My Harem of Dangerous and Crazy Women as a Reincarnated Necromancer-Chapter 78: Relentless Search

"AAAAAAH! PLEASE, STOP! I BEG YOU!"

The scream echoed off the stone walls of the room, bouncing from surface to surface until the sound blended with the sobs of the man who had produced it.

"Shh, shh, shh," said a feminine voice in a tone so soft and delicate it seemed completely out of place in that context. "There’s no need to scream like that... if you want me to stop, you just have to tell me what I want to know."

The man was breathing in ragged gasps.

His body was soaked in sweat, his wrists raw from the friction of the ropes binding him to the chair.

His clothes were torn in several places, and his face was a mess of tears, snot, and dried blood.

"I... I already told you everything I know," the man said in a broken voice barely audible between his own heaving breaths. "I swear... I don’t know anything else..."

"See, that’s what worries me," she said in that same tender tone, as if speaking to a child who refused to admit they’d done something wrong. "Every time I ask you, you tell me the same thing. And every time you tell me the same thing, I get the feeling you’re not being completely honest with me."

"I AM being honest!" the man shouted, lifting his head to look at her. "I’m telling you the truth!"

The woman watched him in silence for a moment.

She had white hair with golden streaks, so short it barely reached below her neck. Her eyes were blue, and her face had soft features that in any other context would have been described as kind.

And in her hands she held a hammer in her right and a nail in her left.

"If you keep refusing to cooperate," the woman said, twirling the nail between her fingers with a fluid motion, "you’re not going to be leaving here anytime soon."

"I’m not refusing! I already told you everything!"

Then she placed the tip of the nail on the man’s left forearm.

"No, wait, wait, wai—"

The woman raised the hammer and brought it down in one clean, precise motion, driving the nail through the flesh of his forearm and sinking it halfway in.

"AAAAAAAAAGH!"

The scream was so loud that the woman closed her eyes for a second, as if the noise struck her as mildly irritating.

She waited patiently for the screaming to die down into groaning before speaking again.

"I’m going to ask you one more time," she said with the same soft voice as before, as if nothing had happened. "And I hope this time you give me the answer I want to hear."

The man looked at her with bloodshot eyes, tears streaming down his cheeks.

"Where is Aria Lightwood?"

"I already... already told you..." he muttered through clenched teeth, his voice trembling with each word. "We were only hired to ambush a supposed necromancer... that was all... she told us where he would be and paid us upfront..."

The man opened his eyes and looked at the woman with an expression of desperation.

"But we never finished the job!" he shouted. "The demi-humans attacked us before we could do anything! And after that we never saw the woman who hired us again! I don’t know where she is! I don’t know where she went! I don’t know anything!"

The woman listened in silence, her expression unchanged.

Not a single muscle in her face moved as the man screamed in front of her.

When he finished talking and slumped in the chair with his head hanging forward, gasping, the woman slowly straightened up.

"...I don’t believe you," she said in a tone that remained soft but now carried an edge that hadn’t been there before. "I don’t believe a single word you’re telling me."

"It’s the truth..." he whispered without lifting his head.

"And my patience," the woman continued, ignoring his words, "is beginning to run out."

She picked up another nail from a small table beside her.

The table had several instruments arranged with meticulous care, each one in its place, as if they were a surgeon’s tools rather than instruments of torture.

"No... no, please..."

The woman approached the man and with her free hand lifted his head by the chin, gently, forcing him to look at her.

And then she placed the tip of the nail in the center of his forehead.

"Since you’re unwilling to cooperate," she said, pressing the nail’s tip lightly against his skin, "you’re no longer of use to me."

A drop of blood welled up where the tip made contact.

"We’ll bring in another one of your companions for questioning," the woman said in the same calm tone. "Perhaps he’ll be more... communicative."

As she finished speaking she raised the hammer, and the man closed his eyes.

"PLEASE, NO—!"

But then the door to the room burst open.

The sound of the rusted hinges made the woman stop the hammer mid-swing. She turned her head toward the door — without releasing the nail from the man’s forehead or lowering the hammer.

In the doorway stood another woman, her eyes covered by a blindfold that crossed her face from side to side.

Despite being blindfolded, she moved with a sureness that indicated she had no need of sight to know exactly where she was.

"General Hod," said the blindfolded woman in a formal tone. "An urgent report has arrived from the clergy and the Inquisition. It is classified as extremely urgent information."

Hod looked at the newcomer for a second, then lowered the hammer and withdrew the nail from the man’s forehead with a smooth motion, leaving only a small red dot in the center of his forehead where the tip had been pressing.

The man let out a sob of relief at no longer feeling the nail against his skin.

"Let me see it," said Hod, extending her hand.

The blindfolded woman handed her a sealed document.

Hod took it and read it in silence.

Her eyes moved left to right as they swept over the contents of the report, but her expression, which until that moment had been one of unshakable calm, changed.

"...This can’t be," Hod murmured, stepping out of the room and crumpling the paper in her hand.