Chapter 20: The servant’s punishment

“What do we have here, now…?”

Suzuka tried to blabber something, but he wasn’t hearing her anymore.

According to the menu’s rules, all he had to do was choose one of the options from the list and command it out loud for it to take effect.

Some of the more advanced punishments, though, were sealed behind some pretty high credit walls. Not that it mattered, however. He already had everything he needed.

“Let’s start with… Electric Shock!”

“Electric Shock.”

The girl jerked about as her hands instinctively moved to her back, desperately trying to stop the 20-volt jolts coming from its middle. Regardless, she fiercely grit her teeth and fought the pain, staring back at him with a full, mocking grin as if to tell him such a thing was nothing but child’s play.

“Is-s… that the best you can do!?”

“That was only level 1, though. Level 2, coming up!”

“Electric Shock Lvl. 2.”

The shock was increased to 40 volts, and this time she'd barely rocked off her feet, still holding onto the targeted zone.

“Still feel nothing!”

“Level 3, coming up…”

60 volts. By now she was almost losing her balance, letting out a low yelp.

“I’m… not talking…”

“Level 4…”

Instead of activating the next punishment, though, the menu prompted him for payment.

“Oh, right. Paywalls. Moving on…”

Next up on the list was…

“Frost-layer!”

The girl suddenly started to tremble and shake furiously to one side and another as though she’d been caught in the middle of a raging blizzard, but still she wouldn’t give up no matter how much he lowered the temperature.

“I-I-I… c-c-c-can do t-t-this all d-d-d… day!”

“Heatwave!”

Suzuka fell to the floor, sweating profusely as she quickly lost her sharp tongue.

“Huh. The pyromaniac girl is weak to heat. Who would’ve thought?”

All she could manage before long were a few bouts of unintelligible slurring every few seconds, but eventually even those stopped as she bowed weakly atop the graying tar, hands pressed firmly on the ground. It almost seemed like she was groveling at first, but he could still see her hand from down below, visibly flipping him off.

“This is starting to get really, really tiring, matchsticks… Can’t you just talk? Seriously?”

Haruto sighed once more, just barely burying a yawn. That torture session wasn’t turning out nearly as interesting as he’d envisioned it. Did villains seriously get off on this?

“Acid attack.”

But, well, it just didn’t turn out to be that kind of acid. Since he couldn’t reach any high tiers in that torture option, it wasn’t exactly like she’d gotten hit and covered with boiling acid like in some domestic terrorist attempt. Instead, the insides of her mouth started to burn as if they had been completely filled with hot pepper, making her gag and cough for around a minute tops. Pretty underwhelming.

“Human bomb.”

Self-explanatory. And obviously, she didn’t tell him anything. Took her about thirty seconds to grow back together from all her bits and pieces scattered throughout, which was cool to know, at least. It seemed any kind of death or invalidity would be immediately reverted by the system, unless it happened to someone participating in a race. That wouldn’t exactly apply to one’s vehicle, though. Poor golf cart. It had a short career on the racetrack.

“Well, this is getting us nowhere…”

She wouldn’t let up, still, no matter what. But what else could he use? He needed to use something that actually got to her head. Something distinctive.

Then, it occurred to him. Maybe he could just combine stuff together and see what happened. It wasn’t like the punishment menu prevented it.

“Alrighty, then… Anti-gravity.”

No sooner than he’d said it, Suzuka had taken off, her feet lifting off the ground as her body floated further up, stopping just a few feet above the boy, stuck upside down.

Quite unexpectedly, she’d started to panic at this one, shouting and squealing as she remained there, held up in the air, clutching her skirt up with one hand and erratically flailing the other around.

“W-Wh-What is this!? Get me down from here!! How did you even–!?”

“Oh? Afraid of heights, are we…? But I thought you could do this all day!”

“Please, let me down!! I can’t take this!!! Maekawa!!!!!”

(Jeez… Of all the things to break through… Maybe I should let her down. She really doesn’t look well.)

“...So? Are you going to talk?”

“What!? Of course I’m not, stupid!!! You dumb, arrogant, indolent, jerk of a –”

“Alright, then.” he nodded, squinting his eyes as if trying to spot a bug on a wall.

(I want to see her suffer…)

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“Extreme Gravitron! (... did I pronounce this right…?)”

Abruptly, the redheaded girl started to spin violently in the air, moving in wide strokes in more directions and angles than his eyes could keep track of. Up, down, left, right, 180, 360, horizontal, vertical, diagonal, and so on, he couldn’t even imagine how that must’ve felt from her perspective, since even Haruto himself had felt the need to avert his eyes from the crazy helicopter person above him before he could end up getting motion sickness. In simpler terms, just looking was painful by itself.

(Aggh… My eyes…)

It didn’t take even a minute for her to start pleading for mercy, much to his own relief.

“Plea… Pleaaaase…!! Maekawa, let me down…!!! Stop this already… I’ll… I’ll… I’ll do anything you want… Just… Please just get me down from here…”

Reaching out to the punishment window, Haruto canceled the ‘Gravitron’ punishment thing and made the girl stop still in the air once again, shivering and gasping for air.

“Now, let’s try this again! From the beginning. What. is. Chariot. City?? Why. is. nobody. here??”

“I-It’s just a ghost town in the middle of nothing!! People don’t go here because there’s a bunch of crazy haunted vehicles running around attacking whatever they see! Obviously no one would want to live in a place like that!! Everyone else’s long moved on from here! The nearest civilization is more than a hundred miles from here… I only came here because it was a good place for grinding and cheap challenges!! Then suddenly, you and the other guy were in my way…”

“That’s more like it.” he nodded, content with the explanation.

“... Please, just let me down…?”

“Who? Me?? I don’t know… You look really good up there, you know? Very festive! Like a Christmas ornament, even.”

“Maekawa… I… I can tell you whatever you ask me, so, please, just…!”

“Maekawa, who?”

“Please, H-Haruto…?”

“Ew, no way.”

“I’ll do whatever you want…! M…M-Master…”

“...”

That last one creeped him out a bit. But it would do.

“Fair enough.”

He disabled the ‘Anti-gravity’ command and closed the menu, as the petrified girl slowly descended back down to the ground, her legs still visibly shaking once she set her feet on the pavement.

Not wasting time waiting for her to settle down properly, however, he continued on with the interrogation.

“What exactly is this place? This ‘Cyberway’ you’ve been talking about, I mean.”

She looked him straight in the eyes, this time, her own even redder than they’d looked the last time. By now, she’d given up trying to wipe the tears, even though her desperate cries themselves had been over for a while now. She looked genuinely surprised, hearing such a question from him.

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“I told you part of it before. I thought you had the idea.” she took a moment to exhale, as if just mentioning this topic straight on made her uncomfortable. “This place… Is where all the losers go. It’s where irrelevant people get dumped after they die. It’s a place for nobodies… Like that other guy. Like you. Like me.”

“...”

Haruto froze for a moment. The statement had stunned him, even though there was nothing too special about it.

“So… This new world… I mean…” he tried to articulate into words what currently came to his mind, but it revealed itself much too difficult for his mouth to process. “If I ended up here, then… Does that–”

Before he could even get close to finishing, their conversation was interrupted by the deafening roar of horns and sirens out of tune closing in fast in the distance. More patrols.

“And those are the so-called… ‘haunted vehicles’, as you say…?”

She nodded, finally gathering the strength to start wiping her own face again.

“You can’t stop them. They never give up…”

“But they can’t kill us, either. Right?”

“In theory… But most people who got careless and got caught, as far as I know… Well, they haven't been seen since. Take that how you will…”

“...”

Seeing the growing lights in the distance, Haruto wasted no more time opening his inventory, and from the vehicle tab, he materialized the scarlet motorcycle from before right in front of them.

“Would they be able to follow us out of the city?”

“Not really.”

“Well, delightful! Now, you’ll have the privilege of taking your master out of here, before those crazies run us to the ground.”

“... U… Understood…” she stammered, taking up her usual position atop the bike and going over controls and adjustments in a fuss. “... Hop on… Master?”

He got on right behind her, holding onto her waist. He could feel her twitch slightly under her blazer. She didn’t seem all that comfortable taking in a passenger, which worried him for a second, since the last thing he wanted was to have her screw up and get them both smashed against the pavement. Not the most pleasant way to go, he knew from experience.

(Guess I’ll just have to bet it on faith. What other choice do I have…?)

“All set. Let’s go!”

The scarlet motorcycle sped away, roaring into the distance, leaving behind only a faint cloud of gray dust.

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