38 – The Future of the Empire #6
The iron gate was cracked open, revealing a staircase leading down.
As soon as the door opened, what I felt was the cool underground air. And there was the fishy smell of blood flowing out of the air.
I slowly descended the stairs. I was in the dark, where I couldn’t see anything, but the darkness didn’t matter to me.
After stepping step by step, I eventually arrived at a large space that was supposed to be underground.
There were about twenty men waiting for me in the dreary darkness.
Unlike the small fish above, the spirit of the men here was clearly different. It was a momentum that reminded me of the scarred man I met on the market street.
Former soldier, mercenary, adventurer… All of them had the atmosphere of those who were familiar with battle and did not mind killing.
The men were glaring at me in the dark without any discomfort, whether there was an artifact or a night vision spell.
But that was the case for me as well. As I looked around the men clearly in the dark, the men whose eyes met each other crumpled their faces with nervous expressions as if embarrassed.
To my surprise, I found a familiar face inside.
A horseman who rode a wagon to get to Sangria.
He was looking at me with the kind of sad smile he had when we first met.
Unexpectedly, the coachman of the wagon, who seemed ordinary, seemed to be the highest-ranking person in the place. It was because all the men were watching him and acting.
The coachman said, raising his hand in a friendly greeting.
“Look. Long time no see.”
I looked around without answering that. The coachman’s expression, which had been neatly ignored, stiffened for a moment, but I didn’t care at all.
The basement warehouse was quite spacious. As if this large space was being used entirely to store something, the interior was filled with solid iron bars.
The cages, narrow enough for one person to fit in, were clearly marked with red bloodstains. The fishy smell of blood that filled the basement was coming from there.
Most of the bars were empty, but some were not.
Everything inside the iron cage where people were confined was miserable.
A dwarf man passed out with his wrist cut off. A rat-beast woman who has been beaten so badly that her face is unrecognizable. An immigrant man whose whole body was chained and restrained. In addition, several people who seemed to be of a different race or race were confined in iron cages with miserable faces.
Looking at the scene, I felt that my thoughts before coming here changed.
I didn’t intend to kill anyone at all.
I’d rather just kill them all.
I didn’t hide my sincerity and took a slow step. Then the men each took out their weapons and prepared for battle.
The moment the tension in this place increased, the coachman hurriedly raised his hand and shouted.
“Wait! Wait!”
“What if you don’t like it?”
I continued walking nonchalantly. The idea was to break the neck of the first one who came running. However, the coachman’s next words forced me to stop involuntarily.
“We know who you are!”
“… ….”
You know who I am?
I wouldn’t be doing this if I knew.
As I looked at the coachman with mixed doubts and doubts, a fishy smile spread across the coachman’s face, as if he had mistakenly thought that I was interested in stopping.
“I never thought that the soldier I met then became an instructor. It was my mistake not knowing that a single instructor could be this strong. Let us negotiate.”
Ah, was that it?
I am the one who brought Titania to the market, so if Titania was the target, of course the people around her would have already done their research. He could have quickly figured out that I am an instructor at Fillion Academy.
As it turned out, I had a sullen expression on my face at the thought that it wasn’t a big deal. Perhaps he misunderstood it as meaning to put aside the chatter and talk about the main topic, the coachman urgently added his words.
“No matter how strong you are, it will be difficult to defeat everyone here. Even if it is possible, this is not all we have.”
The coachman smirked among the men.
“What we need are elves. If you hand over that elf, I can give you immense wealth and power you could never have imagined. Don’t you want to become a noble?”
“A coachman?”
“Even if I am just a coachman, the person I serve is different. He will surely repay you greatly if you bring only the elf princess. Because he is a person with the ability and position to do so.”
The coachman looked on his face as if he dared to refuse this offer. He seemed to think that there was no way a commoner would ever pass up a chance to become an aristocrat.
I answered nonchalantly.
“Then I will have to kill him too.”
At my words, the surroundings were stained with chilly silence.
The coachman let out a long sigh.
From noble mtl dot com
“You just made a big mistake.”
The coachman gestured to his men, and immediately the men drew their weapons and slowly approached me.
As pros in combat, they didn’t rush at you blindly, spitting lines like third-rate villains. As if they were aware of my ability to capture the scarred man, they exchanged glances with each other and secretly closed the distance to encircle me.
Before the encirclement completely choked me, I rushed forward first.
The man, who seemed to be a seasoned adventurer, reacted to my speed slowly and raised his shield. However, my fist slashed the man’s shield in half and struck him in the chin. With that one shot, his jaw was shattered and his neck turned, and the adventurer was mortified.
At the same time the adventurer collapsed to the ground, my arm stretched out like a thunderbolt, I grabbed the iron sword he was holding and swung it at the mercenary rushing at me with an ax from behind. The mercenary was unable to respond to the speed of the sword and slashed through his breastplate.
The sword that split the armor with tremendous strength eventually split the mercenary’s body in half, unable to withstand my strength, and broke in half.
I threw away the broken sword and grabbed the falling axe.
The men froze in shock at the gruesome death of two comrades in an instant. The coachman, who was watching the scene from behind, also shouted in a fit of surprise with a shocked expression.
“… Lord, kill! Let’s all together!”
It’s kind of third-rate now.
I swung an ax at the men who were rushing at me with screams or shouts that I couldn’t tell.
The man whose head was split in half with the helmet died instantly with his brain bursting, and I lightly tapped his wrist with my fingertips while avoiding the stabbing sword from behind.
“How many!?”
At that trivial action, the man holding the sword twisted his shoulder and stabbed his colleague in the neck. The opponent lost his life meaninglessly with his throat pierced, probably not knowing that his colleague’s sword was aiming at him.
The man who was astonished at killing his comrades was equally split in the head by my axe.
I swung the weapon in a straight line without any trick or skill. A quick and simple trajectory is powerful enough on its own.
If the weapon broke in the middle, he took another weapon and split the opponent with one blow, and sometimes he used the enemy’s attack to destroy the enemy.
A man in his twenties collapsed to the floor in an instant. I was the only one standing in the scene of bloody slaughter.
The coachman said with a puzzled expression.
“… They were all guys who knew how to do martial arts. Are you a demon who has infiltrated the empire?”
I slowly approached the coachman.
Footprints stained with blood were left on the ground.
“You don’t seem to know what demons look like.”
“… What?”
Instead of answering, I hit the coachman’s shoulder with a curved mace. With that one blow, his shoulder blade was crushed and the coachman squealed and sat down.
“Quaaa!!”
“Eomsal is.”
With only a few broken bones.
I knew that the coachman did not suffer like this often and that he was not trained in torture. The man who did not know whether he was a coachman, a spy, or a member of a terrorist organization trembled with pain and chewed his lips until they bled.
“Turn off, turn off… ! You! What are you guys up to? Even with the strength of the elders, I couldn’t know your history… ! Why do the Imperial Administration Office and the Imperial Army Headquarters refuse to investigate you!? Where the hell did he come from to interfere with our work!”
The coachman glared at me with wide eyes and shouted indignantly.
“Don’t you think that the current empire is wrong! It means that it was not a different race, but a human, who led the fight against the demon king! That victory was won by humans, so why should we share the price of victory with them!? What is harmony and coexistence for?”
“Stop.”
I slapped the coachman on the opposite shoulder.
“Quaaa!!”
“I am not here to convince you. I didn’t even ask what you thought.”
I said, thrusting the mace drenched in blood into the bastard’s face.
“Just answer what I ask.”
The coachman’s face went white with pain and fear.
Blunt weapons are very effective for torture. Because they bleed less than blades, there is no chance of dying from excessive blood loss during torture.
The pain was so severe I could have died of shock, but I could control that.
As he proceeded with the torture, he let everything he knew about the ‘future of the empire’ unfold. If he didn’t answer, he would break his bones bit by bit and inflict pain.
I learned the whereabouts of the people behind bars. Most died of exhaustion from torture, and some were sold into slavery on the black market.
I learned that those who were sold in this way were turned over to illegal gladiators, spearmen, or as experimental subjects for mad wizards.
My torture of the coachman became more insistent and brutal with each unwanted information I uncovered.
The elder mentioned by the coachman is the Marquis of Raineyar, the biggest supporter of the Merchant Guild, and his purpose is to kidnap Titania and cause a dispute between the elves and the empire in the Great Forest of Linia. I learned that I also tried to satisfy my personal desires.
After hearing that far, there was no more information to find out.
The coachman, who had completely hoarse his voice, exhaling incessantly, breathed heavily and spoke in a painful voice.
“Lord, kill… kill me…….”
I smacked him in the head just as the coachman wanted.
Red blood splattered and wet his cheeks, but his whole body was already full of blood, so he only painted new blood over the dried bloodstains.
The underground warehouse, which had been filled with screams, soon became static.
“Whoa….”
I let out a weary breath as I finished my work. My body wasn’t tired at all, but I was a little tired mentally from seeing blood while torturing for the first time in a long time.
But there were still people left.
I broke the locks on the bars where the kidnapped people were locked in one by one.
They had been kidnapped and had not eaten a single meal and had to endure torture.
It would take a long time to move everyone alone, but the guards were brought in just in case.
While breaking through the bars and looking for someone, one barbed wire caught my eye.
Inside it was a blonde woman dressed in shabby clothes.