Chapter 192

“…Ugh…….”

Henson, upon regaining consciousness, met the three pairs of eyes staring at him.

“…What in the world is this?”

He quickly realized that he was tied up tightly, and that this was my and Amethus’s doing.

It was because, in his faint memory, there was a scene of Amethus jumping onto the counter and kicking him.

“…This is what you’re doing!”

He shouted in anger.

“Do you think an outsider can get away with this! Even if you are a noble, to dare to do this on Denoebang family land…….”

“Shut up.”

My voice was endlessly cold.

“Hesra Heport. Act wisely.”

“……!!!”

“What do you think it means that we know your real name?”

Henson, or rather, Hesra Heport’s reaction was swift.

Instead of speaking further, he immediately stuck out his tongue.

It was to bite his own tongue and commit suicide. However, ‘Fantasy Finger’.

My first Ars did not permit it.

An invisible hand firmly gripped Hesra Heport’s jaws.

“Trying to commit suicide right away? A senior agent indeed.”

Hesra Heport’s eyes were bloodshot.

He glared at me as if to kill me, but I did not flinch.

Instead, I answered with a sneer.

“Amethus, are there any useful drugs among his?”

“Yes. A combination of these three drugs will make a truth serum.”

“Hmm, mix that in too. The intelligence agency agents are basically resistant to their own drugs.”

Watching the two of us casually spill the secrets of the Cordis intelligence agency, Hesra Heport was simply bewildered.

But the bewilderment could not last long.

Amethus’s hands moved swiftly, mixing the drugs in an instant.

He took out a small dagger, sufficiently soaked its tip with the drug, and Hesra watched the approaching tip of the blade with trembling eyes.

The dagger pierced Hesra’s neck.

The blade gently pressed against the spot where the largest blood vessel in the neck passed, and then it broke through the skin.

Blood flowed, and the drug soaked into the blade began to course through Hesra Heport’s body.

“Ugh!”

Hesra’s eyes became thoroughly bloodshot.

The potent drug entering his blood vessels caused his eyes to bulge and his limbs to tremble violently.

Then, his entire body went limp.

“…Ugh…….”

A groan escaped.

“…Ugh, uuuuugh…….”

“He’s ready to be honest.”

I said nonchalantly, and Amethus nodded.

Obro, with his dirty beard, could only watch, not knowing what to do.

“I’ll leave the interrogation to you, Amethus.”

“…Ame, thus……”

Hesra Heport mumbled.

He was dazed, repeating Amethus, Amethus, then his eyes suddenly lit up and he tried to stand up abruptly.

He couldn’t stand because he was tied up tightly, and the skin where the rope bound him only peeled off, but he paid no mind and shouted.

“…Amethus! So you are Amethus! The dog-like bastard who betrayed His Majesty’s grace!”

He cried out with a strange fury.

“No wonder you were spouting our secrets. To be promised the most glorious position in the Millennial Empire, to have enjoyed His Majesty Ferbias’s trust so much, and yet you dare! Dare……!!”

Amethus scratched his cheek and looked at me.

“…Hasn’t he become a bit too honest?”

“I suppose so. He’s got some anger in him.”

I said.

“He must have been holding a lot in. Quiet him down.”

“Yes.”

Amethus raised his palm and slapped Hesra Heport’s cheek.

A slapping sound echoed.

Hesra became even angrier and spat, but Amethus continued to slap his cheek, again and again.

By the time the sharp slap changed to a dull thud, Hesra could no longer shout.

“…Ugh…….”

“He’s tough. The truth serum doesn’t make him immune to pain.”

“…You bastards are already cornered…….”

Hesra gave a small laugh. His mouth was bloody.

“I reported on the first day you came to this village… that there were guys looking for the White Lord……. The agency’s elites will be here soon…….”

“That’s right. On the first day, we looked for the White Lord at your tavern. Why do you think we did that?”

I put my hand in my pocket.

Thud, thud, something rolled on the floor.

On closer inspection, they were fingernails.

They looked identical to the fake fingernails Hesra Heport had attached to hide his drugs.

But each one seemed to belong to a different person.

“Thanks to your hasty report, we found the other agents besides you.”

“…Ah…….”

“We already took care of them on the first day and sent a false report. They won’t suspect anything for at least 15 days.”

“……!!!”

15 days was Hesra Heport’s regular reporting cycle.

A groan escaped him, wondering if I even knew that. I found the sight of the bewildered Cordis agent quite pleasing.

“You guys were pretty persistent too. The confidentiality level on Obro was only lowered four months ago.”

I exposed the intelligence agency’s secrets.

“To manage him as a top-level secret for seven years after making him like this. I couldn’t even touch him and just had to wait.”

The regular report for a top-level secret of the Cordis intelligence agency is once every three days.

At least eight senior agents are assigned.

Even I couldn’t act rashly without being prepared to reveal my identity.

“Hesra Heport. State your main mission.”

“…The management and reporting of Obro Denoebang……”

He recited his duties.

To make him drink alcohol mixed with deadly poison, three glasses a day.

To occasionally incite thugs to provoke Obro Denoebang to test if there was any possibility of his recovery.

To report all these matters regularly……. With every word Hesra spoke, Obro trembled with rage.

“When did your operation begin?”

“…The full-scale start was 11 years ago…….”

Hesra Heport’s lips parted.

“The ‘Night of Inversion’…….”

“What exactly did you do then?”

“We got the White Lord dead drunk, and made the Ancient God of the Underworld go berserk……. So that he would bear the blame and collapse…….”

Obro Denoebang’s face turned pale white.

The aged face between the dirty beard and hair was colored with horror.

“…What……”

“It’s understandable to be bewildered, Mr. Obro.”

I looked at the bearded man.

“You’ve believed it was your fault all this time, haven’t you? You thought you were isolated without anyone knowing, didn’t you? You’ve lived thinking you ended up stuck here in obscurity because of your own wrong choices, haven’t you?”

“……”

“The truth is, that wasn’t the case.”

Obro’s eyes trembled violently. Regardless, I continued to speak.

“The Empire, which looks down on the West so much, had one person they just couldn’t ignore. Who do you think that was?”

Obro did not answer. It was as I had expected.

“It was you, Obro Denoebang.”

The bearded man slumped to the floor.

“In the Empire’s eyes, the biggest obstacle in the West was you. That’s why they orchestrated the ‘Night of Inversion’, got you drunk that day, and made all sorts of blame and ridicule rain down on you…….”

“…A, all of that…….”

“…Even after breaking you like that, they were so anxious that they managed you as a top-level secret for seven years, making you drink poisoned alcohol every day.”

“…Why……”

Obro Denoebang’s face contorted.

The pain of his past life resurfaced.

Thanks to having vomited out the poison, his fear had faded and anger surged.

All the pain and suffering swirled in his chest, igniting a flame.

The dreadful days when he couldn’t die, when even letting go of life felt like a sin, and he had no choice but to live on, wrecked Obro’s heart.

“…Why, why… rather than that, why not just kill me……”

“Because they were afraid.”

My blue eyes flashed.

“Because they were worried that the White Lord, threatened with his life, might just come to his senses.”

“……I, I, I was……”

“I know that you were far more broken than the Empire thought.”

I bowed my head.

“I’m sorry for coming late. If we had come when you were being managed as a top-level secret, the Empire would have tried to kill you. They would have used all their strength, even at the risk of you coming to your senses, even if their schemes might be revealed.”

“……”

“Are you confident you could have stopped them?”

Obro shook his head.

His fear and pain were deep-rooted.

He was somehow managing to train his body, but he was in no state to fight.

I knew this as well.

That Obro Denoebang was broken beyond repair.

That was why I had no choice but to wait anxiously for seven years.

“Did you think you were unlucky?”

I asked as if muttering to myself.

It was unclear whether it was directed at Obro or myself.

“Or did you think it was your own fault?”

Obro Denoebang’s eyes held a deep sorrow.

Yet, what was saddest of all was that he had no tears left to shed.

“Get a hold of yourself, Obro Denoebang. A clear malice has ruined your life.”

“…Who……?”

“Cordis!”

I shouted as if crying out from my soul.

I gave a glimpse of the flame in my heart, of the screaming hunchback.

“Again, it is their doing.”

***

“…It was Cordis, their doing……”

Obro Denoebang sat collapsed, muttering.

His beard and hair were long and shaggy, reaching his waist.

He resembled a mouse more than a person, and a hairy mushroom more than a mouse.

It was a filthy state, unbelievable for the once-admired White Lord.

“…I thought that it might be so. …The days… were so, so…… dreadful…….”

He squeezed his eyes shut without realizing it.

“…Still, thinking that, it was so sinful… it only felt like running away from my responsibility, h, so…….”

I let him continue to speak.

“…I just shouldered it all, and shouldered it and shouldered it… what I shouldered, whether I even shouldered it, I forgot everything…… and became a cripple alone……”

A sorrowful recitation.

“……”

Silence was the deepest sorrow of all.

Obro tried to remember the loss.

He tried to recall what he had lost, but he couldn’t.

The loss was so deep that no trace of what came before remained.

He was empty, and in the empty space, filthy things had rushed in, wounding and rotting him.

The man, already completely rotted, simply stared blankly at the ceiling.

It was dirty with dust and cobwebs.

Just like Obro’s own situation.

“…But…….”

He looked at me.

With brown eyes that couldn’t cry even if they wanted to, he stared intently at me.

“…What changes?”

I did not avoid his gaze.

I looked straight into the brown eyes that made one sorrowful just by meeting them.

Within my blue eyes were seven flames.

“E, even if all of that… was Cordis’s doing…….”

Obro looked down at his own hands.

He had not stopped his training.

Not for a single day.

Even as a drunkard and a cripple, when no one acknowledged him and he himself didn’t know, without any result, he constantly whipped himself.

Thanks to that, his hands were still firm and strong.

“I, I am already…….”

But, there is no strength.

He cannot hold a sword.

Just looking at a blade is terrifying.

Even when Amethus took out a dagger to administer the truth serum to Hesra Heport, he had trembled quietly behind.

Something other than physical strength, something that makes a person human, was completely ruined.

“…a cripple who doesn’t even have the strength to hate…….”

“I will not force you to hate.”

I said, as if leaping forward.

In the face of Obro Denoebang’s excruciating regret and pain, a monologue of hardship from which an ordinary person would have to retreat, I stood tall without backing down.

“But, don’t you understand yet, Mr. Obro?”

“…What……”

“If it is the work of humans, if all of that was something committed by humans!”

I declare.

“It means that humans can reverse it.”

“…What…….”

“It all started from that day, didn’t it? 11 years ago, the ‘Night of Inversion’! The people who were dragged to the underworld, the responsibility you couldn’t bear.”

Obro Denoebang’s eyes trembled violently.

“There is a way to bring them back.”

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