Spy Classroom - Volume 4 - Chapter 1.5

Interlude

Purple Ant  

In the end, she never told him a thing about how she’d gotten to Mouzaia. All she’d done was narrow her eyes a bit, like she was thinking back through her memories. Reminiscing on a life she’d never be able to return to, no doubt.

Purple Ant observed his captive. When he said she was younger than he’d expected, he had meant every word. Given the outstanding espionage work she’d been doing in Mitario, he had assumed she would be far older and far more experienced.

She still hadn’t given him her name.

However, he didn’t mind. Purple Ant was perfectly happy taking it slow and leisurely thinking it over. He still had plenty of time.

He ordered another cola.

His exclusive bartender broke off some ice with his ice pick, then garnished the drink with a lemon slice before serving it to him. Purple Ant took a sip. Then, as he let it linger on his tongue, a knock echoed through the room.

“Come in,” he said, and a naked man wearing a dog collar came into the bar.

“………”

His captive gave their new intruder a quizzical look.

Purple Ant smiled amiably. “You were acting rather cold, so I thought the gentlemanly thing to do would be to tell you a story myself. I imagine you’re curious, after all. You want to know why it is you and your people lost to me.”

Then he barked an order to the collared man. “Sit.”

A pained look crossed the man’s face for a moment, but he obediently took a seat on the ground.

“Allow me to introduce you. This is my pet dog.”

“……”

“Up until five years ago, he was a med student at Mitario University. People called him a prodigy, and his grades were excellent. In fact, I hear he was top of his class and captain of the cricket team to boot. And the ladies loved him. His days were rich and full, and he had a bright future ahead of him.”

“………”

“Doesn’t that sound a bit odd? How could such a promising young man get reduced to a mangy beast like this?”

Purple Ant presented his hand to the bartender, and the bartender gave him a wineglass garnished with a custom-made stun gun. That was Purple Ant’s weapon of choice. He flipped it on, and blue sparks crackled at its tip.

“Allow me to demonstrate,” he said, then pressed the stun gun against his so-called pet dog’s shoulder.

A scream split the air, as bloodcurdling as an echo from Hell itself.

Purple Ant held the stun gun down, and a full twenty-three seconds elapsed. Only then, after tormenting the man for what must have felt like an eternity, did Purple Ant stop the current.

Then he gave the man another order. “Show me some gratitude.”

Tears rolled down his pet’s face as the man groaned in pain. “…Thank you, sir.”

“______!”

The captive spy gasped. Her brain couldn’t quite process the gruesome spectacle she’d just witnessed.

Purple Ant chuckled. “Shocking, isn’t it? You know, there’s a trick to tormenting people so they don’t pass out.”

Stun guns were designed to be powerful enough to knock someone out in a single second. Being able to deliver more than twenty seconds’ worth of torture with one required a great deal of finesse.

“I have this gift, you see. For as long as I can remember, I’ve known exactly what kind of pain will chisel fear deep into a person’s brain. Give me a week with someone, and I can make anyone fall in line. If I ordered them to die, they would do just that.”

“………”

“He used to be a happy med student, but now, he’s just my dog. He gave up his family, his girlfriend, his dreams, and his identity, and now he runs around the world doing exactly what I tell him to.”

Purple Ant called that power of his “domination.”

The way he saw it, it was a gift he’d been given by God himself.

“The pain I give people rewrites their very brains. It isn’t logic that makes them obey me; it’s their primal instincts. Students, killers, fighters, bank clerks, and actresses alike all bow before their king,” Purple Ant declared. “They become Worker Ants, dutifully obeying me until the day they die.”

“………”

“By day, they go about their normal lives. But at night, they serve me like the fanatical slaves they are. They study assassination techniques like their lives depend on it, and they kill without a single scruple or qualm.”

Mitario was Purple Ant’s stronghold, and he had countless Worker Ants roaming its streets. And what’s more, his loyal, unfeeling minions were indistinguishable from normal civilians.

“What I’m saying is, my Worker Ants have already obliterated your team.”

With that, Purple Ant began spinning his tale.

He told his captive about the massacre he’d carried out in his kingdom of Mitario.