Kaijin Fighter: So I Have to Make Monsters, So What?-Chapter 1290: Pits of Pain and Misery

When Zhen Liu had sent out his zakos to explore the [Mines of Malevolence], he was fully expecting to witness scenes that looked straight out of a picture book about hell.

As such, despite being saddened, enraged and outright offended about how the kaijin of this knock-off lord were treating people, he was still able to somewhat keep his cool.

But as the zakos kept looking around and kept feeding him more and more instances of misery, pain and outright despair, it became harder and harder for him to do so.

Whether this was due to the innate nature of his [Chaos] that amplified his feelings to take action or because he still held some memories and morals from his old life was unclear, he just knew that he didn't want to see any more of these wretched scenes.

Alas, Zhen Liu needed more information, so he had to stomach all of this.

Thankfully, he had a mystery to keep his mind off of these scenes for a moment. Rather, a mystery that would help to explain all of these miserable moments.

'Why are these slaves loosing their [Desires]?' Zhen Liu asked himself.

This would usually be the time where Logos and Pathos would provide some form of explanation, or the Kaijin would provide their own observations.

But Zhen Liu was disconnected from the former, and had strategically(?) left the latter outside until things got dicey.

As such, he had no choice but to use his own brain power to figure things out.

And right now, there was a glaringly obvious detail that's been bugging him ever since the zakos entered the main working area of the mines.

'How the fuck is [Malevolent Gold] able to absorb [Desire] like this?' Zhen Liu pondered as he watched the slave miners work through the eyes of the zakos.

Due to his nature as Kaijin Lord,having condensed dozens upon dozens of [Cores] from all sorts of [Desires], and learning how to control the [Flames of Vice and Virtue] from Blazejudicator, Zhen Liu had become quite adept at detecting [Desire] and determining their sources.

As such, he could detect that there was something deeply weird about the interactions between these slaves miners and the [Malevolent Gold] they were being forced to dig up.

In his eyes, the eyes of the stone zakos, Zhen Liu could see that whenever a slave dug up a piece of [Malevolent Gold], something seemed to leave their bodies and enter the ore.

And this "something" wasn't like any [Desire] Zhen Liu had handled before.

He could detect [Hunger], [Love], [Passion],[Motivation], literally every single [Desire] that could be measured on the [Vice and Virtue] scale that he and Blazejudicator had devised and then some. It was like chunks of their souls were being removed and absorbed by the [Malevolent Gold], strengthening the latter in the process.

As the zako looked over these miners, Zhen Liu could see that some of the older looking slaves, the ones that had been here the longest, had a dead look in their eyes.

The kind of eyes that he had only seen in people who lost their driving force.

'Wait a minute...is this how that guy makes his cores? That can't be right...'

Directing his zakos, Zhen Liu brought them towards a minecart that was full of freshly extracted [Malevolent Gold] ore.

From these chunks of ore, Zhen Liu could detect the faintest traces of [Desire] inside them, but the [Desires] were so muddled, mixed and weak that Zhen Liu instinctually knew that it wouldn't be enough to make a [Core].

Even then, none of the Kaijin in mine radiated [Desire] like any of the Kaijin Zhen Liu had made, they all radiated [Disgust].

'This guy probably has some kind of weird refinement method to turn the raw gold into cores,' Zhen Liu speculated. 'Something tells me that this process is a lot more complicated than just throwing it in a smelter. Might as well find out.'

Zhen Liu ordered one of the zakos to hide in one of the mine carts that was loaded with [Malevolent Gold] ore and had it bury itself in such a way that anyone looking it over would assume it was just a weird rock that one of those drained slaves tossed in.

'Alright, I think I can just focus on this guy while putting the rest on...wait a minute...'

Before Zhen Liu decided to put the rest of his zako on standby so that he could focus on the one riding the mine carts, he suddenly felt a very distinctive spike of [Desire].

'What the fuck?'

It's appearance was so sudden and so brief that he couldn't determine exactly where the spike came from. Needless to say, this bothered Zhen Liu immensely since this was the equivalent of suddenly noticing a red flare going off in the middle of the ocean.

'Alright, I'm just going to dedicate half of my attention to this,' Zhen Liu concluded. 'If I can't find a lead in the time it takes for the cart riding zako to reach the end of the line, I'll just forget about it.'

With this plan in mind, Zhen Liu tuned back into the zakos that were still wandering around and seeing where they had wound up without his direction.

Immediately, he found himself staring down two places that seemed to be contenders for where that [Desire] spike came from...at least at a glance.

The first place was an excavated fight pit where Zhen Liu could make out captured warriors being forced to fight for the amusement of the kaijin.

More specifically, the Kaijin were training their abilities by using these captured warriors as living dummies.

[Hehehe! Come on you silly little rats! Try harder or I'll break you like those silly little hippos!]

"What the fuck is this guy?!" A rat Bloodliner shouted as he fired off a flurry of wind lances. "My attacks aren't doing anything!"

'Oh... he's fucked.'

Zhen Liu could sense from the zako's perch overlooking the fight pit that there was a strong [Desire] for [Survival], but it wasn't the [Desire] he was sensing earlier.

The [Desire] he had sensed was almost as hot, but it was more...pleasant.

The second spot that caught his attention was a dark cavern that seemed to be curtain off from everywhere else.

At first, Zhen Liu thought the curtain was for privacy...until the zako got close enough at the same time as a Kaijin carrying a corpse into the cave.

'HOLY—!'

The smell of what had to be about a thousand corpses assailed the zako's nostrils and made the both of them gag.

Evidently the scent of death was so powerful that it caused Zhen Liu's [Ghost Flame] to flare up for a brief moment.

'That's...whoa. Just...whoa!'

Zhen Liu may have become more and more exposed to death attributed aether as of late, especially with Corpse Doll's addition, but there was still a massive difference between seeing a literal pile of rotting bodies and a corpse puppet.

For example, the former was significantly mushier.

Aside from that overwhelming presence of [Death], though, Zhen Liu could pick up even more latent [Desire] accompanying it.

But once again, it wasn't what he had sensed earlier.

[Desire] associated with the dead were a touch more somber, too somber for what he has sensed earlier. The energy was just as dense though, if a little denser.

'Alright, time's almost up,' Zhen Liu concluded as he couldn't think of anywhere else to look.

'Time to bring my focus back to the minecart.'

The moment he did this though, he was immediately overwhelmed by a sudden flash of [Desire].

'GAH!'

For a brief moment, Zhen Liu found himself being overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of... curiosity.

Not just curiosity though, it was feeling of wanting to explore.

A feeling of wanting to discover something that no one has discovered yet and go beyond even that. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com

But as soon as this feeling overwhelmed him, it disappeared.

Once it disappeared, Zhen Liu found himself staring out of the eyes of the zakos that was still hiding in the minecart.

'Okay...looks like I found the source of that [Desire] spike,' Zhen Liu concluded after he managed to get his head and senses to settle down.

'And of course it's where they refine this shitty nuggets of pure evil, great...'

The zako that Zhen Liu was seeing through had arrived to the end of the minecart's line and was dumped alongside the ores of [Malevolent Gold].

'That thing is...way too big.'

The room that the ore was dumped in, looked nothing like a smelter room.

The ores was just careless piled atop each other around a strangely colored bonfire.

Although, the color of this bonfire wasn't the important part.

It was what the bonfire was burning.

'Wait a minute...what the fuck?'

In the center of the blaze was a strange, circular structure that tickled something in the back of Zhen Liu's head.

Unfortunately, he wouldn't have time to think on what it was.