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Donis expected to wake up on the cold ground, not by someone yanking her by the scalp. The brothel manager, an older woman with a pockmarked face wearing a dark green laced-up bodice dress, started to drag her out of the food cellar. The sharpness of her nails and grip on her head began to dig into Donis's skin. If Donis had not activated the Conceptual Barrier, she would have let the manager drag her. Stopping Donis from lashing out was the fear of getting slapped around, but not this time; she was infuriated. Her little fingers dug into the fragile skin of the old lady, drawing blood. As a result, she had been thrown into the wall.
When this happened, they were out of the cellar and on the main floor level. Luckily, the manager had not thrown her down the stairs.
"You dirty rat," the brother manager sneered, feeling the tear of the wound. "I should have flogged you yesterday for the shit you pulled!"
Donis ignored her, looking down at the blood between her nails, layering the dry blood from last night— The moment Donis felt the grip leave her wrists, she clawed into that wound, widening it until the man's howls gave way. The memory of what she had done was there, but she didn't feel guilty.
[SYSTEM REMINDER: Using the Conceptual Barrier too much with your mind's weak psyche will cause retribution in the future.]
Deactivate the ability, then.
[Command received.]
Donis still didn't feel anything; maybe she didn't feel guilty for murdering a man. In the back of her mind, she believed that what she had done was right. The high tide that tried to consume her last night was as steady as a rock against the waves. She dully looked at the brothel manager, seeing the name hovering above her head.
[Jenny Holtz.]
The woman felt nothing more than a video game character at the moment. Donis's last remaining fucks-to-give disappeared— if this world wants to fuck me over, then I guess I'll have to make this life my bitch.
[Mental Endurance upgraded from feeble to weak.]
Like that's any upgrade.
[Think of it as Mental Endurance: Level 2, with a label.]
[UPCOMING—Mental Endurance Training Task: talk back to the brothel manager.]
[REWARD: New Ability.]
Jenny scowled. "Follow."
"Why?"
The brothel manager's eyebrow furrowed. "You know what happens to unruly children."
Donis was amused at this point, feeling like she was going crazy. Did she take this woman's abuse in the past? This woman was nothing more than an invention of the world's fucked up game. "I do, Jenny."
The woman raised her eyebrows in question. Since no child knew her name, she made them all call her 'Mother,' per brothel traditions. "How dare you use that name."
"I dare," Donis said, smiling with all teeth visible.
[Task completed.]
[REWARD: New Ability: Decipher.]
[Decipher: the ability to analyze, memorize, and translate written texts and auditory languages.]
The older woman whistled, and the labor boys working in the kitchen came to the main floor, walking towards Donis. She backed up a step before attempting to dart out of the way. Her arm was caught, and one of the men forced her face into the ground. Their boot stomped harshly on her back, eyeing the way she struggled under him.
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"Unruly children get floggings, but you get something different. Some of Ned's boys caught you killin' one of their best customers, and they want your blood. It's only right we give them to you."
Shitshitshit—Ned, the leader of Mearlbay, is equivalent to a King in terms of power. He has the wealth and criminal record to fit the mold of a crimelord. He is the worst of the worst, and he wants her, a younger teen, dead. Donis might as well kiss her life goodbye at this point, but that didn't mean she wouldn't go down without a fight.
[. . .Conceptual Barrier. . . Activated. . .]
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"That's Broncoft's killer?" The tan man said in disbelief.
As her mouth gaped open, Donis didn't think she could take this man seriously. He looks like one of those romanticized mafia romance male leads, but the medieval version. She used to read those books in her past life.
He leaned forward on his office chair, studying the girl kneeling before him, hands tied behind her back. She was bloodstained and gaping at him like he had an awkward eye. Anyone else would have been killed for looking at him in such a way, but his curiosity equaled hers. When he heard of Tim Broncoft's death, he knew he'd be losing a big profit in his drug sales, so he ordered his men to find the culprit—not a little girl.
"You're telling me this is who killed Broncoft?" Ned asked the two men standing on both sides of the girl. "She's tinny, malnourished, and works at a brothel—It's hard to believe she has any fighting experience."
"The witness identified her as the killer, sir."
Killer—the word left a sour taste on Donis's tongue.
[UPCOMING— Mental Endurance Training Task: defend yourself.]
Easier said than done, Leo. You try speaking to a tyrant.
[The system is thinking... REWARD: Alchemy.]
Alchemy?
[Alchemy.]
Fine.
"Do you not see the blood on me?" Donis blurted, not trying to sound rude, but to them, she did.
[That's not defending yourself; you just admitted to the crime.]
"What I mean is that the man tried to get in my pants, so I bit him—a natural response."
"Normally, a person would scream for help," Ned argued.
"Are you dense?" Donis questioned without thinking. If her hands were free, she'd cover her mouth because she couldn't believe she called the most powerful man in Merlbay stupid. She might as well keep going if she's already made it this far. "Mearlybay isn't exactly where one would call for help."
The man on the left side of her grabbed a fistful of her hair behind her head, slamming her face into the wooden floorboards. Her nose started bleeding as she glanced up at Ned, who glared, stood up, and made his way around the desk to lean against the front. His leather boot latched under Donis's chin, making her look into his crystal blue eyes. "Call me dense again, and I'll have the doctor remove your organs one by one for profit."
"I rate your hospitality zero out of five stars."
Ned cocked an eyebrow. "You're brave but not a guest; you're my prisoner. I hold your future in my hands. I suggest you act like you're aware of your situation, whore."
[Mental Endurance upgraded from weak to moderately weak.]
Donis found it difficult to act normal in this situation. Her entire personality took a shift within a night—from a girl scared of the brothel owner to a killer without any remorse. "I'm not a whore. Children aren't whores."
"It doesn't matter if you are a child in this city. You are what you work at."
"Because you made it that way." Donis grits her teeth; he's the reason why people like Broncoft violate children. "Maybe if people like you focused on something other than money, this city wouldn't be so shitty—"
A hand clamps over her mouth, and one of Ned's men kneels beside her as if he dared to sympathize with her. He whispered inside her ear: "Keep your mouth shut if you want to survive."
The hand left her mouth as the man stood back up, grabbing her by the waist and hoisting her over his shoulder. "I'll put her in the dungeons until she can behave herself."
"Sounds good," Ned agreed.
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The next few days, Donis was starved; it's not like she hadn't been through that same ordeal before. Water was the only supplement she got. A few days turned into a ten. That's when she started to feel the urge to eat anything, even herself. This must be the punishment for talking back at Ned. Starving was probably the best of all punishments Ned could give her. He could have ordered her nail to be removed or, worse, dissect her alive. The thought made Donis shiver.
Inside the underground dungeon, spiders crawl along the high corners of the ceiling. She would have eaten those if she could reach them. The only thing scurrying on the ground were rats. Thinking of the number of diseases they had disgusted her, but if they didn't feed her by tomorrow, she might have to do something worse than biting someone's neck. Her first ability helped her cope with the hunger pains and urges her mind fed her, but it wouldn't last long before she felt the side effects of using Conceptual Barrier for more than a week without a break.
Her mental endurance was at level three, according to what the system described. There were ten levels in total; once she reached the tenth level, the Conceptual Barrier would have no aftereffects.
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The enslaved person who brought Donis her daily water intake smelled something vile. He ran barefoot to the cell, hands wrapping around the metallic bars with apprehension.
Every day a slave like him worried about fucking up the tasks they had been assigned for the day. People like him were slaves for Ned and his men who were waiting to be bought by the slave trading system. Once captured by Ned's guild, an enslaved person's only hope for freedom was death.
Like all of the people captured by Ned, they were starved until their minds broke or they couldn't fight back. If their minds had not broken during that, then they would have been isolated from the world. Being without social interaction made the toughest of men break. Once an object is broken, it can be repaired—their brains are rewired to have people think for them.
Seeing the source of the small, he thought he was hallucinating. Then the girl looked at him like a feral animal that was interrupted during their meal. Her strawberry-blonde hair stuck to her cheeks from the blood of her prey as her teeth gnawed the meat off the bone. Her hazel eyes had nothing but desperation in them—a feeling he could relate to. When he was in her place, he thought about eating the rodents that ran in the dungeons but never succumbed to the disgusting idea. At the time, he had nothing he wanted to live for, so he let them break him. Unlike him, this girl clearly had something to live for if she had resorted to eating a rat.
Bile rose in his throat as he forced himself to gulp it down. It seems that Ned's plan had failed to break his newest addition but to mold her into something undomesticated.