CHAPTER 53: EMOTIONAL TORTURE (3)

Gideon's eyes had become dull, completely devoid of any life and emotion, same with his hair. His body had slumped in his chair and his skin was pale and his lips were dry. His body had thinned down due to not eating for days, or was it weeks? Gideon had no idea on how much time had passed. But one thing was for sure however, and that was that Gideon's mind had broken.

He didn't how many times he had seen Victoria die, not did he know the number of brutal methods that had been used, but his soul had nearly given up.

He had seen her head explode, seen her get sliced in have, seen her belly slit open before having her organs yanked out, seen her bleed to death, electrocuted, burnt, frozen, drowned, fried with oil. Each time he just wanted it to end as he felt his sanity get chipped at each time.

But then, he finally saw a ray of hope, and that was that the less emotions he showed, the slower the rate of Victoria dying.

It was an insanely difficult task, especially considering the fact that he had to watch the person he cared about the most in the world die repeatedly and not show any emotions. And so it was only after hundreds, thousands of deaths did Gideon completely wipe a way his emotions.

His eyes were glued to Victoria's figure who was asleep while kneeling down. Although there was some tenderness in Gideon's heart, he didn't dare show it on his face or in his eyes as he knew that even the slightest emotional fluctuation would be detected and Victoria would die again.

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Victoria's hair was disheveled and her body had gotten marks from struggling against her binds so much. Similar to Gideon, her eyes were completely devoid of any emotions and had turned lifeless.

Similar to Gideon, she had learnt the consequences about letting the slightest emotional fluctuation show the hard way, and that was by watching her beloved brother die in all sorts of cruel ways. Some of them were short so although it hurt, she felt that he didn't need to suffer too much. But there were also some that were so excruciatingly slow that each second felt like an eternity and if felt like someone was carving out her heart each time.

By the time she realized what she needed to do, she was brought back to life after biting her tongue and killing herself. She gain the realization just when everything went black, and when she was brought back, she did everything she could in order to keep her emotions in check.

Victoria saw Gideon mouthing 'It's okay' to her through the window despite all the suffer he was going through, even though she wanted to feel bad, she drowned the feeling and simply stared at Gideon with her lifeless eyes. It hurt, but it was all she could do.

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"It's been a day here but roughly three weeks for Gideon and four for Victoria. That's quite decent considering their age. Anyway, I guess I should end it now." Lin mused before cancelling her mind control technique, but she still kept the duo binded in case they had another outburst.

At that moment, the two siblings opened their eyes and looked around for a moment, the memories of everything that had happened resurfacing. And immediately, when they looked at each other and saw the same dull look in their eyes, no words were said nor were there any exaggerated actions. Instead, tears streamed down both of their faces relief, joy, sadness, anger, all sorts of emotions flashed in their eyes. But only flashed. In the next moment, the tears stopped and even though their eyes were no longer lifeless, they didn't hold a trace of emotion.

"Seems like the training was a success, congratulations on completing your second stage of training." Lin said with praise as her wind restriction was removed and the duo regained their ability to move.

They moved their bodies with relief as even though it was only an hour in reality, weeks had passed by for them without them being able to move.

"How much time has passed." Gideon asked with a hoarse voice.

"One day." Upon hearing the answer that would usually wreck the minds of normal people, the siblings merely nodded as they had expected such an answer.

"Thank you." They said in unison as they bowed towards Lin who merely waved her hand. They had matured quite a bit over the time spent in the hellish world and realized that getting pissed of would not only be pointless but also stupid since their temperament was actually not that great and they needed this type of training, ni matter how horrible it was.

"I'm going to leave you two to stabilize your minds, besides, I'm sure you two would want to talk about a lot of things." Lin's voice became slightly soft at the end before she disappeared, leaving the siblings on their own.

Immediately after she left, Gideon and Victoria looked at each other for some seconds, and then without hesitation, Gideon pulled Victoria into a tight embrace.

Victoria was stunned for a moment before the tears began to pour out like a broken dam as she hugged him back tightly.

"It hurt." Victoria whimpered out and Gideon hugged her tighter while crying as well.

"I know, but it's fine now, alright? Everything's alright." Gideon stroked her head with incredible care as he didn't want anything bad to happen to her. You don't know how important something is until you loose it, and it was each other in their case.

In truth, they wanted to embrace each other like this the moment they were out of the illusion, but they were afraid that it was still an illusion, so they held themselves back.

One might mistakes their actions for romantic feelings but it was just pure care for each other as siblings, which had reached an entirely different level after the illusion.

Lin looked at the duo from a distance and couldn't help but sigh. She would be lying to herself if she said that she didn't feel bad for them, after all, her own training in this area was much milder than theirs when she was at their level.

'I really envy all those normal citizens honestly. They never need to worry about the urge to get stronger and simply live out their lives, saving themselves this type of torture, just to make sure that they don't screw up during a fight.' Lin sighed, feeling nostalgic. Naturally, the path to strength was not easy. It never was, and never will.