40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 644 27. Interlude: Standard Interrogation (5k)

Zabril took off his burqa, shook his hands, and slowly pushed the sleeves of his gray training shirt up to his elbows.

The air was cold, and a pale light source descended from above his head, filling the interior of the interrogation room with hints - 'There is no room to hide', the pale light whispered.

In the other corner of the room, a hung woman struggled in sweat.

The chains swayed, and the iron hooks that passed through the gaps between her muscles and bones began to punish her silently. Blood flowed out and soon gathered into a new pool at her feet.

Zabril turned around calmly, with a combat dagger in his hand.

He was not a professional interrogator, nor was he some pervert who enjoyed torturing humans, so the only thing he had available for use in this situation was this combat dagger of an inappropriate size.

But it probably didn't matter. His interrogator was already on the verge of collapse after being put on the Edge of Reason, and Zabril felt that he only needed to cut a little skin to get the truth.

But he didn't really want to use his knife, especially after knowing what this woman had done.

Holding the knife, Zabril walked towards her: "Leona de Las?"

"P-please"

The witch, whose real name was once again revealed, spoke with fear, but then gave a rather strange response.

"I beg you, sir, not to say that name any more."

Zabril frowned and turned to look at the wall on the right, but got no response, so he asked directly.

"What do you mean?"

"That name no longer belongs to me."

The witch answered hoarsely, shaking her head, blood and sweat dripping from her golden hair. Her blue eyes had widened to the limit, bloodshot, and she looked as if she had fallen into a state of madness.

Zabril pondered for a moment, walked up to her, gently took her left hand, pinched the witch's thumb with his index and middle fingers, slightly bent it, and then rotated it.
Until a certain limit was reached, a thumb with bones attached was pinched between Zabril's fingers. He raised his hand and showed it to the hung witch, asking again amid her screams.

"Why, Leona de L'Are? Why do you say that name does not belong to you?"

"Stop reading it!"

She roared in response, weeping bitterly, blood spurting out from the hole in her left hand, the remnants of nerves and blood vessels still vaguely visible in that cruel cave of flesh and blood.

She looked pitiful, but Zabril had no kindness in his heart - Leona de Las was a genuine witch, and had long been wanted by the Ministry of Justice and the Inquisition.

Her crimes are countless, one of which is 'identity theft', which seems ordinary, but she does it by skinning her victims and eating their flesh and souls to gain their memories, and finally use the skin for her own use.

In other words, the real Catherine Fine and countless other victims must have suffered ten thousand times more before their deaths than she was going through now.

"Then tell me the truth," the old knight said coldly. "Or do you want more punishment, Leona de Lahr?"

The witch's head, which had been hanging down in pain, suddenly raised up, and then with a snap, her jaw suddenly cracked, and her white, tight skin and muscles were torn apart together.

Bones creaked, jaws and tongue flipped and twisted, countless living insects burst from the depths of her throat with an unearthly scream, and the entire room was instantly filled with a foul smell.

Zabril frowned and took a few steps back, but then he heard a strange muffled sound.
Are there more evil methods?

He subconsciously raised the knife to kill the witch, but he heard a word of dissuasion in his ear: "No, there is no need to do this, Zabriel, she is just being punished."

punish?

"Yes. It seems that someone has taken her name and she is not allowed to use it anymore. She will be punished whenever someone calls her by this name. It's an interesting method, but I think it is probably beyond your professional scope?"

The old knight nodded imperceptibly.

"So, do you need a helper?"

Who?
"An experienced Inquisitor's attendant, he will be here shortly."

squire?

Zabril put away his knife without knowing why, and stepped back a few steps to avoid his boots being touched by the bugs still wriggling on the ground.

He did not reject help from the Inquisitor, even if it was from the annoying Xie Fa. After all, the person who just spoke to him was actually the founder of the Inquisition.
But, a servant? Is he really capable of handling such a matter?

Three dull knocks sounded the next moment. Zabril walked over and opened the door, and saw a strong mortal. This man was wearing a black uniform, and his muscles made the cuffs bulge. The emblem of the Inquisition was pinned on his chest, wiped spotlessly.

He was not wearing a hat, revealing a head full of very short stubble, a high nose bridge, and his lips were habitually turned down, looking like a difficult person to get along with. Even when he opened the door and saw Zabril, an expressionless giant, he did not change his expression.

"Excuse me, sir, I'm here to help," he said.

Zabril stepped aside to let him in and closed the door. Amid the heavy echo, the man began to introduce himself.

"My name is Rental Sable, and I am the armed attendant and personal guard of Inquisitor Cyrano van Derleff. I am here to provide you with some professional theoretical knowledge under the assignment of Lord Caril Rohars. For the Emperor, I wish us a pleasant cooperation."

Zabril watched him walk into the swarm of insects. Within half a second after he introduced himself, he squatted down, grabbed a handful of insects still covered with mucus and blood with his bare hands, and even put them to his nose to sniff them carefully.

".Yes, it is as expected, it is a heart-eating insect."

"Heart-eating worm?"

"A warp creature."

The sable replied nonchalantly, and threw the insects at his feet, then lifted up his coat and took a small metal bottle from his belt.

He turned his head and said to Zabril, "Sir, please step back a little."

"What are you going to do?"

Sable smiled dryly, "The Heart Devouring Bug will quickly suck out the host's soul about a minute after leaving the host's body and aggregate into a Heart Devouring Beast, a powerful demon about four meters tall. The two of us cannot defeat it no matter what."

"So, in other words, my Lord, I have to kill these little bastards before they can eat the souls of our interrogation subjects through the evil link and kill us."

Zabriel did not comment on his words. He just stepped back silently and watched the sable open the metal bottle and throw it into the wriggling swarm of insects.

Some kind of pale ashes quickly poured out from the bottle, quickly covering the entire swarm of insects as if being pulled, but they did not react at all, but suddenly stopped wriggling.

A few seconds later, without Zabriel blinking, the insects on the ground suddenly turned into wisps of green smoke and floated silently towards the ceiling.

Sable squatted down again, picked up his bottle and put it back on his belt, then walked over to Leona de Lal, who was hanging by the chains, and asked casually while reaching out to straighten her head.

"Sir, how do you plan to interrogate her next?"

".What?" Zabril asked instinctively - he had not yet recovered from the scene just now.

Sable reached out, plucked off the witch's chin, and tossed it aside.

The sticky sound of hitting the ground was fleeting, but he reached out and grabbed the witch's tongue as if nothing had happened. Then he stretched out his right hand, and a flash of golden light pierced through the bloody tongue like lightning, nailing it firmly to the witch's chest.

Zabriel looked closely and found that it was actually a sharp, polished, gold-inlaid finger bone.

Leona de Lal uttered a muffled cry and slowly woke up.

“I have three options to recommend.”

Sable spoke like this, standing beside her with his hands behind his back and shrugging.

"The first is to maintain the status quo and examine each question one by one. It's not efficient, but she can't play any tricks. Moreover, if the answers to some questions are cursed, she can bear it for us."

"The second is to directly take out her brain and put it in a wetware culture tank, and use data to retrieve all her memories. This is the fastest way, but it requires analysis and translation, as well as the accompaniment of a devout mechanical priest."

"The third one is——"

"--bass."

Zabril scowled as he drew out his combat dagger. The sound of the blade scraping against the scabbard interrupted Sable's words.

He smiled knowingly, and said nothing more, but bent down to pick up the witch's jaw, then pulled out the finger bone and used it as a nail to connect the bloody jaw to Leona de Laar's face. She struggled in pain, and the original blue in her eyes disappeared without a trace, leaving only a turbid white.

"So, you choose the old way?"

"I'd rather use the old method." The old knight said expressionlessly, came to the witch with a dagger in hand, and then asked again.

"What is your relationship with the traitorous warband, the Ten Thousand Eyes?"

Sable raised his right hand at the right moment and turned the bone nail. The golden light flashed again, and Leona de Las wailed, her voice surprisingly clear.

"I'm their spy!"

"Tell me more details."

Zabril ordered, looking at the sable, who understood and spun the nail again.

The witch's screams became more and more shrill, and her excrement slid down her thighs and gathered in the blood. Dense blood vessels like spider webs quietly pushed up her skin, dark and foreign, and some twisted living thing was crawling rapidly inside.

“I work for them.”

Leona answered while coughing, dust-like blood and rotten internal organs pouring out of her throat.

"The Ten Thousand Eyes gave me power, allowing me to transcend a mediocre life. In return, I must continue to serve them and pass on information."

"You're lying!" Zabril thundered. "You're clearly working with the alien scum!"

The sable tapped the bone nail gently.

"That's because they lost contact with me!" the witch screamed. "They haven't contacted me for almost a century!"

"How did they contact you?"

"Sacrifice. Use the flesh and blood of the living to awaken the horn they gave me. If they blow it, they will find me, no matter where I am."

Zabril took a deep breath, and some unspeakable hatred began to revive in his heart.

Different from the hatred towards the aliens, this is a hatred that has existed in his chest since before the lion returned.

As a Terran veteran, Zabril had seen most of the dirty things in the world during his first twenty years of service. Like what Leona de Laer had just said, he had seen fellow Terran humans do it to their compatriots without remorse.

Only this time, this sacrifice might actually be effective.

"How many times have you done this? How many people do you kill at a time?" Sable asked suddenly.

Facing Zabril's questioning eyes, he smiled coldly and explained, "We in the Inquisition have to write written reports when we do things, sir, and this includes every detail."

"Twenty-eight times. One hundred people each time!"

The witch interrupted them with a scream, and her cloudy eyes began to deteriorate again. The outer membrane of the eyeball melted first, followed by the vascular membrane and retina, the lens and the vitreous body.

In an indescribable way, they melted into a pool of boiling viscous liquid in the witch's eye sockets, scalding her face, melting her skin, flesh, bones and other things, and creating two irregular linear holes on her face.

Sable sighed and shook his head in disgust. "I'm really fed up with you demon summoners. You have no technical skills at all and you only know how to make contracts and sacrifices. How do you feel about the pain caused by the backlash of the contract? Do you still like it?"

He sneered and took a step back, handing the initiative back to Zabril.

Despite this, the old knight now didn't want to go on as he had an urge to vomit.

It's not like he hadn't dealt with some things involving the supernatural before, but throughout his entire military career and the three hundred years he had been on the run, he had never seen anything like this.

His cognition was refreshed in a way that he absolutely did not want to admit or accept.

"grown ups?"

"It's all right," Zabril said, turning his attention back to the witch. "Where is that so-called horn?"

"In my body."

Zabril frowned, raised his right hand, put the dagger close to her neck, and then shouted again: "Speak clearly! Where?!"

He got an answer he didn't really want to know.

"My spine," said Leona de Lal, looking grim.

The sable whistled and pulled out the gold-inlaid finger bone with some joy, without a drop of blood on it.

The witch's jaw dropped again, and she immediately uttered a series of unclear curses. The captive who had been so obedient just now was now so crazy that he dared to insult Zabriel to his face, and his broken face was filled with resentment and madness.

But this seemed to be the last thing she could do. Before Zabriel swung his knife to chop off her head, the traitor trembled and melted into an indescribable mixture of flesh and blood.

The old knight took a step back in disgust, not wanting to have anything to do with it, but Sable, contrary to his usual behavior, pursed his lips, reached into it with both hands, and pulled out a tattered, blood-stained human skin.

Zabril saw a hint of sadness on his face.

"What are you going to do?"

"The Lord named Faan." Sable paused. "He and his wife have a three-year-old daughter who misses her mother very much."

Zabril looked at him in disbelief, his eyebrows furrowed sharply: "Don't tell me you're going to give this to a child!"

"No, of course I would not. I work for the Inquisition, your Excellency." Sable shrugged self-deprecatingly. "It's just that I don't think the victims should be burned with the perpetrators."

He retracted his left hand and took out another metal bottle from his waist. Half a minute later, two flames bloomed quietly in the interrogation room.

The flames reflected in Gabriel's eyes, reflecting a cold hatred.
-
Khalil folded his hands and watched Shefa walk out of the door of another interrogation room. He had no expression on his face, and his uniform was still on, not stained with blood, but he was wiping his hands with a blood-stained handkerchief.

He walked up to Khalil, bowed his head, and said, "The situation is clear, my lord. This alien scum has no connection with the Ten Thousand Eyes Warband we are pursuing."

"So, he was just plain unlucky?" Khalil asked humorously.

"I wouldn't say that. All aliens deserve to die, especially the Eldar like them." Shefa replied. "But is this trial really necessary?"

"Why do you say that?"

"I think you knew all the information we needed the moment you saw him, didn't you? The direction the Edge of Reason is heading in is the best evidence—"

Xiefa raised his hand and pointed to the porthole. Stars twinkled in the sky, and a pool of gravel passed silently by the thick window.

Khalil laughed in silence. He nodded simply, admitting Shefa's speculation: "Yes, I dug out his brain as soon as I saw him."

"So?" Xiefa asked doubtfully, pointing at himself.

Khalil spoke gently, "The investigation of the Ten Thousand Eyes War Gang is a major event involving three Inquisitors. According to the internal regulations of the Inquisition, each Inquisitor involved must report every detail."

"Whether you like it or not, Shefa, you are already involved in this matter, so - if you are not allowed to interrogate him, how are you going to write a report? Are you going to write 400,000 or 500,000 words based on your imagination and submit it to the seal holder for review?"

Xiefa was silent for a full minute before he uttered a word.

".I see."

He said so, then bowed and turned around, preparing to leave, but before taking a step, he paused and uttered another sentence in a low voice.

"My Lord, you are truly nothing like the person described in the records."

Khalil watched him go, his smile not fading.

In his shadow, a voice sounded faintly: "I am now more convinced that you are actually a bad person, Khalil."

"Save that for the other brothers you'll be messing with in the future," Khalil said. "Especially Corax."

A cold snort came from the shadow.

(End of this chapter)