Is this really a Game?!

“Them, how many are there?” Reign suddenly asked as he neared the man who gulped in fear.

“I don’t know man, alright, I don’t know, the boss just gets us to round them up so that they can help us out with such things.”

“And how did you make him do that, to willingly sacrifice his life for you?”

“We lied to him.” The man said as he gritted his teeth. “We told him that it was a paralyzing agent that would simply make him unable to walk, he didn’t know it was a bomb.”

Bam!

A powerful punch sent a couple of the man’s teeth flying as Paul punched him with all his might. The man’s head cocked backward as blood started spilling out. He then grinned savagely at Paul before spitting at him.

“Go to hell, I’m done talking, I know you won’t let us go anyway, not to mention that the boss is much scarier than any of you little bastards.”

“Oh, you won’t be leaving this place alive, that much is true, but trust me, there are some things that are worse than simply dying, if you tell us what we want to know, then you will die a quick and painless death, if you don’t, however, I don’t mind taking a long time to get them out of you, not to mention that death won’t be what releases you from my grasp either.” Reign suddenly said as his eyes turned slightly purple.

The man stared at him in confusion before opening his eyes and mouth as wide as he could. One could hear his attempts of screaming, but no sound would get out. He felt incredible pain, such pain that he had never before believed could exist, and the worst thing was the fact that he didn’t feel any pain coming from any part of his body.

That was because Reign was currently cutting his soul with a small dagger he conjured from one of the souls he had captured in the past. The dagger was cutting very slowly and twisting, making it incredibly painful.

It was impossible to explain just what kind of pain the man was going through as there was no such thing as the ability to damage the soul in the past. One would feel immense pain, but it was one coming from what seemed to be every single part of his body, and yet it was as if it didn’t come from there as well.

After merely 10 seconds, Reign stopped and allowed the man to rest. Sweat had drenched the spectacled man’s entire body as he panted, his hands were shaking as he lifted his head to look at Lyle with horror in his eyes.

“I’ll give you 5 more seconds to rest before we continue.” Reign said with a cold voice as the man gulped before staring down at the ground.

“I’ll …”

Before he was able to say anything, screams could be heard as the smell of burnt meat came from where Wolf was. He was currently using his flames to slowly burn the man alive before having Laura help him with healing him.

Laura was currently healing two of the prisoners. With her healing powers, she could easily heal most injuries, thus allowing the others to once again start torturing them. The horror of seeing your own flesh burn before it was healed and returned to how it previously looked proved to be more than what the man could take, thus he started talking.

Shadow was using a different approach, however. He was using his shadows to bind the man fully before stabbing him lightly, only puncturing the skin before allowing his darkness to slowly spread through the body.

The corrosive power of his darkness worked quickly on someone that couldn’t utilize mana to defend themselves. The man saw how his skin was turning purple, then black, before slowly coming off, showing the muscles and bones that were also being corroded, made incredibly weak and brittle.

Shadow would then will his darkness out and let Laura heal him before doing the same thing once again. The man couldn’t even scream as his mouth was blocked by a shadow vine, he was also unable to tell Shadow a thing, but he didn’t care, he wanted to make the man suffer for some time before checking if he was going to talk or not.

“Your friends seem to be in a much more talkative mood than you, I guess you need more persuasion, huh?” Reign asked the man who opened his mouth, but before he was able to say anything, Reign had already started attacking his soul once again, this time, he continued to do it for 20 seconds before stopping.

“I’ll talk, I’ll talk, just … just stop, please!” The man begged as Reign and Paul stared at him in disgust.

“Talk, and do it quickly, my patience is already as thin as it can be.” Reign said as the man nodded with tears in his eyes.

He, as well as the other two, started narrating the story of what happened to the city. What the boy told Paul was partially correct as the dome did exist since the start of the game, and criminals did indeed manage to evolve earlier than others before taking control over the city, but there were differences in the story.

First of all, the city was divided into 10 areas, each one being controlled by a head of the area together with his group. Each area indeed had gangs that controlled certain regions that answered directly to the head of the area, but the 10 people were not to ones truly controlling the city as they all answered back to one person.

“The people call him ‘The Butcher’, but I don’t know his real name, most people don’t.” The man said as he stared at Reign and the others. 𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗹．𝐨𝗿𝗴

“Nobody dares say the name ‘The Butcher’ out loud as he hates it and will kill whoever was heard saying it, instead, people are ordered to call him ‘The King’ every time they talk of him, calling him any other name is punishable.”

“The only thing I know is the fact that he controls the city and that the ten ‘heads’ are all his men, each one of them is a powerful fighter, but he is the one that stands at the very top.”

“What ability does he have, how does he fight?” Reign asked the man who simply shook his head.

“Only those that are close to him know that, the heads are his personal squad while he has more people with him as well, only they know just how strong he is and how he fights.”

“I see, and what about those so-called ‘heads’, how strong are they?” Reign asked the man who shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know, I and the other two managed to reach Tier IV three days ago, as for the people working directly for the heads, they managed to do so weeks ago, they’re probably in the mid-grade right now, probably near the top of the mid-grade, so the heads are probably either high-grade or at the peak of the tier.”

The man then started telling them everything he knew about the city and the people in it. The situation was even worse than what Reign and the others imagined it to be. The total number of people currently living in the city was 250 000, and there were over 300 000 when the game started, it was just that when ‘The Butcher’ started taking the city over, he was ruthless and killed anyone who tried to go against him.

Most of the people that had died since the game started died at that time. As for the number of people working directly below him, there were thousands of them, probably tens of thousands.

If Reign and the others want to take him down, then they would need to go to the center of the city where his base was located. One couldn’t miss it as it was the tallest building in the city and from what the man knew, he was located at the very top of the building, living in a penthouse there.

Nobody had seen ‘The Butcher’ ever since he took over the city. Some people said he was a tall bald man that had scars present on every single inch of his body, some people said he was a fat bastard that could barely move but had incredible magical powers, others said how he was actually a short and thin man that was incredibly weird and so on, but nobody could say exactly how he looked.

It was as if nobody had ever managed to see him, which was impossible since many did, but almost all of them had a different description of him, and nobody knew why it was so.

“Hmm, he might have an item or even a skill that hides his true appearance.” Reign said before nodding at Paul who suddenly swung his dagger, beheading the man. Reign took his soul, as well as the souls of the other two.

Even though their stories matched, Reign wanted Aethion to confirm it, which would take some time. Luckily for them, they weren’t in a hurry.