and force you to swallow your own cock… Should you use a skill, I will keep you alive while I skin you piece by piece. Death will never come for you if you piss me off…” Servi grabbed his head and whispered in his ears before removing the Ice Ropes and replacing them with standard ropes. Then she held a knife up to his throat as a warning while healing his injuries.

“The boss isn’t in town. He left to get ready for Saturday. I swear I don’t know what it is he has planned. Only the 1sts and 2nds know that, and they’ve left the city with him.”

Servi held her knife closer to his throat and pulled back when he didn’t try to correct himself. However, his body remembered the pain and memories of the blade as it scraped away the skin on his head, and he uncontrollably shook with fright.

“Who’s left in the city?” she asked.

“Every base but the 2nd and 1st. The building where the boss stayed was the 2nd base, but I don’t know where the 1st is. I only heard rumors about this... But the four other 5ths believe the 2nd and 1st bases are the same..."

“Then what about 5th through 3rd? Are they here?”

“We have orders to leave Saturday morning when we see the signal. I don’t know what it is. He didn’t tell us,” 5th replied back. He avoided looking up at Servi, but her knife was always in his sight.

“Who was that Kobold?”

“They say he’s the Boss’s personal bodyguard. Rumors say he can rival a Rank 0 in Warden, and he’s strong enough to destroy a nest of dragons by himself."

“That might prove to be a challenge. It’ll be fun to kill that armored bastard. Tell me, do you know a pink Singi? She was brought in a few days ago during the night. Her name’s Momo.”

“I don’t.”

“Come on! Of course, you do. The boss sent a letter directly to me. He wanted to play a game. Tell me, where’s Momo. Where is she?!?!?! Where the fuck is she?! TELL ME!!!! WHAT'S THE FUCKING SIGNAL?!?!?!?!” Servi barked at her constrained foe and shouted in his face. She spoke so quickly and deranged her spit coated him in warm drool.

“I don’t know. I don’t know…” the 5th whimpered. He felt Servi's warm saliva drip from his nose to his quivering lips.

“Oh, the signal is going to be smoke.” Servi spun on her heels and casually dropped a landmine. Her trap was set, and she only needed him to reveal his card.

“HOW DID—”

In a very soft voice, Servi whispered four soft words.

“I fucking knew it…”

“No—nonono!!NONONO!!!NONONONONONONO—” Servi wrapped an invisible force around his throat, and she flourished her knife around her hand by flipping it between her fingers.

“You fucked up. You majorly fucked up! I can’t even begin to tell you how fucked you are. Where the fuck is Momo?! Tell me WHERE SHE IS?! WHERE THE FUCK IS SHE?!?!?!” she shouted as she peeled his arm like one would a potato, carving the flesh until his arm was skinless. With her strength and the nadrium dagger she used, it was like pushing a sword through sand. His skin instantly surrendered to her weapon. It was as if his blood took on the role of a white flag.

“I don’t...know… I swear…if..the…boss had her…then..the..2nd…base…. But..he’s..gone…forest…”

He struggled to speak as he forced himself against the newly tied Ice Ropes that had regained their home, but there was something different. The Remedium Lux had been replaced with a simple Remedium, and its replacement was badly losing to frostbite.  Perhaps that was why he didn't react much at all to having his skin cut off?

“How can I believe you?! You fucking lied to me! Is the boss worth enduring this fucking pain?!” Servi stood up from her chair and pointed to the pounds of flesh she had carved off. “THAT!!! THAT USED TO BE FUCKING ATTACHED TO YOUR ARM!!!!! Take a closer fucking look at what you made me do!” She grabbed a handful of flesh and forced it down his throat. Somehow, the 5th threw it up in a volley of bloody vomit.

Suddenly, Servi healed his arm with a few hundred stacks of Remedium Lux, and it regenerated like normal. Strangely enough, the leftover flesh remained at her feet. Even so, he wasn't totally healed.

“5th, this torture isn’t going to end until the sun comes up. However, I’ll give you a deal. If you tell me where the 5th, 4th, and 3rd bases are, I will kill you now. You won’t have to suffer the frostbitten legs, the excruciating feeling of having your arms chopped up like meat, and everything else I put you through. Your betrayal will mean their deaths will arrive sooner. I’m sure they have more info than what you can provide. Just know one thing. What I did to you is nothing to what I will do to them. I won’t stop until I have ripped out every goddamn bone in their bodies.” Servi crouched down and poked her dagger at his chest. The remains of several deep gashes continued to pour blood. She had lost herself in anger and nearly killed him a second time.

Servi continued to speak under the moonlight. “Look, the girl your shitty, fucking, goddamn boss kidnapped was my best friend. She only has her grandpa and me. And me? I only have her because I'm a fucking orphan. I don’t know shit about my parents. Do you know what it’s like to whore yourself out when you can barely fucking walk? By the time I was 10, I had already fucked more men than there are days in a year! I have absolutely nothing to fucking lose other than my life, but I refuse to die before I can save my best friend.” Servi’s story was full of lies, but she believed it wouldn’t hurt if she appealed to his humanity.

“Kill…me….if…I…te…l…l…yo..u.” Even with his arm healed, the 5th was incredibly weak. His nerves were probably shot all to hell after a constant battle of freezing while simultaneously being healed. And his teeth littered the roof from where they had been picked and plucked. He couldn’t even lean back in his chair anymore. If the ropes weren’t binding him to the chair, he’d have landed face down on the roof. Maybe on a rock if he was lucky. He’d be dead if that happened.

Even as words passed through his lips, the thought of using a skill never entered his mind. What good could he do against a source of evil who had godly powers and a total lack of consciousness? Only death mattered to him now, and he’d do anything to feel its cold embrace because it'd be warmer than the icy restraints that tied him to the chair.

“You’ll die a quick death,” Servi lied, “If you give up the location of your comrades. If you don’t, I will slice your other arm like a potato, and I will leave you that way to die slowly.”

“It’s…over…there…towards…the…main…RASP….building...orange….sign…location…”

Servi lifted the chair with Telekinesis and slowly rotated him until he said stop.

“I won’t kill you until I verify the base,” Servi had no plans to let him off with a simple death, nor did she ever want to allow him to die before the sun came up.

He only grunted in response, and Servi took off running in the direction he specified. With her new ability and strength, she could effortlessly leap from building to building.  At the same time, she used Veil of Obfuscation and Silentium Fluctus whenever she could to keep hidden from any prying eyes.

Servi took up cover behind a brick chimney on a building that was in surprisingly decent shape. It looked abandoned, but Servi couldn’t spot any noticeable defects or holes in the roof. Like her hostage said, there was a building with the word ‘RASP’ on it. With a colorful rainbow sign, the building attracted quite a bit of attention. There was a line spanning a few hundred meters filled with both Humans and Demi-Humans. And from the number of floors and windows, she estimated there to be at least 150 rooms.

The fates of those forced to be rented out for whatever their renter wanted to do with them had nothing to do with her. Maybe once Momo was rescued and found, Servi would spend the energy to save the slaves inside, but that was an internal conversation for another time.

“It’s the building with the orange sign, right?” Servi asked. She had forgone her usual attire for a complete set of steel armor that covered her face and body. It was big enough to hide the shapely lumps of her breasts, and if she kept her mouth shut, only Servi knew of her true gender. With that in mind, she didn't need Veil of Obfuscation or Silentium Fluctus anymore. At least not for the time being.

“Yes,” groaned her hostage. Though the icy ropes had been removed, the damage remained. The bindings had left dark spots, and the meat in those areas was putrid and stringy, like over rotted flesh. Even a child could rip his legs and arms apart with the smallest of force. They were only attached by Servi’s Telekinesis.

“Keep in mind what happens if it isn’t. Oh, I hope you don’t think I’m going to kill you now. I promised you a quick death, but I have to verify it. You’re coming with me.” Servi had Itarr control the Telekinetic link between her and the floating chair, and the only thing the armored girl had to do was answer her craving for murder.

Servi, why not attack it instead of trying to sneak in?

“Because I need to know for sure that Momo is with the boss in the forest. This dumb fuck could be lying about everything. I just need some documentation. That’s literally all I fucking need.”

Before she made her move, something odd caught her eye. For the four minutes Servi had stood watch, only people with red jumpsuits entered the solid red door belonging to the orange-signed building. Even more stranger, the sign was complete gibberish. Servi knew she could read the language, and the symbols she saw were actual letters, but they didn’t spell out a word she thought was real.

It didn’t matter at all in the long run. Servi gripped her hand on the roof ledge in front of her and vaulted over it. At the same time, she used a few instances of Smokescreen to cloud everyone’s vision. The 5th’s coughing that came from nearby proved Itarr still had a hold on him. The pair raced through the alarmed citizens underneath the artificial cover while Itarr expertly maneuvered the chair in between the growing chaos. When they reached the red door, Servi absorbed it and jumped through, her armor clanking and scrapping across the rough stone floor.

“Put the door back!” Servi shouted.

Already on it! Itarr wrote. Using Telekinesis, Itarr attached the ID to Servi’s hip, and it vibrated when it had a message. Considering the door reappeared in its proper place, Servi didn’t have any need to check what Itarr wrote. And due to the seven men in red jumpsuits standing in front of her with swords and axes, she couldn’t spare the time to read it if she wanted to.

That only applied if she didn’t have a Goddess inside of her who gave her the ability to become unfathomably strong.

Not even half a second had passed, and there were already seven corpses. Seven black holes littered the stone behind them with blood, and the size of the wounds in the mens' chests matched the holes. A quick absorb later, Servi ran for the nearest door while ordering her hostage to speak. The claps of her armored feet against the stone ground almost drowned out his frail voice.

“Red…jumpsuit…color…of…this…base… Monotonia…dependent…slaves….”

Servi took his broken words and quickly analyzed them as she hurried down a familiar spiral staircase. Deset had one like it.

“The jumpsuit-wearing people are slaves who lost to Monotonia?” she questioned as she absorbed the door she found at the bottom. It led to a small guard shack filled with weapons, but the six men lined against the wall had a stoic look on their faces. As if Servi was in a bloody slasher film, the jumpsuit-wearing foes turned their heads at the intruder and rushed forward with anything they found.

Servi had underestimated the sole Singi amongst themselves and met his downward sword slice with a punch to the blade. It shattered, and her fist continued its course until it found a fleshy home in his face. The pressure and force must’ve been too much because the back of Servi's foe's head exploded and showered the room in a red paste.

The five remaining in the room never gave their fallen ally a second glance as they brought down their attacks on the intruder. Even with Soul Essence of Primal Combat, Servi had a small amount of difficulty dodging the incoming attacks. They were messy and wild, but the speed was nothing she had ever faced. The only person coming close was Fisher, but she didn’t remember their fight.

Servi ducked a thrown brick and responded with a nadrium war hammer she pilfered from Parrel’s mansion. Its flat head glowed with two blue lines while the spike remained totally black. But the lines weren’t exclusive to the weapon's head. They trailed all the way down its sleek-looking handle and onto the spiky pommel.

Servi twirled her body around, picked up speed, and slammed her weapon into the chest of a dagger-wielding Dwarf. With nary a sound of pain, a chunk of flesh tore off, and the short-statured Dwarf flew back from the impact.

“I can’t play with you. I have a friend to save, so fucking die!” Blocking an attack from the back, Servi tossed her war hammer at her foe. The bald Human ducked, and Servi surprised him with two shots of Greater Lightning Bolt. His body wordlessly convulsed in pain, but Servi figured it was only because his muscles inadvertently spasmed that way. Something told her that the foes she faced had lost all sense of discomfort and self, and they very much reminded her of the enemies she faced at Parrel's mansion. The only difference was the lack of colored-weapons, but nearly everything else-- the mannerisms, the way they moved and acted-- were the same. If so, then it possibly meant Parrel was somehow connected with the Mafia. Perhaps even more egregious, the Mafia's boss feasibly had a hand in the illegal slave markets Servi helped destroy.

Thinking it could all be connected pissed her off, and she immediately ended the fight by resorting to Telekinesis. Like a toy, the remaining enemies’ heads popped off, and their bodies collapsed to the ground. Like a fallen glass of juice, crimson poured from the new opening and stained the stone floor.