Chapter 282: One too many bodies
Back to the present…
<[Core of Opportunistic Survival] has been consolidated, please use at your earliest convenience.>
<[Core of Dogged Loyalty] has been consolidated, please use at your earliest convenience.>
“Huh, I guess it is true what they say, ” Zhen Liu muttered while admiring his new cores, “you only get to know the measure of a man when life or death is made a choice…or something poetic like that, I am honestly surprised y’all believed the crap I said.”
“MMMPH?!”
“MMMMPH!”
A little after concluding on how he was going to deal with his two “volunteers”, Zhen Liu decided to do a little experiment before mindjumbling them and dumping them in the desert without any clothes except their underwear.
=Shall I take these new cores into storage for you?=
‘Wait, you can do that for me? I thought I’d have to go back into the room and pull it up myself.’
=I mean you can, but we’d be shitty assistants if we couldn’t do something as simple as storing materials.=
‘Oh…cool.’
Zhen Liu handed the two glowing cores over to Logos, who proceeded to disappear from the room with them in tow.
“Well, now that she’s gone…what to do with you two…”
Up until now, Zhen Liu had acquired all of his desire cores via fleeting moments of chance and just being lucky that he had the right materials at the right time…mostly.
But this haphazard acquisition of materials and cores probably wasn’t the smartest method of acquiring kaijin and wouldn’t work in the long term if he’s going to inevitably go toe-to-toe with guys who were stronger than his local warlords.
Also, he didn’t want to risk the possibility of a kaijin being designed to betray him.
He might have been told that would never happen, but he’s seen the shows, he knew there were glitches in every system, he didn’t want a traitorous general situation.
‘Note to self, if I have the ability to turning living humans into kaijin…fucking don’t unless you really need to,’ Zhen Liu told himself.
With this in mind, Zhen Liu explored the possibility of harvesting these desires in a more artificial manner, namely inducing the desire in people via coercion until they created a core for him.
Zhen Liu had initially thought of trying this out on his family members, but nixed that idea because that was a tad fucked up. He didn’t get along with some of them, but blood is blood and one shouldn’t experiment on family willy-nilly…even if they were proper bastards…
He was also tempted to just kidnap a person off the street and then let them loose once they gave him a core, but again, that was fucked up.
Which was why he was a little thankful that his main branch cousins decided to send him some “volunteers” in the form of spies that no one would give a shit about if they suddenly disappeared.
‘Hmmm, I shouldn’t really make it a habit to just kidnap people for the sake of core creation though…’
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Meanwhile…
[Hmm? You guys hear something?,] Hurricroak asked her compatriots.
[No. Why?,] Nepherage responded.
[Thought I heard subtle disapproval of our actions…]
[Probably…conscience…,] Frosttusk added.
[Doubt it.]
[Hey, I have one…speaking of conscious, I suggest you let him go now, he’s starting to turn blue and he’s already passed out.]
[Oh whoops.]
With the reminder given, Nepherage released the spy from her chokehold and allowed him to flop on the ground.
[Okay and that makes three…how many are left?]
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‘Why do I have a sudden feeling of dread in stomach? Eh, whatever.’
Given the situation, Zhen Liu had decided that for his first experiment in artificial core creation, he used the most obvious and probably prevalent desire that would form in spies loyal to an organization: life or death.
No two people in the world ever shared the exact same values and desires, even pawns to a big ass organization like his main branch cousins’ clan was no exception.
There would always be dogmatic fanatics mixed in opportunistic betrayers, that was a fact of life, and lucky for Zhen Liu, he managed to capture one of each.
By using a combination of threats, promises and the simple offering of a deal of betrayal, he had managed to arouse their respective desires to popping out a pair of unique cores.
Of course, the two of them were now staring daggers at each other and looked as if they wanted to stab the other with said daggers, but that wasn’t gonna matter in a couple minutes.
=I am back milord.=
Speak of the devil.
=So, do you still wish to mindjumble the two of them?=
“Yes,” Zhen Liu agreed, “yes I do.”
=Excellent. What do you have mind in terms of their memories being rewritten as?=
“Well…”
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About twenty minutes later, in a certain exit chamber…
“Are you sure you don’t want us to carry them ourselves?,” Alicia asked with small concern, “We did bring them to you unexpectedly.”
“Nah, it’s cool. They’re actually pretty light. On a side note, when did you four get those brooches?”
“Oh, Pathos gave them to us. Said they were gifts for first time visitors.”
“Huh…okay.”
“So…why didn’t you kill them again?,” Jin Fang asked as she slapped the face of one of the unconcious spies that Zhen Liu was now carrying on his shoulders. She was informed about what Zhen Liu and Logos had done these two, namely scramble their memories, but she just couldn’t believe how quick it was.
From what she read, such things usually involved special drugs, a lot of torture devices or one to be a sufficiently powerful anima wielder.
Zhen Liu had none of these…or at least, last she checked.
Zhen Liu rolled his eyes as he explained his reasoning for not merking these two for what he thinks was the third time today.
“Killing these two would probably lead to a chain reaction where the guys in charge of them would send a message back home for them to send more warriors or even deadlier ones,” Zhen Liu explained, “if they disappear and then re-appear a couple days later, it makes them look foolish for having such an overblown reaction. And last I checked, these guys don’t like having their honor besmirched.”
“Oh…that makes sense.”
“Yup, now let’s get the hell outta here.”
With everything settled, bodies secured and gifts given, Zhen Liu reopened the door back to the quarry where this little incident began…only to be greeted by a brand new one.
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“Hi milord! We secured the other spies!”
“What?”
