Kaijin Fighter: So I Have to Make Monsters, So What? – Chapter 874

=Dark…side note, you do realize that honey trapping involves making our targets fall into false relationships, right?=

=Does that term still apply when our zakos have a tendency to make those relationships real?=

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“Wait…don’t you usually use a mask for this sort of thing.”

“Not this time. These guys actually know who I am…sort of.”

“Ah.”

…

SPLASH!

“Bah!”

“Wah!”

“Where am I?!”

“Oh good, you’re awake.”

“What the-oh, fuck!”

“And you’re quick on the uptake too. Good…”

In a predominantly empty stone room, Victor, Simos and Graff found themselves in one of the worst situations that an ex-con turned investigator could ever find themselves in. That is to say, they found themselves tied to chairs with aether sealing cuffs on their wrists, arms behind their backs and soaked in icy cold water. Evidently, whomever captured the lot of them opted to wake them up through less than gentle methods.

Making matters worst, at least two out of three of them had their minds scrambled to the point that everything happened in the last twenty-four hours were more or less a massive blur. As for the third, they wished they had forgotten everything.

As of this moment in time, Simos and Graff were frantically darting their heads back and forth in an attempt to figure out what the fuck was going on.

Victor, the leader of this trio of misfits, however…

“I-I, we-!”

“Shhhh, shhhhh. I’m gonna give you a minute to settle your nerves before we continue. Kay?”

“Uh…”

“I said, okay?”

“Yeah! Okay! Sure!”

“Huh? Big bro, what’s going-”

“Both of you, shut up!”

“Yes sir…”

…was busy trying not to shit himself out of pure terror, and making sure his friends didn’t do or say anything stupid either.

‘I knew this would happen someday…UGH! Why did I agree to do this stupid job?!,” Victor inwardly cursed at the situation.

Sitting across from him and his associates was none other than the Fourth Master of the Zhen Clan, the guy who probably had them tied up in some hidden basement and the guy who literally punched out his teeth, Zhen Liu.

“Aaaah, so these two are your subordinates…do you have them try to kidnap innocent baby hippos too?,” Zhen Liu asked with smirk on his face and a laugh in his voice.

On anybody else, in any other situation, this would’ve been charming.

In this exact situation though, Victor felt as if the devil himself was toying with him.

And his friends weren’t helping either.

“Baby hippos?,” Simos repeated.

“Too?,” Graff added.

“Like I said, this was the guy I tried to steal a baby Raijin Hippo from,” Victor reiterated, knowing full well that it probably didn’t matter at this point if he angered Zhen Liu any further. “And I lost a tooth for it.”

“Several teeth,” Zhen Liu corrected.

“Oh yeah…wait, this is him?”

“He’s so…soft looking!”

“Seriously?!”

“What?”

Evidently, despite having the information regaled to them as to why Zhen Liu was considered, in Victor’s words, “the last person in this entire godsforsaken region that they ever wanted to insult”, Simos and Graff couldn’t help but to run their mouths.

Victor already mentally prepared himself to suddenly witness the death of the closest people he could call friends in over a decade…but then…

“Pfft! Hahaha! I suppose I do look soft, don’t I?”

Zhen Liu began to laugh at Simos’s comment like it was a good natured joke.

When the trio first heard this laugh, they couldn’t believe their ears.

Most people wouldn’t laugh so hard or naturally at their own expense. Most people would’ve lashed out by now, or in their case, Zhen Liu should’ve started torturing them.

But no, instead, Zhen Liu continued to laugh.

“Hahahah.”

And laugh.

“Hehehehe”

And laugh…

“Hohoheheh!”

To the point that Victor, Simos and Graff began to realize that Zhen Liu wasn’t laughing because he thought the Simos’s comment was funny.

“MWAHAHAHAHAHA!”

He was laughing because he was probably fucking insane.

“HAHAHAH-okay, that’s enough of that.”

Tap,tap,tap.

“Huh? What’re you-”

*SMACK!*

“AH!”

“Bro!”

“Okay, back to business.

After Zhen Liu had finished his laughing fit, he had gotten up from his seat and slapped Simos across the face with the back of his hand.

The slap came so quickly and brutally that Victor and Graff couldn’t even see how fast Zhen Liu had swung his hand, but they could see the red welts forming on Simos’s face in an almost comically fast manner.

Disturbingly enough, the welts were forming into the exact shape of Zhen Liu’s backhand.

With this delivery of pain finished, Zhen Liu returned to his original seat and proceeded to sit back down with his legs crossed in a manner suggesting that he was in the middle of a business meeting.

The sheer disconnect of how he was behaving and this entire moment felt utterly surreal to the three captives.

Oh, if only they could return to that sweet dream life…wait a minute.

“Now, you three are probably wondering why I have you tied up to a bunch of chairs in this lovely hidden chamber and not say… decapitated and mutilated in a ditch somewhere,” Zhen Liu said with such eery calmness that the trio couldn’t help but believe that he was entirely serious with that underlying threat. “Well the answer to that is actually quite simple. In fact, depending on how you answer these next few questions, I probably won’t have to kill you and feed you to a pack of hungry coyotes.”

“W-what do you want to know?,” Victor asked, knowing full well just how dumb that statement was.

With how weirdly powerful this kid was, there was a very good chance that he already knew why they were here in the first place. If anything,Victor felt they were just being toyed with at the moment.

A feeling that was made stronger once he saw Zhen Liu’s smile go from simple to wide.

“Well, first off. I would love to know how you three managed to get your asses inside of a place that was supposed to be under several seals and accessible only through the most fantastic of means,” Zhen Liu stated matter-of-factly. “I need to know in order to make sure I can close any more loopholes…and whether or not I’ll need to make a…permanent fix, as it were.”

‘Oh fuck…’

Victor could feel a shiver go up and down his spine as he swore he could feel Zhen Liu eyeing to punch out even more of his spatial attributed from his face. (Un)fortunately, Simos and Graff interjected before Victor could even get a word in.

“We don’t know!”

“Yeah, honest!”

“We just sort of showed up here after…crap, why can’t I remember anything! Was there a statue involved?,” Simos asked with a desperate tone.

The mention of the word, “statue”, caused Victor to twitch a bit, because he just remembered what had happened prior to them being captured. While he had no idea if “she” was real, he remembered her feeling very real.

“Hmm. Okay. I believe you on that front. I suppose I won’t need to cause bodily harm if it was truly an accident.”

As for Zhen Liu, he simply shrugged his shoulders at this bit of information and decided to forgive the trio for their intrusion.

That said, he wasn’t quite done with them just yet.

“I suppose with that preliminary question out of the way though, we can move on to the main meat of the matter and the thing that bothers me the most…who sent you?”

“H-huh?”

“As I asked,” Zhen Liu began to say as he readjusted his sitting position so that he could he place his folded hands beneath his face as if he was trying to peer into the very souls of Victor and his friends. “Who sent you?”

“That…”

While this question wasn’t necessarily that hard to answer, for Victor at least because Simos and Graff were mildly forgetful, he knew damn well that doing so would end…poorly.

“What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”

“Uh…”

It didn’t matter how scary or powerful this young master from the middle of nowhere was, he would rather die by his hands then let the organization who hired them get their hands on him.

Because they wouldn’t just kill him, they would do…well…let’s just say that death by pummeling was preferable to whatever creepy ass bullshit the Night Parade cooked up for their experiments.

That said, he couldn’t just goad Zhen Liu into killing him so that he could avoid such a fate since he had friends to think about…right?