Rundstedt felt the same unrelenting pain in his kidneys, and a flicker of disappointment crossed his eyes.
"Heh... this is the fate none of us can escape, Charns," Rundstedt said with a self-mocking smile.
Rundstedt walked into another secret underground holding room, where five agents were brutally torturing two enemy soldiers.
"Director." The five agents immediately saluted when they saw Rundstedt enter.
"Have they talked?" Rundstedt took out a cigar, and an agent beside him produced a lighter to light it for him.
"No. They're incredibly tough," the interrogator said.
Rundstedt looked at the two soldiers, who were now a horrific sight. Their hair had been torn away with their scalps, leaving blood streaming down their heads. One had even had an eye gouged out. All ten fingers on each man's hands had been chopped off, and the flesh on their thighs had been scraped away until only bone remained.
Clark glared with his one bloodshot eye, the other socket empty. He looked utterly horrifying, yet even that lone eye remained resolute and unyielding.
Since the Survey Corps' reforms, all recruits had gone to Erwin's Eldia Royal Military Academy to study, with one class admitted each year. He had been the top graduate of the 106th Class. His Vertical Maneuvering Equipment scores ranked fifth in the Survey Corps' history, behind Chen Si, Levi, Mikasa, and Yasuo. He was also the finest marksman in the academy's history.
A year earlier, he had been the squad leader in Mikasa's special training class. He was one of the few soldiers in the Survey Corps who secretly loved her. Beautiful as she was, her strictness and ruthlessness intimidated countless men. Everyone knew that Mikasa's tenderness belonged to that man alone.
He had been captured by the Marley Special Operations Bureau because an Eldia child