Chapter 21

~she's alive~

That was the first thought that ran through my mind as I watched the rat mans life, soul, whatever the fuck I sense, disappear within them, slowly fading away just like everything else I had killed since my arrival here, all except for that girl.

I've thought for a while now, but im like 99% sure that the "life" I sense is their soul

Quite the interesting thought considering I had personally cut her neck apart, but I've died to much much worse and I'm still here, so I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised. She was a good actor too, really made me think I was speaking to a regular person about to die instead of an immortal, or maybe the body was just a puppet? Who knows.

At least currently, this "life" being the soul is the only viable explanation I can come up with. It perfectly explains why I was the only one with it during the trial, as even though most of the high tier monsters had near if not superior intelligence to humans, as well as sapience, they all were in the end, fakes. Mere emulations made by some multiversal god to serve as props in a planetary scale simulation of the apocalypse, like an AI simply given enough response algorithms to sound alive, but not truly capable of sapient thought.

It explains why, upon arriving here, so far everything alive has had it, and why it disappeared after their deaths.

I still did not know if the afterlife existed, sure I had been reincarnated, but that was at the whim of some bored god, who knew if it was a unique occurrence, but the fact that, although slightly dissolving upon death, most simply faded away into nothingness, leaving nothing behind, it likely went somewhere…

Thoughts for another time.

Truthfully, I'm not exactly sure how to react to the girl being alive, if my conclusion is correct to begin with. I hate her, no, loathe is a better term, the simple act of her trying to control my mind, or influence it in anyway has severed all possibilities of diplomacy, the very idea of my mind being manipulated so appalling I refuse to even consider a peaceful solution. But truthfully, I really, really don't care enough to hunt her down. I will still not hesitate to kill her if I ever meet her again, but I'm not going to go searching for her.

Although who knows if she will share this sentiment. '~I will always accept some nice stress relief after all~.'

Anyway, why do I feel like I'm forgetting something? Hmmmmmm

I close my eyes and tilt my head to the side frowning for a moment when I finally realize that I have constantly been hearing the sound of panicked breathing, as the man, previously raping the womans corpse, now sat back against the wall, frozen in terror. Ewww gross he didn't pull up his pants, damn dude I really didn't want to see that, if I hadn't learned to lock away memories long ago, I would probably be permanently scarred by this experience.

"~Oh, yes, you were here… I completely forgot, I was a bit excited to confirm some things see? But don't worry, you will get your turn soon."

My eyes snap up to his face again, now completely refusing to go any lower. 'Seriously though, it's so gross and shriveled, *shiver* yeah I'ma need to bleach these eyes later.

Oh yeah he's a rapist too, that's so awful. I'm not even being sarcastic now, I just don't know how to emulate it. Personally, I have always considered rape the absolute worst crime anyone can commit, that and slavery, idk it goes either or depending on context, anyway thats not important, its just that as a proud american, even if I really can't bring myself to care for others, the idea of stripping someone of their freedom, and enslaving or raping them, just really is the worst crime imaginable to me, beyond murder, which honestly, I don't really care about, my main thing with murder is if you kill someone you should expect to be killed in return. Which is why it always made no sense to me that such an emphasis was placed on nonlethal capture back in my old world, like, sure it's nice to bring them to justice and all, but especially with how corrupt our justice system was, it's just better to straight up kill them most of the time.

And don't get me started on superhero stories, like seriously, "this dude just committed war crimes on an industrial scale and killed X number of people, we need to take him in alive just so he can inevitably escape and do it again." like yeah rehab is important, but there are just some people you can't change.

Wait what was I talking about, oh yeah crying rapist with his pants down and a nasty crotch. Fuck I really need some bleach. Ok yeah, I was gonna give you a painful death anyway but now its personal so fuck you.

"~lets see, I think I have a present for you here somewhere."

I quickly wipe the blood from my blade and sheath it before rummaging through my jacket, reaching through the different pockets until I pull out two small arrowhead shaped structures about the size of my pointer finger, both transparent to show a variety of fluids, components, and a small motherboard within. One glows a blood red, while the other glows a light silver.

I mumble a bit as I look at them. "Let's see… I have a Revenge model 1.31 and a Repent model 1.76… damn the system really only gave me my old shit these are from forever ago, pretty sure I haven't made these in a few thousand runs, moved on to better versions. I guess the Revenge model doesn't really apply here since the victim is already dead… so I guess the Repent it is."

I should probably explain oh great voices in my mind, these two little pretties are my "Relatively early" iterations of my two categories of torture device. And while both do relatively the same thing, they have very different uses. Both work by hijacking the victims nervous system, allowing them to directly stimulate the victims brain with as much pain as humanly imaginable, while also keeping them from going insane or dying from shock using a variety of drugs and stimulants. Some of my later models could even directly control the victims body so that no one even knew something was wrong, but these ones can't do that, the most they can do is sort of "stun" the victim, locking up muscles temporarily. 

The distinction comes from the way they are used. The "Revenge" model, allows the victim to directly control the process, choosing how, where, and when to cause pain through either integrated cybernetics like me, or, with this model, a small device that they can wear anywhere that touches their body within a few centimeters of their spine, allowing it to communicate with their brain in a non invasive way.

On the other hand, the "Repent model" has two modes, its namesake "Repent" which in this model basically just works as torturing the victim until they confess their crimes, and sometimes the crimes of their employers/group. Or, if I want to, simply just torture the victim for as long as possible.

Both will only kill the victim after they can no longer keep the brain alive under torture, or when anyone tries to help the victim in a way that might actually work, which considering my lack of knowledge of magic, means literally everything magical.

I made the first version of these a long long time ago, it started after one run where I got captured by a group of sadistic former CIA interrogation agents who turned into psychopathic cannibals post apocalypse, where I was then very slowly flayed, tortured, eaten, and raped until I eventually died.

Unfortunately a torture chamber does not count as enough of a safe space to go to my safehouse, who knew?

Anyway, I went back the next run and used everything I learned from what they did to me on them, minus the rape part, I'm not into that.

Then I killed myself and did it all again, and again, and again. Until eventually after who knows how many runs I started doing rnd runs for a while, runs where I did nothing but rnd and didn't try to complete more quests. And developed the first of these little things. Then I went back and tortured them for a few more years using them. It was very fun. Come to think of it, that experience is probably what made me a sadist.

Anyway, I walked up to the man's sniveling, pathetic form, and reached behind his neck with the Repent model in my hand, before flicking it into his neck just below the skull, where it sank into his brainstem and began to work. Merging with his nerves, as I quickly stitched up the tiny incision, and dropped the man back to the floor, watching as he panicked and reached behind his neck, trying to scream when his hand came away bloody, only for no sound to leave his mouth, when his entire body suddenly fell to the floor shaking, and his mouth fell open in a silent scream.

I didn't really care about his group so I just left it on torture till death. And left the alley.

(An: this chapter is a bit disjointed, sorry about that, I kinda just let the words flow out as I thought about them, and was to lazy to go back and rewrite the entire chapter from scratch once I had finished it and had all the ideas thought out like I usually do.)