The camera panned again, fixing its gaze upon the fancy rat.
The "man" was now writhing frantically on the cramped metal rack, his claws scraping against the stainless steel base with a bone-chilling screech.
"Let me out!!!"
"Who are you?! What have you done to me!!"
His voice was shredded, collapsing into a state of total loss of control.
But the only response—
Was the cold gleam of the instruments.
And the silent operation of the Divine Rules.
That grand, calm voice rang out once more:
"Shall the 'Punishment' be executed immediately?"
The former fancy rat, now wearing Sato's skin, stood tall, looking down at "himself" on the lab table.
"He" stared at the body that once belonged to him—now restored to perfection by divine power—his eyes filled with the absurdity of the moment.
"He" did not answer right away.
He just watched. He watched that "self", watched those eyes that were only now learning the meaning of terror.
Time seemed to stretch thin.
It was as if She were giving "him" a chance.
—To choose forgiveness.
Or to choose replication.
After a long silence, "he" nodded.
"Execution permitted."
"His" voice was still somewhat raw, but it was as cold as ancient snow in an ice cellar.
In the next instant—
The air felt as if a switch had been flipped.
The "man's" throat vibrated, his volume continuing to spiral upward.
"Let me out!!!"
"This is a crime!! This is an illegal experiment!!!"
"I will sue you!! Every last one of you will—"
Before the threat could be finished, countless invisible hands seemed to emerge from the void.
Those No. 11 scalpels, long-handled tweezers, and hemostats that "he" had personally polished to a shine—
these "tools of torture", stained with the blood of countless wronged souls—came to life.
They carved pale arcs of light beneath the shadowless lamp.
No anesthesia. No hesitation.
The scalpel fell vertically.
Pshhh—the dull sound of a blade slicing through resilient flesh.
Through the high-definition audio of the global broadcast, the sound was so clear it made the skin on the back of billions of necks crawl instantly.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAGH—!!!"
The scream was no longer a monotonous squeak.
It was overlaid with the heart-wrenching, blood-flecked wail of a grown man.
In this moment, that searing pain pierced through the screens, stabbing accurately into the nerves of every single viewer.
The bullet chat lost all control:
—[Madness! This is literally being flayed alive... I can feel the pain through the screen.]
—[Look at the rat's eyes... he's looking at the camera, he's looking at us!]
—[Look at the logbook on the desk! It says he used to skip anesthesia just to test pain thresholds... this is Karma.]
In the frame, the "New Sato" gripped a Montblanc fountain pen with stiff fingers, his knuckles turning white from the force.
"He" stood by the lab table and scrawled a line of crooked words across the logbook, the nib tearing the expensive paper:
"Experimental Record: Subject reaction... extremely 'lively'. Frequency of screams... identical to when 'I' was cut open back then."
"He" muttered to himself while writing.
His tone was as flat as a weather report, yet it carried a deathly chill that froze the marrow.
The "man" on the lab table completely broke down. Under the weight of extreme agony, "its" body curled into a ball, and the voice took on a sobbing tone:
"Please... stop... I was wrong... I truly know I was wrong now..."
"AAAAAAGH—!!!"
In the global live room, the screen emitted a piercing "squeak", but under the influence of divine power, the sound echoing in the eardrums of billions was Sato's own heart-shredding human voice.
This dislocation of sight and sound was like a heavy sledgehammer, smashing directly through the psychological defenses of the audience.
The chat exploded.
—[Is this real or fake?!]
—[It's an act, right?!]
—[That voice... his vocal cords sound like they're ripping apart. You can't act that!!]
—[What he just said... that was Green Pheasant Country dialect, wasn't it?]
—[Wait... that man... I think I've seen him before...]
—[Look, look at what the 'Rat Sato' is writing, that hatred is almost burning through the screen...]
In the frame, the "New Sato" stopped writing. His nostrils flared nervously a few times, as if he were still getting used to the way this body processed scents.
"He" stared at those cursed words, his hand trembling slightly. Then, with a sudden burst of force, he continued to write:
"Pain Feedback: S-Rank. Subject Consciousness: Extremely Lucid. Note: Insertion depth matches 'my' original wounds down to the millimeter."
"He" paused, as if caught in a memory, his hand still shaking.
Then, "he" forced himself to keep writing.
"He" had inherited Sato's memories and knowledge; he could hold a pen, he could think.
But the handwriting was slanted and distorted, carrying the clumsy ferocity of a wild beast wielding the tools of civilization for the first time.
On the table, the "man" lost control of his functions.
Foul-smelling urine mixed with dark red blood, trickling slowly down the cold metal groove and hitting the floor with a rhythmic tap, tap.
"No additional deviation."
"No... don't... please... I was wrong..."
"I won't do it... I'll never do it again..."
"Please... stop..."
The voice shifted—from cursing to pleading.
From rage to terror.
From high-and-mighty to the depths of the mud.
The "god" who once presided over life and death in this lab was now curled like trash in his own waste.
Beyond the screens—
Countless people fell into a heavy silence.
Everyone finally understood the essence of this broadcast:
This wasn't a random act of abuse.
This was a cross-species "Judgment", accurate down to the final second.
Whatever he had done to it, was now being done back to him.
It wasn't a simple "sentence"—it was a micro-precise "Replication".
Every angle of the needle's entry, every cold word recorded, even the slight, contemptuous breath Sato had taken while watching years ago—
it was all being returned, item by item.
Time was stretched to infinity by the screams.
Only when the "man" on the table had gone completely hoarse, his eyes as hollow as a dead fish, and his very instinct to beg for mercy had nearly withered away, did the levitating instruments finally come to a halt.
A deathly stillness reclaimed the laboratory.
The blood-stained "man" lay slumped in the filth.
"It" felt no relief at having survived; instead, there was only a desperate, pleading longing for the end.
"It" wanted to die. It wanted the heart inside this broken, tiny rodent body to stop beating immediately.
But what came for "it" was not death.
It was—a Refresh.
Under the gaze of billions, the mangled fancy rat in the frame began to twist and heal in a grotesque fashion.
The dark red blood evaporated into thin air; the snapped bones reconnected with a dense, crackling sound.
In a mere instant.
Appearing before the camera was a "new" test subject—fur clean, body intact, but eyes filled with absolute, peak terror.
The bullet chat stuttered to a halt.
—[F**... the wounds are gone???]
—[It's not CGI! Look at his eyes, he's still the same Rat-Sato from a moment ago!]
—[No, they aren't going to do it again, are they?! Does this mean... as long as the debt isn't paid, he has to keep 'refreshing' and starting over?]
—[No, wait... look, it's different now, this is...]
"He" stood there, looking at the being on the table for a long, long time. Finally, he let out a sigh of profound relief.
Then, he whispered:
"So... that's how it is."
"He" set down the logbook and walked away.
"He" no longer had any interest in the images that followed.
Because the punishments to come no longer needed "his" resentment as fuel. They were driven by—Them.
The Great Beast God had not descended a one-time venting of rage, but a Karma carved into the very marrow of the soul.
"He", as the Victim, had settled his accounts. But "Sato", as the Perpetrator, was only beginning to pay for his sins.
A new round of torture began without warning.
The same coldness. The same precision.
But "Sato" discovered with horror that even though his body had been restored, the phantom pains of being sliced open were stacking up at his nerve endings, becoming clearer and more agonizing with every cycle.
People all over the world wanted to turn off their phones, to look away, but they found their eyes pinned to the screens by a Great Power.
In this moment, a suffocating realization surfaced in everyone's mind:
—This was not a one-time trial. This was a reckoning of multiple karmic debts.
For every single living creature "it" had ever tortured to death, "it" would have to die and be reborn in this tiny body that many times.
"It" would have to experience every ounce of agony "it" had ever inflicted.
"It" could not escape.
The souls "it" once dismissed as "consumables" were now lined up at the gates of Hell, waiting for "it".
In the shadows where the camera could not reach, the "New Sato" leaned against the desk, his fingers clawing spasmodically into the drawer.
"He" rummaged through the drawer, pulling out bank cards, thick stacks of cash, and a dark red passport.
His movements still retained a beast-like nervousness—his fingertips habitually scraped against the paper documents as if identifying unfamiliar prey.
"He" took everything that belonged to the "man" and did not look back.
But a second before stepping out the door, "he" froze.
In that instant, a struggle surfaced in his eyes that did not belong to a "test subject".
It was a memory buried deep beneath iron cages, needles, and the stench of chemicals—a memory so faint it was almost transparent.
It was a small strawberry cracker under the setting sun; a voice, slightly scolding yet gentle, calling out a name—the true name he had when he was a fancy rat.
"...Must go back."
"He" whispered to the empty air. The voice was as raspy as sandpaper, yet it held a stubbornness that bordered on the sacred.
Outside the window, the evening glow smeared the horizon like thick, clotted blood.
For an entire day, billions of people across the globe had been frozen before their screens, their minds stretched to the breaking point by the gory spectacle of the torture.
The screens began to dim slowly, and several lines of bone-white text emerged like an epitaph:
[Case No. 1: Execution Complete]
[Subject Username: No. 11 Scalpel (Formerly Human)]
[Victim Record: 374 lives]
[Non-scientific Slaughter Record: 212 lives]
[Current Progress: 212 / 212]
[Status: Zero-Deviation Replication]
—
[Next Target: Loading...]
The moment the screens went pitch black, the world did not immediately erupt in screams.
People discovered with horror that their phones were ice-cold, batteries drained, and office computers were emitting the smell of burnt plastic from overloading.
Yet, until that moment, no one had noticed.
Then came the overwhelming hunger, the parched thirst, and the foul stench of incontinence caused by extreme stress, all hitting at once like a tidal wave alongside violent dizziness.
People began to vomit, to collapse, to shudder violently in the deathly silence of their returning senses.
No one cheered for the victory of justice.
Because everyone realized in their hearts:
—This was only the first one, and the list was very long.
Under the neon lights, a young woman stood lost on the street.
Tears soaked her collar as she stared fixedly at the now-blackened mall screen, her voice trembling beyond recognition:
"Was that... Zhizhi?"
The cold wind blew, but no one answered her.
In a far-off corner of the shadows, a figure in a suit—walking with a strange, rhythmic gait—stumbled toward the street.
He paused occasionally to scratch the back of his hand, as if contemplating his next move.