My tears fell onto my brother’s motionless face. “Even when you hadn’t had anything to eat, you’d give us your food so we wouldn’t go hungry. Whenever we were in danger or hard times loomed, you were always there for us, reminding us that you were our big brother...”
I was no longer the Abyss’s dungeon lord hell bent on exacting revenge and uncovering the truth about this world. In this moment, I was just a simple farm boy who was crying like a little kid, cradling his brother who would never speak again. Even Mei and Aoyuki, the two least emotional members of my inner circle, had started weeping for my sake. However, our shared moment of mourning was interrupted by Doc, who, true to form, launched into a gleeful rant.
“Magnificent! Simply splendid!” he roared. “That was exactly what I’ve been pursuing all these years! Something more beautiful than everything else, and more precious than the future: love!”
I could have sworn that he wasn’t the least bit exhausted from battling us for twenty-seven hours straight.
“I have now witnessed the very peak of magnificence!” Doc droned on. “I remolded your brother into my most perfect masterpiece, yet he was able to retap into his own thoughts and feelings! And not only that, but he gouged out his own heart to stop himself from hurting his dear younger brother! Theoretically, this expression of fraternal devotion was never supposed to have been possible!”
He sounded completely enraptured, as if high on some premium narcotic. He even started to clap due to his excitement.
“This could only have been brought about by a miracle!” Doc bleated. “This is the potential I’m seeking in humanity. Love, to be precise! Love, I say! I have witnessed a truly marvelous display!”
My two lieutenants stared at the mad scientist in stunned silence. Whichever way you looked at it, he was in the tightest corner he could possibly find himself in. Not only had he lost his corpse golem, but his bodyguard had just committed suicide. Yet he simply glossed over how desperate his own situation was and kept on crowing like an overexcited researcher observing some lab rats. Both Mei and Aoyuki seethed silently at Doc’s total lack of grace, but as ever, he was totally oblivious to their unspoken rage.
“If you really are the younger brother of my greatest masterpiece, then in the memory of your sibling, won’t you assist me in my research?” Doc suggested. “You share the same blood as this specimen who just brought about a miracle through the expression of familial love! I am also curious to find out how you, a human, came into possession of all of your powers.”
I didn’t say a word in reply to this, but he continued on regardless. “If we join forces, we will be able to create a new future for humanity. A future where none of the other races will look down upon our species. So could I ask you to offer up yourself for the sake of the human race?”
“Shut up...” I said in a barely audible whisper.
“Those two females who appear to be your underlings have also piqued my interest exceedingly.” Of course, Doc hadn’t heard what I’d said. “Perhaps you can convince them to offer up their bodies for the sake of humanity as well? Oh, but please do not get the wrong impression of me. While your female cohorts are indeed extremely lovely, I entertain no inappropriate feelings for them. My interest in them is purely scientific and in pursuit of a future for the human race—”
“Shut the hell up!” I screamed, finally losing it. “Not another damn word!”
The entirety of my murderous fury radiated out toward Doc, and the energy I was releasing was strong enough to even make Mei and Aoyuki gulp in fright. Yet despite being subjected to what was basically the heat of a thousand suns, Doc continued to prattle on without any regard for my raging temper.
“Calm yourself, young man,” he said. “Yes, it is sad your brother died, but his sacrifice was necessary for the future of humanity. Your brother has become a precious cornerstone in that future, and getting emotional and incensed about it will be of no benefit to anyone—”
“Shut your mouth right now!” I gently laid Els on the ground and immediately ran over to knock Doc’s block off.
“D-Debuff! Boost! Multilayer Debuff!” Doc blurted out desperately. Despite being barely unable to move due to sheer fatigue, he rattled off a bunch of debuffs to weaken my stats, along with a buff that raised the stats of his scalpels, which he then threw at me. Under normal circumstances, I would have just whacked the scalpels away with my Gungnir or dodged them entirely, but I was so furious that I simply let the boosted scalpels slash away at my debuffed body without hesitating for a second. I didn’t give a damn what happened to me, as long as I got the chance to pound this scumbag into the dirt!
This time around, Doc looked scared stiff, since he hadn’t counted on me just allowing myself to be slashed by his scalpels without slowing my momentum. It frankly didn’t matter at all what he did to me. With a scream like a banshee, I buried my fist into his mask-covered face. Mei had of course taught me various techniques when it came to hand-to-hand combat, but I didn’t consider any of my training while delivering this punch. I was acting purely on emotion, and my form was as sloppy and unrefined as anyone could imagine, like some kid in a schoolyard brawl. Yet my punch connected anyway, and since my debuffed stats were still sky-high, the force behind it was enough to make him roll and flop quite some distance across the ground.
Doc held one hand against his face in response to the throbbing pain—his Level 6000 resistance had been the only thing that had saved him from instant death—and the other to gesture wildly at me to stop.
“P-Please don’t! Please calm down!” Doc begged. “Let’s discuss this like rational adults!”
I was too enraged to give his words a second thought. “When you were busy chopping up people for your experiments, how many of them pleaded with you to stop?! And did you listen to them? You know what you’ve done, so don’t you dare ask me for mercy!”
Doc was still sitting on the ground when I reached him again, and I kicked him as hard as I could. He tried blocking with both of his arms, but I was way too powerful, and I wasn’t holding back this time. He ended up splayed out on the ground once again, with both of his arms crushed.
Doc screamed. “M-My arms! Why?!”
I was seeing red, and not just metaphorically either. The enraged energy I was unleashing had caused the capillaries in my eyeballs to burst, tinting my vision with blood. Yes, my brother had killed himself, but we could always revive him using Ellie’s Resurrection of the Dead spell (though nothing was guaranteed, since there were a whole bunch of conditions we had to fulfill first). Furthermore, we needed Doc alive so he could tell us how to take the monster out of my brother and turn him back to normal. But despite how valuable Doc was to this plan, my rage wasn’t listening to reason, and I didn’t care if Doc died by my hand or not.
“W-Wait! Please!” he pleaded.
“Shut the hell up!” I kept swinging away with my fists without any real finesse or technique to my swings. I simply pummeled him like a goon, unwilling to listen to another word out of his mouth. To my mind, he didn’t deserve to utter another syllable. Of course, by this point, his arms were all busted up and flailing around brokenly. I crushed one of his shoulders next, before burying my fist into his chest again, shattering his rib cage this time. I kept pounding his abdomen until his bones and internal organs turned to mush. My hits to his face made short work of tearing through his mask, but I was too enraged to get a good look at his face. I didn’t give a damn how he looked. I needed to make him pay for his crimes with excruciating pain. This time, I was the one who had forgotten who he was, and I roared rabidly as I continued to slug my victim, the pure rage inside of me gushing out and seeming to warp the very air around me.
✦ ✦ ✦
✰✰✰
When all was said and done, I’d more or less lost my mind as I beat the living snot out of Doc, to the point where it took both Mei and Aoyuki grappling with me to finally restrain me. After my lieutenants had dragged me off Doc, they used a gacha card to sedate me, and as I sat nearby in a daze, Mei brought out some other cards to start healing Doc’s wounds. I was staring off toward the horizon in a stupor when Aoyuki walked up in front of me, dropped down to one knee, and offered up her head in penance.
“There is no excuse for what I did, master,” Aoyuki said. “You would have killed that reprobate had we allowed you to continue. In my insolence, I chose to place my hands on you and interfere with your actions. I am prepared to accept whatever punishment you deem it necessary to mete out, my master.”
I had been this close to killing Doc with my bare hands. There was no denying that. And if I had done that, we would have lost the ability to extract information from him that might save my brother. It was exactly for this reason that Mei and Aoyuki stopped me, even though they believed I would probably hate their guts for not letting me have my own way.
“No, you and Mei were right to stop me,” I admitted catatonically. “I’m not gonna punish you. In fact, I should be grateful to the pair of you. Thanks for pulling me back from the brink. We wouldn’t be able to save Els if you hadn’t.”
“Your gracious words are deeply appreciated, master,” Aoyuki replied, bowing even deeper.
Mei and Aoyuki had made what had obviously been the right decision. They had crossed a line, sure, but they had done it because of their undying loyalty to me, and I wasn’t about to overlook that. As for Doc, Mei managed to heal up all of his potentially fatal wounds with the cards, although he still remained unconscious. She then took the opportunity to place an SSSR Curse Collar around his neck and tie him up with her Magistrings. With that, we had officially captured Doc alive, and all that was left was to make him cough up the secret to turning my brother back to normal. And I didn’t care what we’d have to do to him to make him talk!
By the time I’d returned to the Abyss, the rage that was churning away inside of me was darker than the deepest shade of black.