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Do we really have to do this again?... Avan cawed inwardly, as a wave of migraine-like headaches robbed him of his sanity. Since I woke up in this world, I've had more severe headaches than I've had in my entire twenty-five years...
He kept his eyes closed and just lay there for the time being to give his head time to sort itself out and the pain to subside. A few deep breaths and minutes later, his buzzing head slowly subsided and he could concentrate on the rest of his body. Avan was sitting on a kind of chair, even though he was puzzled as to how he had gotten here, and his body felt like lead, so hard was it for him to move his limbs and muscles as he very slowly opened and closed his fists.
The blood only slowly began to circulate properly again and the numbness in his body steadily receded. When he could finally feel something more, he noticed another inconsistency that made his heartbeat pump a lot faster.
An unsubtle and repressed memory came to him from the depths of his mind and pushed itself vehemently into the foreground as it dawned on Avan more and more and the parallels became clear. He was tied to a chair, and the bonds he felt threatened to make his head explode as the memory of his last torture came back full force. Struggling and tearing at the restraints did nothing, and every second of helplessness increased Avan's panic immeasurably as he frantically tried to somehow get his arms or legs free. The chair beneath him was massive, and he finally blinked his eyes open, only to close them again with a cry of pain as he looked directly into a source of light in front of him that sent another knife-edge of pain into his brain. All wriggling and squirming did nothing, and the chair to which Avan was tied creaked only slightly, but otherwise was totally unimpressed by his efforts to free himself. Avan's panicked thoughts raced and whizzed through his consciousness, and for a moment he wondered how he could be so weak, with all the physical stats he was supposed to possess, no matter if the bracelet was cutting off his magic. But no matter what logical thoughts ran through his head, nothing stuck except his panicked attempts to free himself and find a solution, no matter how minimal it seemed.
He blinked several times a second and tried not to look directly at the cone of light that was shining directly at him. His heartbeat was still racing, but it had stopped rising, and Avan could finally see something in the environment he was in.
His worst fears were briefly realized when he recognized the room he was in, even though he had not seen a massive wooden chair, or rather wooden throne, in which he now found himself bound with iron handcuffs. He was, according to his memories, still on the level of the dungeon core and in the torture room, which he had discovered while searching the premises.
The chair to which he was handcuffed was made of solid, almost black wood, which weighed several hundred kilograms in terms of sheer weight and how little he had moved during Avan's attempt. The iron handcuffs on his arms, and probably also on his legs which he could not see in his current position, shone slightly purple and Avan could swear that between some of his eyelashes black runes could be seen on the surface of the metal, connected in a pattern.
The room was exactly the same, except for the torture chair on which he found himself, and only the glowing white ball that hovered two meters in front of him and shone at him was new.
As if his mind was finally waking up, when Avan's heartbeat slowly slowed down again, he noticed a liquid running down his head and his wet silvery hair, some of which was hanging down in loose strands at the edge of his field of vision. His face was also wet and he even tasted the liquid on his lips, which he had opened in his previous scream. It was tasteless and seemed to be simple water.
It wasn't until another drop landed on Avan's forehead and a sharp, breath-stealing pain exploded in his frontal lobe that he cried out again and his heartbeat instantly shot dangerously up. He wriggled again as the pain flared up between his eyes, and tilted his head to avoid another drop, which landed a few centimeters to the left on the top of his head, fortunately causing no further pain.
Minutes passed, and more drops landed in various places all over Avan's scalp as he placed his head in ever-changing positions to avoid his forehead at all costs.
He had read about a torture method where a water source was very very slowly dripped onto the same part of a prisoner, irritating the skin so much that each additional drop became more and more painful and unbearable, not to mention mentally stressful.
This method of torture was primarily intended to deprive sleep, to cause mental and psychological stress without equal, and if on the same place, such as the scalp, to cause more and more tearing pain.
That he now found himself in and under such a torture method scared Avan significantly and his eyes widened in panic as another drop landed on his left ear. His healing by celestial mana had apparently stalled somewhat in his unconsciousness, and only now did he feel the irritated skin slowly but surely regenerating and recovering, even if the mental stress could not be healed like the physical wounds, as the next drop landed on the back of his head.
"Damn! Why?! Why me? Why again?" Avan whimpered to himself as it burst out of him like a broken dam, tears running down his cheeks. "Fuck, fuck, FUCK!" He cursed through tears that slowly robbed him of his vision and blurred it.
Every drop of water that landed on his head made him wince, and it happened at such irregular intervals that he couldn't even tell when the next harmless yet disgusting drop of water was coming down.
It wasn't until he heard the stone door to his right, which led out into the hallway, open and close with a thump that he felt better in a way, because anything was better than waiting for the next drop of water, even if he knew how insane that actually was.
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And when a sweet and slimy sounding voice spoke to him from the right, he winced again, but couldn't suppress a relieved sigh when it too distracted him from the drops.
"Hello, sweetheart!" It spoke from the right in a voice familiar to Avan, as a flabby and chubby man slowly stepped into Avan's field of vision from the right, which he still knew very well from his nightmares.
"It's soooo good to finally see you again! And look at you! So refreshed, so fit, and REGENERATED! I get all wet at the thought of what we have experienced together last time, and I am already full of ecstasy and anticipation to find you so healthy and chipper. Oh, what a joy!" The fat torturer spoke with an almost supernaturally wide grin as he stepped closer to Avan and placed his fat left hand on his head to gently caress him like a lost loved one. "Think of all the good times, the hours, the DAYS we will spend together! All this pleasure, the highs and lows, every single orgasm when we bring you to the climax, always one more time higher and further beyond your previous limits! Ohhhh... I have so much planned! So much that other fragile people before you could not endure. But you? With you we can live everything! There are no limits to our imagination! And you know what's best, AVAN?" The man continued to speak in ecstasy to an increasingly pale Avan, whose brain realized too late and wondered how the man suddenly knew his name, and slowly began to tremble uncontrollably. "We even have a motivation ready for you! Isn't that AMAZING!!!" The torturer suddenly shouted and threw his hands up in the air euphorically and performed a horrible looking dance of joy, which was more reminiscent of a jumping slime.
"Your two companions and fellow slaves are in a side room! And every time you can no longer or refuse to participate, or suddenly no longer regenerate and die, they are in your place! Beautiful, don't you think?" He continued, and Avan could see a dangerous glint in the man's eyes between his tremors of horror, as he looked at him and revealed that Nick and Lea would be tortured as well, once he was no longer able.
Avan shook even more and threw himself against his restraints as his mind somehow tried to logically process what this meant for him as he cried out angrily, forgetting his terror for a split second, only to have a gigantic mental shock wave crash back down on him.
The chubby man smiled sweetly again, and with each further attempt by Avan to somehow break free and more panicked glances he threw around frantically, the torturer seemed to be more and more taken in and reveling in his ecstasy.
A few seconds or even minutes passed until the man suddenly stood by Avan's side again, and gently, like a lover, placed both flabby hands on his head, bent forward, and suddenly kissed Avan on the head.
Under all the shock, Avan could not understand what was happening, and his heart almost jumped out of his chest, so much it raced and pumped blood and adrenaline through his body.
"Why don't you get some more rest, okay? Enjoy the gentle rain, try to sleep a little, and in the meantime we'll bring in your two friends as guests and spectators, okay? And whenever you can't take it anymore, you can watch as well. That sounds fair, I think! After all, you should also have the pleasure of seeing and hearing what my masterful hands can produce in others!"
Avan was too tired at this point, and his body felt oddly powerless and almost lifeless, were it not for the racing heart in his chest that seemed to be running a marathon without stopping.
More minutes of panicked thoughts, emotions and logical sense totally left aside, went by.
Lea and Nick, both with gags in their mouths, were pushed into smaller torture chairs to Avan's right, and the torturer sniffled and huffed as he tried to wipe away the running sweat on his forehead with the back of his hand as he pushed both wide-eyed staring slaves so that they could see Avan completely, who just winced again as another drop of water landed somewhere on his scalp.
His two friends stared at him with wide and shocked eyes, and he could read a variety of emotions in their agape faces as the fat man briefly explained what he was up to and what an extraordinary regeneration their friend Avan possessed. That it was their turn as soon as Avan was no longer able, he strangely left out, but Avan forgot this as quickly as he had noticed it for a moment.
And when the torturer finally introduced himself, as if he were a gentlemen, with his name and a slight grinning bow while holding a black centipede in his left hand, Avan's heart stopped completely for a few seconds.
Bob, he called himself, which did not fit at all in the back of Avan's mind and which he did not believe, but immediately forgot again when he told what exactly the creature in his hand was.
"And do you see these cute little pincers on its head? With them, the cute thing can even bite through stone! The only downside is that the exoskeleton and inner workings of this creature are so odd that he struggles to turn around. So once he's in a hopeless situation and can't turn around, he'll just keep digging straight ahead until he comes out somewhere!"
"And you know, I had so many ideas! But one thing in particular interests me about our friend Avan here. How fast does his regeneration work, and does it work even when important parts of his... brain is attacked?" Bob the torturer explained mischievously, scratching the back of his short stubbly hair with his right hand, thoughtful but with anticipation on his face.
"So I thought to myself, hey, bob, what happens when that cute little thing disappears into my sweetie's ear and can only go forward? What if it reaches the top of the skull, and the delicate brain behind it? Does our friend continue to rain, or do I have to start looking for a new toy? Questions about questions! And there's only one way to find out!"
With renewed euphoria and a facial expression almost bordering on orgasm, the fat man stepped closer to Avan, the wriggling black centipede in his left hand, and Nick and Lea who could only watch with eyes widened in horror.
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