Experiment.

—

After snuggling with each other in silent love and exchanging their Breathing for about an hour, Yoriichi, or rather Richard, instantly tuned his Selfless State to the maximum. Noticing that this shift in mindset unsettled his lover in his chest, he returned to being the warmth and sunshine of Yoriichi. Chuckling, he then explained his sudden behavior, saying, "It's okay. I'm just setting my mind."

Sighing, knowing that her lover wanted to achieve maximum satisfaction, which could possibly take a very long time—especially since she had concluded that Yoriichi had already marked her as his own forever—Margarita simply nodded in silence, not wanting to delay any further.

Setting his mind once again to embody Richard, the more emotionless type, he nodded toward Rita, indicating that she should materialize the two people who had once tortured his Rita. Seeing them both materialize with intact, flawless bodies and complete limbs—unlike the one he had cut in Tretogor—he finally realized that this was Rita and Nemsy's way of creating maximum satisfaction.

Noticing that the part of their brains responsible for speech was damaged—probably because they didn't want them to be able to talk—Richard was intrigued. "Is this Nemsy's doing, or yours as well?"

"Mine as well," Rita replied. "I handled the part where the poison spreads to specific synapses. The pattern behavior of this poison was created by Nemsy."

Nodding as he observed the microscopic robots, which resembled semi-intelligent Nanomites from G.I. Joe and only targeted specific parts, Richard placed his hand on the two people's heads, intending to bring them into a different timescale.

"Wait! I have a place for this," Margarita said. She opened a portal, waved her hand to fly both of the test subjects through it, and onto an operating table in the bunker room on the other side. Turning to Richard, she added, "This place is beneath Undvik, 1,000 meters underground."

Rubbing his chin, seeing that the place was very clean—unlike the torture chamber he had imagined with its dark and gloomy atmosphere—Richard stepped into the portal and examined the white, pristine surgical room more closely. Noting a personal library through a door on the north side, likely intended for Margarita and Nemsy to pass the time during lengthy methods of torture, Richard then turned toward Margarita.

Quantum waves activated to erase what he was about to give and his subsequent actions, he simply said, "Here." Seeing her stunned into silence, he instantly changed the topic, "Right, Rita. Here?"

Coming out of her reverie, feeling a large amount of information entering her brain after being called out, Margarita quickly composed herself and immediately played along, "Yes. They are in section A. As for the equipment, it's just in the back, in the workshop rooms."

Nodding after giving Margarita his Thinking Technique—essentially his method for activating and improving her microtubules to calculate quantum simulations of someone—so she would have something to do while waiting for him to finish, Richard then placed his hand on Rita to bring her to a level 10 timescale. He also set the two people who would become his test subjects for the next eons or so to the same timescale.

Entering the surgical rooms of section A and observing the fear and resentment in Radovid and Mannimarco's eyes for a moment, he then materialized a recording device in the shape of a ballpoint out of thin air. Clicking the top to turn on the device, he said to no one in particular, "Catalog: Villainology Psyche. Log: 0001. Date: November 16th, 1272."

Producing long, thin needles out of thin air while observing their dilated pupils and fidgety bodies, Richard continued, "For the first experiment, I want to understand the point at which someone breaks when faced with the knowledge of death. Method: Bloodletting."

Stabbing the needles into their center pupils to create a perfect laminar flow that slowly drained both of them of blood, Richard observed their sudden reactions and said, "As expected, the initial sudden impact provides no conclusions. It is only pain and throbbing sensations. The subjects still have the willpower to resist."

After a couple of minutes in silence, watching both of them twitch violently and unable to resist, he suddenly paused, noticing that their trajectory of life was already changing. Sighing, knowing this would happen as he sought satisfaction for the revenge because they hurt his Rita, Richard continued the experiment while providing both subjects with regeneration.

"Regeneration seems to give them relief and a bit of hope. How long this will last remains to be seen. Start the timer from 5 seconds onward."

He continued conducting experiment after experiment, from simple limb amputations to prolonged bamboo torture, and even to humiliation torture, including manipulating their sexuality to the extent of simulating a very abnormal homoerotic relationship. Not stopping there, after inflicting pain and humiliation, he began experiments involving disgusting practices like coprophagia.

Richard reached one conclusion after another, but sadly, he did not have another method targeting their emotional sadness or other aspects, as these required field research that could not be replicated in a lab. By the time ten days had passed, he had already developed a comprehensive model of Villainology Psyche under torture, a model that would not improve further as it was already complete.

Even so, he did not stop; instead of studying psychology, he shifted his focus to biology. He began cloning them to understand if their consciousness could be copied. However, upon feeling that the consciousness was entirely different, he stopped the experiment before it even began. This was particularly concerning because he noticed that baby souls were almost being drawn into the cloned bodies.

Thinking about how horrifying it would be if he did not have quantum computation and instead tortured them at different points in time, Richard shivered at the thought. He knew that if he had started torturing them any earlier, he would probably never be able to forgive himself. Because of this, he vowed never again to experiment on consciousness or true souls. After all, even though it involves a baby Thanos, it's still a baby.

So, just like that, he began experiment after experiment across many scientific disciplines until there was nothing more to be gained. However, when he wanted to continue torturing them, realizing it had only been one month since he started and there were still eons before it would be finished, Richard saw Margarita enter the room. She silently caressed his chest up and down without saying anything further. He continued his experiments for about five years, until his anger finally began to calm down.

Turning toward Rita, who patiently and constantly rubbed his chest to prevent his psyche from becoming truly devilish, Richard smiled warmly at his melody and simply said, "Thanks."

—