Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel - Chapter 731
Chapter 731: Traitor (5)
Unfortunately, my conversation with Ricardo Lüchenprague ended quite abruptly.
“Don’t think I’ll let you die an easy death.”
After one final insult, he sent over no more responses. I wondered if he might be ignoring me so as to not feed my trolling, but that didn’t seem to be the case either.
Maybe he just broke his communication device because he got so angry.
Yeah, this was the most likely scenario I could think of. The anger in his voice was genuine and not something that could come out of acting.
Oh, and I had more proof for my assumption as well. I mean, the guy was once known as the Sword Master and was now leading a super-famous terrorist organization named Orcules. Naturally, with how strong he was…
People of his station all think the same way.
He was the exact opposite of an iron hand in a velvet glove.
People like him were defenseless in the face of insults. They’d never met anyone who acted up against them, after all.
Baekho Lee, of course, was an exception. Although he was one of the powerhouses of this era, he was still Korean like me.
Maybe he’s quaking in anger as he runs over to me?
Of course, that was just wishful thinking. I couldn’t be sure of it.
But that didn’t have to mean everything I did was for nothing. I was at least able to get him to talk to me, which meant Amelia should have been able to run just that little bit farther away from him.
Bzzt!
The crystal suddenly crackled with static, and then a familiar voice came through.
The prime minister…?
He was talking in that military code, though, so I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I signaled to Vivian to hurry up and translate it for me, and she went to work.
“It’s the prime minister,” she confirmed after listening in. “He’s telling all the commanders to get off the existing communication lines.”
Hmm, then that was probably the end of our wiretapping adventures.
I wasn’t too disappointed, as honestly, I’d expected as much to happen from the moment I began drawing their aggro. However, the messages that came right after caught my interest.
“Bret chie, Saella Sa.”
“Tiri bi, Saella Sa.”
“Tiri ay, Saella Sa.”
Curious, I asked, “What are they all saying?”
“It’s just simple protocol. They’re saying their area name and disconnecting from the line…”
“Should we leave too, then?” Raven questioned. “I don’t think we’ll get anything useful just by staying here, and the number of people connected to the communications network is rapidly decreasing…”
“No, stay connected. Just in case,” I ordered.
Vivian looked at me in question, but she obliged me without saying another word.
“It’s gone quiet.”
“There are only two people connected to the communications network now.”
That was the status update sometime later. It meant that there was one other person other than us who was still connected.
“Give it here.” I took the radio from Vivian again.
“Eh? What are you going to do?”
“I think it’s time he starts talking.”
“Who are you talking about?”
The moment the person with the authority to connect to the communications network died, they would immediately be kicked from the network to preserve its security, whether or not the crystal was damaged in the process. However, despite that, there was still one person left.
What did that mean?
It’s obvious who’s left.
And so, after a while of it being just the two of us connected to the network, I heard something through the radio crystal.
“Tsk.”
A light click of the tongue that carried the weight of many different thoughts.
“It’s been a while, Prime Minister,” I greeted before he got the chance to formally reveal his identity. “Oh, but I guess you’re not the prime minister anymore, huh? The leader of the traitors, then?”
Surprisingly enough, the other side clocked the tone of the conversation and jumped right in. “Quite a while, indeed. And for you to cause such a scene as soon as you reappear—how very like you.”
He was talking like we were friends who were catching up after a few days of silence.
Ah, I guess that is what we are.
I did have similar conversations with the prime minister until just before I was imprisoned. Well, with the former prime minister of Rafdonia, I should say.
“A bit ironic for you to be talking about causing a scene,” I countered.
“Hmm, I suppose that is true. Just this once.”
Although we were enemies, I couldn’t help but smirk. Even so, we didn’t have time to engage in this small talk.
“Why?”
“Looking for the answer first as always,” he commented instead of answering.
“I don’t enjoy wasting time.”
“You cannot approach the answer in that way. Answers are things that you can only obtain after taking the proper amount of time to scout and hunt for them, just like those treasures hidden deep within the labyrinth.”
Huh. Maybe it was just because he was older than me, but his words seemed to contain a nugget of wisdom.
“The hell are you talking about?” I spat anyway. “You’ve never been inside the labyrinth in your life.”
The things he said only sounded cool if some experienced adventurer were the one saying it. Like me, for example.
“I’ll be frank with this,” he said.
“Why? Are you going to try and win me over?”
He didn’t accept or deny it, instead just forging ahead and laying out the conditions like an impatient businessman.
“I will guarantee the unconditional safety of your allies.”
“Why should I trust the one who raised his sword against us?”
“In truth, I have already given out that order to all the soldiers. That Bjorn Yandel’s allies should be ‘captured alive’ as their highest priority.”
I glanced at Vivian standing next to me to see if he was telling the truth or not, and she nodded.
“For some reason, you were always on my mind,” he admitted. “So I thought I could use your allies if I kept them alive.”
Hmm. It didn’t feel great for my enemy to be overpraising me like this.
Still, it helped me realize that none of my allies had been captured by the traitors yet. If they had been, he wouldn’t have tried to appease me but would’ve begun with threats.
“So, what is your answer?”
I noticed Astarota’s eyes shoot to me at the marquess’s question. He made no move to interrupt and instead was just observing what choice I would make.
I sighed. The answer was already decided.
“I refuse.”
“Why?”
Just like what I had done to him earlier, the marquess immediately questioned my answer. However, I didn’t plan on rambling on like the marquess had.
I’d been holding on to these words for so long, been waiting for this day to come.
“Because I made up my mind at Ice Rock. That I’d rip off the heads of every bastard who was behind that atrocity.”
Despite my appearance, I didn’t have that big of a heart. Never once had I erased a name from my death list.
A moment of silence passed before the marquess continued with a somewhat disappointed tone.
“Hmm… I see. We got off on the wrong foot from the start.”
It wasn’t him making excuses or trying to rationalize it but just self-reflection on his part.
I could hear a hint of regret in his voice, and it pissed me off for some reason. If he was just going to regret it in the end anyway, it would’ve been better if he hadn’t done it at all.
“As you know, you’re the one who took that first step.”
Although my response came out far more antagonistically than I anticipated, the marquess barely reacted, instead only offering a small chuckle. “Hah, I’m used to it at this point. My life is like a spool of string that continues to tangle itself no matter how hard I try to straighten it.”
Was he taking time to look back on his life? I probably would too if I were fighting the palace.
In any case, talking any further would be unproductive, so I asked one last thing.
“What happened to Ragna Peprok?”
In a sense, this could be the most personal question of all. However, he kindly answered it.
“That child is sleeping, ignorant to all the happenings here, and in the safest place this world has to offer. When she awakens, things will have come to an end one way or another.”
“The safest place in the world… I don’t know much, but it looks like the way you treat her is completely different to your son.”
“Shouldn’t you know why? There is only one reason it could be.”
Well, that was true. The marquess’s son was an evil spirit. That was also why the marquess had called for Ragna, who had been wasting her life away inside the library.
Oh, I nearly forgot to ask.
“Those pictures in that hidden room of your office—is the woman in there Ragna’s mother?”
“Yes. She was a kind woman.”
Why was this guy answering all my questions? I wondered. However, the Q&A session then ended there, unfortunately.
“In any case, the situation has become clear,” he declared.
“You’re saying it hasn’t been until now?”
“Haha, still, this means a lot to me. Those thoughts of ‘what if’… Those thoughts have made me who I am today.”
Although I could dismiss those words as the ramblings of an old man, I felt wary. They sounded like the words of someone on the cusp of enlightenment.
“As soon as this conversation ends,” he continued, “I will withdraw the live capture order from all forces and place an extermination order instead.”
It felt as if the chains of fate were starting to tighten.
“After that, any one of those precious allies of yours could die. No, they will die. I will make sure of that.”
“If you’re trying to threaten me, I think you did it in the wrong order.”
“That is to be expected. I wasn’t threatening you,” he said, as if he were just stating the obvious. “I only wished to inform you that I am not so different from you after all.”
Paradoxically, that was exactly what made me feel as if I’d been bested by his words for the first time in my life.
“Having to smile in front of brutes like you—do you have any idea how hard that is to do?” When I didn’t respond, he added, “You must feel it as well. You must feel my pain.”
Hah, I never expected him to have this side to him.
With that one-liner, my connection to the marquess was cut.
“He’s gone…”
After confirming that there was only one person connected to the communications network, I threw the useless radio crystal into the burning building.
“Don’t mind his words too much. They’re just the curses of a traitor,” Astarota consoled. “You’ve made the right decision.”
The right decision…
Yeah, I probably had. If I’d gone over to the marquess’s side, we might’ve come out of the war with no fatalities, but an even greater storm would’ve come for me after the war was over.
“Then can you now at least tell me the reason the marquess started this war?”
“I cannot. His Majesty has told you to hear it from the man himself.”
I sighed. This guy was driving me nuts. It wasn’t like we were playing a game where every single piece of information needed to be unveiled through exploration.
Oh… I guess that is what this is.
In my heart of hearts, I carved the truth: Dungeon and Stone was a moronic, trash game.
“A lot of people have already gathered here,” Astarota mumbled to himself as he looked around.
In other words, we should get moving.
With that, I stowed away my thoughts about the prime minister and analyzed my current situation.
We were in a burning city. The soldiers had been given an order to “not approach” and were maintaining a set distance from us, and their numbers continued to increase as time went by.
And I don’t know if Lüchenprague is coming after me or not.
I wasn’t sure if any of my clan members hiding in the holy land or Amelia in District 4 were safe or not. To make matters worse, the marquess suddenly had a moment of enlightenment and declared that he would kill all my allies.
An evil spirit from another world, —, after losing three of his allies, will realize the path he must take.
I wasn’t even sure if the event I’d read about in the records would come about during this war or not. And that wasn’t all.
“Arua Raven! That former wizard ally of yours is the traitor!”
Vivian also told me that on the day the imperial capital was burning, the person who would betray me was Raven.
Why can’t I just piece together this puzzle?
I tried to summarize all the information I had and move on, but I couldn’t collect my thoughts at all. It felt like my head was going to burst. There were too many things I needed to keep track of. I started to wish I could return to my life in the past when I could just enter the labyrinth and spend every day not thinking.
Ba-dump!
My stress increased, causing my heart to squeeze.
However, that was why I emptied my mind even more, just like a barbarian.
It’ll work out in the end…
Besides, the marquess had already said so. After getting lost for so long, the only thing one could find in the end was the answer. So I just needed to stay present and work to overcome it.
“Behel—LAAAAA!”
Just like in the past, when all I had was this body of mine.
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