EP.28 — I Am Prisoner Rihan (3)
Sandworms belonged to the desert. In the forest-thick southern continent they ought to have been a rare sight, and yet, because of a certain affair in the past, the South had committed the lunacy of importing them out of the sands.
Even so, one could not simply file the business away as lunacy. The common people of the entire South lived in plenty because of it. It was hard to call the thing insane.
Once, certain alchemists had brought a finding to light.
Give us sandworms, and the kingdom's food production will rise to some five times what it is now.
Such was the research that came to light. The kingdom captured sandworms in the desert and succeeded in raising them, and exactly as the alchemists had boasted, the fertilizer those worms disgorged worked a miracle, lifting the kingdom's yield by fully ten times. After that, it was hardly too much to say that worry over the harvest had vanished. A historic achievement, no denying it.
Unfortunately, the alchemists' results and everything known of the sandworms were thereafter handled as a matter of utmost secrecy.
The reason?
Mm. Put simply.
If this gets out, we're screwed.
Yes. The moment word spread, there would be an uproar beyond any uproar. People would learn that the fertilizer a sandworm expelled was, in truth, no different from the corpse of a monster vomited up after it had devoured its own kind, and that the ones who aged that fertilizer — ripening and fermenting it under soil and fallen leaves — were none other than the kingdom's prisoners. They would learn, too, that a sandworm did not eat only earth. It was a monster that liked meat better.
The ground split with a roar.
The common people had no need to know what went into the fertilizer they spread. It was also a truth that had to be kept secret to the very end.
Keeee!!!
Kee—!
Ke!!
Sandworms — though mini-worms was the name that suited them — poured out in a mass, bodies writhing. There were so many that dozens upon dozens kept thrusting their heads up out of the soil without a pause.
"Wh-what is that!"
"Monsters! C-call the soldiers, now! Monsters, I said, monsters—!"
"I-it bit my arm! A damned monster, and it dares—!"
A mini-worm was about the size of a small snake. Small, in other words. Weak enough that even a farmer who had never once held a sword could kill one easily with a pickaxe. A soldier was hardly required.
But.
Keeee!!!
There were far too many of them. Worms the size of snakes were coming by the hundreds — no, by the thousands. This was past anything a man could handle. Soldiers ought to have been moving.
But this place was a prison for convicts, and an execution ground besides.
The Tunnels.
Here a prisoner's death was nothing more than an everyday thing, and a soldier's only duty was to cut down any convict who tried to run. So the prisoners found themselves beset on every side, and the wisest choice left to them was plain.
"F-fight! Fight, you idiots!"
Yes. If no one was coming to save them, they would have to fight themselves — unless they wanted that swarm of mini-worms to eat them and turn them into fertilizer.
And so.
"Aaaaaagh!"
"Spears— no! Pick up the pickaxes and shovels!!"
A pickaxe crunched through. A shovel punched deep. Something burst, wet and final. Survival of the fittest. A battle for the right to stay alive broke open, and the prisoners of the Tunnels threw themselves into the fight with everything they had. It was nothing less than a struggle to live.
And yet, in the middle of that savage melee, there was one place that still carried a measure of ease.
A clean stroke.
"Hoo. So this is what it means to have your Fighting Art sealed. It's brutally hard."
"Even so, you're fighting well. Proof you weren't leaning on Fighting Art alone. Oh, but you — you're pouring in far too much strength for no reason. You'll tire in no time. If you can..."
The next cut landed cleaner still.
"Do it like this."
"Wh-what did you just do?"
"I only stopped the strength from leaking. Spend less stamina this way, and it hits harder besides. Learn it, and in your case your skill goes up by two times at the least. Three, even."
"Th-thank you for the teaching, Senior!!"
"Yeah."
Somehow, while everyone else fought for their lives, these two were not merely at ease. They were downright cheerful, as if the prison were not a battlefield against monsters but some yard of the sword faculty. Lee Han and Jord. Senior and junior were sharing a friendliness that had no business in the scene.
"You came all the way here to do that? You mad training fanatics..."
Jake shook his head at the absurdity of it and kept killing worms all the same. Taking off the head was not enough. You had to mince them thoroughly. They looked like earthworms crossed with mealworms, but at the root they were monsters, which meant their regeneration was nothing ordinary. Fail to make certain of the kill, and—
"Gyaaaaagh!!"
—that was all that waited. One of the prisoners was being eaten by the worms at last. A pitiful sight, and a cruel one, but Jake did not pity him. Small wonder.
A bandit from the wanted notices.
A convict who had plundered villages and killed even children. Why pity a death like that? For a man of that sort, even dying to a monster was a better end than he deserved.
They're all fighting well enough.
Most of the prisoners sent to the Tunnels were strong in a fight. Men ordinary soldiers would have struggled to handle — and the kingdom set men like that against monsters. If the worms died, their corpses were eaten and spat back out as fertilizer. If a man died, the worms ate the corpse and spat fertilizer all the same. Whichever side fell, an endless suffering repeated. A hell without end.
They say nothing is crueler than people. Jake Parman was simply sick of the human cruelty that had built a hell like this.
Why? Why are they all fighting so well...?
Aren, for his part, could only stare, eyes wide, at the three men butchering worms in front of him. If he had barely managed to put down twenty, they had already annihilated more than a hundred in a flash.
This can't be...!
Before he knew it, Aren's fist had clenched. That the monster fought well, he could accept. The man had dropped more than a hundred knights on his own. These were not even full-grown sandworms. There was no world in which he lost to mini-worms of this grade. But the other two?
Jake and Jord. Two knights whose names he had barely heard. They were not as overwhelming as the monster, but they moved with uncommon skill and put the worms down one after another. They were strong. Far stronger, at the least, than the knights of the First Knight Order.
And their Fighting Art is sealed.
Everyone shut into the Tunnels was made to drink a poison. It did not harm the body. What it held, instead, was something that stopped a man from using Fighting Art or mana, so that however much a knight he might be, he was left worse than an ordinary soldier. Sealing Fighting Art was the same as binding a knight's arms and legs. And still they were strong. Unbelievably so.
His fingers tightened.
"...Damn it!"
Born royal, Aren had never spat a vulgar word, nor ever had cause to. And yet one tore out of him all the same. The fact that he was this weak a man — it infuriated him to the point of madness.
The worms attacked five times in a single day, one assault after another. They kept no hours. True to monsters that obeyed nothing but instinct, they came whenever their bellies grew empty, time be damned, and fell on human beings. Evening or dawn, it made no difference. They came for the prisoners, and whenever a man was slow to answer, deaths followed in a string. There was no such thing as time to rest. It was an execution ground where a guillotine no one could predict seemed always to be wandering at one's side. Small wonder people looked at the Tunnels and called them a hell without end.
And yet.
"Lucky for us they're relatively weak."
"...You call that weak?"
"Call?"
"...I mean, you would call that weak, sir."
"......I'm just going to give up on fixing how you talk."
Lee Han considered cuffing him across the back of the head, then decided even that wasn't worth the stamina. He shook his head and went on.
"The sandworms that live in the desert are enormous, and vicious. Strong, too. Born in a waste where survival itself is hard, so of course the stock comes out strong."
"Then the sandworms we killed today..."
"Weak stock. What do they call it — selective breeding? They went through that, and they had to adapt to the southern continent, so all that's left are much smaller, frailer creatures."
"......"
"You've never actually seen a sandworm, have you."
"I-I've only ever heard of them in the records..."
"Hm. That so? Could happen."
"D-don't look at me like I'm pathetic!!"
"...What's he on about, this idiot?"
Aren lunged as if some fit had taken him. Lee Han's fist met him, and he went rigid and dropped.
"I went easy..."
"Fatigue must have piled up."
"From doing what?"
"......He must have been tired, in his own way."
Jake offered a defense that was not much of a defense. Respect for royalty, perhaps.
"Anyway, this is why soft-raised young masters are useless."
Even that, it seemed, failed to sit right with Lee Han. He clicked his tongue. He had brought the man along to knock a little sense into him, but he hadn't expected him to be this useless.
"Even so, the talent is real. He fought like that with no Fighting Art, didn't he?"
"You two managed."
"Us? Senior Lee Han's been teaching us since a few days back."
Jake and Jord had trained under Lee Han to fight without Fighting Art, right up until the mission came due. A consideration unlike him — or something near it. In his own way, he had shown the care to look after a friend, and a junior he liked. Aren was different. Lee Han had offered him no such consideration. He had simply been dragged along. And for a knight, fighting without Fighting Art was worse than unfamiliar. It would feel like having an arm and a leg bound. Drop an ordinary knight into this, and the odds were high he would not have lasted a moment. Which meant the talent Aren possessed was not bad.
Not that "not bad" made the situation easy. In truth, one might suspect Lee Han had brought him along for no reason but to torment him.
"Torment him? Do I look like I've got that kind of time?"
"Then this lesson in character is real?"
"It's discipline. That's all."
Why had Lee Han dragged this useless man all the way to the Tunnels? The bastard had never once apologized to him, not to the end. That grated. And more than that—
"A royal who lets other people use him. I can't even laugh."
Lee Han thoroughly disliked that a man called royal was the sort to be used by his own subordinates. So he meant to tear out that rotten root. In the sense of making him grow up.
At those words—
"......"
"Hm? Why're you looking at me like that?"
"...No. You're kinder than I thought."
"What?"
"...It's just hard to believe you'd be kind to someone because they're royal. You don't even respect royalty the way I do."
"......"
"This isn't the sort of kindness you'd show..."
"......"
"Lee Han?"
"...Ahem."
Instead of answering, he looked away.
...Not like me, I'll grant that.
He didn't want to admit it, but Lee Han had to. He was buying himself suffering.
Why?
...Pity?
Yes. He was only realizing it now, but it seemed he did pity this sorry Eighth Prince. The reason?
A sucker who doesn't even know other people are using him...
Yes. Look at him, and the sucker from the past came to mind. Himself, in the life before. The days just after he had been appointed and made sergeant — days when he hadn't even known he was only being used, and had thought that working hard was enough. So the sight was pitiful. A fellow better born than he was, and talented besides, living in such a wretched way. It was an outrageous bit of meddling, and there was no need to go this far. Even so.
Who knows. It might turn out to mean something.
If, back then, someone had thrown a hard word at him — Hey, you sucker, you idiot, get your head on straight — there was no telling how his life might have gone. Looked at one way, this was vicarious satisfaction. He wanted to see how much a sucker like this would change if you told him, flat out, that he was a sucker and an idiot.
Is this why people play those raising sims?
They wanted to watch a what-if that wasn't their own life.
...I'm an idiot too.
A little self-disgust at himself for doing this tried to well up, and Lee Han wore a bitter smile. Fortunately, he did not have to sit with it long.
A light tap, twice.
"...You here?"
His partner's arrival let Lee Han shake off the idle thoughts, if only for a moment. Of all things, Taechang had even picked up a skill that turned him invisible, and Lee Han lit into him for being this late when he owned a convenience like that.
"The hell took you so long."
"Lot of excuses."
Derek felt the injustice of it.
"Hm?"
"What is it, Max?"
"...Hm. A familiar presence. That's all."
"A presence?"
"There are such things. Come, more importantly, let us eat. Did you not say today's schedule was a busy one?"
"Ah. Very well..."
The man nodded, awkward in his posture, at the words of a fellow one would not hesitate to call a giant. Bulk alone was enough to cow a person. And yet a hearty impression lived in him side by side with something strangely simple and honest. A peculiar figure.
His name—
"Haha! So then, a priest is coming to today's service, yes?"
"Set your mind at ease. They say there is a devotee as fervent as Max, so the priest is coming in person, wishing to meet you."
"Now that does please me!"
Maximus Iron de Lionel.
The knight they called the Black Lion of the North.