"So, you are telling me you overfed the grey zone to extinction?" Dexter asked with doubt and disbelief visible on his face.
I nodded without replying anything.
"Impossible." Titus smacked the table not being able to believe it.
"You can't simply overfeed it to death. Grey zones get stronger the more you feed it. What you said is not possible."
I smiled at them. "Who said I simply fed it?"
"Huh?" Titus looked at me confusedly.
"I let it starve and experience hunger for the first time its life. Then when it was about to go into stasis I stuffed more food than it can take down its throat."
Before they could ask me anything more I carried on. "All beings need some form of energy to sustain itself, and all being uses some of the energy gained from their food to gather more food.
From all the information I received I about grey zone I noticed that the grey zone uses negative emotions to sustain itself like humans use food and water to sustain themselves. So that means it must use energy to sustain the ghost and all it abilities along with the massive amount of undead inside the grey zone.
Now what would happen if you guys don't get food or water?
You would obviously starve and slowly lose energy, correspondingly the same happened to grey zone, hence the reason I had Kristof and Ellis run out of the grey zone while I encountered the ghost, so that it won't feed on their emotions.
While the ghost splurged its energy to get negative emotions from me it slowly got weaker without getting anything in return.
Once any being is hungry it loses control of itself when food appears in front of it. So likewise, once I made sure the ghost was starving without any negative emotions from me, I simply started emitting so much negative emotions to the point it couldn't handle it and overfed on it and burst from eating too much." I finished off my explanation.
Dexter sighed as he rubbed his forehead, while Maximus seemed to be thinking of something.
"I still can't believe what you are saying brat. Do you think we didn't know about the fact that negative emotions are its source of energy and haven't starving it before? We have tried various methods before of suppressing peoples negative emotions and sending them all in. But none of it worked as some kind of negative emotions all was leaks out of those people.
In fact, we have tried using mind-controlled slaves and send in undeads conjured by necromancers while their master stood outside. But it all failed, so how do you explain how you could succeed in holding back your negative emotions when all the others couldn't?" Titus questioned.
I smiled before pointing towards my head using my index finger "Unlike them this thing of mine is much more powerful than them."
Titus seemed to be ticked off and was about to argue with me when Maximus interrupted "Fine say that you can perfectly control your emotions, how did you manage to overfeed it? You have to know that there are records of people once trying your method. They send hundreds of people into a grey zone at once in order to overfeed it with negative emotions, but in the end other than ranking that grey zone up and losing hundreds of lives it did nothing to that grey zone."
"That's easy," I smirked as all three of them seemed interested how 1 person managed to do what hundreds couldn't.
"I have so much negative emotions stored in here." I said as I pointed to my head again.
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There was a silence for a few moments before Titus couldn't take the silence anymore.
"Bull crap. You think you experienced worse things than any one of us in your feeble amount of lifespan let alone that of 100 people?" said an enraged Titus.
"If you don't want to tell us your methods just say it. You don't have to lie about it." Dexter said as he shook his head.
Before Maximus could also start I started off "If you don't believe why don't you get someone capable of reading minds. But let me warn you what happens to him after he reads my memories is none of my responsibility." I smiled at them.
They turned silent for a while before someone initiated.
"Are you serious? You would gladly let someone read your mind? You know we could get all your secrets from having your mind read." Maximus smirked as looked at me.
"Brat there is no backing out now. I am going to have your mind read and find all your secrets." Titus had a smile plastered on his face.
Except Dexter the other two seemed really excited to have my mind be read. "You seem awfully confident John. You do realise once someone enters your mind then you lose all advantage you hold over us?"
"I do realise that, but that's if he is capable of telling you what he sees in memories. You think that what a being whose very existence depends on feeding on negative emotion was unable to handle what it saw in my memory a normal being can?" Suddenly the smile on Titus' and Maximus' face froze.
"Bring it on." I pronounced while smiling.
-------------------------------------------
"Are you out of idea as well?" Steven asked me.
"Yeah. I just can't get how he managed to vanquish a grey zone. I thought he would have formed some kind of treaty with the grey zone. But instead, he managed to vanquish the grey zone in a record time of 30 minutes according to the reports from the guards." I replied.
"What about the recording device from that brat?" I enquired.
"Nothing much. Both of them ran out of the grey zone as soon as John entered the room. According to the footage, the vanquishing time is 20 minutes instead of the reported 30 minutes." I sighed thinking how someone could vanquish a grey zone so quickly.
"How are your investigations going on the informer?" I asked Steven.
"Again, nothing much. The person who delivered the letter to Springwood household apparently was hired by somebody to do it for them.
From their description it seemed to be from a man, with very muscular build carrying a very large sword.
That person tasked the messenger to deliver the letter on a set date and rewarded them 10 gold. The date seemed to be the day before the incident.
They were told if the job was completed further reward would be given. However, it seemed that the talk about further reward was just a lie to make sure the messenger did the job and didn't laze around, as the stranger never appeared to the messenger after that. The messenger didn't seem too upset at losing his potential reward as 10 gold in itself is a huge reward for what he considered as a small job and considering his living condition as a low-class family man.
We lost all track of the mysterious stranger after that." Steven replied visibly frustrated that number of shadows that aren't being controlled by them seemed to have increased.
"You think it could be interference from Dexter?" I asked as I felt a headache coming.
"Not possible unless they detected you? Did they?" I shook my head as I personally made sure that none of them detected me on that day when I went to visit Ellis.
"Then could he have betrayed us?"
"That might be possible. But I would have to see him to know that. But why do you think it wasn't Dexters interference?" I asked him.
"He wouldn't leave any trace. He would make sure to lick the plate clean if it was him, leaving not even the trace of messenger for us. So, either he didn't know about this investigation or he simply concluded that investigating this mysterious strange would lead everyone to a dead end and didn't bother."
I nodded that seemed to be just like Dexter.
I breathed and was about to leave when Smith arrived with a trace of perplexity and partial excitement.
"His highness needs to see you both." He said.
"What happened?" Steven asked.
"Dexter just called in..." Smith trailed of excitedly as if he wanted us to ask him what it was.
Seeing that we remained silent he carried on visibly annoyed "He wants to get Johns mind read."
I froze for a moment. Not believing what he said.
Countless thoughts and ideas whirled past my mind why he would request such a thing. "Could it be John pissed him off finally?"
"The straw that broke the camel's back." Smith chipped in as he started running off to the palace followed by us
"Strange." Steven murmured.
"What is?" I enquired.
"Both of them know their boundary. They wouldn't casually just annoy each to the state of intolerable. Besides Dexter is a very patient person, even if he managed to piss the other two off, Dexter's not the kind of person to easily lose his calm." Steven explained.
"You think they are trying to do something." I tried pondering what they could be planning.
"I don't know. We will find out soon enough." I said as all three of us increased our speed to the palace.