Chapter 138: Let me use this question

With the real aim of my plan already accomplished, all I had to do was to chase after the man that I knocked away. Judging the strength of my attack and the height that he reached before his ascent was broken down and turned into a descent, I pushed my feet heavily into the ground before jumping forward. 

The soaring of the wind by my eyes was strangely relaxing. As if surfing through the idle winds of the fall"s afternoon, I could feel my entire body relaxing as if I wasn"t in the middle of pummeling an expert that many huge factions would happily go to a small war for. 

"aaaaAAAAA…." The sound of the man"s screams as he continued to accelerate more and more towards the ground was a honey to my ears. For someone who commanded the units of people that I already considered traitors of humanity, just being thrown around a bit wasn"t enough. For my inner rage caused by someone"s guts growing to the point when they dared to attack my people, this was a way to quell it. 

Slap.

Perfectly timing my approach with the fall of the leader of the Sarate soldiers, just as he was about to heavily hit the ground and turn into an invalid for the rest of his days, my slap in his face redirected his momentum, sending him crashing against the trees instead. 

Katcha! 

After snapping several smaller branches on his way away from me, the man finally crashed into a st.u.r.dy trunk of a huge oak, before sliding down its side towards the ground. From the pained moans escaping through the man"s lips, it was clear that even being an expert of his scale didn"t mean he was immune to this level of damage.

"W-wait…"

Noticing the fact that I was approaching him again, the man could only weakly whisper some simple words. But instead of listening to his pleas for mercy, I crossed the last few metres that separated us before leaning over the powerless body of the expert.

"Wait for what? For you to call reinforcements? Or maybe for some of your higher-ups to f.u.c.k up the entire situation, sending a government"s retribution right on my head? It wouldn"t be the first time you guys did something like this."

Putting a wide smile on my face, I grabbed the man by his throat, before lifting him up just high enough for his legs to lose contact with the ground. Even despite his physics being on a far end of the durability scale when compared with other humans, a simple flaw of the body of our species was still there. Just by tightening my hand and waiting for a bit, I could see the blood rushing to the face of the man, indicating that he was quickly reaching the appropriate level of suffocation for my purposes.

Waiting for just a few moments, I could see the man"s eyes turning bloodshot and his face turning violet before his eyes rolled to the back as his entire body limped.

"Good."

Relaxing my grip, I allowed the lifeless body of the Sarate"s expert to plummet down to the ground. While I didn"t kill him and it would only take a short while for him to come back to his senses, I judged that I had more than ample amount of time to fix up a special kind of restraint.

And it was something that I spent quite a long time thinking about it. While it was already a while since the idea popped up in my head for the last time, its simplicity was what made it easy for me to recall the design that I proposed after consulting the idea with Sander.

Keeping just the right amount of attention to the unconscious body beside me, I quickly scavenged the area. As a land just recently abandoned, the traces of human presence were pretty common all around. Before the man on the ground could come to his senses, I already returned to his resting spot with a thin, vinyl string in my hands.

"Now, let"s see if it will really work out as I hoped it would…" 

The problem of putting powerful experts under control was what made me lose several hours of sleep back in time a bit. With their insanely boosted and improved psychique, with their ability to draw force far greater than their muscles should normally allow, there was hardly any material that could be used to contain them. Only using the toughest of the metal alloys at least several centimetres thick in all places would put my mind at ease in terms of controlling the experts of level two and above.

But there was no way for such a specific and intricate tool to just loiter around the former farmland. While all sorts of plastic trash, ropes and even clothes could be found all over the place, there was no need for the kind of item I needed in the farmlands in the first place, making it futile to look for it even before I would even begin.

Yet, I wasn"t worried. Using the fact that the man has yet to regain his consciousness, I pulled his hands to the back before rolling his body to make him face the ground. Pulling out a knife that I bought in one of the still-operating convenience stores, I quickly freed the man"s feet from his shoes, throwing the sc.r.a.p pieces of high-quality leather away.

With both of his hands and feet now fully in my control, I bent his knees before bringing his feet above his waistline. Binding one end of the vinyl thread to his pinky, I moved it up towards his throat, before pulling it down to his hand. From there, another curl around the neck only to bend a part of the threat around his other pinky following with the last round around the man"s throat and ending up bound to the finger of his other hand.

Surely, the man could easily snap such a tiny thread. But by making it run and angle at his throat three times, doing so would be akin to cutting his own throat and committing a slightly more elaborate suicide.

This was the real reason behind my act of pulling him up before. Since an expert of his level could be defeated by attacking his vitals, it meant that despite his strength, his throat was still a place on his body he had to pay particular attention to protect.

That was the only solution, outside of the heaviest chains possible, that I came up with for dealing with the powerful experts. Rather than trying to block them from exerting their strength at all, I decided that making it so using their power would force them to deal a fatal injury to themselves seemed like a greater option.

The only two problems with this solution laid in the wits of the man and the strength of the thread. If the vinyl item were to be too fragile, this d.a.m.ned Sarate soldier could just risk snapping it. Even if his throat were to be squeezed by it then, he could free himself from his restraint before any real injury would happen to his vital part. This was the only reasonable way to free himself from my bounds that didn"t involve third-party help. 

And for this way out to work, the man had to not only have a relatively huge sack of b.a.l.l.s under his pants, but the thread also had to be weak enough for such an escape attempt to be successful. Thankfully, with my background as a witch, manipulating the emotions of this expert to make him too fearful of taking any action in fear of claiming his own life was a walk in the park!

Cough, cough! 

"Wha…" 

Once the man finally regained his senses, he coughed a few times before his eyes finally started supplying his brain with the detailed imagery of the ground below his nose. Right away, the man attempted to prompt himself upwards, but with the vinyl thread tensing up and digging into the flesh of his throat, the man"s movement ceased.

"Stay where you are. There are some questions you need to answer to if you want to return to your dog employer in a single piece." 

As much as I didn"t like to threaten others or even claim lives, it was something that was inevitable on the path that I chose for myself. Given how I was the powerhouse of my cult hiding in plain sight, it was only a matter of time before the local conflicts and crossing spheres of influences would lead to a greater war. 

And only a disaster would await my entire faction if I were to refuse to get my own hands dirty.

"What the f.u.c.k do you want…" 

Only capable of gentle whisper with the piece of vinyl constantly pressing against the soft flesh of his throat, the expert laying on the ground below me was clearly struggling to maintain his limbs in a position where the threat of this thread cutting his throat open would be the smallest.

"What do I want to know? Hmm… Isn"t that a great question? Let me use it to ask you then."

Putting a wide smile on my face, I paced around the area as if I was adoring the growth of nature in this place, exploding due to the lack of human hand nearby.

"What are you going to tell me, that you deem will be a worthy exchange for sparing your life?"

Sitting down on one of the boulders in the area, I smiled before turning silent. 

I made my move. Now it was the time for the other party to do theirs.