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The reason the reapers needed to regrow their servants was two-fold. One, Morgunov hadn't wanted to bother feeding and caring for so many hostages. That was always the trouble with prisons and the like. And two, he'd already played with them a bit over the last month, and none of them had survived it particularly well. Or at all, really.

Apparently, a simple obstacle course was too much for them. Sure, he'd built it out of machines that could analyze their movement patterns, adjust positioning on the fly, and also shred their fleshy bodies into tiny pieces with thousands of soul-strengthened blades and lasers--but c'mon. What sense of accomplishment would they have gotten if he'd gone easy on them?

Plus, it had given him a pretty good measure of their comparative threat levels.

Parsey Boy had done quite well for himself, surviving for six whole minutes. The one who performed the best, however, was Redmond Jules. Which was a bit surprising, because despite carrying the rank of captain general just like Parson, Morgunov had never been particularly impressed by his exploits. Perhaps the lad just had never gotten the opportunity to really shine.

Some folk were like that, after all. Even at this level of strength. Slow and steady climbers. Not given to making big, flashy displays of power. And there was certainly logic in that, too. They would be better poised to take their opponents by surprise at a critical moment, which was no small advantage. It could save their dang life.

But it was just so boring. Strength was meant to be used. To be witnessed. Without grand spectacle, the world would be so much poorer.

Counter-intuitively, though, it made Morgunov want to keep Jules alive. To see what the boy was really made of. And to test out some other stuff on him. Mainly the latter, actually.