Shawshank Escape
Night had fallen deep, and a darkened sky settled over the Evergarden estate.
In the Evergarden household — which had been bustling all day with servants scrambling to haul expensive, heavy furnishings into storage on what seemed to them utterly baffling orders — the lights began snuffing out one by one as the day wound down into quiet.
"Hwaaam…"
But for Hams, a soldier of the Evergarden house and tonight's duty guard, the day was far from over.
"What's with you? Didn't sleep today?"
"Nah, all that stuff the lady of the house had us doing… it was so damn loud I couldn't get any sleep."
"Yeah, tell me about it. I was sleeping too when this huge crash woke me up — thought a cannonball had come flying in."
"And our barracks are right next to the manor, so the noise was even louder… augh."
The private soldiers of the Evergarden house normally worked on a commute basis, but temporary barracks had been set up near the manor so the night-duty guards who patrolled the grounds could catch some sleep. Hams, being on duty tonight, had been supposed to sleep there while the other soldiers handled their daytime tasks — but the manor had been so raucous that he hadn't managed any real rest, and he was still half-dazed.
"Seriously though, why suddenly move all that stuff they'd been carefully collecting?"
"Didn't you hear? They're selling all of it."
"All of it? Just like that?"
"Who knows? How are we supposed to understand what nobles think? Maybe the fashion's gone out of style and they're selling everything to buy new stuff."
"Man… if I could just swipe one of those and fence it, my whole life would turn around…"
"Don't even think about it. Touch a noble's property and get caught, and it's straight off with your head. And those things are ridiculously expensive!"
"I know, I know. Just imagining."
Hams and his partner Chris passed the time that crawled by with agonizing slowness by chatting — wondering why the lady of the house was doing all this, and envying the nobles who could buy and sell treasures ordinary people couldn't acquire in a lifetime of work. Night duty was always mind-numbingly boring and time dragged endlessly, so having a partner to talk to was a genuine blessing.
Just then.
Rustle—
"Hey, did you just hear something?"
"Huh? Hear what?"
"I thought I heard something moving just now."
Hams, who had been propping himself against his spear as a support while fighting to keep his drooping eyes open, had caught a sound.
"What? Where?"
"Not sure exactly, but it seemed like it came from the bushes in the flower bed over there?"
"The bushes? Probably just a rat scurrying around nearby."
"…You think so?"
"Bet it is. A buddy of mine who works in the kitchen was complaining recently that field mice have been raiding the food stores."
"…Yeah, probably."
"Right? What kind of lunatic with a death wish would sneak into a count's manor in the middle of the night?"
"Damn… got spooked for nothing. I'm so sleepy."
"Hang in there a little longer. Once patrol's over, want to grab a quick drink back at the barracks?"
"What? What if we get caught?"
"We won't, we won't~ I've done it a few times already and nobody ever said a word."
"…What's the snack?"
Startled by the rustling, Hams soon drifted into a daydream of finishing his patrol, watching the rising sun, and sipping the wine his partner had brought — and he swallowed hard.
However.
"Damn it… damn it…!!"
The source of the noise they had dismissed as a field mouse was, in fact, a person.
And if there was anything unusual about him, it was that he was less an intruder than an escapee.
Curmon had stepped on a branch through his own carelessness and held his breath for fear of being discovered. Once he confirmed that the soldiers' attention had faded, he continued crawling away from them on his belly, muttering curses under his breath.
"How the hell did I end up like this…!"
Waddling his ample belly across the dirt, Curmon sweated sourly as he recalled what had happened a few hours earlier.
A few hours earlier.
Curmon had been clutching the crystal orb that was his last lifeline, weeping and begging for salvation.
Viscount Bjorn.
He had judged that the man who had given him this crystal would somehow be able to save him.
"Yes! She might summon me as early as tonight to interrogate me about this! I—I don't know what to do…"
"…Pardon?"
But the conversation that followed completely defied Curmon's expectations.
"This is—! I am the one who perfectly carried out everything Viscount Bjorn ordered! And now you're saying you'll abandon me?"
That was how it had gone.
Back when Curmon's greed was still modest enough that he only dipped into the Evergarden coffers for a bit of pocket money here and there, a visitor had come to the Evergarden house.
That visitor was an attendant of Viscount Bjorn.
Darian, whose talents had always lain in socializing and free spending, regularly threw parties and burned through money, and the Viscount was a noble he had become acquainted with in the process.
Their territories bordered each other, and Darian had thought they got along reasonably well, so he kept in regular contact. Curmon had assumed today was just another one of those days.
As usual, Darian was dead to the world in a midday drunken stupor, ignoring all work, so Curmon received the guest in his place. Just as he was about to inform Darian of the visitor, the attendant approached him with extreme stealth and slipped him a crystal orb.
The sleight of hand was so subtle that Curmon didn't even realize the orb had been placed in his possession until after the attendant had delivered a letter full of empty pleasantries to Darian and left the manor. Only upon returning to his own room did he notice it. When he lifted the crystal orb in bewilderment, mana immediately flowed into it and a communication spell activated.
And when he realized the person on the other end was Viscount Bjorn, he was startled all over again.
The Viscount's request was simple.
Stamp the family seal on the documents his attendant would deliver, and hand them over.
When Curmon asked how the Viscount knew he even possessed the family seal, the noble replied that nobles had their own methods — a chilling remark that made clear he had multiple hands inside the Evergarden household, and it was more than enough to send a shiver down Curmon's spine.
Having lightly threatened Curmon with the stick, Viscount Bjorn then began dangling a sweet carrot.
If this job went well, he promised, when the Evergarden family eventually collapsed, he would use his influence to recommend Curmon for a better position. That carrot sent Curmon charging forward like a starving colt.
After that, Viscount Bjorn sent his attendant again with documents, and Curmon promptly stamped them with the family seal — the seal that only the head of the Evergarden house could possess and use — and returned them to the attendant.
The moment the attendant received the documents, he handed Curmon money and vanished.
They could have simply had him stamp the documents without handing over any money at all, creating a purely fabricated debt — but that might have caused complications when they eventually swallowed the Evergarden house, so actual money had been transferred.
Of course, the interest rate was set right on the razor's edge of the legal limit, and while the principal was recorded on paper, the Evergarden head of house was kept completely unaware — so the interest fattened itself with every passing day.
The sum Viscount Bjorn had actually handed over was, from a noble's perspective, roughly the cost of a few pricey trinkets. But by the time the family that didn't even know they were in debt discovered the truth, that debt would have swelled into a tsunami capable of swallowing the entire Evergarden house.
Had Freya not examined the documents immediately after her possession — or had she never been possessed at all — they would have blithely spent whatever money remained until Viscount Bjorn suddenly appeared, brandishing the promissory notes like a shield, and stripped them bare.
"I—I won't just sit still if it comes to this!"
"V-Viscount Bjorn…!"
Facing the threat of being discarded after use, Curmon gripped the crystal orb with trembling hands and cried out — and the intermediary who had been relaying the conversation vanished, replaced by Viscount Bjorn himself.
"Th-that's…!"
"…!"
He was right.
Even if Curmon went to the head of house right now and confessed everything to save his own skin, given that man's volatile temper, the only future he could see was his head parting company with his limbs.
"What the… huh? Y-you bastard!!!"
Clang!
With that, Viscount Bjorn left a final, thoroughly polished sneer directed at Curmon and cut the connection — complete with the discard-after-use, the teabagging, and a swift block on whatever curses would follow.
If he had lived in the modern world, he would have had the skills to become a true professional gamer in more ways than one.
But this was a fantasy world where the medieval and the magical were organically intertwined, and Curmon could literally feel the blade of a threat to his life pressing right up under his chin.
"Damn Viscount Bjorn…!"
After that, he had held his breath and waited for the right moment until the Evergarden manor was wrapped in the dark curtain of night. Then he set about escaping, grinding his teeth as he dragged his massive body across the dirt.
He had managed to get out of his room and leave the manor proper, but there were too many guards at the front gate, the rear gate, and everywhere in between.
Given Curmon's position, he could have simply walked out the front gate and told the soldiers he had business to attend to. In fact, he had often done exactly that in the past — boldly leaving the manor at night, living it up, and returning early in the morning — so it wouldn't have been a problem.
But the obstacle was Freya.
Having discovered the forged documents and even dropped hints about it, would Freya really have said nothing to the soldiers charged with the weighty duty of guarding this manor?
If he boldly presented himself before the soldiers and announced he was going out, he might well get a "You scoundrel!" and a crack over the head, then be dragged by his heavy body to kneel before Freya.
And as for slipping past the soldiers' watch to secretly scale the wall — his thick, heavy, well-padded body, which spent every day clutching a pen with his substantial rear planted in a chair, couldn't have managed that even if there had been no surveillance at all.
So what method had Curmon devised for his escape?
"There's only one place left, isn't there."
Curmon may have had some fat between his ears, but he wasn't a complete idiot.
Doing something this bold required a working brain, and Curmon pulled out the map he had brought with him.
"The secret passage passed down only through the Evergarden family. There's no other way…!"
His plan was to escape using the secret passage he had coincidentally discovered while working in the head of house's office.
The founding head of the Evergarden family had been an exceptional warrior, and he had carved secret passages throughout the manor in preparation for any unforeseen crisis.
That secret was supposed to be known only to the head of house and key successors — but the current head hadn't even known of its existence.
Darian had never been a proper heir to begin with, and even after becoming head of house, he had never shown the slightest interest in such confidential matters.
So the map that had languished pitifully in a corner of the head's office had become the key for Curmon to break through this very moment.
"Like hell I'm going down to those idiots! I will escape…!!"
Recalling his plan with a sly grin, Curmon muttered as he rolled his massive body along the ground.
"Right here, then left, and pull the third lever—"
Rumble—
"Ooooh!! This is it!"
Crawling through the garden and rolling along beneath the walls, Curmon was in the middle of his escape via the secret passage hidden near the manor.
The cave was made of earthen walls and extremely dark, but faint luminescent stones embedded here and there provided enough light to see two or three paces ahead. Curmon carefully advanced through the dark tunnel, consulting the copy of the secret passage map he had made in advance, and at last reached the very threshold of the exit.
When he pulled what at a glance looked like a torch bracket — the lever — a secret door he had taken for a solid wall opened with a magnificent sound.
"Escape… I'm escaping!!!"
Thud-thud-thud—
And when the exit came into view beyond, Curmon let out a cheer and began running as hard as his heavy body would allow, feet flying.
First I'll use the emergency funds I've stashed all over my room to get a carriage and get out of this territory! I've got plenty of money.
I'll use that money to hide out in some rural fief and prepare for a fresh start!
Even then, his mind was racing far faster than his sluggish body, laying plans for a new beginning with the precious metals and gold coin bundles he had secretly set aside.
"This Curmon will never go down like th— gah!!"
Crash!
Just as Curmon came running right up to the exit and was shouting, something blunt struck him in the head, and he toppled backward. His round body tumbled several times down the passage.
"Wh-what?!"
Reeling from the sudden impact, Curmon scrambled to his feet and looked ahead.
"Well, well… so you really did come out this way? Waiting was worth it."
"Hah…!"
Something that had been hidden in the darkness approached with heavy footsteps, and Curmon could finally make out the figure concealed in the shadows.
"Y-you… Count Evergarden!"
"Huh? Ah. Right, Count Evergarden. Man, I keep forgetting."
It was none other than Darian Evergarden.
"Hey, but this bastard's talking down to a noble? You wanna die?"
"H-how are you here…?"
Curmon was thrown into confusion — as far as he knew, Darian shouldn't have known about this secret passage. How had he found him?
"Hmm… never mind, this noble act feels too awkward. Can't pull it off."
"But this one thing? This doesn't feel awkward at all."
Crack—crack—
Looking down at Curmon from above, Darian clenched his fist tight, and a bone-chilling sound of knuckles cracking echoed through the secret passage.
"Alright, first things first — take one."
Whoosh—
"Ah."
And with a grin spreading across Darian's face, his fist appeared right in front of Curmon's eyes — and that was the last thing Curmon's consciousness registered before it cut out.