Chapter 106

“Y-you insolent ... O-overgrown-khha-meathead...” Felicia gasped for air as she tried and utterly failed to move even a single of Alexander’s fingers off her neck. “Z-Zack, you useless sack of shit, do something!!”

“O-oh? right!” Zack stopped kicking unconscious Bob, turned around and charged up a fireball right at Alexander.

Alexander looked at Zack who stood at the farther end of the pit, then at Felicia and smiled before straightening out his arm so that Felicia was a few more inches away from his own body.

Felicia’s eyes went wide open when she saw Alexander’s smile and the fire reflecting in his eyes. Don’t tell me... “ZACK, DON’T YOU DARE—!!”

KAPOW!

Zack fired off his fireball at Alexander, who just held Felicia as his personal living shield.

“Tch,” annoyed, Alexander side-stepped the fireball just before it had the chance to make him a roast beastkin.

“UUWAAAAH!!!” the other prisoners of the pit that huddled on the other end of the pit screamed in horror and jumped in all directions, seeking shelter from the flying fiery doom in the liquid shit.

“Can’t have you served on a plate just yet,” Alexander said to Felicia and proceeded to swiftly beat the ever-living shit out of Zack with one hand while holding Felicia in the other.

“U-ugh,” Michael finally gathered the strength to try and get up despite the stabbing pain in his chain and difficulty breathing only to see Zack’s naked back descend right on top of him. “A-AAAGH—”

“Now, where were we?” Alexander turned his attention to Felicia.

“aaa ... Ä̷͕́Ă̴̲A̴̪̕Á̸̟Ä̷̞A̶͗ͅA̶̳͂ ... Á̵̠̹͂́A̴̺͌̕À̶̭̈́̋—GHUURKLHK!??”

Before Felicia could charge up her shout, Alexander shoved two fingers deep into her mouth and pressed on the back of her tongue until she started gagging, and a few moments later...

“BLEEERGHH, Cough, cough, cough, cunt! Bleh! Shit!” Felicia cursed, coughed, and spit after Alexander forced her to vomit to cancel her trademark [Piercing Wail] skill.

Alexander then slammed the coughing furball against the wall and said, “Try that again and I’ll rip out your vocal cords! Now confess! How did you end up with the power to control those demons?”

“For fucks ... I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Felicia stated as loudly and as clearly as she could under the circumstances that her neck was in. “And some Champion you are! Your theatrics just killed two more people.”

Alexander looked behind where Zack’s fireball had landed and indeed there were two corpses—one slumped against the blackened wall, still burning, another floating in the cesspool. Meanwhile at least two more people appeared to have noticeable burn injuries on their limbs.

“Oh, you mean the people that got drunk, high and had sex to the music of death during the games?” Alexander asked Felicia. “Tell someone who cares. If you can still find such person in this city. Now, start talking or you will find yourself cooked for their meal.”

“Ha! If I do have the information you need, then you can’t kill me. But if I did give you the supposed answers you seek, you’d have no reason to keep me alive,” Felicia managed a combative smile. “So, here’s what we’re going to do: you get me the hell out of this hellhole and back to the Guild. Then I’ll tell you anything and everything you want: the demons, the former champions, and all the fun ways they had sex with each other.”

SNAP

“GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!” Felica cried in agony after Alexander grabbed her right leg and swiftly twisted it at an angle and force it was not designed for, destroying the hinge joint in one move.

“Many more joints to go through,” Alexander said, his words drowned in Felicia’s cries. “You will be useful to me alive as a bargaining chip, so I encourage you to speak up before I start removing your fingers one by one and using them as treats for your pets once they wake up.”

“HHhnn ... Rrrr, youuu,” Felicia growled through grit teeth, her face wet from sweat and tears.

“Alright,” Alexander grabbed Felicia’s pinkie.

“WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!!!!” Felicia cried.

“The Abomination?” Alexander asked again while slowly bending Felicia’s pinkie out of its joint.

“IT’S MERILLIA’S!!”

“The Queen?” Alexander asked in disbelief.

“Yes!” Felicia confessed through pained tears. “It was her little project. The demonlings are hers too!”

“H-her’s? How can ... Did the Queen bring them into the city? Is she growing them? How is she controlling them?”

“ ... No idea. The White Masks took me to the mines where we planned the Forge of Champions. And there she was. It was the only time I ever saw Merillia outside the Palace. She just summoned the demonlings out of the depths of the mines with a wave of a hand. The same with the Abomination, though it was no bigger than a demonling back then. There are situations where you know not to ask questions if you want to live.”

“Does the King know?”

Felicia shrugged. “As far as I could ever tell he’s always high out of his mind. Either doesn’t know or doesn’t care, so does it even matter?”

“Why do the demons obey you? And what kind of a project is putting an abomination under the city?”

“I don’t know! She just told them to obey certain commands from me and they did! It’s not like I can use them as my personal army! I don’t even communicate with them. Not really. They understand me, but I don’t understand them. I just tell Okui when dinner is served. And the demonlings are emergency guards.”

“D-dinner...” Alexander gasped. “Then ... All Champions ... Even my brother...”

“Okui grows stronger and bigger with each powerful warrior it consumes,” Felicia explained. “As far as I figure it lets Merillia get rid of rogue powerful individuals that are not under employ of the Guild, Purples, or Royals.”

“‘As far as you figure’?”

“It’s not like I got a user manual for the thing! Everyone just drops things for me to handle and I get told below the bare minimum! For all anyone knows she could have also done it for shits and giggles! The Games were already agreed on before then. The Abomination was the Merillia’s last-second addition.”

“Who else knew about it then?”

“As far as I know, only those from the palace: Several Princesses, a few hand-picked soldiers. Even though all three from G.P.R. were directly involved in the Forge of Champions, this was a separate ‘event’ from the Games. Held several days later, overseen by white masks. If someone from the Guild was informed, they did a phenomenal job not letting on. Even our slut Guild leader ... As for the Purples ... Belmot couldn’t be trusted to oversee his own wardrobe. And with the Flavna/Gamesh wonder duo, if anyone among the Purple Capes were to know, they would know too.”

“Names.”

Felicia sighed, “Samira, Asuna, Julia ... Mira too, once.”

“Not Mary?”

“That unstable child? You must be joking!”

“And you killed all the Champions? But that Odo Proudcock survived, how?”

“Obviously, he never fought Okui,” Felicia snickered. “Just a poster-boy for the glories and pleasures of a Champion. Some put up a better fight than others, even driving Okui back, for a moment. Those lucky enough not to be devoured the White Masks dragged back to the palace. But by then they were barely recognizable minced corpses.”

“WAS MY BROTHER AMONG THEM!?” Alexander squeezed Felicia’s neck tighter.

“GHh-Nobody wore a ‘Number Seven’s brother’ tag on them!”

SNAP

“GHYAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!! FFFFfuucking cunt!” Felicia cried and cursed after Alexander broke her thumb.

“Philip, his name is Philip!” Alexander said. “He participated two Games prior.”

“H-Hhhhhhh,” Felicia trembled as if she had a fever while holding her broken thumb. “S-sure. I remember him. Another overgrown musclehead. A dime a dozen in the Games. Yeah, he put up a fight. Julia and a few other White Masks dragged his body away to the palace.”

“Ah,” for a second, Alexander’s eyes looked like those of a regular man, his grip lessened, and Felicia’s white hair rose to life.

[Fluffy Cage]!! Felicia cast her defensive spell and her ample hair enveloped her body from all sides, turning razor sharp, cutting Alexander’s hand and forearm, and started spinning.

“Argh!” Alexander withdrew his arm before Felicia spun out of control.

The white spinning furball of death flew at Alexander, who dodged the countless blades that could turn any man into minced meat. And as the Felicia flew past Alexander, she landed into another horrified inmate. She smacked him into a wall and spun in place, pulverizing his upper body. After that she bounced off that wall, then off another one and up to the exit she flew.

Seeing only one chance before Felicia escapes, Alexander grabbed both unconscious Michael and Zack, and jumped up after Felicia. As Felicia bounced off the ceiling, Alexander cut off her trajectory and thrust both eunuch’s bodies right into the spinning death machine, knocking it off course while using the two bodies as shields.

“UAAAAAAAAA!!!” Michael was the first to scream when Felicia dug into his belly with her razor hair.

Alexander then managed to hold the spinning furball down on the ground, just beside the Pit while Felicia’s speed slowed down, getting bogged down in the blood and meat, and intestines of the two eunuchs.

“Huaaah,” Felicia breathed heavily when her defensive spell finally gave out. The little beastkin grabbed at the gaps in the floor stones with her tiny fingers trying to crawl from under the minced meat. But before she was even halfway out, Felicia felt a chillinly familiar big, strong, merciless hand push down on her back right between her shoulder blades, crushing any fleeting hope of escape.

“aaa ... Ä̷͕́Ă̴̲A̴̪̕Á̸̟Ä̷̞A̶͗ͅA̶̳͂ ... Á̵̠̹͂́A̴̺͌̕À̶̭̈́̋—”

SNAP

“Waaah get away from me, get awaayyy!!” a purple cape soldier kicked and screamed as he tried to break free from half a dozen other purple capes. Of course, in spite of his adrenaline-fueled desperate fight, he had no chance of fighting off six men that were fueled by something even more powerful.

“Beregooooold!!!” a young woman screamed in tears, reaching out to the unfortunate soldier, but she was held back by another fellow guard.

“Forget about him, Martha! He’s gone!!” he screamed, trying to break through to his emotionally distressed friend.

The other three purple capes also did nothing to help. It took all they had just to hold down a single one of the crazed guards who babbled, grunted, and moaned while slurping up the milk that already reached even this remote guard post. Although that wasn’t the true reason they hesitated to help. They knew it in their hearts—if they tried to, if they leapt into the fray, in the ensuing chaos they would too end up becoming like them. So, they resigned to simply watching their comrade get dragged away into the shadows with the pretense that they held their guard post in this unimportant hallway intersection.

Suddenly another guard ran into the intersection from the other hallway and shouted, “There’s more coming this way!!”

“We can’t hold this position any longer!” Klaus cried while trying to sweep the incoming milk away from their defensive position.

“We have to fall back!” Gerald shouted, breaking a sweat while holding down his crazed comrade.

“Oh, where’s Captain Flavna when you need her?” Vlad complained.

“They’re coming!!” Luca cried out.

And they indeed came. Dozens of them. Crazy-eyed, barely able to speak coherent, simple words, milk dripping from their chins. Once, loyal comrades. Now, simple-minded milk addicts. Some in uniform, some already in the uniform mother nature blessed them with. And they did not come alone.

“W-what’s that sound?”

“M-m-m-m-m-milk maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!”

“UAAAH, RUN FOR YOU LIVES!!”

The remaining Purple Capes dropped their weapons and abandoned their post, running in the opposite direction from the encroaching milk, the milkafied Purple Capes, and that. The sane survivors ran fast, but the milk and its worshippers were catching up to the fresh meat.

“There it is!” Gerald pointed ahead of them at the half open wooden double doors shrouded in darkness. “The library! Noone ever goes in there! We should be safe!”

“Waah! They’re catching up!!” Martha cried.

“Hurry!!” Klaus screamed.

As soon as the first two Purple Capes ran inside, they started closing the doors.

“AH!? Wait for us you bastards!!” Vlad shouted.

“Just run faster!” Gerald shouted back and continued to push the old heavy doors shut as fast as the rusty hinges would allow.

Two more guards made it in just barely and the doors shut behind them, right in the faces of the two stragglers.

“LET US IN YOU SELFISH SCUM!!” Vlad desperately banged on the door.

“Martha! Martha please!” Luca bawled as he beat on the door with his fists. “It’s me!! It’s me! How can you do this!?”

“FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT’S DESCENT OPEN THE DOOO-UAAAAAAAAAAAA!!”

The banging of fists against the wood was instantly replaced with loud thuds of body upon body piled on in some unholy mosh pit. The doors creaked and the wood in the door latch bent from the pressure.

“Hold it for your lives!!” Gerald shouted as he and the others braced the door with all their might while increasingly unsavory sounds came from the other side.

Then, the pressure lessened, and it got eerily quiet.

“A-are they gone?” Klaus asked with a trembling voice.