Chapter 83: Chapter 83: Small Torture
The survivors with no superpowers were definitely not a match for those thugs who were ability users. Soon, many of the survivors stopped running, watching as Darren and others chased after those brutes.
The fastest one was definitely Cassias, who instantly caught both men and tossed them to the road, groaning in pain.
They hissed, clutching the injured part. The rough surface of the road tore their skin open, and blood seeped out.
"What are you all doing? Bullying us with numbers?!" One thug complained, glaring at Cassias. He clutched his hand, where a huge gash had opened on the knee.
"Yeah, what did we do?!" The other hand protested indignantly, squinting his eyes.
Darren arrived, and Zerra handed over a rope to him. Outnumbered, they became as quiet as a mouse. Now, they became anxious as they swallowed their saliva upon realizing their current predicament.
They dragged the two bound men to the side of the road roughly, making them nearly pass out from the excruciating pain. Their wounds were smeared with soil and dust.
"We will give you two options." Darren began, his eyes looking straight at them sharply. "The easy and hard way. You can choose to confess willingly or be forced to confess."
"Confess what? We did nothing. It’s you, the villains, who captured and bullied us like this without any basis." They stared at them with menacing eyes.
"So, you prefer the hard way, huh?" Darren took out a bottle of water and approached Zerra, asking for salt.
She obediently took it out, watching as he sprinkled salt into the bottle of water. The bound men felt their hearts thumping madly in their chests when they saw what Darren was about to do.
Darren walked over to them and mercilessly poured salt water on their wounds. Not only were they drenched from head to toe, but a deep searing pain also tore through their skin. They gasped, breathless.
Psychological tears blurred their eyes. Shame emerged as more people crowded around them, watching them suffer with gloating and satisfied expressions on their faces.
They were the survivors, the weak people they used to oppress by stealing their supplies. The thugs never differentiated their victims; anyone who passed by them would be robbed.
Luckily, they never dared to enter the supermarket. Because the survivors would band together against them–the common enemy.
Those people watched coldly as the thugs writhed in pain. They were treated like monkeys by this group of people! Resentment soared amidst the pain, but it was soon extinguished.
Because... they saw the man, who had sprinkled salt water on them earlier, was now holding a knife. Their bodies tensed; they felt like a fish on the chopping block.
"Do you have more knives?" Laziel approached Zerra.
Her mouth twitched. They were treating her like a Doraemon! But the girl still nodded and took a knife from the space; her movement didn’t escape the watchful eyes that were observing them curiously.
The thugs’ backs were drenched with sweat the moment they saw the gleaming blades.
Zerra raised her eyebrows. Laziel wasn’t as soft-hearted as she thought. Thankfully. Well, it had something to do with Nyra, after all. Or... Meira.
The thugs’ hearts shook as Darren and Laziel drew closer. They tacitly took slow, deliberate steps. Until they reached the thugs and pointed the knife point at their necks, slowly going deeper.
"We will tell you! We will tell you!" Unable to bear the psychological burden of having a knife point on his neck, one of them instantly broke down.
The other one was silent, but panic, and dread were apparent in his eyes. When he heard his companion’s words, he hissed at him. "What are you doing? The boss will kill us if he knows we are the ones snitching on him!"
"Does that matter? At least we have some more time to live..." he gulped as he tried to distance his neck away from the knife point.
He was scared that the unreliable-looking young man, Laziel, would accidentally stab him with his knife.
The other man fell silent when he heard it. He opened his mouth. "Is it too late to choose the easy way? We will willingly confess."
Darren sheathed his knife and sneered, "Had you two been so cooperative from the start, you wouldn’t have suffered. Don’t blame us."
"What do you want to know?" The man who first surrendered opened his mouth. "Take this knife away first."
Laziel snorted and disdainfully withdrew the knife, making a minor cut that sent shivers down the man’s spine. It was a warning.
The man immediately changed his tune. "Are you looking for the two missing girls? We can show the way."
Thus, they released the men, who gritted their teeth as they forced themselves to walk. They didn’t dare to delay, for fear that those men would suddenly stab them.
They walked quite a distance away until they arrived at a secluded house. Its surroundings were filled with trees and high vegetation–an abandoned place.
"This is the place?" Darren asked with narrowed eyes.
"Y-yes!"
Tossing the men to the ground, they turned to the house. Darren took large strides impatiently, almost running toward the wooden house that looked like it would crumble with the slightest touch.
Zerra and others ignored the groaning men and followed Darren. According to the men’s confession, they had caught Nyra and Meira outside after they retrieved something from the car.
Now that she thought about it, wasn’t it weird that Nyra, this fierce female protagonist, had allowed herself to be taken away like that? She thought instinctively that there must have been another reason for that.
Using his earth ability, Darren gathered a small hill beside the door and smashed it open.
Zerra peered at the scene inside the house. There was fighting noise. Undoubtedly, it was Nyra. She looked disheveled as she thrust the longsword toward her opponents.
"Who are you people?!" They were alarmed when they saw unfamiliar people enter the house.
The moment Zerra jumped inside, she took out her pitchfork and stabbed anyone who dared to get close to her. In order not to stab her own teammates, she strayed a bit far from them.
In her other hand, she had a gun readily aimed at them.
Sensing a presence nearby, she turned around and pulled the trigger. Someone was sneaking up on her. Unfortunately, the person managed to dodge the first bullet; she quickly fired a few shots in quick succession.
The man tumbled, clutching his belly. His weight accidentally pushed the door behind him.
Zerra followed him and aimed the gun at his heart. She fired another shot, and the man’s body twitched a few times before he was dead.
The sight inside the door, however, shocked her to the core. The guilt bubbling in her chest for killing the man was gone, and her trembling hand clutched the gun more resolutely.
In the apocalypse, humans were most often more terrifying than zombies. Now she understood the reason Nyra had allowed herself to be taken away by them.
Although her eldest sister disliked her, she still had compassion toward humanity. What those criminals did was truly inhumane.
"Zerra, watch out!"