Provocations

"Anyways, how come your oh-so-amazing organization sent you on your own today, instead of providing you with some support, hmm?" I continued to interrogate the guy. "Shouldn't they already know that you can't handle me on your own? I guess they don't care about your safety at all."

The guy hung his head low, not saying a word. His breathing was uneven. I was trying to provoke him, but I guess it wasn't good enough.

"Not even your teammate from the last time cared enough to join you…"

Hearing this, his head snapped back up. "Not cared enough to join me!? How the fuck do you expect him to join me!? He's fucking dead, don't you know!?"

Oh?

Did my desperate move sending the bullets in one of the snipers' direction actually work? I knew that some of them hit him, but I didn't expect the wounds to be fatal.

"Is that so?" I answered, sounding completely disinterested. "And there were no replacements for him available? Not even another weakling like you? Seems that your organization is not so well organized, or lacking in manpower, no?"

"That…" The guy wanted to say something to contradict me, but he shut his mouth tight and lowered his head again. After a moment of silence, he took a deep breath, trying to calm down, and finally responded. "I will not disclose any information about the organization to you."

I rolled my eyes. Yeah, right. He could easily contradict me without revealing anything specific. But he didn't. That meant it was likely that my guess was more or less correct.

And the guy was a terrible liar.

Moreover, judging by his behavior, he wasn't trained on how to behave during interrogations and torture. Questioning him might not be so hard, after all. I just needed to play it smart.

"Alright, but your organization is pretty evil, don't you think? Attacking an innocent civilian like me without any explanation, trying to assassinate me without giving me a chance to speak…" I spoke slowly, making myself sound rather pitiful, all while carefully observing his reactions.

His eyes opened wide, shocked upon hearing my words. Of course, he had to shut them back immediately, hissing in pain from the burn. "Innocent? Civilian? Are you fucking kidding me? Don't you know what you've done? How many worlds have you fucking destroyed?"

I couldn't help letting out a small chuckle. I quickly coughed trying to cover it up, but unfortunately, it didn't escape the guy's attention. And he seemed to have realized what I've been doing. He stopped talking and gritted his teeth in anger.

But I've already obtained at least some information. As I suspected, they were after me because I didn't belong, and I was going around breaking the reality laws and destroying the worlds.

"Hmm, so you're trying to make me stop." I paused for a moment, thinking about how to phrase my next question so I could get the best response. "But you're not able to disturb the reality laws much yourselves, so you have no choice but to try to take me down with guns. And obviously, you're failing miserably. Quite pathetic, don't you think?"

I had two theories regarding their approach.

One, they can't break the reality laws much. At least they're nowhere near my level. That's why they need to use guns and different strategies.

Two, they don't use their full abilities because they don't want to disturb this world. After all, the more the reality laws are broken, the more unstable the world becomes, until eventually it starts crumbling down. And they're trying to avoid such a situation.

It could also be that both of my theories were correct to some extent.

Depending on which was the case, I would need to adjust my approach when facing them in the future. After all, if they were holding back for this world's sake, that would only give me a temporary advantage. Once the world gets destroyed to the point of no return, there would be no reason for them to do that anymore, and they would attack me with their full strength.

I was hoping that his reaction to my words could give me some clues, but he seemed to have realized his earlier mistake and tried his best not to let anything show.

I sighed and reached for my bag. I guess we'll have to do it the hard way.

Honestly, I would have preferred not to resort to such a drastic method. While I had absolutely no reservations when it came to killing people, directly mutilating their bodies like that felt a bit disgusting.

But whatever, one does what one has to do.

"Alright then, if that's how it's gonna be, I guess we need to experiment a bit, hmm?" I approached him with a pair of pincers in my hand. "Let's start with the nails, what do you say?"

The guy flinched, but remained silent.

I grabbed his hand, and without any hesitation, I pulled out the nail from his thumb.

The guy let out a short scream. His breathing got even more uneven, his whole body shivering in pain. But he still refused to speak.

"Alright then, one more it is."

I pulled another nail, this time from his forefinger.

I leaned to the side, trying to take a look at his face to see how he was doing.

And I immediately dropped the pincers, grabbing him by the hair and pulling his head up.

The guy was bleeding profusely from his mouth. He spat out a bloody, fleshy lump before his body went limp as he fainted.

He bit off his tongue.

Like, what the actual fuck?

I quickly wrenched his mouth open to see the wound, but I didn't even know where to start. I've never even attempted to heal anyone but myself ever before. Not even a simple cut, forget something like that.

The wound started clotting on its own pretty soon, so he would most likely not die from blood loss after all. However, that was not enough for me to feel relieved.

He was still tongueless. How the fuck am I supposed to interrogate him now?