[A/N: This chapter has descriptions of gore, and torture. It's advised to proceed with caution.]

Recap

"He’ Stendhal is an existence who has surpassed the confines of humanity. The right of life."

"And the black of death."

"The persona of the convector."

"Who severs the gap between the two with a single stroke. "

"Without my mask, I am no more than an ordinary man who devotes himself to the ideologies of heroes." 

"And I despise allowing those two sides to interact."

As Dante saw the fanatic look on "Stendhals" face, he admonished himself for trying to appear cool in front of his Sensei.

Azure was jolted out of his reverie when he heard a bloodcurdling scream. He looked at his surroundings and saw the rusted cells, the grim atmosphere surrounding the place. 

But his sensei interrupted his thoughts since he grimly said, "Yakuza scum."

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Azure looked at the pitiful yakuza sitting on a bloodied chair in the middle of the room. The moonlight shining down on him illuminated his bruised and battered face.

Azure remembered all the things that transpired throughout this past week. He learned a myriad of torture techniques from his sensei. 

*Flashback to five days ago*

Stendhal was talking to Azure while he was holding a knife near the abdomen of the poor villain.

"Azure, most villains are trained to at least be able to handle the pain of blunt force beatings." 

Stendhal demonstrated this with a punch towards the villain's arm, causing the said villain to bite down on the cloth over his mouth.

"And handle the pain of basic stabbing."

Stendhal demonstrated this by inserting a knife into the villain's abdomen. The villain had trouble holding back a groan but still didn’t let out a sound.

Stendhal looked back towards Azure, who had his eyes glued to the villain.

"However, one thing that villains don’t realize is that their fingers are one of the most painful parts of the body."

Stendhal dislocated the villain's finger. This caused the villain to open his mouth, but no sound came through. 

He and many others of their organization were trained for a possible kidnapping scenario. They were all taught that if they said anything, even if they lived, they would wish they hadn’t.

"Of course, I’m not talking about the whole finger. Instead, it's the fingernails. Although all nails count.

Nails are produced by nail matrix cells that reside in the moon-shaped white area at the base of the nail. If the nail matrix isn’t damaged, the nail can regrow."

The villain now had visible sweat coming from his forehead. Although he had experienced pain throughout his career, he didn’t like what was about to happen.

"And with this here."

Stendhal brought out a pair of rusted pliers.

"It usually gets them talking."

The villain was shaking in his seat. He contemplated taking the pain and what would happen if he were to talk. He wasn’t given much time to think, though, as Stendhal quickly started. 

Unfortunately for him, even if he had decided, he wouldn’t have been free as the purpose of this wasn’t for information, as he was told, but for Azure to learn about the human body.

What took place was hours of excruciating pain for the villain as Stendhal slowly chipped, broke, and separated his nails from both his fingers and foot. 

The worst of it is that when he had no more nails covering his hands and feet, Stendhal grabbed a box lying in the corner of the room.

As Stendhal left the groaning villain, who was experiencing cold air hitting his bare skin, he continued.

"There’s also special medicine that can speed up the healing of wounds that would normally heal."

Stendhal sprinkled the suspicious white powder over the villains' nails. The villain could feel the nails regrow. The feeling wasn’t pleasant and he started shaking in his chair trying to get out.

"Of course, the process isn’t pain free. In addition, this will cause adverse effects on the body and make the regrown part even more brittle than before. "

After a minute, the villains' nails grew back. After hanging his head down, the villain looked up since he decided that whatever happened after he was free would be better than this pain.

But what met his eyes was a mask that showed nothing. Stendhal's hands grabbed the pliers, ignoring the tears that welled up in the villains' eyes.

He looked towards the small one since he thought this one may be kinder. But all his brown eyes met were cold, uncaring sapphire ones.

Azure thought of villains who killed, raped, and committed other unspecified acts towards innocents as lower than scum, and worth less than trash. Even trash can be recycled into something useful.

He wouldn’t care for the life or suffering of trash, so why should he care for that of villains? The villain was shaking. Tears streamed down his eyes. He screamed behind the cloth. He was trying to communicate with the two demons in front of him.

However, as if his pleas fell on deaf ears, he ignored them. Only hours later, he was allowed to fall into the sweet embrace of death. His corpse burned into ash, leaving nothing to remember him in this world.

*Flashback End.*

Groans came from the yakuza slumped in the chair. Unlike the previous villain, his nails were left intact, but burns of varying sizes and severity littered his body. 

Azure didn’t like the hands-on aspect of touching the villains, he preferred scorching them, and feeding them the special "white powder" as a better method of getting information. 

Although the powder is expensive, he usually focuses on only burning their skin so as to give him more time and space. Most of those he’s tried this on spoke before he burned their entire bodies. 

Usually, because the wounds ended up flacking off occasionally when that happened, Azure’s victims all sucked in a breath every time the wound made contact with air.

However, this Yakuza was especially tough. He didn’t crack even after a couple of hours. He was even conscious!

The Yakuza, hearing Stendhal's remark about them being scum, could not help but scold them inside his head.

He didn’t have the energy to talk, but he could still think properly. ‘You're the ones who raided my base.’

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Geze that was a pretty gruesome chapter. But you learned a bit more about Azure's conviction to his mentality and the fact that Azure has become a little less reckless.

Now instead of just killing the villains and moving on to the next, he tortur-Ahem, he peacefully gains information to help him with his next victim, after he sends them to the afterlife.