Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel - Chapter 714
Chapter 714: Prison (1)
As someone with experience in using a hammer to crush the skulls of others without any warning, I’d argue that each instance of said experience had something in common: an expression.
Huh?
Did I just get hit?
Huh?
I can’t put any strength into my body?
…Huh?
Is this…how I die…?
Like so.
Such a pointless death…?
Crunch!
Most people who got hit in the head by my hammer wore shocked expressions as their eyes sought to discover if this was truly reality or not.
Crunch!
They couldn’t believe the predicament they found themselves in, even as they saw and felt their heads being destroyed in real time.
This guy was probably in even more disbelief than most. His head didn’t get targeted while we were fighting or anything, after all.
“So what? Are you going to harm me? You, with so much to lose?”
Plus, he was even weirdly confident about it. If I’d told him that his head would get smashed in back then, he probably wouldn’t have believed it.
“S-stop! What are you doing?!”
However, this was Rafdonia.
“Baron Yandel is causing another scene!”
A brutal world where one mistake could instantly lead to death.
Yeah, so…
Crunch!
Pay for your misjudgment.
“S-stop him!”
I ignored the knights trying to stop me and continued to hammer down on his head.
Crunch! Crunch!
The members of Orcules watched with wide eyes while the members of our search unit had gone deathly pale. Even so, I continued.
Crunch, crunch, crunch!
Just in case, I slammed down a few more times.
Crunch!
Finally, when the screams quieted to the sound of sludge being smacked, I felt that familiar, particular feeling flow through my hands and allowed myself to be moved away by the strength of the soldiers.
“Lord Baron… Just what is this?”
Knight Gramps came up to me with a conflicted expression without bothering to confirm the status of the vice-captain. He knew from his own extensive experience that when someone’s head was in that state, even the most talented of priests wouldn’t be able to do a thing.
“You have killed a prisoner, and one of the most important prisoners at that,” he continued. “Depending on how one looks at it, this could be considered treason.”
“Ah, sorry. He insulted me, and I couldn’t hold back myself.”
“Insulted you…?”
“He sneered at me and called me a coward.”
“Is that true?” Knight Gramps asked for confirmation from the knight standing near me. The knight looked hesitant at first before telling the truth.
“He didn’t say coward, just…that unlike what he looked like, he was a very logical—”
Okay, just there.
“That’s calling me a coward!” I shouted in mock rage.
Knight Gramps pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s fine. The reason does not matter.”
“Oh, are you saying you’ll let this go?”
“It doesn’t matter if I let this go or not. As I told you before, I must take responsibility for this. It’s clear that the marquess, who is already furious with you, will try to drag you down because of this ‘mistake.’”
Despite the surface-level meaning of his words, Knight Gramps seemed more concerned with what he would say to the marquess rather than with finding fault in my actions. In fact, if anything, it seemed like his opinion of me had only improved.
“However, one thing is now clear to me.” When I looked at him questioningly, he said, “To be honest, I was worried since you are a nonhuman, but now, I do not doubt your patriotic spirit.”
Ah, did he assume I killed him for the good of the kingdom?
I didn’t know, but one thing was clear to me too.
“While it is true that the marquess has a firm grip on the nation, I will try to use my strength for you. Do not worry too much. Patriots like you are the reason this nation still stands.”
Knight Gramps didn’t seem to like that the marquess was controlling the kingdom as a proxy.
Looks like I stumbled my way into getting a reliable ally. Maybe this incident today will end without much trouble, I thought, flicking the blood and flesh off my hammer.
But then, the knight that had been collecting the corpse quickly ran over and relayed a shocking piece of news.
“C-Captain! H-he’s still alive!”
“Huh?”
“Demon Eyes, Banozant—he is still alive!”
Huh? What the hell?
“Is that true?!”
He…survived that?
***
There were sometimes moments like this in shows and movies. The moment someone thinks, Is it dead? and the enemy that was thought to be deceased would suddenly get up as if nothing was wrong and power up into a second phase.
The situation this time was a little different, of course. Rather than powering up and charging me, the vice-captain was just throwing up blood and writhing on the ground in pain, just like someone who had barely managed to return to life.
Naturally, there was no second phase. The only difference was that Knight Gramps stood in front of me just in case I caused another scene.
“Stop there… I will cut you down if you take another step forward. This is for you.”
I sighed inwardly. What should I do?
Knight Gramps took my moment of hesitation to give a signal with his eyes, and the other knights quickly put the vice-captain on the carriage before heading off. By the time I realized what happened, it was already too late for my slow body to chase after him.
Damn it.
In the end, I decided to just give up.
I had done enough. The fact that he survived after being pummeled to that state wasn’t because I was weak, but because he was strong. That was the right mindset to have.
However, I was curious about one thing.
“How the hell did he survive?” I demanded.
“I will relay that information if we learn it in the follow-up investigation. So stay here, calm down, and then return to the military command. I will put in a word for you to the marquess.”
Okay, so this Knight Gramps didn’t know how the vice-captain survived either. I mean, it was obvious it was with the help of either an item or an essence.
Since he told me he’d tell me later, I can just wait for that to come.
“I truly hope that when we meet again, it is after you have regained your bearings.”
With that, Knight Gramps left, and I took a moment to collect my thoughts in the marquess’s garden before looking through the mansion one last time. Specifically, I carefully studied the hiding hole the Noarkans had been in.
So this is what it looks like.
If the secret office was made for getting work done, the hole they were hiding in was purely for taking refuge. It was something like a panic room one would see in those foreign mansions, built in case someone needed to hide from robbers.
It’s nothing special…
After taking a quick look inside, I told the soldiers to investigate the rest of the mansion before leaving with the unit members and heading to the palace.
“The supreme commander has called for you.”
As expected, I was summoned immediately upon returning.
“Everyone else may leave.”
“But—”
“That’s quite enough. Don’t make me repeat myself.”
“Understood.”
The marquess made our discussion into a private meeting by sending out all the guard knights.
I took a seat, and the marquess glared at me for a moment before speaking.
“So… You really found them while searching my house?”
“I got lucky.”
Although I was being 100 percent truthful, the marquess didn’t seem to believe me.
“Where did you get the information? Was the Corpse Collector really your informant?”
“I only said that to buy time.”
I wasn’t lying this time either, but the marquess showed no signs of even attempting to take me seriously. He just tried to sound out which parts of my sentence were true and which weren’t.
I mean, if you weren’t going to believe me in the first place, why even ask? Making me talk for no reason, tsk.
I didn’t plan on wasting time on a useless back-and-forth, so I jumped immediately into the heart of the issue. “That’s that, so keep your promise. I’ve drawn out the Noarkans that were hiding in the city like you asked me to. The vice-captain of Orcules was even among them. Haven’t I accomplished the task and even exceeded it at this point?”
“Are you talking about that Demon Eyes whom you tried to kill in that ambush?”
I paused. “It was an accident.”
“Hmm, even if you say that, there are motives that could be logically deduced from your actions. Such as having to ‘shut him up’…”
Well, if that was how he was going to speak, then even I couldn’t stand my ground and wait it out.
I shouldn’t be saying this as a tank, but sometimes, the best defense was a good offense.
“Well, if we’re looking at it like that, aren’t you the most suspicious?” I shot back. The marquess only sent me a dubious look. “I might have smashed open the vice-captain’s skull, but you were the one with the special forces of Noark hidden away in your mansion. That’s way more suspicious.”
I didn’t just pull that out in an attempt to attack him. It was a genuine point of suspicion for me. At first, I had thought the Noarkans were hiding in the mansion without knowing who the marquess really was…
“Sure. We surrender.”
But no matter how I thought about it, the vice-captain could only have made that decision if he was backed by someone with a position within the palace.
Given the circumstances, the marquess was the most likely suspect.
After a long pause, the marquess said, “I didn’t hide them.”
“So what happened to them?”
“They are currently being held in the underground prisons of the palace. The members from the Department of Intelligence will soon conduct a high-intensity interrogation.”
“Hmm… Is that so?”
However, I decided to end the conversation there and return to the previous topic.
“Anyway, I’ve kept your promise, so send me to District Seven.”
“I’m…afraid that won’t be impossible.”
“Why not?”
“Do not misunderstand. I’m not saying I cannot send you there ever.”
“Then tell me why exactly. So that I can accept it.”
“You searching my home? Since you produced satisfactory results comparable to the gravity of that decision, I can let that be. However, the fact that you tried to kill an important prisoner in front of everyone is a bit of a different matter.”
To put it simply, he was going to hand out both reward and punishment.
“I told you to tell me exact details. So, what are you going to do?”
“Since Sir Kalitumur has put in a word for you as well, I won’t ask a lot of you. Think about it as keeping the order of the military spirit and serving a punishment that lasts only two days.”
I asked what the punishment would be, and the marquess told me it would be imprisonment. However, he convinced me that the prison would have better facilities than most inns, as I would serve my sentence in the prison on the first underground floor of the palace where nobles were held.
The environment wasn’t an issue, anyway. The important thing was the time, and the most important thing was the marquess’s intent.
Two days…
Hah, what could I do? Without this guy’s permission, I could never enter District Seven.
“This is my last offer, and there will be no compromise. Even if you resort to deserting.”
This was the only option I had to legally make it back to District Seven.
After a moment of thought, I came to a decision.
If I deserted here or tried to fight the punishment, my situation could worsen. He even told me I didn’t need to have shackles on me while I stayed. If things started to go sideways, I could break through the iron bars and just escape.
Yeah, so…
“Two days. Just for two days.”
“Good choice.”
I would observe the situation for now.
The marquess, this bastard is really too suspicious.
I had no intention of letting everything according to his whims.
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