Their eyes darted between the kukri and the other. Yet neither of them moved toward it. Instead, they turned their gazes toward Aiden.

It wasn’t difficult to know what they were thinking. He was alone, and there were two of them. That too with a weapon. They could just kill Aiden and leave.

After receiving the ultimatum between the two punishments, the two would naturally pick the third option.

Meanwhile, Aiden just leaned back in his ghoul-made seat and said nothing. There were over fifty ghouls in the basement.

Every single one of them could easily rip their limbs off, yet the fools thought Aiden was the helpless one there. They even forgot how moments ago, he had lifted both of them like they weighed nothing.

"Two choices," Aiden reminded them again, buying another kukri, just to snap it in half, and throwing the pieces at them. "If you don’t want me to pick a third option."

The first man who had pushed Lily moved first. He reached down and grabbed the kukri by the handle and shoved it handle-first toward the second man.

"Take it, Bret!" he said. "You don’t want your sister to be without children, do you—?"

"I’m not taking it," Bret snapped back. "You bastard, you pushed the girl. A monster like you doesn’t deserve to have children either way!"

"I said, take it!"

"And I said I’m not taking it!"

The two of them stood there, pushing the kukri back and forth between each other’s hands. Bret shoved it into Cole’s palm. Cole closed his fingers around the blade and shoved it back.

This time, instead of pushing it back, Bret smirked and pulled the handle. Cole was holding the blade tightly and didn’t expect him to pull the kukri.

A deep gash formed in Cole’s palms, blood immediately spurting out of it.

"I told you, just do it obediently, but you didn’t listen," he said and ran at the nearest pillar. "Now you can’t even jack off, so why not just chop the useless thing off?"

He covered the distance in four strides and hit the pillar with the side of his head. However, surviving instincts kicked in, and the hit wasn’t even strong enough to draw blood.

Lily had hit her head with even more force, and seeing how Bret was trying to half-ass his punishment, Aiden frowned and was about to bash the fucker’s head into the pillar himself when someone else acted.

Cole looked at the kukri in his own hand and then at the unsteady Bret and made his decision.

"Like hell will I pay for your mistake!" he roared, charging at Bret.

As soon as he got closer, he drove his knee upward with everything he had, hitting Bret’s crotch. The latter folded in half like a piece of paper.

He went down sideways and hit the floor, both his hands shot towards his crotch, bringing his knees towards his chest in a fetal position.

Cole stood over him, still holding the kukri. For a moment, he felt remorse for what he was about to do, but that feeling didn’t last for long. If it wasn’t for Bret, they wouldn’t have ended in such a mess in the first place.

With that thought in his head, Cole pinned one of Bret’s legs sideways and raised the kukri over his head.

"NO! DON’T!" Bret yelled, but his shout turned into a cry as Cole brought down the kukri between his legs over and over.

Bret’s trousers turned crimson like a stain spreading outward. The blood seeped through his clothes and onto the floor as he kept crying.

Cole looked down at him, then at the bloodied kukri in his hands, and laughed like a maniac.

He kept laughing as he turned to face the pillar and ran towards it like a mad bull.

His head bounced off the concrete, and he staggered back two steps, and then lurched forward and ran into another pillar. He kept laughing and biting his head over and over again.

By the fourth one, the laughing had stopped, and he slumped to the ground. He sat at the base of it with his back against the concrete, his head lolling forward as blood gushed out of his head.

The basement was quiet except for Bret’s crying from the floor. Once the two had executed their punishment, Aiden stood up.

He walked to Cole first and pushed him with his leg. He didn’t even have the strength to resist the soft push, and his head hit the floor. However, Aiden’s anger didn’t subside, not even one bit. So he turned and looked at one of the ghouls and nodded at Cole.

The ghoul understood and forced Cole’s legs apart like Cole had done to Bret, and leaned in, its mouth open, showing off the razor-sharp teeth.

Cole’s scream was the loudest sound in the basement as the ghoul’s teeth clamped shut on his crotch. He was on his back, tears flowing down his face, as he didn’t even have the strength to squirm anymore. He could only lie there staring at the ceiling.

"Not enough," Aiden muttered, turning to Bret.

Bret had seen what happened to Cole. Despite the fact that he was already dealing with a significant personal situation, his eyes had gone very wide as he tried to crawl backward along the floor using his elbows.

He just wanted to escape, even if he had to use his teeth for it. Unfortunately, his escape route got cut off by another ghoul.

A second ghoul stepped in front of him.

"No... No! Please, no!"

Ignoring the man’s pleas, the ghoul reached down and picked him up on his shoulder like he was carrying a piece of wood and walked to the nearest pillar.

The ghoul looked at Aiden and then ran with all its strength, slamming Bret’s head against the pillar with enough force to crack it.

The damage Bret’s head received was even more severe from the sound Cole’s, because Cole had been doing it himself with some degree of control, even in his lucid state, but the ghoul didn’t.

The immense pain blinded Bret, but the ghoul wasn’t done. It walked from pillar to pillar, forcing Bret’s head into each one.

The ghoul finished the circuit and came back and set Bret down on the floor in front of Aiden. Then it stepped back and returned to the farming area and resumed what it had been doing before.

Both culprits were laid across each other. Aiden looked at both of them for a moment. Then he pulled out his system interface and sent a message to Daniel Cho, since Jewell was busy taking care of Lily. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

Keep both of them alive until Jewell is free. Then tell him to heal them.

He put the interface away and looked down at the two men on the cold basement floor.

Aiden crouched down between the two of them.

There was no doubt that their minds had been scrambled from all the hits they took. As for their crotches, those were useless either way. At least this way the ghouls would have something to eat.

"Since you like mutts so much," he repeated the words. "Now you can live like them. Neutered and mindless."

After saying that, he stood up, straightened his clothes, and left.