Chapter 209 Volume IV – Chapter 54: An Escaped Captive

I slowly and calmly entered my room, the room where, as the highest-ranking person in Caleuche, I could control everything.

It was a large room. Inside, my assistants and a few staff members were tinkering with the ship’s control mechanisms and giving instructions. They could control most things on the holographic screens in front of them, and they could do it just by thinking. They didn’t even need to move their bodies in any way.

Seeing me enter, one of the assistants bowed slightly.

“General Kahdun, welcome sir.”

At his words, everyone else in the room stopped what they were doing for a moment and turned to me. They bowed their heads in the same way.

I raised my hand and nodded in acknowledgment of their respect for me, and everyone went back to their work.

I took a deep breath, moved towards my seat, and let myself sink into it. I closed my eyes, trying to ignore all the noises around me.

I was thinking, and what I was thinking about, or rather who I was thinking about, was of course Aiden Tenebra.

He was supposed to be a nobody. He was above average for the battlefield and had mysterious powers, but he was not someone who stood out. He was one of those surprise eggs that pop up in every battle. Yet he had been captured and was now a captive.

He wasn’t someone I should take seriously, and his background didn’t seem mysterious.

I frowned, remembering what happened when his name came out of my mouth. I could never forget what happened then.

How could I forget one of those rare moments when I trembled with fear, despite my rank, despite my position on this ship, despite my authority?

“Aiden… Tenebra? Tenebra, you say?”

I involuntarily replayed that moment in my mind, remembered it again, heard that voice again, remembered that smile, that feeling that made my whole being tremble, and I shook my head from side to side.

I think about useless things, I just have to fulfill the task I have been given. As long as I break the boy even more, as long as I ruin his sanity, I can get everything I want from him.

So I took a deep breath, focused on the countless reports in front of me, and randomly clicked on one of them.

I started reading the report, it was one of the usual simple reports.

I didn’t get a chance to continue with the report, though… The report was blocked by another window that simultaneously appeared on the screen in front of me as it grew larger.

“Hmm?”

Surprised, I squinted through my furrowed brows and focused on the window.

Suddenly an ear-splittingly loud alarm went off throughout the entire ship.

“What’s going on?!”

I quickly turned around, looking at the other dwarves working behind my room. Their eyes were wide, they all looked shocked.

“I’M TALKING TO YOU!”

Soon one of them spoke, without taking his eyes off the screen in front of him.

“A- a captive… A captive escaped from the d- dungeon!”

Everyone looked at me at once, waiting for orders with a meaningless expression in their eyes. The sound of the alarm was still echoing, a sound I did not expect to hear on this huge ship.

Yet what I heard was something I would never have expected to hear, let alone thought possible.

“Someone… escaped?”

Thousands of thoughts instantly went through my mind.

Everyone in the dungeon is weak, powerless. Even their mana must be restricted.

Even if one of them managed to get out of the dungeon, what could they have done to set off the loudest alarm on the ship, to shock the crew?

“Transfer the camera footage to my screen.”

Without waiting for them, I turned around, and an image instantly appeared in front of me.

A long, wide corridor with white walls appeared on the screen. It was a simple corridor, like the general design of the ship, but even for the general design, this place was too simple.

It was done that way on purpose. The inside of the dungeons, even the torture chambers, were left like this intentionally. Restrained colors, few visible objects… Everything was an attack on the psychology of the prisoner held inside.

Yet now another ‘color’ was added to this monotonous design. The whole corridor glowed with a purple glow.

In the center of the screen was a captive’s room with a door that looked as if it had melted. Just in front of this door stood a thin, really thin man.

His right hand, with a purple artificial finger where his ring finger should have been, rested on the head of the worker who was bringing him food. The purple glow that spread throughout the room, especially from his hand, was moving toward the man’s head.

The man opened his mouth and mumbled something. Just then, with his one remaining eye, Aiden Tenebra looked up at the camera as if he could see me directly, even though I was looking at him through the screen, even though we were not face to face.

His left eye, once gray, now shone with a fierce, violet glow. His exhausted, devastated look had been replaced by a cold person whose thoughts could not be read in any way. He looked like someone, a man with soulless eyes that made me shiver every time I saw him.

No, it was not a simple resemblance. What I felt when I looked at him was exactly the same as what I felt when I looked at ‘that’ man. I was startled.

With his one remaining eye, Aiden Tenebra pointed his left hand, also with artificial ring and pinkie fingers, at the camera.

With that, a purple glow filled the entire field of view of the camera and the image disappeared in an instant.

Time began to flow again, the breath I had been struggling to hold in finally came out, and I put my hand on my chest to try to make my breathing more regular.

I replayed what I had seen over and over again in my mind’s eye, my mouth agape. A young man who only a few hours ago I had seen on the verge of insanity, who was supposed to be emaciated and extremely thin, was now causing something like this.

But that wasn’t the main thing that caused me to be surprised, that made me freeze. Apart from the fact that he looked like that man, it was the fact that he had something that few people had in common among the few people whose existence in this life I feared, who managed to make me tremble inside.

“Everyone…”

It was the purple energy, caora as those beings called it, so Aiden Tenebra was a wiera just like them.

“Direct everyone to where the captive is! Neutralize him now, you can kill him; I don’t care what you do… Hurry!”

Soon the room was in complete chaos. Beads of sweat gathered on my forehead for no reason, but I didn’t bother to wipe them off. I put aside the tension that had enveloped my body and quickly moved from camera to camera, trying to find Aiden Tenebra. After a while, I realized that all the cameras that were heading in one direction had lost their signal one by one.

Tenebra’s target was a specific room, which was easily visible on the ship’s map.

“He’s heading to where the prisoners’ belongings are stored.”

The people working behind me paused for a moment at what I said, and then went on with whatever they were doing.

All the prisoners’ belongings are put in a big warehouse near the dungeon and there are not that many people there. There are a few guards with no knowledge of warfare who are there to check the things inside… There is also security, but they are few.

If he gets there unhindered… he will have countless useful and useless artifacts, items, and weapons at his disposal. It’s impossible for him to know where the room is, but… He might have gotten it from the dwarf he killed. If he has his card, he can get into the warehouse without any trouble, but that’s not important.

We… we can’t let him in there.

I let go of the interrupting camera images and activated the setting on the map that showed the location of the soldiers. Soon, with that, blue dots began to appear on the screen in front of me. Each of them were armed soldiers on their way to kill Aiden Tenebra.

When Aiden arrived in front of the warehouse – a red dot, as can be seen on the map – the dots on the screen paused.

Then, in just a few seconds, almost all of them disappeared… as if they had never existed to begin with.

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