Two weeks passed.
Today was once again the day when Kurome and the others needed to execute death-row inmates for their training.
Noah arrived at the execution ground early, sitting quietly in a chair and organizing the documents in his hands.
Beside him, tied to wooden posts, were the inmates scheduled to be executed by Class A today: five men and two women.
According to the intelligence files, they belonged to two different criminal syndicates.
Among them, the two women were assassins who disguised themselves as traveling dancers; so far, the number of ordinary people they had murdered for money reached double digits, and they had also assassinated several local officials.
The other five men came from another group—the so-called Rebel Army.
They were all people who couldn't survive the crushing taxes in their hometowns anymore and had followed passing Rebel Army troops to join the rebellion, only to be caught by the military police while disseminating the rebels' ideals in the Capital.
In the silent execution ground, the only sound was made by the boy casually flipping through the paper files in his hands.
The atmosphere was oppressive.
After all, the seven people tied to the posts knew they could not escape death today.
At this point, they surely had many thoughts; perhaps it was precisely because their minds were flooded with too much chaotic information that they had fallen completely silent instead.
'Gulp.'
One of the Rebel Army inmates gritted his teeth and asked tentatively, "Hey, boy. Could you do me a favor?"
The inmate who spoke was about to offer a bribe, but his companion stopped him.
"Hey, shut up. Are you trying to drag that kid down with us?"
Seeing a child appear in such a bloody place, the group subconsciously assumed that Noah was also a victim of the Empire's brainwashing.
A mere child shouldn't have the ability to distinguish between good and evil, he was just being used by the adults.
Such a child surely wouldn't be able to withstand sweet words and coaxing.
He knew that this companion of his was best at swindling and deceiving.
If the boy listened to his bewitchment and released them, regardless of whether they could actually escape the Imperial Capital alive, the boy would definitely end up dead for treason.
If they died, they died, there was no need to harm this pitiful boy.
Stopped by his companion's voice, the swindler said unwillingly, "Then what do you suggest we do! Our wishes haven't been fulfilled yet, our noble ideals..."
"Enough. We have already done what we could. Those efforts won't be in vain, even though we won't be around to see the revolution."
"Then isn't it meaningless!!"
Snap!
A crisp snap of fingers echoed through the courtyard.
In an instant, it overpowered the sound of the argument.
The roaring inmate's expression suddenly changed, his entire face turning livid from lack of oxygen.
The inmate's face rapidly filled with panic.
When he realized he couldn't breathe, he felt an intense craving for air and began to struggle frantically against his ropes.
Seeing his sudden, disease-like reaction, his companions gradually realized something was wrong.
"Hey, what's wrong with you?"
The man was unable to answer his companion's question. He just thrashed against the post, his eyes bulging.
"Hey, answer me!"
"Boy, he doesn't look right, hurry and call a doctor!"
The man's companions all grew tense.
Looking at that face filled with despair and confusion, they were suddenly infected by those emotions.
Feelings of powerlessness and helplessness quickly engulfed them.
They looked pleadingly at the only person here who could contact the outside world, but the sliver of hope they still harbored was shattered.
Expression.
Because they didn't see any expression on the boy's face.
If they had to describe it, it was pure indifference.
As if nothing was happening before him, and the events transpiring were completely inconsequential to his day.
Suddenly, they realized it.
That snap of the fingers they had ignored earlier was made by the boy!
"It... It was you?" One of them whipped his head to look at Noah.
"Did you do something to him?!"
Isn't this guy just an ordinary brat? Right, he's been far too calm since the beginning...
Facing the inmates' questioning, Noah looked at them calmly, estimating in his mind that the suffocating man hadn't reached his limit yet.
"Answer me!"
"Did you do this?!"
"Stop it immediately!"
Noah rested his chin on one hand, while the fingers of his other hand tapped rhythmically against the armrest of his chair, passively observing the oxygen-deprived inmate.
He ignored the roars of the other inmates.
The evil deeds these people had committed would be enough for them to be sentenced to death ten times over in modern society, they weren't worthy of sympathy.
Rather, it was absurd that they were staging a grand drama of friendship on the execution ground after having done all those things.
It wasn't until the man was on the verge of going into shock that Noah allowed the air to return to his lungs.
"Gasp—!"
The man's eyes widened, greedily sucking in the fresh air as his consciousness began to return from the chaos of asphyxiation.
However, he didn't feel happy because of this, but was rather filled with pure terror.
That sheer terror of his life and death not being in his own hands made him realize just how terrifying death truly was.
"Cough."
And the one who had given him this experience was the boy sitting in front of him.
"W-Wait, I've changed my mind! First of all, thank you so much for sparing me! I'm willing to talk! I'm willing to tell you everything I didn't tell the interrogators before! I'll say it all, just please don't kill me!"
The man's pathetic begging dumbfounded his companions.
"Wh-What are you talking about..."
They had experienced agonizing torture together in the cells, yet everyone had pulled through and prepared themselves for death.
But now, a companion who had gone through all of that with them was begging for mercy and planning to leak their secrets!
"I'll tell you everything!" the man screamed, tears streaming down his face.
"The Rebel Army's base, codes, contact methods, and the guys providing support behind the scenes, I'll confess everything! Please let me go! Do whatever you want to the others, but please spare my life alone!"
Watching their companion act so hysterically, the other death-row inmates gnashed their teeth and roared.
"Stop joking around!"
"You bastard!"
"Just try saying it! I'll bite your throat out right now!"
Scolded furiously by his most trusted companions, the man replied angrily.
"Bah, idiots! If you can do it, then come at me! Let's see you get a taste of that suffocating feeling too!"
"You scumbag..."
Bang!
Noah slammed his palm onto the table.
The death-row inmates were being too loud, preventing him from thinking quietly.
"You lot, stop arguing. You're all going to die in a few minutes anyway, so there's no point in scrambling over each other."
"What?"
"Wait, my lord! I'm willing to provide valuable intel!"
Noah sighed.
He said softly, "Sorry, that sort of thing is outside my scope of work. Since you're already here, death is your only outcome. Give it up."
Intel? He couldn't care less about that kind of stuff.
"Hah? What's the meaning of this?"
"D-Don't say that, my lord. I really do know a lot of things. I was just momentarily foolish for not saying them before!" the man pleaded further.
Yet Noah's expression remained entirely unchanged.
"It's too late for regrets. Before you arrived here, the interrogators should have given you plenty of opportunities as well, but you threw them all away."
"When it comes down to it, since you chose to rebel, you should have considered this outcome long ago. Everyone will gain or lose because of their own choices, that is inevitable. As an independent individual, you should take responsibility for your actions."
Seeing Noah's understated sentence, the man lowered his head in despair.
However, the other inmates beside him grew agitated again.
"Isn't that all because of the Empire?!"
"If it weren't for the Empire's problems, why would we have taken such a risk?"
The corruption of the Empire was a widely known fact.
Because they lived in poverty and suffering, the people were the only group that could truly experience whether a country was good or not.
When the people live in agony, it signifies that the country itself is sick.
And the Empire was already terminally ill.
"Treatment is useless! Even cutting out the source of the disease is useless! Everything must be overthrown and rebuilt from scratch!" the man roared, preaching about love and justice.
But this failed to resonate with Noah at all.
He had grown up under socialism, then arrived at a city ruled by gods, and later stayed in a small monarchical country for a period of time; these countries were all fundamentally in stable conditions.
The history of every world was different.
How this period of history would be recorded in the future—the facts might not be exactly as written in the books, but it would take the shape that the victors desired.
"Is that so."
"What do you mean, 'is that so'?! Why are you so calm?!" The man flew into a rage over Noah's uncaring reaction.
"Can't you see the tragic state of the Empire..."
Suddenly, the man realized something.
"Heh, no wonder. A brainwashed brat of the Empire like you simply can't comprehend how noble this..."
"Noble?" Noah frowned slightly.
"Then, which side is truly the brainwashed one? Can you guarantee that the king you support won't become a new oppressor?"
"A thousand-year empire can become corrupt, is your kingdom an eternal paradise? To my knowledge, there are only so many state systems that can be born from the current environment, and none of them will be the type to satisfy you. Frankly, I don't care what happens to the Empire, I'm only here to achieve my own goals. Whether you are truly doing this for the people or not has very little to do with me."
"You... how is that possible? Aren't you doing this for the Empire?"
Wasn't this brat a brainwashed suicide soldier?
Why were his words and actions so individualistic? This was vastly different from the brainwashed children of the Empire he had encountered before!
"Shh, it seems we've chatted a bit too much."
Noah narrowed his eyes.
Invisible spikes simultaneously pierced through the souls of all the death-row inmates in an instant, turning them all groggy and dazed in the next second.
In this state, although they still had physical reactions to the outside world, they couldn't process complex information, nor could they even answer questions.
Anyway, their purpose was just like targets at a shooting range, and targets don't need to know how to speak.
'The effect is pretty good... Let's just call it 'Mind Drill Spike'.'
His manipulation of magic power and elemental forces with Spellweaver achieved certain results through his continuous training, but the ability to manipulate souls had only been acquired recently, so its current level of development was relatively weak.
Furthermore, there were still many unknowable conditions regarding the soul.
Forcibly altering the shape of the soul would kill the host of the soul and transform the soul into mental pollution.
But if the molding and deformation of the soul were done from the inside, that wouldn't happen.
Relying on this method, he could manifest the soul; he had learned this ability from the Blazers.
Moreover, based on this, by forming the soul into an "anchor", he could pierce through the soul's protection and interfere with the souls of others from the inside.
He called this process "Soul Anchoring".
The things that could be achieved after anchoring were not limited to just entering the "Soul Corridor" to observe or even influence the memories within the soul; even a person's personality could be changed.
This kind of thing was countless times more terrifying than brainwashing.
To kill an enemy without generating mental pollution, one could not roughly distort the soul, so he had been constantly considering how to apply this power.
'Mind Drill Spike' was essentially using the method of an "Innate Device" to manifest the soul into a "nail" to directly attack the opponent's soul.
Because it lacked a physical form, it was difficult to block using physical means.
It might become an extremely frightening offensive technique.
At first, that was what he had thought.
But in the end…
The power of this technique was worlds apart from what he had imagined.
Although it had speed and was concealed enough, the damage it caused was not worth mentioning.
After testing, the power of this attack was no different from being struck once with a wooden stick.
Forget being fatal; it would even be difficult to injure someone with it.
Fortunately, its target was not the physical body, but the soul itself.
Anyone struck by it would feel as though their head were about to split apart, suffering a level of pain that could not be endured.
If the strength of the target's soul was average, they would lose consciousness the instant they were hit.
These people's willpower was much stronger than that of ordinary people.
Otherwise, they would never have endured such cruel interrogation.
The Mind Drill could briefly shake their souls, causing those souls to sink into chaos for a short time.
He had originally intended to develop a trump card, but what he had ended up with was a "control-type" technique instead.
If he used it on an enemy in actual combat, then even a powerful opponent should reveal an opening.
'Looks like I've gone even farther down the path of first-time-kill techniques.'
If an enemy knew absolutely nothing about Noah's abilities, then he might suddenly appear like a war god.
But if there was an enemy who understood all of his abilities, then his combat strength might drop to only a tenth of what it should be.
That was what intelligence warfare was.
Once your abilities were no longer mysterious in the eyes of the enemy, they could find flaw after flaw and lead you toward defeat.
Tap—tap.
A series of footsteps came from the doorway, and the person who had been waiting there rose from time to time.
"They're here."
In that case, he should hurry up and finish today's work, then go back and research "that."
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