Chapter 94 - Lies

Something splashed on Ven’s face.

The room was dark. Twisted and blurry figures stood over him. What was going on? It wasn’t like Ven to fall asleep where he shouldn’t. His core was full of ether. This wasn’t good. He’d be caught as a breaker. He tried to lift his hands. His limbs were weak, and his hands wouldn’t move.

Another bucket of ice-cold water splashed on his face, jolting Ven awake from his groggy delirium.

Ven was tied to a chair ropes, hands cuffed. The room was a cell of sorts, connected to a hallway with sturdy hardstone bars. The walls around him were built of smooth colorless stone. Nothing could qualify as decoration. The room was as lifeless as a cell could get.

The skeletal Steward loomed over him. Uundref. In the corner was a second man, face covered in a black scarf mask.

“Vernard Beckem,” Uundref said. “Supposedly, you're the mastermind behind this whole ordeal.”

Ven snorted, showing a weak smile. He could vaguely remember passing out. He’d launched an attack at Uundref as they’d planned. The Steward had expected the ambush and blocked Ven’s attack without issues. A venerium sword had pierced his shoulder, and he was promptly passed out. It seemed he'd received an antivenom. His shoulder was wrapped tightly, stopping the bleeding.

Immediately, Ven suspected that Grenall had betrayed them. How else would the Stewards have read the plan so thoroughly? Ven didn’t want to think about that.

Solace and the nix sword were both leaning on the wall behind the Stewards. Ven had no way of reaching them. Attempting to fight back was useless. He still had his full ether reserves—over five thousand ether—but the cuffs around his hands were most certainly nothing cuffs. They’d suck in any ether that Ven attempted to channel.

The plan was a ruin. He had no choice but to talk to these damned tyrants. “What ordeal?” Ven asked.

A sting hit him in the face. Uundref’s sharp nails scratched his upper lip down to his cheeks. Blood flowed into his mouth immediately, dripping to his clothes.

“We will start by clearing your ether reserves,” Uundref said. His tone was calm yet authoritative, fully expecting Ven to comply. “Transfer everything you have to me.”

Ven sighed, but did as asked. He didn’t have much of a choice. “Can I keep three hundred?” he asked.

“You may keep five to avoid starving your soul,” Uundref said.

Still using polite words, huh? Ven thought. Uundref made no sense. But Ven did as asked, transferring all of his ether to Uundref.

“And your skills,” Uundref said, holding out two skill containers.

Ven complied without arguments. He carried two of the Hollows’ trash skills. Skills that the Hollows had never used beyond testing them out when they got them. He had Horn Blare, a skill that turned ether into ear-piercing sounds, and Summon Mudman. That skill dropped from the Fang Tanker a while ago. The summons were turd monsters that did nothing but walk around and smell mildly bad.

Uundref looked down at Ven with that unsettling grin. “It seems you read the situation perfectly. You’re here for questioning. Your answers decide what we do with you afterward. I will be asking the questions, and you will answer without complaints.” He turned to the shady man in the corner. “This gentleman over here is my assistant. He is a human from the captured mining group. One of the most skilled humans I’ve ever met. So proficient at his job, in fact, that I have personally hired him as my assistant. Please introduce yourself.”

The human’s eyes were dark and emotionless. He picked up a tool suitcase, opening it for Ven to examine the contents.

A subtle smell of blood and rotting flesh escaped from the suitcase. The tools were uncleaned. There were bloody handsaws, rusty scissors, tearers, thumbscrews, and a dozen more nasty tools Ven certainly didn’t want to interact with.

“Nice portfolio,” Ven said. He tasted blood flowing into his mouth as he spoke.

The man didn’t respond. He retreated back to his position in the corner, closing his suitcase.

“Look, I know how this works,” Ven said. “I’m not so insane that I’ll hide my identity when threatened with torture. Just ask me what you need to know, and I’ll tell you as much as I know.”

“Let’s start simple with introductions,” Uundref said. “Tell me a bit about yourself. And about the Hollow Phantoms.”

Ven frowned. Where had Uundref heard that name? Had he already tortured the others?

“The Hollow Phantoms is the name of our secret organization within the lower levels of the dungeon,” Ven said. “For the last six or seven years, we’ve been clearing bosses. Each time you left them to brew, we waited a few weeks, and we killed them. That’s why your drops have been so weak. We’ve been stealing skills.”

“That much we’ve figured out,” Uundref said. “How many skills have you collected?”

“Nine in total,” Ven said. “I can list them all if you want.”

Uundref requested just that, and Ven listed all of the skills the Hollows had gathered, excluding Vivi’s Thorn Sword. Uundref listened curiously. Speaking about the Hollows hurt. Everything they’d worked hard to hide was disappearing as he spoke.

But the Hollows had already agreed from the very start: if someone was caught, everything would be spilled. Nobody was forced to let themselves be tortured just to keep secrets.

Still, Ven had two secrets he absolutely required lies for. How would he explain Vivi’s swords? He tried to think of solutions, while speaking in a low meandering voice about the Hollows’ skills.

“Such effort for useless skills,” Uundref said. “Why bother?”

“We found the hidden dungeon by accident,” Ven said. “Originally, our goal was simply to gather more ether for our gang to thrive.”

“What gang, and where did you find the dungeon?”

“Aang’s Union,” Ven said. “The Hollow Phantoms consist of Aang’s elite members. Regular Union member’s don’t know of our existence. We found the dungeon through the lakes. The crawl spaces extend underwater. From there, we created exits of our own. Each week, we spent time creating holes and additional crawl spaces.”

“And their locations?” Uundref asked.

“I can grab you a map of each exit if you allow me to live,” Ven said. “I’ll also take you to our lair.”

Uundref studied his expression. “Very well. You have been cooperative so far. I will let you live until then. Now, tell me about members. Who is a Hollow Phantom?”

“We’re all nimrods,” Ven said. “There’s Alisa and Rohan. The two you already captured. Then there’s an alchemist called Lydi. And the fiend, Emmy, she's also a part of our operations.”

“That’s not all of them,” Uundref said. “Who is your boss?”

Does he not know? Ven thought. The answer should have been obvious. Still, it seemed like Uundref didn’t know Aang’s part in the plan. If the Stewards knew that the main dungeon was currently being cleared, they would be far more alarmed trying to stop that. Whoever betrayed the Hollows hadn’t informed the Stewards about the other half of the plan. Ven just had to keep Uundref occupied while the main dungeon was cleared.

“It’s Aang, obviously,” Ven said. “He’s currently preparing an escape. Most likely, he has already escaped. We intended to kill you before causing a mass escape in hopes of framing you as the culprit behind the hidden operation. If a Steward disappeared just as shady operations were discovered in the dungeon, the investigation would have been harder to pinpoint to us. We hoped to escape with our skills.”

“And because of your newfound strength, you believed you could defeat me,” Uundref said. “Foolish.”

Ven laughed weakly. “The other members have escaped by now. It was my idea to try and frame you. If we failed, we agreed that the others would be escaping. I’m allowed to reveal everyone’s identities, seeing as they’ve all escaped.”

“And their escape route?” Uundref asked.

“Zand has dozens of flaws they could abuse,” Ven said. “They obviously didn’t tell me which route they took. The walls can be climbed. They can be cut through. Those two are the easiest escape routes. You can escape through outside raids, or you can disguise yourself as a guard. We’ve already escaped many times with all of these tricks. We just came back each time, since living in Zand is easier than living as Zand escapees. And we could earn skills here. Or rather, steal skills.”

Uundref observed Ven’s eyes. Reading the skeletal expression was difficult. He wasn’t grinning like he usually did. Uundref turned to the torturer at the back of the room.

“A lot of truths,” the torturer said. “And a lot was left unsaid. I sensed two major lies in this story.”

Uundref’s expression slowly fell to a frown. “The story sounded sensible. You are good at lying, yet subtle inconsistencies are spread within your tale. It seems we will have to start the questioning for real now.”

What do you mean, two major lies! Ven shouted in his thoughts. He kept a composed expression, ostensibly staying in control of the situation. Inside, his heart was starting to race. This would escalate to torture, wouldn’t it? Uundref intended to gain the full truth out of Ven.

“There’s a lot I wish to learn about the Hollow Phantoms,” Uundref said. “Six years is enough for tales and stories to have formed. To get everything out of your mouth will take weeks. Before any of that, however…” Uundref picked up Vivi’s nix sword from the ground and flowed ether through its runes. The veins lit up.

Uundref frowned, then pressed the sword's tip against Ven’s throat. “How do you have an inside-carved runesword?”