Chapter 33
MIRA WONDERED WHAT he was talking about, then realized he was referring to a superhero’s transformation.
Sure enough, Lastrada blithely began changing into his antihero costume, humming a tune that fit his antiheroic switch-up: “Doo doo doooo, duuun dun duh dun!”
He almost looked like he was reenacting a transformation scene.
“Here, Commander. Hurry up!” he urged, looking intently at the bag that Mira was holding.
Looking inside it out of curiosity, she found it stuffed full of women’s clothing in dark shades. He’d apparently dropped by the clothing store to pick up an antihero costume for her to wear too.
“Ugh, if I must…” Mira sighed.
Although she lamented having to go out of her way to change, she knew that there was no stopping Lastrada when it came to superhero stuff. It was abundantly clear that, even if she objected, she’d still end up wearing the clothes. Chuckling to herself in irritation about how she really had no choice, she changed into the outfit Lastrada had handed to her.
“What on earth am I wearing…?”
Having put on just about everything in the bag, Mira was gobsmacked. She looked like she’d suddenly become some mistress of the night.
The royal-looking black dress she wore was cute, yet it brought out her natural allure. Red ribbons even wrapped all around it. Mira couldn’t quite make out their purpose; that said, they looked sturdy enough to tie someone up with.
She also wore black high heels that really leaned into the whole “mistress of the night” vibe. Perhaps to play up the “dark” angle, they were aggressively adorned with skulls.
Finally, the pièce de résistance was a black masquerade mask accented with a rose that further emphasized the outfit’s gothic, feminine look.
Checking how her full “transformation” looked with a hand mirror, Mira muttered the first thing that popped into her mind: “I’m not sure how to put this…but I feel less like an antihero and more like some evil sorceress.”
It wasn’t quite an antiheroic look. And while it certainly evoked a “mistress of the night,” the outfit honestly reminded her even more of the kind of evil sorceress that a certain group of transforming sentai superheroes might’ve fought.
When she’d finished getting into her costume, Lastrada dashed over. The moment he saw Mira’s full “transformation,” he broke into a satisfied grin.
“Wow, it’s perfect!”
Putting herself aside, Mira was shocked to see how different Lastrada looked in his full costume. He wore a skull mask and a jet-black cape, as well as a suit, like the kind a certain spider-themed superhero wore.
Looking at his outfit, though, she didn’t feel he looked much different from the type of antihero he was trying to portray.
“Nope. I really don’t feel like I quite look like an antihero,” Mira insisted.
Her current appearance really was a far cry from that. Yet when she told Lastrada what she meant, he tilted his head doubtfully before beginning to inspect every inch of her. Perhaps because the costume was exactly the look he’d been going for, he merely oohed and aahed. After a moment, though, a light gleamed in his eyes.
“Ah! Got it, Commander! A tiger! It needs a tiger!” he said after thinking it over. Mira was baffled.
At that point, Lastrada even began suggesting that she evoke Jingulara. Why in the world had he come up with that? Mira did as he suggested, though, summoning the white tiger of frozen fog.
“Sorry to make you tag along.”
Jingulara was incredibly tall and over twelve feet long. His coat looked like freshly fallen snow, and he had razor-sharp claws resembling shards of ice.
Taking in the full sight of the tiger nuzzled up beside Mira, Lastrada definitively declared, “Yes, that’s perfect. You definitely look like an antiheroine now!”
“Well, as long as you’re okay with it, I guess it’s fine…” Despite feeling that the new addition simply made her look more queenlike, she decided to drop the subject. She was keenly aware that this could get even worse.
For the record, the reason Mira was dressed that way had to do with Lastrada’s favorite superhero shows. It was a popular cliché that the sorceresses in those shows would become double agents who spied on the enemy, or that the heroes would talk them into switching sides. Thus, Lastrada saw evil sorceresses as analogous to antiheroines.
The very satisfied Lastrada marching in front of her, Mira finally plunged into enemy territory. Still wondering how exactly a female antihero was supposed to look, she made her way toward the cave.
Proceeding into that labyrinthine cave, they came upon men who appeared to be standing guard. The men only had a moment to be shocked by Lastrada’s new appearance before they were instantaneously silenced.
While Lastrada was a little overly focused on transformations and behaving like an antihero, he was undoubtedly a pro when it came to his work. His heroic spirit was absolutely committed to bringing down the human-trafficking syndicate, and he didn’t waver for a moment.
Yet Mira was struggling as she followed the ever-zealous Lastrada. “Jeez, these are… Ngh…! They’re so hard to walk in! How are you supposed to…?!”
She’d never worn high heels, and the cave’s rough floor kept tripping her up, so just walking was a struggle, let alone actual fighting. Wondering just how the women who could strut around in such shoes trained, Mira gave up on walking, leaping atop Jingulara.
Now that the heels were no longer a problem, Mira noticed that Lastrada had rapidly managed to stride far ahead. She hurried to catch up.
Reaching the larger cavern, she gazed at Gillian Rock’s hideout. Lamps hung around the chamber; below sat an encampment full of huts and scaffolding. Despite being inside a cave, the space seemed fairly comfortable.
At the moment, though, it was in an uproar, as though a monster had appeared in it. That was Lastrada’s doing, of course. In addition to his appearance, he knew no mercy in his current antihero mode.
Unlike Fuzzy Dice, the “antihero” Lastrada had unrestricted access to his offensive techniques. Besides, all the guild members there were involved in human trafficking, so there wasn’t any need to hold back.
Looking at their enemies, Mira saw that some were significantly powerful. Still, they could only hold off Lastrada—who was avidly delivering justice—for so long. The scene unfolding resembled some action sequence straight out of a Hollywood superhero movie.
“Jeez. He started without me.”
Why hadn’t he waited? Maybe he hadn’t even noticed that Mira had fallen behind. Thinking that she was late to the party either way, Mira joined the fray. Hindered by her high heels, however, she simply sicced Jingulara on her foes while staying near the entrance so that no stragglers escaped.
While this was going on, Lastrada’s rampage became even more furious.
Perhaps looking to run for it, several men appeared in front of the exit where Mira was waiting.
One asked, “Huh? What’s a girl doing here?” as soon as he saw Mira, but he only wondered that for a moment. After getting a good look at her, he shouted, “Wait… She’s with that weird guy!”
Apparently, he found her evil-sorceress look pretty similar to Lastrada’s antihero look. The men suddenly became much warier.
“Hey, missy, how about letting us through? If you do, we won’t hurt you.”
Still—perhaps because of her outfit—they figured that she was essentially just a cute girl, so they were quite sure of themselves.
“Hrmm… No dice!” Mira rejected the idea as if they should’ve expected as much.
“I see. Then you only have yourself to blame!”
The moment the words left one man’s lips, the group rushed at Mira with swords in hand, screaming for her to get out of the way. At once, several crashed into a tower shield that suddenly appeared in front of them; they fell backward. Several others were blown away when Mira unleashed [Immortal Arts Heaven: Pulse].
Finally, one man was left. Perhaps frightened at seeing how his comrades had all ended up sprawled on the ground within the blink of an eye, he stopped cold. Utterly baffled, he couldn’t figure out what’d happened.
But Mira wasn’t about to let the opportunity go to waste. She took a decisive step forward, almost as if letting the man know that it was all over, and delivered a sharp kick.
Just then, however—perhaps due to her inexperience with wearing heels—Mira lost her balance slightly. In turn, her kick just barely missed its target and landed square between the man’s legs.
“Ooof!”
She hadn’t simply kicked him. As fate would have it, she struck the blow directly with the tip of her heel. The man cried out in such agony that he could barely make another sound before collapsing. He began writhing in pain, letting out ragged breaths and beginning to tremble.
However you looked at it, it was quite clear that he wouldn’t be having kids anytime soon, if ever.
“Hey, I’m really sorry about that…”
Her opponent was a villain who’d participated in human trafficking and exploited a great many children, so whatever happened was his just deserts. But Mira knew that kind of pain all too well, so she apologized from the bottom of her heart.
Once she’d calmed the man down, she sprinkled a costly restorative medicine generously onto his nether region. That was her very best spirit medicine and would easily heal him so long as the damage wasn’t too great.
“What a barbaric thing to do…”
“Damn… She’s like a demon.”
As Mira tended to the man, whom she felt she’d taken things a bit too far with, several other men watched from a distance. They’d run off hoping to escape as well, and though far away, they’d witnessed what had happened. That is, they’d seen Mira deliver that truly savage kick.
She could only have done something like that because she was a woman, and didn’t understand how much such an attack hurt. The men shuddered, utterly appalled.
From their point of view, they’d seen a warning: Anyone who tried to escape would be involuntarily sterilized. At least, that was how it looked to them.
Seeing the utterly merciless methods the seemingly cute girl employed, the men cringed.
“Hey—she’s still doing somethin’!”
“What is that…? It’s like she’s sprinkling something…”
“It’s got to be…some kind of poison. She’s makin’ the damage permanent—tryin’ to be sure he never has kids…!”
The merciless kick Mira had delivered in front of them, coupled with her sadistic-looking getup, cemented the men’s impression of her.
They were all busy watching Mira’s poor victim in horror, wondering what fate would befall him, and thus never noticed Jingulara creeping up behind them.
The men only had a fraction of a second to cry out before they too were beaten into submission. Luckily for them, though, their future children were spared.
“Well, how’d that go…?” Convinced that she’d done everything she could, Mira gingerly took off the man’s pants. “There… It seems to have worked.”
The spirit medicine had evidently taken effect. It didn’t look like anything was out of the ordinary.
Realizing that everything had suddenly gotten quiet, Mira sighed. “Hrmm. Guess it must be over.”
She no longer heard Lastrada going postal, and Jingulara was standing guard behind her as if he’d completed his assignment. It seemed that the Gillian Rock members in this hideout had been put out of action. That meant Lastrada should already have captured the guild master holed up there.
“All right, then. Where is he?” As Mira looked around for Lastrada and the guild master, Jingulara pointed in another direction. “Oh. Over there, huh?”
Beginning to walk away to meet with Lastrada, Mira suddenly turned back and looked at the man she’d tended to. She thought about how the agony and dread of such an attack had become alien to her in her current body.
I guess I never have to worry about dealing with that excruciating pain again…
That was actually a big perk, but at the same time, she couldn’t help feeling slightly nostalgic. Staring at her lower half, lost in thought, Mira suddenly remembered the strike she’d just delivered and cringed as a shiver ran down her spine.
She came upon Lastrada past the cavern and farther inside the cave, in a spot that appeared to have been set up to live in fairly comfortably. He’d apparently been waiting for Mira to show up, since he was sitting in a chair. He gestured her over.
“So you’ve been all the way in here,” Mira said, as if it hadn’t been easy to find him.
She hopped down from Jingulara and stood beside him. Then, looking farther inside the cave, she noticed a man lying on the ground. She had no doubt that he was Gillian Rock’s guild master.
“How’d it go?” she asked. “Did you get any information from him?”
The guild master had been stuck to the ground using spider silk. He looked so helpless that Lastrada could’ve done just about anything to him. In that case, he’d probably already gotten information out of the guild master. At least, that was what Mira thought, but apparently things hadn’t been quite that simple.
“He’s a stubborn one. He won’t talk, so I’m in a bit of a pickle,” Lastrada answered, then explained all the methods he’d tried.
According to him, the man had an extremely high tolerance for pain, and he didn’t seem to hold his own life in particularly high regard. Lastrada had tried interrogating him using poison, but the man still refused to speak, and his expression apparently hadn’t changed one bit throughout the whole process.
“I’ve had to interrogate quite a few people in my day, but it’s my first time coming across anyone this tough to crack.”
Perhaps motivated by pride or loyalty, the guild master—who was unmoved by fear or pain and had an iron will—maintained his silence. His name was Rock. At least that was the only name Mira could find using the Inspect function. Considering how stubborn he was and how hard of a time he’d given Lastrada, he seemed to have lived up to his name.
But Lastrada didn’t seem to intend to use any more cruel or brutal interrogation tactics than the ones he had already.
“What would you do, Noir Queen?” Lastrada asked expectantly.
“Noir Qu… Well, it’s fine. Hrmm. What should we do?”
Lastrada had apparently chosen her antihero name. Smiling tolerantly at this, Mira walked deliberately over to Rock to begin by getting a sense of the situation. No good ideas came to her, though, and she wasn’t very familiar with interrogation methods.
“He does look pretty tough.”
Although Rock was stuck to the ground, staring up toward the cave ceiling with a surly look, she could tell that he was fairly strong. She could see several wounds on his body that looked like Lastrada had inflicted them during his interrogation, but they weren’t the guild master’s only wounds. The scars that covered his body served as evidence that he was used to being hurt.
It certainly seemed that, whatever they tried, they wouldn’t be able to break him. She could tell from one look that Rock was full of an unbreakable will.
Mira drew closer to the guild master. At that point, he closed his eyes and stated matter-of-factly, “You’re wasting your time.”
It didn’t matter what tortures they put him through; he still didn’t intend to answer. His entire body attested to that. Despite having been captured, his attitude gave them the feeling that he wasn’t the least bit worried, and his voice was totally unperturbed. Besides, the scars covering him more than backed up what he’d said.
Mira wondered if she could do anything against a foe like Rock.
If only Kagura were there—things would certainly already be settled. But she wasn’t. Mira did have a way to contact her, but she couldn’t do so immediately, and it would take yet more time if Kagura even decided to come.
At any rate, I should try doing whatever I can at the moment. I can call Kagura as a last resort.
It didn’t feel great always relying on Kagura either. With that in mind, Mira drew even closer to Rock, searching for a weak spot or something she could use. She still wasn’t used to wearing heels, so she had to approach him slowly, one step at a time.
Rock kept his eyes firmly shut and didn’t move a muscle. He had several painful-looking cuts, yet they appeared not to bother him one bit. His expression wasn’t fearful or anxious; it was completely apathetic. She couldn’t read any emotion on his face at all.
Hrmm… I don’t know whether I can do anything.
He was a foe that even Lastrada, who’d interrogated criminals before, had no idea what to do with. Unable to come up with anything herself, Mira tried asking the Spirit King and Martel, hoping that they’d have some wisdom on the subject.
“What a shame. If I could just go there in person, I could give him a fruit that’d make him tell the truth,” Martel said, much to Mira’s surprise.
Apparently, the progenitor spirit had some incredible fruit that rivalled Kagura’s confession technique. But she couldn’t use it unless she was present, and it wasn’t really feasible for Mira to go all the way back to the Ancient Underground City just to get her.
“Oh, yeah… How about using Salamander’s power to roast him from inside? There’s surely no way he’s toughened his organs to withstand that!” The Spirit King’s suggestion definitely constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
Needless to say, Mira answered that she wasn’t going to go quite that far. The Spirit King replied that any number of things were possible, depending how one chose to use spirits, before laughing that it was just a joke.
“In any case, if you’re looking to break someone who’s already endured this much, you may need to think a bit outside the box. For example, maybe try moving him emotionally with one of Leticia’s songs.”
Physical torture wasn’t the only form. Mira could go at it from a mental angle by stirring Rock’s emotions, which would also actually feel positive rather than negative. That, at least, was the Spirit King’s suggestion.
“I see. Yeah, that may just work!”
Having observed Rock’s attitude and body, it was abundantly clear to Mira that the guild master could endure whatever torments they inflicted upon him. But what if they tried the polar opposite? Perhaps Leticia’s singing, which made one feel like they were ascending to heaven, could open up his heart. After he succumbed to its comfort, he might well want more of it. If he did, they could offer to let her continue singing in exchange for information.
That was definitely a better strategy against an enemy who wouldn’t submit to torment or pain. Considering it a great idea, Mira immediately walked back to Lastrada to discuss it.
“Well, he is the kind of guy who won’t break however hard we squeeze him, huh? Okay, that sounds good. I expected nothing less of you, Noir Queen! Sure, go ahead and try it!” Lastrada agreed. He didn’t think it was a bad idea either.
“All right. Now it’s my turn. I hope you’re ready.” Mira strode toward Rock once more. She’d begun to figure out how exactly to walk in heels, so her steps were substantially lighter. As she drew nearer to him, the sound of her heels clacking echoed through the cave.
Just then, Rock’s eyes—which he’d kept shut to signal his utter refusal to cooperate—suddenly opened wide. His gaze shot straight toward Mira’s feet and, rather than stopping there, slowly began moving up her legs.
“What…the hell?!” Rock said, having thoroughly looked Mira up and down. There seemed to be some emotion in his voice and expression other than mere surprise.
“Hm? What? What’d I do?”
Why had Rock suddenly reacted, although she hadn’t yet begun with her plan? His prior demeanor had vanished in an instant; sure enough, he was clearly showing emotion.
Surprised, Lastrada quickly hurried over to get a look at how the guild master had changed. Right then, though, the stony, apathetic look returned to Rock’s face. It seemed like it’d be difficult to determine what exactly had caused his sudden reaction.
But though Mira couldn’t figure out why, his iron will had definitely cracked, if only for a moment.
“Let me take another look.”
Lastrada approached the man, hoping to gather some hint as to any weakness he might have. Mira, meanwhile, put the Leticia plan on hold, moving aside to avoid getting in Lastrada’s way.
“Uh-oh…!”
Just then, perhaps overestimating her ability to walk in heels after getting somewhat used to them, Mira stumbled and lost her balance. She moved her leg immediately to regain it.
“Hnngh!”
Moving reflexively, Mira had ended up stomping on Rock. Moreover, she’d done so in such a way that all her weight was on that heel. Despite how little she weighed, the pain must’ve been excruciating. Rock let out a shriek.
“Oops! Sorry about that!” Mira said apologetically, scrambling to take her foot off him.
But as soon as she did, a shiver ran down her spine, and she turned around. Rock was staring right at her. While his expression was still blank, his eyes had a somewhat keen look.
“Why’d he yell just now?” Lastrada asked.
Regardless of what Lastrada did to him, Rock had maintained the same expression without so much as making a peep. But within this short span of time, he’d suddenly changed wildly. Lastrada studied him carefully, hoping to gather what his reaction meant.
“He’s kind of giving me the creeps,” Mira said.
The man was staring at her ardently. Somewhat weirded out, she slowly shrank back. But his gaze was firmly fixed on her. Wherever she went, his eyes followed.
“Is that…?”
Watching Rock very closely, Lastrada realized something upon noticing one very particular change in the guild master’s body.
“Noir Queen, do you have a second?” he asked. “There’s something I want you to try…”
He whispered the plan into Mira’s ear so that she could attempt it.
Upon hearing it, however, she grimaced, and a bewildered look passed over her face. “Wait. Hold on. You want me to do what?!”
“He may just spill the beans really easily if it works. And from what I can tell, the chances of that are pretty high.”
While it was difficult to ask Mira to attempt the plan, he’d picked up on definite proof that led him to think it would work, Lastrada boasted. And the truth was that his eyes had been thoroughly trained to serve justice, so they’d long been able to see through many a villain.
“Well, fine. Why not?”
If Lastrada was willing to go this far out on a limb, there was definitely a chance it’d work. Firmly believing that, Mira agreed and approached Rock once more.
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