Bellhead wrote: ↑Fri Jan 08, 2021 2:49 am
Eclipse wrote: ↑Fri Jan 08, 2021 2:01 am
So I read TDM, and I really don't see the same sense of brutality there either. He subtly threatened Zen and Natani if they didn't go through with the mission, but we never saw anything that explicitly demonstrated any form of cruelty until this page.
Explicitly, no. But I'd also say that it's not needed, given that Nat and Zen were both in the guild under him. I just skimmed my copy of it, and the most we see of him is his entrance with the briefing, fighting in Nat's head for control, and his fear and anger at Nora.
The most notable bit, I think, is on page 23, when he's in his office musing over his plans right before he starts fighting with Natani for control. It's there that he outright says to himself that he wasn't just going to
threaten to have Natani thrown to his men to be gang-raped if they failed, but fully intends to do it
anyway even after they succeed. Unless, of course, he decides to just take Nat as a sex slave instead. It's not quite as flashy as personally BBQing a disobedient minion, but I'd argue that this not only qualifies as 'cruel', but actually is
more cruel in a way than what he did to Roan. With Roan, at least there's the excuse of disobedience in the code of criminal organizations to try to justify the cruelty. With his intentions towards Natani, there's no excuse at all - it's
pure unjustified self-centered spiteful cruelty, with no justification other than that he simply hates women. Roan was an underling who'd bungled a mission through disobedience. Natani and Zen were underlings who were currently
succeeding in an important mission to steal an incredibly valuable item for him and who had not yet (at the time he was talking) disobeyed him or given him the reasons to hate them that he later had. He simply decided that he wanted to see them suffer on a whim. Any value they might have had as people or to his guild was meaningless next to his desire for personal pleasure and need to inflict pain.
It's not as blatant as what he did to Roan, of course. It was a briefly stated aside that was quickly passed over as the plot rushed on, rather than a big 'wham' moment that everyone gets to dwell on until the next page comes out, and it of course also didn't end up actually happening. But it's at least as big of a window into the sort of horrible cruel person he is, IMO.