Chapter 68: Live-in Lover - Part 32 (Violence)

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"Trud threw a tantrum like a child—or rather, a brat—as he kept beating Jeff, now not just with his bare hands but with a baseball bat.

Meanwhile, his henchmen, Henry and Francis, just kept watching, sitting behind Trud while enjoying beer and snacks.

"Ugh..."

Though Jeff had started to groan from the pain of the darkening bruises all over his body and a few broken bones, especially his ribs, his will didn’t break; he continued to endure the pain.

"You leave me no choice, you fucking bastard," Trud said after landing another full swing of his bat squarely on Jeff’s head.

While Jeff bled from his mouth with his hands chained as he hung listless, Trud caught his breath, taking a break to explain what he planned to do next now that he had no way to contact Jess.

"I should have brought her here long ago and fucked her like the others."

"Isn’t that what we’re always telling you, boss?"

"You don’t need to be her boyfriend to fuck her."

"Shut up!"

Of course this shit bastard could have done that, Jeff thought, listening to the conversation while pretending to have already lost consciousness to catch a little break himself.

Remembering what Jeff had read in Trud’s Archive, Trud and his men had indeed abducted a great number of women from near and far in Central City to play with them—or to be more accurate, to r*pe them.

Their crimes didn’t end there. After having their fill of the women they abducted, they would demand ransom from the families. If the woman had a boyfriend, they would blackmail the man into doing their unreasonable bidding until, eventually, they fed him to their dogs. And if the woman died during their "play," they would bury her corpse deep in the mountain.

Trud could have done that to Jess. In fact, that was her fate written in Jess’s Archive Update 1—the reward for Quest 12 of the Returner Fantasy System—and if Jeff failed his current quest, he was sure that Jess would suffer that cruel fate.

As to why Trud hadn’t done it yet, even before Jeff’s regression twelve years into the past—

"If you fucked her here before, everyone could have a taste of her."

"We’re always happy to take your leftovers, boss."

"She’s mine alone, so fuck off."

There—he said it, Jeff thought, understanding Trud’s reason: he wanted Jess for himself.

"It would be more fun to let the bastard cry while watching all of us having a turn."

"So let’s go to this bastard’s house and take her already, boss."

Hearing Henry and Francis’s suggestions, Trud became quiet for a second, as if weighing his options.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought of forcing his way into Jeff’s house to take Jess, but if he did that and attracted too much attention and got the police too involved, it might cause trouble for his father, who was the mayor.

But now that he couldn’t think of any other plan, he didn’t care anymore. Besides, any trouble he might cause, Trud was sure his father could fix with his power, wealth, and influence.

"Right, let’s do that." Trud said as he grabbed Jeff’s hair and lifted his head to look him face to face.

"I’m gonna ransack your house, beat up your family, and take her—maybe her hot MILF mother too. Then we’re gonna fuck both of them right here in front of you. But before that—"

Trud took a step back, then went for a kick, aiming to break Jeff’s balls like Jeff had done to him at the beach hotel parking lot.

However, after threatening to hurt his family, including Jess and her mother, Jeff had already had enough of his crap.

Jeff skillfully caught Trud’s right foot between his knees and twisted it, spraining his ankle.

"ARGH~!... Fuck!"

Trud fell down, screaming and squirming on the floor, unable to endure the pain of his twisted ankle.

"Pfft—Hahaha..."

"What are you doing, boss?"

Henry and Francis, laughing at their pathetic boss, helped Trud back to his feet.

"That’s it, I’m done playing games."

Trud drew his gun—a Glock 45—and pointed it at Jeff with serious intent to put some holes in his body, even if he ended up killing him and ruining the plan of r*ping Jess and her mother in front of him. But when he pulled the trigger—

---

[RETURNER FANTASY SYSTEM]

[Reward – Returner Luck]

---

—the gun failed to fire.

"What the fuck?"

Trud tried the gun once more, but no matter how much he pulled the trigger, it wouldn’t fire at all.

"Give me your gun!"

The same happened with Henry and Francis’s guns as well.

"What the fuck is happening?!"

Thanks to the Returner Luck—the reward for Quest 11—Jeff could avoid life-threatening incidents for a certain amount of time upon its activation. That’s why he was so confident to let himself be captured by Trud.

Giving up on using their guns, or getting the other guns stored in the warehouse, Trud proceeded to another form of torture he had prepared for Jeff.

"If these fucking guns won’t work, then I’m just gonna electrocute you to death."

As Trud said, the iron chain restraining and hanging Jeff was connected to an electric wire in the ceiling; one pull on the lever of the circuit breaker would roast him.

Trud took a few steps back, supported by Henry, as Francis moved to the nearby wall toward the circuit breaker.

"Now roast this fucker like a pig!"

At Trud’s command, Francis pulled the lever. But instead of sending high-voltage electricity to Jeff, the warehouse lost power and plunged into total darkness. But that wasn’t the effect of the Returner Luck.

"Just how lucky is this fucking bastard."

"This is getting scary, boss."

"Did those three mess up with the wire—ARGH!"

Francis’s pained scream echoed in the darkness, sending Trud and Henry into a panic.

Scared enough to shit and wet himself, Henry shoved Trud aside and blindly ran into the dark.

As Trud stumbled and hit his face on the table Henry and Francis had been using while drinking earlier, Henry’s scream of pain joined Francis’s.

"You fucking bastard," Trud screamed, terrified of the dark and whatever unknown thing was attacking his henchmen. "You don’t know who you’re dealing with, fuckers! My father would—ARGH!"

As the three continued to scream in pain, the lights came back on, revealing arrows piercing each of their legs—in Trud’s case, one through his left leg—rendering him unable to stand with his right ankle already sprained.

The sight of arrows through their legs was enough to make the three wet themselves; Henry twice over.

The fear from the voice that then came from the second-floor mezzanine—

"Watching your friend get beat up is kind of fun, actually."

—along with another voice from the back room of the warehouse—

"But beating the bastards that beat him up would definitely be more fun."

—was enough to make them shit their pants, twice again for Henry.