183 Chapter 57 ...Like A Bitch

"Mana Rot..."

Yes, as you could probably guess this was a new ability, it had evolved from Zeref's Decay skill and was, well, not very pleasant as you would soon see. It turns out that having all of the magicules inside of your body beginning to rapidly break down was a very painful experience to go through. Oh and did I forget to mention that magicules are basically the building blocks of all things, so this not only affected the body but also the soul as well?

Thankfully Zeref had some control over all of this and stopped Clayman from straight up dying, unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, Clayman was left in one hell of a state. Imagine all of the atoms in your body, all of the things that made up your soul and mind, imagine all of that literally rotting and ripping itself apart, yet despite all of this you are completely unable to die no matter how much you may want it. If you can visualize all of that you may be able to understand Clayman's current predicament. Add on Rimuru manipulating his perception of time and, well, he wasn't having what most would consider a fun time that's for sure.

This lasted for only a few moments, seconds even, however for Clayman it was a lot, lot longer. I took quite a lot of enjoyment in knowing that fact. Anyway, after some time Zeref removed his hand and Clayman collapsed to his knees. He had looked so confident in himself only an instant before but now look at him, a shivering and cowering mess, how very disappointing.

"Well that was anticlimactic..." Rimuru hummed slightly surprised at how easy that all was.

I simply rolled my eyes at that. "Is that really a major concern right now?"

"Nope." He shrugged before walking forward and crouching just in front of Clayman. "You're going to answer all of my questions, and who knows, if I like what you have to say I might let you die quickly instead of dragging it out for who knows how long, understood?"

"And don't try bullshiting your way out of this, you can't lie when I'm around." I hummed while glaring down at the douchebag in question.

"But to be honest though..." I continued with a more aggressive tone in my voice. "I am really hoping that you have the balls to actually keep your mouth shut, it will be a hell of a lot more fun for me if that ends up being the case."

"After all, I can think of several interesting methods to tear that information out of that little head of yours."

It took him a second to settle down enough to be able to speak again, however to my surprise he actually refused to answer anything even after my rather descriptive threats. I had to admit his loyalty to his allies was somewhat commendable, especially for a scheming bastard such as himself, not that I planned to show mercy but still.

"Guess we're doing this the hard way then. Suu, do your thing." Rimuru mused, pulling my attention to him.

Hearing him I smiled rather maliciously. "With pleasure." I chuckled darkly while taking a step forward. "Now then, let's see what it is that you were so worried about telling us shall we."

"W-wait! What are you doing?!" Clayman asked as I grabbed his head and forced him to look into my eyes.

"Oh don't be such a bitch." I huffed as my eyes began to glow a golden colour. "It'll most definitely hurt for sure, however it won't do much to you at all. In fact it will only destroy everything that you are, you know, like your memories, your personality, pretty much everything that makes up the individual that is yourself." Hearing that he tried to struggle but I wouldn't let him get away so easily.

"I mean I could make it so none of that happens to you, that you come out of this completely unharmed and unscathed." I hummed in thought but quickly shook my head at that ridiculous idea. "But that would take a lot of effort on my part, effort that just isn't worth wasting on you, thankfully no one here seems to care whether you live or die so I suppose it doesn't matter either way."

And so I began tearing through Clayman's mind without any real hesitation at all, he screamed at first of course but he quickly stopped when his brain turned to dust in his own skull. Anyway, what I saw was similar to that time I did this to the sixth, basically I saw fragmented images and felt various emotions that weren't my own. For the most part it was all useless crap or things that we already knew before, however there were a few things that stood out amongst it all. 

(Damn it, I really don't like how that feels...) I thought as Rimuru absorbed what was left of the asshole with beelzebub to make sure no one could resurrect him.

As that happened I took a second to steady myself while thinking on what I had just learnt. (Kazalim, those damn clowns and...and someone else, it seems there is a lot more to all of this than I originally suspected.) 

"You okay birdy?" Milim asked as she popped up next to me, a fact that startled me somewhat.

"Y-yeah...errm...the ability I just used feels weird to use at all." I muttered while standing back up and rubbing the back of my head.

Surprisingly Carrion was the one to speak up next out of everyone. "Why didn't you just do that from the start?"

"Because when I look into someone's mind I don't get the full picture, I only get fragments, scattered images of the greater whole, especially when I do it forcefully." I explained while slightly shaking my head. "As such I was hoping that he'd spill something beforehand, so that we could get a bigger picture about what exactly was going on before I turned his brains to mush."

"Ah, got it."

"What did you end up seeing?" Rimuru asked, causing me to look over at him.

"Well, for one I saw a lot of useless crap to be honest." I admitted but he could tell there was more to it than just that.

"However?"

"However, he seems to be working for someone named Kazalim or however you pronounce it."

That name definitely surprised some people if the looks I was getting were anything to go by. Apparently he was another demon lord, one that was supposed to be dead according to what the others knew, apparently Leon had fought and defeated him quite a while ago.

"I guess that this means that I can add someone new to my shit list." I hissed, honestly, my list of people I wanted to kill was getting longer and longer as the days passed by.

"Anything else?"

"It seems that Kazalim and his clowns aren't working alone, there was someone else important of note in his memories I think, someone who helped in Kazalim's apparent resurrection but I don't know who exactly." 

"Can you describe them?" Rimuru asked and I shook my head in response.

"No...no I can't, for some reason the memories related to them were filled with fuzz, like something was blocking me from seeing them." That little fact actually reminded me of the time where I was unable to see some of the cult's statuses.

"That's fine I guess, we'll figure the rest out as we go along." He mused with a somewhat narrowed gaze.

"Yeah, yeah you're right..." I sighed before a slightly confused expression passed across my face. "What do we do now?"

"We continue the meeting I think."

"Great..."

(A/N. Next chapter will be out after Christmas, just so you know. P.S This volume has two, maybe three chapters left until it comes to an end and the next one begins, just in case you wanted to know.)