“Noooooo! Noooooo!” a fairy strapped to a mini-chair wailed as loud as a dying siren. She flailed her head like a mad woman. If she wasn’t strapped to the chair, she would’ve flung to the walls by now.

“Listen! Tell me who is in charge of-”

“Nooooooooo!” the fairy cried again, interrupting me.

No matter how much I tried, the fairy I captured refused to give any details. I tried to employ the various torture techniques available to me, but the fairy enjoyed the torture sessions more than the quiet times.

I gritted my teeth and wrapped my hand around my chin. My spymaster was still a sea away from me, but I didn’t exactly have the patience to wait for his arrival. I only had a few methods left, but they were unconventional. Very unconventional.

When possible, I would rather not expend my powers beyond the limit I had given myself.

“Demons are such a pain in the ass. Why do you even bother with gathering information from her?” Kendra commented from the corner. I had initially planned to give Kendra lessons on how to ‘obtain’ information from targets, but it turned out that the fairy was simply… not in this world.

“Well, this is the second live fairy I’ve actually managed to get my hands on. I want to extract as much as possible while she’s still alive,” I replied.

“Fairy? Is that some kind of slang for demons?” Kendra questioned. “And second?”

“Don’t mind the trivialities. For now, I need to shut this thing up,” I said while grabbing the fairy. I dunked her head into a glass of water and waited for her to calm down. Fairies were quite resilient so a bit of drowning won’t kill them.

When I placed the mini-chair back into its original position, the fairy had a dazed, tired look. She started muttering to herself, “This world…Flesh. Flesh. This world…”

“What’s she talking about? She’s been repeating that for quite some time now,” Kendra pointed out.

I tapped my table as I pondered. After a minute of searching for clues inside my empty head, I called out loudly, “Daggerless!”

“Yes, Boss!” Daggerless suddenly stood at attention when I called him.

“Go get me a fleshy corpse. No, wait. Make sure they’re alive or undead.”

“So, kidnap someone?” Daggerless asked.

I gave him a nod, and he excitedly ran off with a few of his subordinates.

Kendra gazed at me with a confused look. “What’re you planning?”

Instead of answering, I kept quiet, patiently waiting. Half an hour later, Daggerless and his group returned with a panic-stricken zombie. They laid him at the ground and held onto him tightly.

“Wow, wait, hold on a minute…” Kendra said as she slowly stood up.

I grabbed the fairy, slowly unbinded her, and placed her on top of the zombie’s chest. She looked like a scared and bewildered cat, not knowing what was going on.

“Get in,” I ordered the fairy.

Excitement filled her eyes as she grinned from one end of her face to the other. Without further ado, she jabbed at the chest of the zombie and began digging into his chest.

The gagged zombie tried to scream, not from pain, but from fear. After all, the fairies’ body-snatching ability was well-known. Once the fairy was deep inside, the zombie started spasming violently, to the point that some of my companions nearly lost their hold on the corpse.

“Hold the body down, boys,” I ordered.

“Boss! At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the limbs suddenly tore off and-” Daggerless suddenly fell back as the arm he was holding was ripped off the body. Blood spilled around the room, decorating the dull gray room with a splatter of red.

After a few minutes of frantic struggle, the zombie stopped and became motionless, like a puppet whose strings had been cut off. Its dead eyes turned towards me before speaking with a calm tone, “You. What do you want from me?”

Suddenly, it felt as if the fairy had a full personality switch. The delirious, screaming fairy was nowhere to be heard in the zombie’s voice.

I crouched down and replied, “Name. I need your name.”

“My name is insignificant. Insignificant to the grand scheme at play, lich,” the zombie replied.

“Ah. I thought you meant that your name was ‘Insignificant’.” I waved my hand and continued, “Anyway, I want your name. Your real name. I don’t care if it’s meaningless.”

“They call me Actress Melancholic. My people do. Those who remembered, at least,” the zombie answered with a tired tone. “Are you happy now, lich?”

“Perhaps.”

The zombie looked at me with his shallow eyes. Though they weren’t the fairy’s actual eyes, they still managed to convey feelings—the fairy’s feelings. “If you want information on the demon network in Gravia, I cannot help. I simply do not have the authority to know more. I am simply… the middleman.”

“So you’ve confirmed there’s more than one of you active in the city.”

“Not a big surprise. Anybody would be able to guess this much. Gravia is one of the biggest enemies and obstacles to the Tea Party. Perhaps the biggest,” the zombie casually noted.

“You’re remarkably cooperative, fairy,” I said.

The zombie twitched and slowly groaned, “It’s been a long time since anyone called us that. Who are you, lich? You can’t simply be any simple undead.”

I nodded. “I’m glad you asked. I am Presidential-Candidate Boss, running from the presidency of the Republic of Gravia. As for my policies-”

“I’m not interested in that!” the zombie interrupted loudly.

Kendra suddenly interjected while cleaning her dress, “Fairy this, fairy that. What in the name of the Goddess is a fairy?”

“Should she be here?” the zombie asked.

“Ignore her for now. Gravia has a barrier to keep vampires and fairies out. How did you manage to get an entire network up and running within the city?”

“Nothing is truly invincible. You would know that, wouldn’t you? The world will not allow it. A balance must be kept. The world knows. The world understands,” the zombie said with a smile.

With a sigh, I stood up. “Daggerless, keep the fairy locked up. Don’t let her out of her prison or her body. And find someone to clean this mess up.”

“Wait. What about the interrogation? We’ve barely gotten anything from the demon-... fairy, whatever!” Kendra pointed out.

“The information should suffice for now. We need some time for the fairy to get used to her new body and get some rest. Besides, we need to deal with Lard’s end first. Speaking of which…” I exited the room with Kendra and found Lard, accompanied by Horatio. The vampire handed me a stack of paper to which I promptly handed it to Kendra.

“I, Vakasa of the Darkness, have found out this much about Senator Terebnis Gloomus Darkius’ network!” Lard declared.

“What about the shade-like?” I asked.

“With my ingenuity, I, Vakasa of the Darkness, simply said that I, as Senator Terebnis Gloomus Darkius, had a stomach ache, thus I, as Senator Terebnis Gloomus Darkius, shall spend an extended period of time in the toilet!”

“In all your ingenuity, you didn’t realize shades don’t need to use the toilet, right?” I retorted.

“Oh crap! I-I… I need to get back! Hopefully my cover’s not blown yet!” Lard panicked and left with Horatio in tow.

“What does Lard’s scribblings say?” I asked Kendra while she looked through the report.

“The education bureau isn’t actually under Terebnis’ control. It’s under the demons’!” Kendra gasped. “We could attempt to wrestle control from the demons and gain another major supporter for the election!”

“Is that it?”

Kendra nodded as she flipped through the stack. “So far, yeah. I’m surprised that guy managed to get this much information already.”

“Good. Then our next target will be the education bureau. While we’re at it, start funneling support and resources from Terebnis to our side in secret. With Terebnis’ supporters, we should have a fighting chance against that monster Particia,” I dictated.

“Understood! But, how are we going to go about taking over the education bureau?”

“Fairies operate inside stolen bodies. Needless to say, ghosts and spectres don’t have a body to be snatched,” I explained.

“Wait. But the education bureau is mostly occupied by them,” Kendra observed as she scanned through the report regarding the Educational Bureau of Gravia. I stopped her when I pointed at a critical piece of information written on the stack of paper. “The head advisor?”

“Look over his details.”

Kendra slowly read out the personal information of the education bureau’s head advisor. “Burmlin Yuvez. Age 84. Gender Male. Race… Undead Grand Slug.”

“Right on the mark. He’s most likely the fairy’s host. If not, we can easily go down the list from him. The bureau’s not exactly filled with ghosts, but there’s not many non-spectrals working there either,” I said. “The biggest problem would be getting near the education bureau without alerting them. They’re wary enough that they kidnapped Zoweer on the spot.”

Kendra suddenly gasped as an idea popped into her head. “I can do it! I can infiltrate and get the demon for you!”

“You? I’m sure everyone knows-”

“No! Not even Particia’s group’s aware of my existence until recently!” Kendra declared proudly.

“What? Why’s that?” I asked.

She turned her head and waved her hand as she muttered, “D-Don’t mind the trivialities…”

After some deliberation, I nodded. “Alright. This might as well be a test of your skills. Just remember, if you mess up once, we might blow the chance to secure the support of one of the few remaining neutral entities in Gravia.”