Only now was the Azure Anarchist's maniacal brilliance made apparent. While keeping Fate's head and hair safe, he also belted Fate down with metal.
So now, it wasn't just the back half of his body sustaining the heat, but also his wrists, ankles, waist, and shoulders. His legs were left untouched, the warmth refusing to go into that section, undoubtedly to keep Fate's pants from igniting.
The Azure Anarchist had set it up so Fate would experience the most pain possible, while also giving his captive enough of a chance to live through it. This was designed to torture, not kill.
That thought calmed Fate even as another TICK rang out. 114 degrees. Ten more minutes.
By now, the cold was gone entirely. The heat radiating off of Fate's slab was enough for his entire room to lose its chilly feel and render his sweat useless.
Finding no point in sweating any longer, he tried to smother his skin with his Divine Reach to keep the liquid from leaking. As soon as he did so, the Flowing Steel's Imprints glowed and sucked away his Divine Energy.
"Uh uh uh," the Azure Anarchist said with a wag of his finger as his picture appeared on the mirror. "No using your Divine Reach to protect you from the heat. That takes all of the fun out of it."
Fate opened his eyes, the bright, glowing blue floating within the inky black of his sclera. The glow dimmed as he cut off his telekinesis.
"I'm going to die from dehydration before I burn alive," Fate remarked. "Did you think about that, oh wise judged?"
"Of course, I did. I'm not stupid," grumbled the masked man. "You remember that blue liquid I injected you with, right? It's a special liquid called Blue Oasis. After your little sleep and the time it took you have…
"About four hours left to enjoy its effects. More than enough to last you through my game."
"And what exactly are those effects?"
"I was getting to that!" snapped the madman. Fate's theory that he was a spurned professor continued to gain validity.
The masked man composed himself, releasing a short breath before he continued.
"While the Blue Oasis is affecting you, you'll stay hydrated. It'll be as unsatisfying as sustaining yourself with Divine Energy, and won't get rid of that dry mouth of yours, but it gets the job done."
"Then why hasn't it started working yet?"
"Would you let me finish?" growled the Azure Anarchist. "That function only kicks in shortly after the effects of dehydration starts. If you're using that sustenance technique, then it won't apply.
"Another added benefit – for me and the viewers, anyway – is that it won't let you sleep or fall unconscious. You'll be wide awake the whole time, and your heart won't fail from heatstroke either! Isn't modern medicine wonderful?"
"You're one sick son of a bitch," Seri retorted.
"Yeah, what happened to you?" Fate asked. His throat was a little raw from the heat, so it came out kind of croaky. "Did some bully steal a cookie from you when you were a kid or something?"
"You know, you two make it easy to subject you to life-or-death situations," cackled the maniac. "Keep the banter up, please. The viewers are loving it!"
He left the two alone, a tense silence passing between them.
TICK.
Fate's flesh started to sizzle. He closed his eyes and restarted his breathing exercises, fighting through the pain. His limbs started to tremble beside themselves, his restraints only making the experience all the more unpleasant as they had nowhere to go.
Seri said nothing even as the next incremental increase in heat came and gone, Fate letting out a hiss of pain as he felt as if someone had taken a brand to his back.
His hisses soon turned into groans as every inch of his skin was cooked from the outside. He kept his eyes closed, refusing to look at the Vedavo woman.
Seri, meanwhile, was watching with immense feelings of guilt and self-loathing. But above all that, there was an intense hatred for the Azure Anarchist.
If Fate truly was a good person, as this demented "game" was supposed to prove, why did he have to go through so much pain to prove it? Why should an innocent person be punished for refusing to sign her death warrant?
TICK.
This entire farce was made to punish the good and reward the bad. If Fate simply said those five words on the screen, he'd prove that, by the Anarchist's unreliable standards, he was a bad person.
But if he was a good person, what was the point of this? The Anarchist suggested he had an intense hatred for wrongful punishments, yet what was this if not a wrongful punishment?
TICK.
There was only one explanation, Seri concluded as she watched Fate's skin start to crack open, the sweat coming off of him catching that heat and leaving trails of red, blistered skin in their wake.
TICK.
The Azure Anarchist didn't want to judge.
TICK.
He just wanted other people to suffer as he believed he did.
TICK.
The two-hour mark came and went, Fate's throat now ragged and bloodied from screaming. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he breathed heavily, every breath feeling like he had poured magma down his throat.
TICK.
His screams were now faint groans, welts racing up and down his torso and arms occasionally bursting into spurts of blood that sizzled when it landed on the blue floor below.
TICK.
The end was in sight, he realized. Through his blear, dry eyes, he could vaguely make out the shape of Seri Vedavo screaming at him with what he thought were tears, but he was so consumed by the pain that he couldn't hear a word she said.
Tick.
Only forty-five more minutes…
Tick.
The heat jumped up by much more than two degrees just then, going from 134 to 144 degrees in one leap. His skin started to burn away, the raw red flesh underneath experiencing agony against the constant breeze inside the room.