The squeaky girl reached out with a cloth out to wipe away the blood.

I pushed her hand aside.

"No need. I'm fine."

I didn't know why she wanted a sample of my blood and didn't want to find out. She was presumably a considerably talented mage to be here, near the most dangerous labs.

There was also a question of who set off the explosion. Based on what Aria had told me, it was probably a deliberate murder attempt.

The people with access to the lab that had facilities in the blast tunnel were currently the most suspect. Certainly, the squeaky girl was in approximately the right place, and the way she panicked was suspicious.

Well, it'd be best to talk to the senior mage first to get a better read of the situation.

Whoever tried to kill me must've had some amount of influence, and this was their home territory. I'd deal with them, but I'd have to be especially careful.

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King Anthony IV of the Kingdom of Iron walked into his bedchamber in his silken robe, sighing in relaxation from the warm bath the servants had just given him. The room was softly lit with the low, warm-coloured flames of candlelight. It always made him feel relaxed and sleepy.

After his daughter had killed herself and framed an important member of the mage tower, his power had been growing. He felt more secure in his position than he'd ever been.

The king was in the middle of a rather long yawn when he noticed the figure in his armchair. It was a very large, heavily muscled man. He had put his feet up on the king's table and was leaning back comfortably, as if his presence there were the most natural thing in the world.

"Are you enjoying my furniture?" The king asked.

"Yes, it's quite comfortable," the man replied, "You've got good taste. Where did you get it?"

King Anthony IV laughed amicably.

"Thank you. It's a unique design, custom made by my kingdom's finest artisans."

"Oh, is that so? And now I've gotten it all dirty. How unfortunate."

"It happens. You seem like a very brave person. Nobody has treated me like this for quite a while," Anthony examined his nails, "Ever since I had the last one publicly executed. In a way, it's refreshing."

"No, not at all. I simply believe in speaking truth to power. You don't mind, do you?"

"Of course. Not at all," Anthony replied, discreetly triggering an artifact disguised as a bracelet. It would signal the guards to burst in and arrest the intruder.

Anthony didn't know how the man had broken in. Clearly, his security team had gotten too lax, these days. He'd have them investigated later.

For now, the outrageous commoner was the main issue. Anthony briefly contemplated having him hung, then settled on a beheading.

"Oh? You seem like you've decided on something. Penny for your thoughts?"

The man's voice startled Anthony out of his contemplation.

Something about the way the man was watching him was beginning to make the king incredibly uncomfortable. He wondered when his guards would arrive.

"Don't worry so much. They're not coming," the man in the chair said casually.

"What? Why not? Guards!!!" The king tried to keep it out of his voice, but he was finally starting to panic.

Johan enjoyed the process of watching his victims' confidence slowly change to dread as much as the next evil bastard. But he was starting to tire of it; there were better things to do.

Faster than Anthony could react, Johan was in front of him, hand around the king's throat, lifting him off the ground with a single arm.

"I already told you, the guards aren't coming. As for the rest of your questions: you should be less worried about irrelevant details and more about what I'm going to do to you."

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"A-And what would that be?"

Johan smiled, his blue eyes glimmering. He made a gesture and a woman walked in and stood beside them. The king recognized her as one of his servants.

Then Johan began to weave a highly intricate series of mana constructs, almost like channels. The king had seen something like it before only once, when his mages had shown him how to recognize black magic.

He watched with horror as the woman's features began to wriggle and shift, falling into a new arrangement. When the magic was done, the king found himself looking at a perfect copy of himself.

"Who are you?" Johan asked the copy.

"I am King Anthony IV, ruler of the Kingdom of Iron."

Then Johan asked the copy all manner of secrets, some of which only the king knew the answers to. To the king's horror, the copy answered them all smoothly and perfectly, with the exact same mannerisms as Anthony himself.

Anthony did not know it, but the spell operated on similar principles to the copying stage of the ritual to steal elven bodies. The essential difference was that, in this version, the copy kept their original soul and a few of their own memories.

In this case, before being transformed, the copy had been bound by true name and oath using the strongest rituals the Temple of Light had available. Even with the king's memories and personality copied, the bonds remained.

"Go to sleep and do not mention to anyone what has happened here. Run the kingdom as usual and wait for further orders," Johan told the copy.

"Yes, master," the copy replied, lying down on the bed.

"How is this possible?" Anthony asked.

"Remember, that's not what you should be asking."

"Then, w-what are you going to do?"

Finally, Johan looked satisfied. He spoke slowly and clearly, as if explaining something to a child.

"I'm going to take everything from you, and then I'm going to hurt you. I'm going to hurt you so badly that you will beg me to kill you. But I will not kill you. I'll just keep going. I'll keep going until you're such a broken mess that I get bored of you. And when I'm done, I'll ruin your mind so that you can never speak or think or want or do anything ever again except lie in your own excrement and suffer."

He plunged his hand into the king's abdomen, grabbing a loop of intestine. Slowly, he pulled it out of the king's body, forcing the man, now crying and pleading hysterically, to watch as he tore it off with his bare hands, spilling blood and gastric fluids everywhere. Then, he ripped out Anthony's eyes. Precise blasts of magic took Anthony's hearing, but the torture continued.

Anthony retched and convulsed uncontrollably. He had never experienced such agony and terror. He started praying to all the gods he knew. He was willing to do anything. He just wanted it to stop.

And suddenly it did.

There was light mana inside him now, erasing the pain. He felt his torn flesh being cleansed, regrowing.

He knew it had to be an incredible healer. Relief flooded over him. Thank the gods. Someone had finally come to save him.

His eyes, too, began to heal. First, the eyelids were restored; they closed shut over the sensory organs as they regrew.

Finally, he was whole again.

He opened his new eyes to look at his saviour, and his heart froze in his chest.

It was his torturer. The man had his hand on the king's chest and was infusing into him the purest light mana Anthony ever felt. How could such a person have such pure healing mana?

"Ready to do it again?" Johan asked, grinning, and the king felt true despair.

Johan watched as the light of hope in the king's eyes was extinguished. There was little he got off on more than crushing the spirits of people with power and authority, bringing them to the lowest a human can go, making them cry and bleed and beg, knowing without a doubt that they were at the complete and total mercy of him and him alone.

The fact that this weak excuse for a human had dared to piss off his brother (and, by extension, waste so much of Johan's time) made torturing him even more satisfying.

After all, Johan lived to fight and hurt and kill.

He had to bring the king back to the Temple of Light alive, or the king's soul stone would shatter and alert the courtiers. And he had to render the man incapable of human thought or speech by the time Solomon transmitted to him Johan's true name.

Still, that gave him a small window to mess around. With a man like Anthony, that'd be more than enough.

Johan wondered what it would be like to give Solomon the same treatment. Obviously, his brother would last quite a lot longer than someone like Anthony, but everyone breaks eventually.

He'd seen Solomon angry and sad and even desperate, but his brother had never lost that deep-rooted pride.

Even if subjected to immense physical pain and humiliation, Solomon would usually react with anger, not shame or despair. He wouldn't focus on what was being done to him, instead spending the time thinking of how to escape and make his captors suffer.

What would it take for Solomon to give that up? Months? Years?

He briefly considered if having him sexually humiliated would be more effective, but immediately dismissed the thought. He had no interest in doing that sort of thing himself, and nobody else had the right to debase his brother.

That was fine. There were so many other methods. Watching that stubborn pride flare and struggle as it slowly faded away over the course of years would entertain Johan for a very long time.

Why had he never thought of this before?

It would be challenging, but more than worth it. What would be the best way to get started?

Touch our brother again and I will utterly destroy you.

The voice in his head was not mocking this time, but furious.

"So what if I do? What can a ghost like you even do about it?"

As usual, the voice didn't respond.

"Oh, come on. It was just a joke! I wouldn't want to break my favorite toy. I learned my lesson from last time."

Still silence.

Johan shrugged and sighed, the sound coming out a bit amused.

The king, now a quivering wreck, managed to regain a scrap of courage.

"W-Who are you talking to?"

Johan rolled his eyes and broke Anthony's jaw.

He'd finish dealing with the king first, and then he could go look for Solomon.

For now, he'd put aside any plans of truly trying to break his brother, but it'd be fine to have a bit of fun.

Solomon probably had chosen a few places that met certain criteria and then randomly picked one to hide out in. It'd take a considerable amount of work, but Johan knew what to look for. If he cross-referenced adventurerers registered within a certain time period with suitable locations, he'd have enough leads to work with.

He could barely wait to get to it.