This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

“Alright, let’s separate ’em,” Jax muttered, dragging a whimpering underling down the dim corridor of the Golden Brew Syndicate’s abandoned factory. “One idiot per room. No need for group therapy.”

“Got it,” Miya said, cracking her knuckles. “Been needing to let off some steam. I will definitely be taking this one.” She said, pointing with glee to a wide-eyed, burly underling who had once pinched her butt as he passed her. Back then, she’d had to repress her emotions, but now she’d be able to release her rage—all of it.

Garret opened one of the rusted office doors with a screech and shoved a dazed goon inside. “You may stay here. Someone will be with you shortly.” His large and burly demeanour, and the bleak surroundings at odds with his calm and professional tone, reminiscent of a hotel staff member.

Inside the factory, the silence of the night was broken only by the occasional groan or muffled curse from the tied-up captives. The Golden Brew Syndicate’s home base—normally bustling—was eerily empty, its workforce either unconscious, tied up, or at home, blissfully unaware that management was experiencing a hostile takeover.

“Room check,” Lira announced, hands on her hips. “Seven rooms. Seven captives. Reginald, that Black Vine member, and the five staff members. Should we each take a staff member and then work on Reginald and the Black Vine member together?”

Darius didn’t answer immediately. He was still towelling off the sewer water from earlier, dignity freshly laundered but not fully restored.

Eventually, he nodded, “But I will be taking the lead.” If Reginald wasn’t forthcoming, he’d take the opportunity to get revenge for having sewage dumped on him.

———–

In Reginald’s office, which now had its owner usurped…

Reginald was tied to a metal chair, his face still flushed and his nose crooked from where Darius had smashed him with a chair earlier. The bruising had begun to bloom in various purples, but it was his trembling that stood out the most.

For the past hour, he’d been subjected to hearing the horrifying screams of his underlings as they were subjected to god knows what.

Darius and the others stepped in silently, their gazes cold—especially Miya, who had had to put up with him the most.

Reginald took one look and immediately started sweating.

“L-look! You have no idea who you’re dealing with.” He said stutteringly, but still trying to intimidate the others. “I-if you just let me go, I could forget this ever happened.”

Darius sat down across from him and said nothing while the others stood slightly behind against a wall of the room.

Reginald’s eyes scanned them in a panic. His gaze flicked over to Lira, then Jax, then Garret—who cracked his massive, gloved knuckles with a slow, deliberate rhythm—and then landed on Miya.

His bruised face twisted into an expression that he clearly thought was oozing with charm.

“Mary… sweetheart,” he said, forcing a smile through his swollen lip. “You’re not really with them, right? I always knew there was something special between us. You—You laughed at my jokes. You always made sure my coffee was hot.”

Miya didn’t respond. She only stared at him, arms crossed.

Reginald’s voice wavered. “You used to look at me like—like you wanted to marry me.”

“I was imagining you choking on your own tongue,” she replied coolly. “And for the record, my name’s Miya. Not Mary.”

Reginald blinked. “Wh-what?”

“The loyal secretary act was fake,” she said, stepping forward. “Every smile, every compliment—fake. Every time you ‘accidentally’ brushed up against me, I wanted to break your fingers.”

The smile died completely on Reginald’s face.

Jax leaned forward. “You’ve got about thirty seconds before I start playing ‘Guess What Bone I’m Breaking Next.’ Wanna talk, or should I warm up?”

Garret, standing silent until now, made a show of adjusting the gloves on his massive hands.

Reginald’s mouth flapped, but no sound came out.

Miya stepped forward, her heeled boots clicking softly against the floor. “We’ll start with fingers,” she said, almost bored. “Work our way down to kneecaps if he’s slow.”

Reginald cracked.

“I—I’ll talk! I’ll talk!” he yelped, the chair rattling beneath him, and focusing on Darius in front of him solely. “You don’t need to do anything, okay? I’ll tell you everything, just don’t let them near me!”

Reginald talked. Oh, he talked. Within three minutes since they’d entered the room, he’d spilled every detail of the operation like someone eager to confess all of their sins before a priest for salvation. The other team members, watching from the side, blinked in disbelief.

“…He’s worse than a leaky faucet,” Miya whispered.

“No,” Lira said. “The faucet at least tries to hold it in.”

“It’s the spiritual beer!” Reginald wailed. “That kid’s spiritual beer! That stuff—stabilized the compound! They supposedly tried everything, but that spiritual beer was the only thing that worked!”

“What compound and who is ‘they’?” Darius asked.

“I don’t know! Just that it has some flower in it called Somnum’s Lament. But it’s not like the pure plant. This drug is terrible stuff! It makes people feel amazing like the flower —strong, powerful—but the other stuff added actually does change you! People get addicted, and then…” He swallowed hard. “Then they stop being… human.”

Darius’s expression didn’t change, but his hand curled slightly into a fist.

“Mutations. That’s what they called it. The addicts don’t stay human. They change, get all twisted. But I don’t know too much! There is another group—the real bosses behind Black Vine—and they track the addicts. They take them before the changes get too obvious.”

“And do what?” Darius asked.

Reginald shook his head violently. “I don’t know! I swear I don’t know! They take ’em and they don’t come back! I—I think they’re doing experiments! All I know is, the beer was supposed to be the delivery method. If they take over the spiritual beer market, they’d have Empire-wide delivery and be able to create tens of millions of new test subject in a way where no one would suspect anything…”

He was shaking so hard the chair rattled. “Please. I told you everything. I didn’t even want to be in this business! My parents wanted me to become a pastry chef!”

“He really was just a glorified errand boy,” Miya muttered.

Darius rose to his feet.

“I—I’m allergic to pain! Please!” Reginald cried.

Darius looked down at him.

“…That was extremely easy,” he muttered with disappointment.

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