9th Grade Civil Servant In Another World Chapter 122 - Corpse Flower (4)

“Cough! Cough! Cough!”

Lieutenant General Leon Kaiser opened his eyes, coughing violently.

What entered his blurry vision was a concrete room lit by dim lighting. That familiar room—familiar because he had no choice but to be familiar with it, and familiar because he had to become familiar with it.

In one corner, the silhouette of a small man flickered. The man who had been sitting in a chair puffing smoke pressed out his cigarette and stood up.

“Shall we begin?”

“Let’s.”

At the dry voice, Kaiser turned his stiff neck. A man leaning against a concrete tank filled with water.

Lieutenant Colonel Johann Werner—the man Leon Kaiser had to kill in order to live.

“Then I’ll leave it to you.”

“Do you really intend to stay here?”

“I want to see for myself. What kind of thing we’re doing… I have no intention of running away like a coward.”

The lieutenant colonel shook his head as if he couldn’t understand, then stood up and strode closer.

Leon Kaiser felt his breathing become labored without realizing it.

Instinctive fear.

He knew perfectly well what was about to happen. How painful it would be, how miserably he would die.

Lieutenant Colonel Werner grabbed Kaiser’s head from behind. Despite his large frame, he was dragged helplessly by Werner’s strength and immediately had his face shoved into the tank.

“Gasp! Gack!”

“First we need to get the drug out of your system. Lieutenant general, what was the record for the longest anyone you ‘interrogated’ lasted? Everyone I’ve seen couldn’t make it past 12 hours.”

Lieutenant Colonel Werner’s rumbling voice echoed in his ears.

He held his breath, but whether due to the canil’s side effects, his lungs quickly became unbearably tight, unlike usual. Eventually unable to hold out, he opened his mouth and cold water mercilessly rushed in.

As his whole body twisted and thrashed, the lieutenant colonel yanked his hair.

“Gack! Gasp! Blegh!”

He gasped as if his breath would give out, then took a big gulp of air, and the next moment vomited up everything in his stomach.

“Ugh! Bleh! Blegh!”

A terrible smell stung his nose. He couldn’t even wipe away the tears trickling down.

At least after vomiting violently once, the tingling itch that had been lingering at the tips of his hands and feet seemed to subside a little.

A few steps away, Lucas Redan’s face as he sat in a chair watching was expressionless like a wax doll.

Had it been a mistake to underestimate that bastard?

“How pathetic.”

Lieutenant Colonel Werner, who had muttered this, shoved his face back into the tank once more.

Kaiser suddenly became curious. How long he himself could last.

***

“How many minutes did it take?”

“Exactly 1 hour, 17 minutes, and 32 seconds.”

I answered Johann’s question while looking at my pocket watch.

Lieutenant General Kaiser surrendered quickly.

No, considering the intensity of the torture, perhaps I should say he lasted quite a long time instead.

Normally Johann would have used psychological pressure methods too, but this was an emergency. He had said from the start he’d go hard, and I had agreed.

And I sat in the ‘interrogation room’ in the basement of Ossel headquarters, watching everything.

I witnessed with my own eyes that there were torture methods beyond drowning or hanging someone upside down and whipping them.

My ears are still ringing.

The sound of teeth being hammered with a chisel, bones breaking, skin burning, vomiting again and again and again.

Even I felt nausea rising, but I couldn’t look away. All kinds of thoughts swirled inside me.

‘Torture is inherently inhumane and unethical, and quite unsuitable for obtaining accurate information. Since this world is still going through a transitional period, interrogation techniques must still be stuck in pre-modern times, but surely there are more sophisticated methods…’

The continuous chain of thoughts was cut off. The lieutenant general, who had been hit in the abdomen, spat out a clot of blood and asked with labored breathing.

“Why… gasp… do such foolish things? The reports in your office… if you recruit lower-level Ossels, cough! Cough! It would be easier…”

Before I knew it, I was grinning from ear to ear.

“Are you kidding? All you have to do is open your mouth, so why would we need to go the long way around? Besides, this is entertaining too.”

My complicated thoughts were quickly and neatly organized.

I just wanted to see Lieutenant General Kaiser suffer.

‘Mrs. Schmidt, how many of these did you endure?’

Ironically, it wasn’t torture but another reason that made the lieutenant general surrender.

“Where did you hide the White Raven Order?”

“Give me the name of the facility where canil research was conducted.”

“Is this the only task the Supreme Leader entrusted to you?”

After being whipped for a while, he weakly opened his mouth, and I thought he was going to answer the questions, but he wasn’t.

“Drugs… drugs…”

Was he suffering withdrawal symptoms? How long had it been since the drug effects wore off?

“Please, please…!”

He crawled toward me on his belly, breathing painfully. His whole body trembled, and his hands and feet twisted strangely as if his muscles were numb.

Looking down at the lieutenant general clinging and crying, my face unconsciously frowned.

“This is serious. Were they planning to distribute this stuff to workers and soldiers?”

“It might have been a drug with specially heightened addiction. Didn’t he say it was originally meant to be fed to you?”

“Ah, right. So they’ve broken people this way?”

I crouched down and whispered.

“Leon Kaiser. Tell me everything you know. I’ll let you die comfortably.”

***

“Let’s go.”

Looking down at the lieutenant general’s corpse, I picked up my notebook and stood up.

He had confessed everything, and I had written it all down. In return, I granted him an ecstatic death.

Leaving the basement and emerging into the open but garbage-smelling courtyard in front of headquarters, Philip was waiting with several wagons.

“Long live the Great Supreme Leader! Lieutenant colonel! The rescue operation is complete!”

Behind him saluting, nearly twenty people were visible. Friends from the White Raven Order and Assad and Bletter members.

“Lucas!”

Daniel saw me and approached, grabbing my shoulder.

“Are you okay?”

“Ah, yeah. I’m fine, of course. How about you guys?”

“Nothing happened on our end. We were just being held in a building nearby. Then First Lieutenant Philip Decker and Bletter came and rescued us.”

I sent a grateful look to the taciturn Assad.

Johann had rushed to the 3rd district’s luxury hotel to avoid the eyes of the Ossels who had sided with the lieutenant general, and Assad had quickly assembled his men.

They moved so swiftly that they stormed Ossel headquarters while I was confronting the lieutenant general.

And with the information I got from the lieutenant general, they even rescued my friends. There must have been quite a battle.

“Anyway, I’m glad nothing happened to you. But then again, you guys are valuable human resources. Since they’d need to use the White Raven Order once they recruited you, the lieutenant general probably couldn’t treat you roughly.”

I spoke with feigned cheerfulness, and Erika looked at me with a strange expression.

“But Lucas, are you really okay?”

“Hm? I told you I’m fine.”

“You’re shaking.”

At Erika’s words, I looked down at my hands with a start. From my finely trembling fingers came the smell of blood.

“Ah…”

That’s when Johann stepped forward.

“Is that important right now?”

“Ah, ah, right, that’s not what’s important right now. I was just a little surprised.”

I laughed emptily while vigorously wiping my hands with a handkerchief.

“More importantly, I found out the location of the research facility. We’ll have to wait a bit though.”

“Why?”

Just as I was about to explain something, someone came running from the entrance of the garbage dump, waving their hand.

“Did you wait for me?”

“Woof! Woof!”

It was Hannah with her bright smiling face and Colin wagging his tail furiously.

“Woof!”

Colin leaped up and jumped into my arms.

“Ack! Colin!”

I barely managed not to fall over while catching his tiger-sized bulk.

“Colin? Why did you bring Colin?”

Georg asked while stroking the black, sleek fur.

“Well, you see.”

“Because this dog was born in that research facility.”

Johann flatly interrupted.

“What?”

“Research on using animals as weapons. When it showed no particular effects, the research team was disbanded and the facility was supposedly closed.”

“Remember? It was in the materials Daniel brought when we raided Ossel headquarters last time.”

“Ah, that! I remember!”

“‘Military Animal Development & Training Plan—Focusing on Possibilities as Lethal Weapons,’ right?”

At Georg and Richard’s words, Oscar’s face turned pale.

“Those horrible experiment records? You’re taking Colin back to that research facility?! Lucas, are you in your right mind!”

He shook my shoulders violently.

“This is abuse, abuse!”

Oscar’s expression was more serious and sorrowful than ever before. But then Johann approached and kicked his shin hard.

“Ugh!”

Oscar tumbled backward, but Johann remained calm.

“Idiot. That dog is the only specimen that survived the experiments. When we take him to the research facility, his reactions will be very important clues.

Are you going to say what we can learn from that? If you hadn’t burned all the materials from Ossel headquarters, we wouldn’t need to cling to such a thin hope.

If you think preventing an animal’s suffering is more important than opposing the Supreme Leader, then stop whining and join an animal protection group instead.”

At the dry, cold rebuke, Oscar hung his head deeply.

Johann’s words were a bit harsh, but most people here would think the same way.

Oscar, who loved not only dragons but pretty much all animals and felt sorry for them, was truly an oddball.

“…Sorry, I was being shortsighted.”

He quietly apologized, and I shook my head.

“Nothing to be sorry about. I’ll make you one promise. If Colin gets severely scared, I’ll take him out immediately. I’m not doing this because I want to see Colin suffer either.”

“Thank you.”

Oscar looked much more at ease.

“So, are we ready?”

Assad, who had been watching our little drama, asked somewhat irritably, and I grinned and nodded.

“Yeah, let’s go!”

***

A sticky summer night.

That’s right, it was still night.

3 AM in the morning, with hours left until dawn.

After meeting Johann at 10 PM last night, the events of the past five hours had been nonstop chaos.

We were fully armed.

No one thought it was excessive. As a result of eliminating the lieutenant general, we learned this research facility was a den filled with madmen.

“Hahaha! It’s useless to put me in front, Major General. Cough! They’re already nothing but killing machines.”

The lieutenant general, with a syringe stuck in his arm and an ecstatic expression, had said this.

“Don’t those Ossels there know how to switch sides?”

“Do they have enough intelligence left for that? Hahaha!”

“What, then you’re useless.”

“That’s right. I’d like you to kill me before the drug effects wear off.”

Bang!

The lieutenant general died instantly from Johann’s gunshot. With a happy expression.

***

The research facility was in the District 16.

The District 16 was attached to the very edge of Lüdelheim. There were no residential areas at all, just industrial facilities packed densely together.

Rural workers would take the train up every week to work in the factories, eating and sleeping there, then take the train back down on weekends to spend time with their families.

In other words, it was a massive industrial complex. The waste water from the factories flowed out to sea along the Mire River that divided Lüdelheim from east to west.

Even in a world without oil or coal, chemical solutions and such pollutants were no different.

“I think my nose is going numb.”

Even Georg, who had lived on the streets encountering all sorts of filth, grumbled. Colin, whose sense of smell was more sensitive than humans, was already whimpering.

At least the research facility was on the very outskirts of the District 16, so it was free from the smell.

A massive front gate appeared along with an iron sign.

“Lüdelheim Research Facility No. 1, how unimaginative.”

As I muttered, Erika next to me chuckled softly.

The front gate was firmly sealed with padlocks and chains.

Though it was a dark night, from what I could see, there were buildings inside with only steel frames left, abandoned.

Assad gave hand signals.

Philip, dressed in a black jumpsuit and wearing a mask, nodded and climbed onto a wagon.

With a whoosh, his body cut through the air. He hung from the 4-meter concrete wall and threw something inside.

BOOM!

With a tremendous sound, the iron front gate burst apart. Philip flew through the air, then landed safely with near-acrobatic tumbling.

Ring-ring-ring-ring-ring!

At the same time, a loud alarm assaulted our ears.

“Intruders! Intruders!”

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

Along with the shrieking voice, bullets came flying.

I quickly ducked down, grabbed the smooth metal object that came to hand, and hurled it with all my strength.

“Eat this, drug addicts!”

Standard-issue grenades swept from Ossel headquarters began exploding one after another. As flesh scattered amidst the rising flames, figures in Ossel uniforms came charging through.

Those who kept moving even while bleeding, even with limbs falling off one by one. With expressions exactly like demons rising from hell.

“Hahahaha! Insane!”

Laughter burst out along with tears. Kruger, you made something so utterly ridiculous.

BOOM BOOM BOOM!

The explosions continued.