Read Novel Full Chapter 633: Voluntary Investigation
Chapter 633: Voluntary Investigation
“But here’s the thing.” Mika said, and his voice brightened with sudden, fierce energy.
“I don’t like being manipulated. I don’t like being forced into corners. And I really don’t like being told what to do.”
His burnt face twisted into a grin.
“So I decided: fine. I’ll walk into the trap. I’ll save Charlotte. I’ll suffer whatever comes. But before I go…I’m going to make my own preparations.”
He looked at Marcus, and his grin widened.
“That’s why, right before I entered your domain—I flicked a middle finger at whatever entity was watching me. And then I grabbed my own skull.”
Charlotte’s blood ran cold.
“I shoved my fingers deep inside my head.” Mika said, his voice almost cheerful now. “And I tore my skull apart until my brain was exposed!”
Marcus’s face went white. “What the hell are you doing—are you crazy?!”
Mika ignored him, his gaze locked on Charlotte’s horrified face.
“Even though I had no idea what was going to happen inside your mind, I already knew it was going to be bad. Really bad.”
“So I decided to make a failsafe.”
“A way to send messages to the outside world even if I was trapped in a mental world I couldn’t break out of.”
He paused, letting the words sink in.
“So I completely split my mental self and my physical self. I basically severed the connection between them entirely.”
Marcus’s eyes shimmered with dawning horror.
“Don’t tell me—you actually—you actually tore of your own—”
Mika nodded. “I pulled my brain from the inside of my skull.”
Charlotte felt the world tilt. “Mika—no—”
“I used my own hands to pull my brain from my body.”
Mika continued, his voice eerily calm.
“And…I placed it right on top of your head, Charlotte.”
The image was so grotesque, so impossible, that Charlotte couldn’t process it.
Mika standing over her sleeping body, his skull split open, his brain resting gently atop her head like some horrible offering.
It was insane. It was monstrous. It was—
“You see, before entering.” Mika explained, leaning back against the wood. “I had found an obscure research paper about mental blessings and how they control the body.”
“It was based on safe experiments conducted on animals that had been exposed to powerful mental blessings.”
“And the researcher…she had discovered something fascinating!”
A look of admiration appeared on Mika’s burnt face.
“Apparently, a mental blessing could interfere with the animals movements, their reflexes, even their involuntary bodily functions.”
“But—only because the animal’s brain was still neurologically connected to its body.”
He recited the conclusion from memory, his voice taking on a scholarly cadence.
“Basically, the mind doesn’t command the flesh directly. It commands the brain, and the brain commands the flesh.”
His non-existent gaze was razor-sharp.
“That’s what gave me the idea. If the connection between the consciousness and the brain could be severed, then a mental blessing would have no pathway to control the physical body.”
“The enemy could imprison my mind. They could manipulate it. They could do whatever they wanted to the consciousness inside their domain. But they couldn’t touch the body I left behind.”
His smile became almost triumphant
“So, I broke the command chain. I sent my consciousness into your domain, but I left my physical body outside in an autonomous, severed state.”
“I established a hyper-narrow, one-way communication channel between my mind here and my body out there.”
He spread his charred arms as far as the stakes would allow—a grotesque parody of a shrug.
“Basically…I gave you my mind, Marcus. Just not my body.”
The silence that followed was absolute.
Marcus’s face had gone through a dozen emotions in as many seconds—disbelief, denial, dawning comprehension, and finally, a cold, creeping horror.
As someone intimately knowledgeable about mental blessings, he understood immediately the implications of what Mika was describing.
The brain was where dreams came from. The brain was where consciousness lived.
Without it, a body was nothing—a corpse, a puppet with no strings.
Marcus himself could not command a dead body, because the brain was dead.
But who in their right mind would think to separate the brain from the body? To voluntarily sever the connection between mind and flesh?
It was suicide. It was madness. And yet—
And yet the boy had done it. The boy had done it and survived.
And that meant—
“…I never had a connection to his physical body at all.”
Marcus whispered, the realization crashing over him like a wave.
“All this time…I thought his resistance was simply too high. I thought I couldn’t establish the link because his consciousness was too strong. I thought that as he weakened, I would finally break through.”
He stared at Mika, his eyes wide and empty.
“But there was never any connection to break through. Because you severed it before he ever entered.”
Mika’s smile confirmed it.
Marcus’s legs buckled. He caught himself on a nearby table, his chest heaving.
All those weeks. All that torture. All that meticulous, patient breaking down of the boy’s mind—and it had all been pointless.
He had been trying to open a door that didn’t exist.
Mika turned to Charlotte, and his voice softened.
“Do you know who wrote that paper, Charlotte? Do you know who gave me my lifeline at the very last moment?”
Charlotte’s lips trembled. “Who was it, Mika? Who?”
Mika’s lipless smile widened, and his voice filled with something like wonder.
“It was Fauna.”
Charlotte’s hand flew to her mouth.
“Your dear aunt, she wrote that paper years ago. And I found it by pure chance on the coffee table in the living room. Just sitting there.”
“I thought it was a coincidence. I thought I was just lucky. But now…now I’m not so sure.”
He looked up at the dark sky, his ruined eyes searching.
“The same forces that are trying to destroy me…I think there are also forces trying to help me.”
“Someone—something—left that paper where I would find it. Someone knew I would need it. Someone was looking out for me, even when I didn’t know it.”
Charlotte’s mind reeled.
One moment the world was trying to kill him, and the next it was trying to save him.
It was as if the universe itself had a split personality, and she couldn’t begin to understand which side was winning.
Marcus, meanwhile, had collapsed to his knees.
“How!?” He croaked. “How could you split your brain like that? You should have died instantly. No one can do that! It’s not—it’s not possible—”
“My body is different from everyone else’s.” Mika said, as if explaining something to a child. “Even if I split my brain from my body, I won’t die. It might ache a little. That’s all.”
“I do feel bad for your mother, though.” He added, looking down at Charlotte. “When the Yelena and the others arrived, they must have been terrified beyond belief.”
“Not only were you completely comatose, but there I was, my head split wide open, my brain sitting on top of your head like some kind of grotesque hat.”
He snickered. “It would have been such a hilarious sight.”
Charlotte tried to imagine it. Her mother’s face. Her aunts faces. The horror, the panic, the utter chaos.
And it was true. When they had seen the sight, Yelena had broken down on the spot.
Nadia’s emotions had fluctuated so violently that a massive earthquake had erupted across the region.
Fauna had fainted immediately, unable to process what she was seeing.
The Maiden of War had blacked out, refusing to believe her eyes, while the Maiden of Fate had felt her head spin with the sheer impossibility of it all.
Mika had created utter mayhem in the outside world. And he thought it was funny.
“So you see, Marcus.” Mika said, turning his attention back to the broken man on his knees.
“I never had to break out of your domain at all. I just had to establish a connection from inside back to my physical body.”
“Like a Bluetooth signal. Just enough to send messages and tell the Battle Angels what to do. That was far simpler than actually breaking through your defenses. After all…”
He sneered down at Marcus.
“…you never even thought to look for it. You were so focused on keeping me contained that you missed the loophole entirely.”
“Overall… He let out a tired sigh. “It took me about a week to establish the connection, given how unstable my mental palace was in here.”
He clicked his tongue. “Could have done it faster if I wasn’t being tortured, to be honest.”
Charlotte blinked, a sudden realization striking her.
“Wait…hold on, Mika. Did you say it took you a week?”
“Yes.” Mika nodded. “Eight days to be exact.”
“Then…why have we been stuck in this nightmare for over twenty days?!” Charlotte asked in utter confusion. “If you established the connection on the eighth day, you could have just told Mama and the others to break in and rescue us immediately!”
Marcus’s head snapped up, realizing the exact same thing.
If the Battle Angels had been alerted on day eight, he would have been obliterated weeks ago!
Mika’s expression changed. The confidence flickered. Something softer, something almost apologetic, crept into his ruined features.
“This is where I have to apologize to you, Charlotte.” He said quietly.
“I dragged you through all of this…when I could have gotten you out much sooner.”
Charlotte stared at him. “What…What do you mean? What are you trying to say?”
“On the eighth day, when the connection stabilized, I was ready to call in the strike.” Mika explained. “I even told you back then that we were getting out soon.”
Charlotte remembered that day. She remembered the baffling certainty in his voice, the way he’d spoken as if their escape was already a done deal.
She had thought he was just trying to comfort her.
Now she knew if his plan had worked, they would have escaped as soon as he sent the message.
“But then…” Mika said, and his voice hardened. “That was the same day that damn whore Amanda came in and interrupted us.”
Charlotte’s heart skipped. “Did her arrival interrupt the connection? Is that why—”
“It’s not that at all.” Mika shook his head. “Instead, it’s what she said.”
Seeing that Charlotte still had no clue he went on to say explain,
“She mentioned that not only did she exist in this world, but so did many other people. Corrupt evil individuals—the same kind of people who seemed so bright and kind and good to the outside world.”
“The kind who maintained perfect public images…and then came to this world to throw those disguises away and turn into animals.”
He leaned forward, and his voice dropped to a growl.
“And the moment I heard that, I felt sick! Disgusted! These horrible monsters were walking around in the outside world, and no one even knew!”
“But the problem was—I didn’t know who they were.” He frowned in contemplation. “Amanda made it clear that many of them existed, but she didn’t give me names or identities.”
He smiled, and it was the saddest smile Charlotte had ever seen on his face.
“So I decided to stay a little longer and…investigate for myself.”
Marcus’s face went through a slow, terrible transformation.
Disbelief. Then comprehension. Then horror!
“You…” He whispered, pointing a shaking finger at the crucified boy. “You brat. You actually…You did all that…you stayed on purpose…”
“That’s right, Marcus.” Mika rasped, his grin returning with a vengeance.
“My stay here from day eight until tonight was entirely voluntary…”
“I chose to remain in your hell, so I could personally investigate every single monster who entered this domain.”
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