Chapter 218 Volume IV – Chapter 63: An Important Meeting

Two days passed almost in the blink of an eye.

It was fast because there was nothing I could do and all my requests were quickly fulfilled so that I had nothing to do.

Doctors, nurses, staff… They were always there for me as if I was an extremely important person.

Of course, like all good things, I was aware that this would come to an end and so I did not give myself over to this comfort.

And that’s what happened. At the end of two days, almost all of which I spent resting, a doctor entered my room. What was not normal was that he was accompanied by two dwarves who looked like security guards.

“Aiden Tenebra, how are ye feeling?”

I looked at the two dwarves behind the doctor, their eyes on me and on the corners of the room. They were examining everything they could see as suspicious.

They still don’t fully trust me…

“I’m fine, I think I’ll be able to walk without any problems in a few days at most, but for now… I wouldn’t mind a little support, I guess.”

The doctor nodded in understanding, turned around, and said something I couldn’t quite make out through the door, and then a new dwarf came in. A nurse pushing a wheelchair with her hands.

They are in a hurry, but it’s not that I don’t understand them.

I sighed involuntarily. Because I wanted to rest even more, but that didn’t seem possible.

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

I sighed again after the doctor’s fast reply, though I was not going to cause any difficulties.

“I see, let’s go then.”

The doctor smiled and nodded, stepping aside. The nurse brought the wheelchair to the bedside so that I could hold on to the bed and get back on my two feet after the last few days.

Of course, it was a brief moment as I was directly in the wheelchair, but it was enough to make me feel awkward.

So, once I was properly settled in the wheelchair, I walked out of the room for the first time since I woke up here.

What I expected to see was a hospital corridor or something like that, but… it wasn’t.

Rather than a hospital, I was confronted with a small corridor and that was enough to surprise me a little.

When we finally came out into a larger opening and I saw something familiar to me, my eyes widened and I realized that the care I was being given was greater than I had thought.

This was not a hospital.

I was directly under the huge government building in the center of the North Holar.

*******

At first, I thought it was absurd, that they would put me directly in the most important place in this huge country, even though they suspected me…

But as I kept moving forward, as I slowly made my way up from this place under the ground, what I saw made me realize that I was wrong.

This is not the worst place they can hold me, on the contrary, it’s the best place.

There are cameras, sensors, and much more everywhere. There are dwarves everywhere, keeping an eye on me. Once someone is in, it’s next to impossible to get out.

Even if I’m not tied down, even if I’m not locked in a room… I don’t feel free.

I closed my eyes and relaxed myself as much as I could as I kept moving forward.

I had expected the journey in the wheelchair to be a bit long, but I had much, much less time than I thought. I stayed like this for a while, thinking about what was going to come out of my mouth, because I couldn’t afford any imperfections.

So, when I finally opened my eyes again, I saw that we were in a fairly large, courtyard-like space.

“We just need to run a few quick checks, Mr. Aiden.”

I nodded in response to the doctor’s words, looking at the large door in front of us and the ‘control device’, about five meters long, placed just in front of it.

All we had to do was walk slowly through this device, which looked like a corridor with walls made of a glass-like material.

The nurse who had brought me here so far stepped aside, then the doctor, who I now thought was someone important, took my wheelchair, and we made our way to the device together.

As we started to walk through the glass corridor, my whole body trembled slightly, I felt the mana surrounding my body.

It was an uncomfortable feeling. It was as if the mana used for scanning was not only surrounding my body but also examining my body itself.

As I was approaching the big door, thanks to this feeling, I never felt at ease.

In this way, when we finally reached the end of the glass corridor and the guards on both sides of the door nodded in approval, the big door slowly opened in front of us.

The doctor moved forward with my wheelchair so that we were behind the opened door. Then… the whole room was in front of my eyes.

Honestly… I wasn’t surprised.

I had seen this place before, even if it was in rubble… It was exactly as I had imagined it.

Black walls, a large table in the center, and around it a row of important people, each of them studying me in particular.

After the silence, the door through which I entered closed noisily and slowly behind me, as if it had been done on purpose.

I studied the dwarves inside.

A few of them were familiar, a few I had never seen before, but one caught my eye.

The dwarf I was looking for in the first place, when the city where I was staying was attacked. Now, here he was, in front of me… If everything had gone as I had planned that day, maybe things would have been different.

Meanwhile, as I was immersed in these thoughts, a deep voice echoed in my ears.

“Aiden Tenebra, come; approach the table.”

My eyes shifted to the person speaking, a dwarf sitting directly across the table.

He was wearing a plain suit. His brown hair with occasional gray and his beard was not too long, his green eyes were sharp and locked directly on mine.

He had two scars on his face, one long and one short, the long one starting from his neck and almost reaching his right eye, but not quite there. The short one was on his left cheek, a scratch.

He was taller than most of the dwarves here, maybe even one of the tallest dwarves in history. I could see it even from where he was sitting.

His hands were folded on the table in front of him, his posture alone emphasized his importance. There was not a single flaw, he just stood where he was, making one shiver involuntarily.

It had to be that way, though. After all, this man was not really a simple man.

He was Houdhin Gargel, the current President of the North Holar. He had been through so much to get where he was. He had overcome so much, eliminated countless rivals, and risen from the ashes.

He was like a legend. No… he already was.

He was intimidating, he lived up to everything they said about him. And he wasn’t afraid to let it show on the outside.

I nodded, and the doctor behind me pushed my wheelchair so that it pushed me closer to the table.

The sound of the wheels on the floor was the only sound echoing in the room. Every second I spent here I was collapsing in on myself, that’s how it felt.

Still, I made it to the front of the table without any problems. The doctor let go of the wheelchair and stepped back slightly. He was going to stay in the room, after all, I hadn’t fully recovered.

Of course, I’m sure the dwarves had temporarily deafened him in some way. Just like almost all the guards in this room. That way there won’t be any ‘spying’ problems.

“How do you feel?”

When President Houdhin’s deep, stern voice echoed in my ears, I agreed even more with everything that had been said about him.

Even the man’s voice seemed to make the others tremble.

“I am quite well, sir, thank you.”

I’ll be careful not to be disrespectful.

“Good, we apologize for dragging you here while you were still recovering. I hope you realize the situation we’re in.”

He apologizes like this, but… his facial expression doesn’t change a bit. His voice is always the same tone. He shows his superiority without even using his words.

“I am aware, sir, that’s why I’m here.”

Houdhin nodded slightly, then leaned back a little. He seemed a little more relaxed when he saw my cooperative approach to the situation.

“Well then… You can start by telling us your story. How did you get into Caleuche, what did you experience, what did you do, how did you escape and how did you make such a mess of the South?”

He got to the point quickly, not lingering on anything unnecessary. Maybe it wasn’t the most effective way to open past wounds in a situation like this, but he had already hinted at the very beginning of our conversation that this would be the case.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and waited for a while.

I didn’t need to make any requests for this, they wouldn’t hesitate to give me a short time to talk about the past.

Of course, I will use this time to think, not to prepare myself.

How can I make the whole scenario work for me without lying?

I’ve already given this a lot of thought while I was resting, but there’s no harm in going over everything again…

Seconds passed in this way, and when it approached a minute, it wasn’t hard to realize that the people at the table were getting impatient.

I opened my eyes but left them slightly squinted, I glanced briefly around the table and saw that they were all looking at me with great curiosity. So I took my eyes off them and shifted them slightly to the floor.

“In the bunker… I fainted because of the amount of blood I lost from the wounds I received while trying to escape.”

That’s how I started, telling what ‘happened’ in the past. I made sure that there was not a single lie in my words. and, of course, making sure that they didn’t tell the whole truth.

I told them that I woke up a prisoner in Caleuche, that they were trying to get information from me about Dorhud.

This was easy to tell, there was no need for me to distort the truth. The important parts were the period when I was tortured and afterward.

I didn’t describe what I went through in excessive detail, I went through it quickly in a cursory way, but… when I reached the point where I was taken back to my prison room, that’s when the real thing started.

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