nashuaworldcup Chapter 240: He Has Agreed to Your Request
Chapter 240: He Has Agreed to Your Request
The black rabbit doll stayed perfectly still.
It hadn’t moved once.
Still.
Even without seeing the terrifying hallucinations the others had, Pandora had felt something.
With her considerable Wizardly mental fortitude, she’d clearly sensed that surge of overwhelming psychic force that had erupted into the room—and just as quickly snapped back under control the moment the clerks started their bizarre little routine.
It was an invisible psychic shockwave.
The intensity was off the charts, carrying an edge of indescribable madness and chaos.
What surprised Pandora the most was that while the thing ran roughshod over the entire room, it had curved neatly around her.
As if the doll had deliberately sidestepped her.
It hadn’t touched her at all.
At least quasi-Master Demon Hunter level, Pandora estimated silently.
And is that... a hint of Wizardry I’m sensing? This kind of mental erosion and domination is pure Wizard territory.
She looked at the doll, turning the questions over in her head.
Did the Academy just stumble across this ‘Mr. Long-Ears’ by accident? Like those Wizard-related artifacts you can buy in the East District of Eden? Or...
Does the Demon Hunter Academy actually have ties with the Wizards?
While she was still chewing on that, she noticed the four people on the floor starting to move.
“Cough, cough... I thought... I almost thought...”
“I was going to cash in this body...”
As ‘Mr. Long-Ears’ miasma of violence settled back down to a simmer, the section chief—who’d been kneeling on the floor—pulled himself upright, swaying.
His face was the color of old paper, the blood at the corner of his mouth still un-wiped, looking thoroughly hollowed out.
The young clerk tried to follow suit, but he clearly hadn’t done this as many times as the chief.
His eyes were still unfocused, a faint trail of drool still hanging from the corner of his mouth, and he was staring at people with a blank, unblinking gaze—clearly still halfway convinced he was a root vegetable.
The middle-aged woman in the cardigan was sprawled on the floor, gasping for breath.
Her voice still shook, but it was mostly the boneless exhaustion of a close call:
“I told you... we shouldn’t use Mr. Long-Ears so much... the thing is too dangerous...”
The section chief shook his head.
Leaning on the bald clerk, he accepted a darker, more viscous specialized energy drink with trembling hands and threw back a long gulp.
A little bit of color crept back into his face.
“The issue isn’t Mr. Long-Ears,” he said between breaths, his voice like sandpaper.
“We don’t have a lot of tools for dealing with Wizard-path extraordinaries. Standard interrogation, pharmaceuticals, physical pressure—they bounce right off them.”
“The doll is... well, it’s the most effective option we have that we can actually control. Mostly.”
He paused there, a flicker of something close to terror crossing his eyes.
“The problem is...”
The section chief stopped.
He turned his head, slowly.
Those deep, exhausted eyes locked onto the girl behind the interrogation table—the one sitting there looking for all the world like she’d just enjoyed a particularly amusing street performance.
Pandora noticed him staring.
She just smiled, maintaining that expression of calm, slightly innocent serenity.
What was there to say, really?
The Disciplinary Court was extremely well-practiced when it came to Corpse-Plague Acolyte apprentices.
The path of infection modification and flesh augmentation had obvious vulnerabilities; they might have high raw resilience, but when faced with the right chemical suppressants, mental pressure, and physical coercion, they cracked like eggs. Run them through the standard pipeline, and there was almost no truth you couldn’t drag out of them.
But she was a Wizard.
Wizards were a much rarer sight at the Demon Hunter Academy. Not nonexistent, mind you. Just as someone like Bradley Dulles might choose to jump tracks from Corpse-Plague Acolyte to Wizardry, in a large enough population, someone was always going to try the road less traveled.
And Pandora wasn’t just a Wizard. She also carried a much more hidden, much rarer Witch bloodline.
Add to that the information support she’d purchased with potions from Julian Bennett—which methods she could tank, which ones required her to play along, which questions to deflect, and which charges to deny to the hilt...
Navigating an interrogation of this caliber wasn’t exactly difficult.
It wasn’t like she’d committed some capital offense like “Anti-Demon Hunter Crimes” or anything that would trigger the truly extreme measures.
Given the charges against her, they couldn’t go too far. A measure like Mr. Long-Ears—something that could break loose and leave lasting psychic damage—was already them pushing the absolute limit.
..................
The section chief gave Pandora a long, hard look. When she showed no sign of speaking—no urge to explain herself or gloat—he finally looked away.
That familiar sense of defeat washed over him again.
He waved a hand, his voice rough.
“Alright, pack it up.”
“Put Mr. Long-Ears away. Carefully. Don’t set it off.”
The bald clerk and the middle-aged woman moved immediately, their motions efficient but radiating obvious caution.
They hauled a specialized metal box from the corner—covered in dark leather.
They popped the latches and opened it to reveal... colorful eiderdown printed with cute little patterns.
With gloved hands, the two of them gingerly lifted the black rabbit doll—which was still sitting peacefully on the table.
The doll didn’t react.
The woman’s hands shook so badly she nearly dropped it.
The bald clerk hissed a curse under his breath, and between the two of them, they managed to get the thing settled into the padding.
Click.
The lid came down.
The latches snapped shut.
Only then did the people in the room—section chief included—seem to remember how to breathe properly.
The chief waved the two clerks out with the box and followed behind them, getting ready to shut the door on his way out.
His footing was unsteady, his spine no longer ramrod straight, as if that short, harrowing exchange had siphoned off every last drop of his energy.
He had one foot over the threshold of Room S and was pulling the heavy oak door shut behind him when—
“Section Chief.”
The calm voice came from the room he was leaving.
The section chief stopped.
His grip on the doorframe tightened, knuckles going white.
He didn’t turn around right away. It looked like he was bracing himself for something.
A few seconds passed before he turned—very, very slowly.
Pandora was still sitting behind the interrogation table, hands folded neatly on the surface. She looked for all the world like a model student waiting for the teacher to call on her.
“Today,” she said, her voice clear, “makes it the twenty-ninth day, doesn’t it?”
The section chief looked at her and gave a single, silent nod.
“Then tomorrow,” Pandora continued, her tone perfectly even, “should be the final day. Correct?”
“Yes.”
The section chief finally spoke, his voice like dry gravel.