Chapter 175: Gathering Information
Lake did his best to see as much of the basement as he could while his body was walking deeper into it. It was clear that this basement had become some form of prison but he could also tell all of the prisoners were just bodies thrown into various cages and cells. Lake didn't know why they were keeping dead people prisoner but he was sure he would find out if he spent any time here.
After walking to the very back of the basement, Lake saw three people in black robes standing over a table that had a body that had all of its flesh stripped off of its limbs and face. As his body walked closer Lake started to worry about the work he was going to be helping in. What would happen if he wasn't actually capable of doing some of the things he was expected to do.
For example if whatever they were doing involved using Unholy magic would his body be able to do it. He technically had an affinity for it but he had never used it before so what would happen if he tried to use a spell he didn't know. Sometimes spells need some preparation to actually unlock them.
Lake decided to just calm down because he didn't see any of them doing anything other than cutting away at the muscle that had been exposed on the corpse's face. Seeing his arm reach out and grab a blade of its own, Lake guessed he was just going to do what the others were doing and that meant he could just pay attention to what they were whispering about.
His hearing was good enough to catch the subtle words they were exchanging while they worked on the face but it didn't really mean anything to him because it seemed to be technical gibberish related to whatever pieces of flesh they were shaving down and after they worked on the bit they had just named they would say if they had done a good job on that bit or not and move on.
Lake found their behavior creepy but at least it was interesting to watch because it seemed whatever they were doing took a very long time and after a while he found himself starting to lose his ability to pay attention. He had his ears open though even if he wasn't watching what was going on and after some more time he finally heard one of them tell him to bring the skin over.
Lake felt his body start to walk after it set its knife down and looking out through his eyes he saw himself walking towards a small pile of what he guessed was the flesh from the body. Lake was able to feel the cold wetness of the skin as he lifted it but at this point he had kind of gotten over what he was feeling with his hands because of the work he had been doing over the past hour.
Bringing the flesh over to the table with the others, Lake saw them start to spread it out before they started to line it up with where it had come from. Once they had it lined up perfectly they all lowered it down till it perfectly covered the portions that had been skinned but while they had done a good job in lining it up he thought it looked terrible.
It was so obvious that there had been massive trauma to the areas they had just covered and even the flesh they had just put back on was the wrong color. Lake guessed as it had sat out it had drained most of its fluid or something because it was a different, more sickly shade than the rest of the corpse.
"Put it away and let it heal, we'll inspect our work later." Lake felt his body start to follow the order and it made him wonder if he had used Impersonate on a grunt. It would make sense that an unimportant person would be the one who had been told to stay upstairs and catch the person knocking and Lake saw him being unimportant as a good thing.
It made him being used for anything important less likely but it also meant he would be less privy to any important info he might want to hear. But, he was actually starting to wonder how important any of these people were to whatever the Demon Worshipers were doing here in the Metal Domain.
They kind of felt like they were just doing their own thing because he had yet to see anything he could see destroying the city in a few days. None of them seemed like they were in a hurry either, which didn't match what he would expect from a bunch of people who only had a few more days before they pulled something big.
It was too bad he couldn't just walk over to one of the others and start asking questions like he wanted. If none of them seemed like they were important soon he would just kill all of them but one and ask them questions. He wanted to find out which of them would know the most before he did start killing though.
So far his best guess would be one of the two who had told him what to do but there were others who stood out to him as people that might actually be in charge here. Out of the nine Demon Worshipers he had confirmed to be here there was one who was quietly sitting at a desk writing something into a book and Lake felt like that was leader behavior if he had ever seen it.
Lake was going to pass by the desk apparently because the place he was going to store the body was near the front of the basement so Lake quickly formed a plan and deactivated Play The Part. He continued to carry the body but pretended to trip as he passed the desk. Once was on the ground, Lake reactivated Play The Part and waited for the man behind the desk to say something to him.
He figured he could figure out what kind of role they played here by how they reacted or how they sounded if they spoke. Lake saw his body start to react to him being on the ground right after he reactivated Play The Part and he could tell the body was scrambling to pick up the corpse off of the floor.
Then as it was doing this his body looked back towards where it had come from and completely ignored the person at the desk and continued doing what it had been before he had made it fall. This told Lake the person at the desk wasn't the person he was after and the real leader was the person who had been telling him what to do while they had been working.
This meant he could move on to the next part of the plan which was him killing everyone but them and then asking them questions/bringing them back to the guild as a prisoner if he thought they were a good enough source of information. He wasn't just going to start now though because he wanted to get close to a few of them first so he could take out most of them at once.
Once the body was placed in a cell he started to walk back to the table in the back where he had been working and he was going to start attacking soon but he wanted to see what they were about to do first. Once he returned to where he had been while they were working he wanted for the person who had been telling him what to do to notice him again.
They were cleaning the tools they had been using and it took them a while but once they were done they said. "Go get the next one." Lake wanted to see the beginning of the process so he let himself do what he had been told. Once the corpse was on the table Lake watched as the main Demon Worshiper started to peel off the face of the body.
Once it was off it was handed to him and the same went for the skin that came from the arms and legs. Once he had all of it he went and placed it down in the same place he had retrieved the other pile of skin from earlier and he walked back and was about to grab a knife when the leader said. "What Are you doing? This one's you. We need to take your measurements first."
Lake knew he wasn't really getting anything out of this but he still played along and let his body get measured by the people standing next to him. As they measured they would call out numbers and while he couldn't see it he was pretty sure the man at the desk was writing them down for later use.
After a while they stopped and Lakes' body was about to get to work when he deactivated Play The Part and was about to start killing them when he realized he would be missing a really good opportunity to make them mad first. Pretending like he was still just one of them he used his knife to start making cuts like he had done earlier but doing an obviously terrible job.
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