Benjamin started by using more gentle means of torture. For example, using a harmless move like the ice needle and piercing it through the pirate boss’ fingers. He let it travel through the skin and come out at the sole of his feet. He would then use a water ball of healing to heal him. He repeated this torture method ten to twenty times.
The other crueler moves he could not do due to how kind he was.
The System was oddly excited throughout the whole process and kept yelling things like "Use steam and put it up his ass! Take out his liver and feed it to him! Fill his lungs with water then take it out...". Even Benjamin was uncomfortable. An innocent face saying these things, it really was embarrassing.
The entire interrogation took about ten minutes. In that time, the river pirate boss fainted more than ten times, and was woken up every single time. His screams reverberated over the entire ship. Even the mages didn’t dare come to observe.
In the end the pirate king wasn’t strong enough. Unlike all like the priests or mages, he didn’t have the ability to commit suicide with magic. And so, he chose to surrender.
"That, that wasn’t... a normal magical creature."
Benjamin frowned.
The river pirate boss was starting to lose consciousness again, he stuttered across his words, could he really explain how to tame the magical creature?
"Where did you learn this method, did you just happen to come across it in a book or something else?" Benjamin asked.
"It... it was a book." The river pirate boss answered weakly.
As expected. Benjamin nodded with satisfaction, and continued, "Where is this book?"
The pirate boss answered: "In...in my room...under the bed...under a loose floorboard."
Upon hearing this, Benjamin felt satisfied. He told another mage to keep an eye on the pirate boss and left the room to go look for the best bed on the boat. He used steam to move the bed, and used his hands to knock on the floorboards, searching for a hollow one.
It wasn’t long before he identified the floorboard and found the subsequent secret compartment under it. He opened the compartment and found an old, yellowing book.
Benjamin took out the book and held it in his hands. The book was thin, the front page was blank, without even an author’s name. As he read it, the book opened his eyes, telling him everything he needed to know on how to breed the tiger like magical creature.
Benjamin understood at that moment, that this indeed was not a normal magical creature.
The pirate boss’ method said to train the magical creature not to create one.
The entire process didn’t look too complicated. It was also written clearly in the book: First, catch a young tiger and starve it half to death; then, use the feeder’s blood along with other weird magical creature material, and feed it to the young tiger; lastly, raise it for two months. This special tiger shaped "magical creature" will eventually mature, lose all sense of self, ready to be ordered about by the feeder - loyal to the end.
As he read, Benjamin couldn’t help but gasp. This kind of method… what kind of person must someone be to be able to come up with something like this?
Even though it was specially created, this kind magical creature was not very strong; besides flight and strength, they possessed no other special abilities. But to verify this, they would have needed to perform thousands of experiments.
Maybe, this happened a long time ago. When men were still trying to figure out how to tame magical creatures, they could have accidentally found this side door.
While continuing to read on, he also discovered that there were some very significant side effects of this method.
After the magical creature matures, its appetite would also increase. Before, it would eat every five days, then every three days, then every day, then a few times a day... in the end, once it passes a certain time frame, its appetite will reach a point when it cannot be satisfied.
A hungry magical beast will be very aggressive. It will be impossible to control, attacking everyone, before exploding - covering everything with its disgusting and smelly blood.
After reading everything, Benjamin could understand why this creature did not replace horses or play a significant role in battles and wars.
It is difficult to keep, and requires so much food. The process it takes to raise it is also disgusting and cruel. Added on to the fact that the tiger shaped magical creature was ugly, to make an army of them, would anyone really enjoy the idea?
Benjamin suddenly realized the reason the river pirates frequently robbed the town of Ciera could be because of the increasing appetite of their magical creatures.
After some thought, Benjamin closed and kept the book. The method was crooked, and he had no intention of keeping one. But he had a weird feeling, he may one day have one of the creatures.
Moreover, the method, if it can be discovered, then it can be improved, right?
After getting what he wanted, Benjamin stood up and went to the interrogation room to give the river pirate boss a smile. Afterwards, from the reports from the other mages, he managed to get an understanding of all the riches on the boat.
Luxurious food, about five hundred pieces of gold coins, a collection of weaponry... Unfortunately, besides the food and the money, the others weren’t useful to Benjamin. It wasn’t easy to take with them either and so they reluctantly left it on the boat.
After riding the wind for a few hours, they were very far away from the town of Ciera. After dinner, Benjamin confirmed their direction with the System and called the mages together to use magic to stop the boat at a deserted island.
They used a lot of magic as though they were blowing the boat onto shore, before finally getting it stuck among the rocks at the shore, in order to stop it from floating away. Then, they got off with their luggage and continued on.
Their current location was a just few hours’ journey from the border of Icor.
The region had low hills, with very few people present. Even on the map, there wasn’t any significant landmarks. Because of this, Benjamin and the group travelled at night, taking the opportunity to run as far away as they could from the border.
Very quickly, they neared the border between the two countries.
But the border was lit up with fire. From afar, it looked like the mountains had intermittent two long lines of lanterns – on one side was Icor’s garrison, and on the other side was Ferelden’s garrison. The two side were only a hundred meters apart, facing each other, but not attacking.
Being the number one wanted gang in Icor, naturally Benjamin and his people could not just walk up to them.
After briefly thinking, he used the flying spell and the pillar of steam spell. Together with the other mages, they rose gently into the air.
Thankfully, the weather was good to them. Dark clouds gathered together, hiding the moonlight, whilst there was not a star in the night sky.
After about a hundred meters, the mages maintained their altitude. With the aid of magic, they flew towards Ferelden.