Stella helped me wrapped a section of the Chains of Void around Mikhail's entombed body. That immediately dispelled the blood that restrained his body, but because it did nothing to reverse the damage done to his body by the highly acidic stuff, he couldn't break free of the new chains. Indeed, with the spear destroyed by my ultimate blood spell, he appeared to have lost all the strength that the weapon had granted him and reverted to his normal, frail self.
"No!" he was howling as Stella tied him up. "I don't want to die! Please don't kill me! I don't want to die!"
I stared at him, disgusted. "I'm sure your victims said the same thing, but did you ever listen to them?"
"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! Please forgive me!"
"No." I turned to Chris and the others, who were looking just as revolted at his attitude as I felt. "Let's bring him back to the lab."
I wanted to ask Wilson to use his wind spell to carry Mikhail, but the Chains of Void dispelled whatever magic we tried to cast on him, so that didn't work. In the end, I just dragged him along the rough terrain, the old fashioned way. I didn't care if he got even more injured in the process. After all the suffering he caused others, this was the least he deserved.
On that note, I realized how stupid I was. Earlier, I had asked Wilson to cast the wind spell to fly us over to the Gensies' convoy…but now I remembered that even if he could, he wouldn't have been able to cast it on me because I was carrying the Chains of Void. Well, the solution was simple. I would have discarded the Chains of Void or left them back in the mage corps' garrison. As I had found out earlier, my ability to use magic far outweighed the Chains' field of magic nullification.
I was a mage, not a warrior. I honestly shouldn't be trying to confront my enemies in a contest of brute strength, but rather take advantage of my knowledge of magic.
The journey back to the garrison took longer because we were no longer running. Ten kilometers weren't a joke. Even though we walked at a more relaxed pace, we were still worn out by the time we completed the journey. At least the mages were. Stella and I were still fine because of our improved physiques. Hell, we had traveled longer journeys on foot, when there were places where it was inappropriate to bring Wolfe along.
As exhausted as the four mages were, they were at least better off than poor Mikhail. His body was torn and bleeding after being mercilessly dragged the whole way for all ten kilometers. He had passed out for most of the journey, but I didn't wake him up.
Let him rest for now…for his true suffering was only going to begin later.
"You know, I was surprised that Mikhail didn't use a sneak attack to throw his spear at you when your guard is down," Stella told me. I gave her a look.
"My guard is never down. The last time I did that, the people I thought were my comrades chopped off my legs. I swore never to let my guard down ever again after that."
Stella sulked. "But that's no fun."
"I'm taking revenge on the people who are known for being members of the strongest Hero party. Fun isn't exactly a priority. Staying alive and ensuring that I succeed is."
"But…but…! You won't have a chance to add another heroine to your harem! As a new 'subordinate'!"
"…what the fuck are you even talking about now?"
"No…idea…" Rose gasped as she struggled to catch up with us. Wilson was helping her up and she leaned against him. "Sometimes I don't understand what Miss Stella is talking about."
"You guys should read more web novels." Stella shook her head in disapproval. "You're missing out on a lot of…um, cultural products."
"Most of these web novels are pretty trashy," Wilson pointed out. "I mean, running into a random village girl whose hobby is dressing in a maid uniform? Where the hell does a simple village girl get a maid uniform from in the first place? It's like the author threw in clichés for the sake of it without thinking them through."
"It's just to suit his harem fetish," Chris muttered darkly. "That's also why he had the entity of Darkness manifest in the form of a beautiful woman called Rakshasa. Oh, an also a big-breasted vampire who tried to recruit the protagonist. Notice that all the characters who surround the protagonists are all girls, and most of them are in love with him for no good reason."
"Uh…what are you guys even talking about now?" Lance asked, looking utterly perplexed. "Who the hell is Rakshasa?"
"Trashy web novels," I replied with a sigh. "Trust me, you don't want to know."
Lance frowned and seemed like he was about to ask for more details. Fortunately, I was saved from having to rudely refuse to answer when Mikhail woke up and began screaming.
"Don't kill me! I don't want to die! I don't want to die!"
"I'm sick of hearing that," Chris growled and kicked Mikhail's head so hard that he knocked the guy out. "If our positions were reversed, he would be laughing and gloating as he tortures us and performs hideous experiments on us."
"I know, right?" Wilson shook his head, disgusted. "It's fine if they do it, but if other people do it to them, they are somehow monsters. Their hypocrisy is baffling."
"They are just evil," Rose replied sourly.
"Good thing I'm also evil," I declared cheerfully. "That's the only way these bastards will get their just desserts."
We were greeted at the entrance of the garrison by a pair of shambling zombies. They snapped a salute to us before shuffling aside to make way. Lindley must have been monitoring through their eyes, for he appeared shortly after that.
"You're back," he said, pleased. "I was beginning to worry."
"Sorry about that." I sighed and jerked on the chains. "This jerk ran away to a pretty far place. We had to travel quite a bit to catch him, and then the return journey…you get the picture."
While the four mages returned to their barracks to get some much-needed rest, I hauled Mikhail to the lab. Stella followed me for a bit, but I held up a hand and shook my head.
"Stella, you go and rest. Take care of Chris and the others for me."
"…understood." Stella nodded. She glanced at the unconscious Mikhail, and then at the gurneys – where Miranda was strapped onto one of them – before understanding my meaning. She looked a little uncomfortable, but after all the horrors she had witnessed, she wasn't going to stop me. Instead, she lowered her head somberly. "You will be making them suffer."
There was no approval in her voice. She sounded uneasy, but at the same time she knew they deserved it. And that she couldn't stop me. Her pride as a knight and her oath to ensure that I stayed on the right path clashed with her fury at the mages' atrocities. The latter won out, and she sharply turned about and marched off without another word.
"Do you need me?" Lindley asked.
I nodded and dragged Mikhail over to a gurney. Wheeling it over to Miranda's gurney, I locked them together and put on the brakes. Now Miranda and Mikhail were placed side by side, and I could proceed to adjust the chains to tie the two of them together. As I reworked the restraints, I turned back to the disguised lich lord.
"How much of Miranda's research have you read?"
"Quite a bit," Lindley admitted. "You were gone for many hours. I had plenty of time to read most of the detail. I hope you do not mind."
"Not at all. As long as you don't use them outside of this one instance."
"…this one instance?" Lindley raised an eyebrow. His expression was otherwise slack. He still had trouble imitating most human expressions.
"Yup." I gestured toward the mage couple on the locked gurneys. "They love to experiment on others, don't they? Then let's see if they enjoy being experimented upon. It'll be quite the refreshing experience for them, don't you think?"
While I got the tools ready, I also brought the limbs of Miranda, which I had preserved by freezing them with my ice spells.
"Since Miranda loves her chimeras and grafting limbs and appendages onto human bodies, let's see if she enjoys having it done to her." I glanced at her disciple. "And Mikhail too…I'm sure he would love to be one with his beloved mistress."
"Fascinating." Lindley shrugged nonchalantly. "I must say, though, this will be a wasteful expenditure. Such…surgeries are inefficient and produce nothing but failures."
"That's fine. I don't care if it fails. The point is to make them suffer the same thing as their victims." I rolled my sleeves up and began to work. "All right, Lindley, let's get started."
*
The surgery took a few hours. Using Miranda's own discoveries and research data, Lindley and I fused Miranda and Mikhail's bodies together, grafting them together in a manner similar to how I fused Herman and Irene with acid. However, this was a more complicated process, with the both of us trying to meld their neural pathways together, as well as the two bodies at the cellular level. Then we worked on grafting the excess limbs into the bloated bodies.
The result was a monstrous two-headed humanoid – with the faces of Miranda and Mikhail side by side. Four arms had been grated into the muscular and massive torso, two protruding from each side. The legs had been entwined and sewn together to producer thicker legs for more support. Now they resembled a two-headed orc somewhat, only that they were more hideous.
"They won't survive for long," Lindley remarked, frowning in disapproval. "Their telomeres have been shortened drastically. They will probably last a couple of days before they expire."
"Good enough," I replied with a grin. Then I injected them with a stimulant. The eyes of both their heads flickered open.
Then Miranda screamed. Especially as she took in her new bloated, fused body, her eyes widened in horror and she wailed in despair.
"W…what did you do to me?"
"The same thing you did to innocent villagers," I replied with a shrug. She flailed about with her side of her new body, but the person fused to her remained relatively calm.
"I…I have…become one with Chairwoman Miranda!"
Mikhail was grinning madly, almost drooling. He turned his wild gaze to me, his eyes filled with gratitude, and the arms on his side curved as if he wanted to bow.
"Thank you so much! You granted my dream! Now I'll always be together with my beloved mistress! We'll be together forever!"
"WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?!" Miranda screeched. "ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE?!"
"I thought the answer was clear." I shook my head. "Did you really think anyone willing to follow you was sane?"
"Turn me back!" Miranda shrieked, turning her furious gaze upon me. "Turn us back! Separate us! And turn me back!"
"Ah…about that, I'm afraid I don't know how to." I shrugged indifferently. "I mean, your research data only contained methods on cellular and genetic splicing, as well as chimeric surgery, but there was nothing on how to turn specimens back to normal. Did you put those notes somewhere? If you did, perhaps we can try it out on you."
"That…" Miranda faltered. Clearly it had never occurred to her to research on such a thing. Why would she need to? She never imagined that she would have such a horrific thing done to her as well. She then glared at Lindley. "What about you? Will you be able to conceive of such a method?!"
Lindley shook his head. "Not with the current amount of data and level of technology, I'm afraid. And it's pointless to do so, because I don't intend to carry out such pointless, wasteful and inefficient surgeries in future."
"B…but you can do it, when given time?" she begged.
"Maybe, but definitely not before your current body expires." Lindley sighed. "I definitely won't be able to pioneer a solution for years, never mind the two days before your current condition collapses."
"No, that's…" Miranda's head swiveled back to me. As expected of a genius, she was quick-witted enough to think of a solution. "K…Klein, you can freeze us, right? Place us in stasis and suspend us until your subordinate comes up with a solution."
"Maybe, but why should I?"
"Y…you…!"
"You seem to be misunderstanding something, Miranda." I shook my head. "Have you forgotten what you and the others did to me? And when I paid you a visit, didn't you set your army on me and tried your utmost best to kill me? Fine, it's true that I was the one who broke into your precious lab with an army of the undead in the first place and you were merely defending yourself. But let's not fool ourselves. If our positions were reversed, would you ever listen to my request?"
I then turned about and made a point of studying the surrounding gurneys, all of which were bloodstained and showed signs of being used.
"You sure as hell didn't listen to your victims when they begged you to stop."
"I AM THE CHOSEN ONE!" Miranda hollered. "They should be honored to be my specimens! They should be honored to be part of my progress toward magical development!"
"Such arrogance," Lindley muttered, shaking his head. "Even I'm not that deluded."
"If you don't, then I'll kill you and find a way myself!"
Screaming, Miranda charged toward me. Mikhail happily went along, eager to please his beloved mistress. Not only that, he also had a vendetta against me for all the suffering I had meted upon them.
"Seems like you did something during the surgery to take away my magic, but you made the mistake of improving my physical strength!"
Miranda was giggling hysterically, along with a madly cackling Mikhail, as she drove her combined body forward to pulverize me with all four of their fists.
"No, it wasn't a mistake." I pushed my glasses up my nose and smirked. "In fact, I would venture to say that it's a success. Seems like Lindley and I really managed to follow your research down to the letter."
"Then you should be proud to die by my hands!"
"Our hands, Chairwoman Miranda!"
"Oh, shut up! Just kill that bastard!"
Despite bellowing an order toward her subordinate, who was now fused with her, the both of them found that their attack never reached me.
There was so much blood in the lab that it was practically home ground advantage for me. Blood chains whipped out and ensnared them, the tips turning into stakes and running through their limbs as the chain portions coiled around their arms, torso and legs. Stretching taut, they yanked the fused body of Mikhail and Miranda to a stop.
"Ugh!" Miranda and Mikhail struggled against the chains, but to no avail. They were too thick, solid and strong for the merged pair to break free.
Raising a finger, I wagged it at them and grinned.
"You know, I'll leave the two of you here, to enjoy each other's company for the next few days. Then I'll be back to check on you later."
"You…you can't do this!" Miranda howled. In contrast, Mikhail grinned crazily.
"Thank you so much!" he shouted after my departing figure.
"SHUT UP, YOU MANIAC!" Miranda screamed at him. Those were the last words I heard from her before I shut the door and left the gruesome lab, with Lindley in tow.