Yu heard a person yelling from his right side, and turned his attention to it immediately.
There was a skinny looking malnourished young lad around the same age as Yu. Yet he had a furious expression on his face as he rushed towards the pirate cosplayer with an eye patch. However, just before the young boy could reach his target, the man raised his fist, before the fist vanished from its spot and then appeared once again down near his waist, covered in blood and some strange white substance, which he flicked off by waiving his hand in the air a few times.
*Thud*
The sound had caused everyone's attention to shift from the man to the cause of the entire event. To their great horror, however, the initiator was no longer alive; just a headless dead body on the ground.
The bits of flesh and bone, and mist of blood likely once made-up his head, but now were just inanimate objects.
The man grunted a few more phrases in a language Yu did not understand before continuing. The other 9 men continued to follow him, slightly shivering, so Yu could also sigh in his mind and just follow.
He had already seen a lot of dead bodies, and Kai had killed even more. Although Yu did not have the bloodlust that Kai did currently, they were both rather immune to seeing dead bodies and people dying around them.
The other 10 or so people in chains left in the room silently shifted away from the location of all the blood and gore, leaving one corner of the squarish room empty exempting the dead body.
Yu followed the line of males of various ages, builds, and ethnicities as they left the underground room and entered a long corridor, with around 4 doors of a similar kind as the one leading to the room Yu had been in until now.
This was the worst-case scenario Yu could possibly imagine. Not only were Bob and him kidnapped, they were either kidnapped by a very powerful underworld organisation or were sold to one, both of which meant that his chances of escape had whittled down to nearly 0%.
All he could do was show that he was useful to this organisation. The only issue was… that he was not strong at all, and even if he somehow got the External Art from Pops, and somehow found the time to isolate himself to put it on his arm, this organisation would likely torture him for the External Art.
Once they got it, they would immediately dispose of him to prevent the External Art from being leaked any further. That was if they were a powerful organisation that understood the basics of controlling information to maintain power.
'No. Instead of physical powers, I could show my usefulness through the mental field.' Yu mused as he come up with a goal.
The group continued walking behind the man with a slight stubble under his eye patch, as they crossed the entire corridor and entered a larger room with stairs leading up.
The man pointed at a wooden counter, where a youth was dressed in clothing which reminded Yu of the old butler back at the Dread manor and began speaking, after which the people in chains behind him lined up at the counter.
A knife was waiting next to a neat pile of papers with something written on it, and the butler handed the small knife to the first person in chains. He pointed at the thumb and spoke something in the same unknown language.
The middle-aged man who was first in line nodded hurriedly before taking the knife and making a small cut on his thumb without any hesitation. The man then pressed his bleeding thumb into the location pointed out by the butler before speaking two words.
This process repeated a few times until it was Yu's turn. By now, he understood this was some sort of contract based on what it looked like, and the two words each of the chained people were saying were their names.
However, before anything, he tried to converse with the butler in the language Kai had learned all his life.
"Can you understand me?"
The butler looked at Kai with an odd expression before he turned to the pirate-looking man, who just shrugged and said something in their strange language. Yu sighed as he began to use hand gestures to express himself. He was trying to ask what the contract was for.
However, just 10 seconds in and the pirate-looking man stepped up to his side and pointed at the contract before pointing at Yu. Next, he proceeded to put on a sadistic smile Yu would hope not even his worst enemies would ever have to see while gesturing using his thumb of slicing his own throat.
Yu put on a frightened expression, while internally he was just sighing at not being in control of anything ever since he went to sleep to learn the External Art.
A slight sting permeated his finger as he made the cut, yet it hurt much less compared to the cuts around his mask, so Yu was able to mostly ignore it as he pressed down his thumb on the location.
"Yu." Was the name he had given himself, and so that is what he said. As he said the name, the butler noted it down on a white sheet of paper next to a symbol which seemed to be some sort of numerical order. Since he was the 6th person, that symbol likely meant 6.
Yu moved to where all those who had placed their thumb impression and waited.