Tutorial — 6th Floor
The old butler who came in with Johann was shaking from head to toe, as if seized by a fit.
"Is it truly you, Sir Shin-hoo? Is it really you?"
"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."
He had blurted it out the instant he stepped into the room, and I kept playing dumb.
"You—I am asking whether you stole the Lord's family heirloom!"
The old butler's voice climbed higher and higher, fury spilling past whatever restraint he had left, until he was all but screaming.
"We've already told you several times that breaking into the warehouse would have been impossible—"
"The Inventory Clan!"
Joo Ha-yeon snorted before she could stop herself.
I understood completely. I hadn't expected anyone to bellow a name that asinine with a straight face either. I managed not to laugh, but I couldn't keep my expression from twitching.
"It... it can't be... Sir Shin-hoo... is it truly so...?"
The old butler wore the look of a man staring at a reality he could not accept.
Johann stepped in for him when the words would no longer come.
"I can scarcely believe it. To think I brought people like you into the castle! Did you come here intending to steal the heirloom from the very beginning?!"
"This is absurd. In less than a month, our party's contributions to this castle—"
"Silence! How dare you steal a noble family's heirloom and still have the gall to speak like that!"
Johann's hide was thicker than I'd given him credit for.
"I'll say it again. I didn't steal anything. Inventory? What are you talking about?"
The moment the word inventory came up, I had a pretty good idea where this was headed.
Kim Insil—the one who'd fled alone in the first cycle—had, for some reason, thrown in with Johann.
"Kim Insil and Park Nam-young have already confessed everything. That you come from the Inventory Clan. That every last one of your people is born with the innate ability to use subspace storage. I heard your clan was recently destroyed, and that you lot are all that's left. And this is how you repay the Lord who took you in? With betrayal?"
He's writing a whole damn screenplay.
And a lavish one at that. The Lord hadn't even known about our abilities when he took us in. What "betrayal"? Still, going by Johann's words, it wasn't just Kim Insil—Park Nam-young had flipped as well. Had they been tortured? Why? Why turn on us? The tutorial wasn't going to last forever, and they knew that. If they'd gone over anyway, it meant there was something in it for them. The only thing I could picture was treatment for their lingering injuries. Had they really fallen for a promise of healing?
At this point they'd need a top-grade potion or a high-ranking priest. A little further down the line, potions wouldn't cut it anymore.
And what a garbage name. "Clan"? What were we, vampires?
I ignored Johann's blustering and turned my gaze on the old butler.
"Hah. It's true that we can use subspace storage."
There was no point hiding it anymore. Even if I denied it, Kim Insil and Park Nam-young would demonstrate the skill themselves and point us out as users. Keep stonewalling, and it might play out just like the first cycle. I chose to come clean.
"Shin-hoo!"
Joo Ha-yeon startled at the admission.
"Well, even if you killed us, nothing that's already gone in would come back out, and we have no way of showing you the inside of our storage. If we could just let you look, this would all be simple."
That would take a skill. And there was no way to get one right now.
"I didn't mention it because I knew this kind of misunderstanding would happen. Once you knew, you'd assume we were the culprits no matter what."
"Of course we would! If you have a skill like that, you could have gone in and out and settled the whole thing in an instant! Stashing things, smuggling them out—it'd all be trivial!"
Johann kept shouting at me without missing a beat.
"I'll concede that we had the means to take it. But we didn't even know where the warehouse was, and we never had time to look. How long do you think we've even been in this castle?"
"If you were a spy for another noble house, you'd already have that information! Don't give me that nonsense! Someone saw you entering the cellar behind the lord's keep!"
"...The cellar?"
I could no longer afford to ignore Johann.
"I told you they confessed! Those two aren't shameless like the rest of you. They said they couldn't bring themselves to betray the Lord who'd shown them such kindness, and they recounted your every move in detail. Kim Insil said he saw you sneaking into the cellar the day before you went to the Underground Waterway, keeping out of sight."
According to Johann's version of events, our party was some kind of spy ring hired by a rival noble. Kim Insil and Park Nam-young had supposedly been moved by the Lord's grace and defected, while we were the spies still denying everything to the bitter end.
"What's in the cellar? Don't tell me—"
"...There's a hidden door in the cellar that leads to the secret warehouse."
So that's where it was. Honestly, I hadn't known. In the first cycle, the lord's secret warehouse had been nothing but a frame-up. I'd only learned it even existed much later—and even then, I never knew the location.
If it hadn't been for Hans, I probably would have poked around a little and moved on.
"That's a lie. I've never been anywhere like that. There would have been people on patrol, wouldn't there? Did any of them see me or Kim Insil?"
"...No. It's Kim Insil's word alone. But then again, you have no way of proving your innocence either, do you?"
This wasn't Earth. There was no such thing as presumption of innocence.
If we wanted to live, we had to prove we hadn't stolen anything.
It was infuriatingly unfair.
"That's rich. If I had subspace storage and I'd stolen something, why would the Ring of Life be rolling around in my room instead of tucked away inside it?"
"You must have slipped up! You idiot!"
A complete stretch. Johann had dropped the mask entirely now.
"There's no reason we'd be spies. Who throws talent like ours into a deathtrap? Look at the state of this castle. And if I'd really stolen the heirloom, I wouldn't have needed to report the goblin reconnaissance the way I did. I would have just kept my mouth shut. When exactly was the item stolen?"
I shamelessly called myself talented. Looking at what I'd actually done, it was fair enough.
"It was still there, safe and sound, until the day you first entered the castle."
The day Johann presented the Imitation Holy Grail. He'd probably gone in once to plant it. And he hadn't gone back since.
"I want to believe you. I truly do. But the circumstances won't let me. There will be a trial tomorrow. You are currently the prime suspects. There's no use telling me anything. I can only hope you prove your innocence tomorrow."
With that—there was nothing more to be done—the old butler had us sent down to the underground prison.
The party was split up and locked away. I got a solitary cell; the women seemed to have been paired off, two to a cell.
The cells were a fair distance apart, but the prison had no magical treatment whatsoever, which meant the soundproofing was equally nonexistent. With my stats, I could use mana to catch the gist of the others' conversations.
I leaned against the cell wall and listened in on the women.
"Unni, Unni, what do we do? Why... why did this happen?"
"Seoyun..."
"Why did those two betray us? Why? If they'd just stayed with us...!"
While Na Seoyun trembled with anxiety, rage, and despair, Na-yeon soothed her even as she wrestled with her own confusion.
In the other cell, Nam Eun-ju was crying, and Joo Ha-yeon held her close, murmuring under her breath.
"What do we do... why would those two... and Johann, why would he...?"
She wanted to understand the cause of all this, how to fix it, why those two had betrayed us, and why Johann was doing this to us.
The truth was, Johann's reasons weren't complicated.
It was because the Lord was a reasonably just man.
Johann had reported the Imitation Holy Grail as if he'd retrieved it alone, and that had gotten him pulled off the front lines. Our subsequent exploits had even earned him a promotion.
If it came out that bringing back the Imitation Holy Grail hadn't been a solo effort—that we'd done it together—then vouching for our identities would be the sum total of Johann's actual contribution. And even that: if we'd simply disclosed that we'd retrieved the Grail together, getting into the castle wouldn't have been difficult, and the identity guarantee might have been a formality.
Johann had shamelessly framed that identity guarantee as a favor, and buried the rest. Then he'd sold us off to the north gate.
Except the people he'd sold off had stopped the north gate from being overrun, risked their lives to bring back intelligence that absolutely could not be lost, and completed the Lord's commission even while they were struggling.
And on top of all that, we'd brought back the Imitation Holy Grail together? Then Johann wouldn't be the sharp-eyed man who'd faithfully completed his mission, brought us into the castle, and vouched for us. He'd be the bastard who'd stolen the credit of the heroes who'd saved the castle—and used those heroes for all they were worth.
His reputation would be shredded, and living safely in Mellid Castle would become impossible. He'd probably be reduced to an ordinary hunter again, risking his life on hunts and fighting on the defensive front lines with death at his elbow.
Compared to that, even if he went out now, he just managed a few hunters, his quota had been reduced, and he never had to fight on the front lines. He was halfway to a desk job, with an escape hatch ready if he needed it.
He needed to stay safe, at least until he could flee this castle.
So he didn't want us distinguishing ourselves any further. Once he'd brought back the Grail and secured himself a reasonably comfortable, safe position, we'd outlived our usefulness, and he wanted us gone. At the very least, he'd meant to inflict a serious injury so we couldn't operate for a while. That's why he'd sent us to the most dangerous place—the north gate. But as we kept racking up increasingly absurd accomplishments and growing stronger, the Imitation Holy Grail situation became a bomb that could go off at any moment. So he moved up his plan to steal the heirloom and pinned a ridiculous frame-up on us.
His only miscalculation was that the goblins were far stronger than he'd imagined.
This castle wouldn't hold. It would fall to the goblins, and Johann would die.
I leaned against the wall and listened for movement outside.
Only two people were watching us.
I decided to wait for dawn.
Then something unexpected happened.
Johann came down to the underground prison.
He spoke with one of the jailers, was granted an hour's visitation, and headed toward the women's cells.
...Don't tell me. Before the trial?
A hideous memory from the first cycle flashed through my mind.
The rape Johann had committed under the pretext of a "sexual interrogation."
And of all things, four of the people locked in this prison were women.
I started seriously considering whether I should scrap the plan, smash the prison open right now, and get us out of the castle. Screwing Johann over was a form of entertainment. I'd already collected the real gains. My inventory was fully expanded, and even after that it was packed with leftover jewels and gold coins. Plenty of valuable antiques, and more than ten artifacts I could throw as bombs.
On top of that, I'd confirmed Na Seoyun and Na-yeon's stats, skill slots, and aptitudes—the original objective—decided to recruit them as companions, and succeeded in building a relationship close enough to matter.
By any measure, I'd already overshot the tutorial's goals. One of the original objectives—the ninth-floor dungeon—was still left, but it felt more like a bonus stage at this point. Of course I was still going to take it.
I focused my senses in the direction Johann and the jailer had gone, ready to smash everything if it came to that.
Fortunately, it didn't.
"...so if you just testify..."
"You've got some nerve..."
"You can still live..."
Fragments of conversation, coming through in fits and starts.
Ah. So he's trying to flip them.
That tracked. He was probably sweet-talking them—sell me out and we'll let you live. Last chance, that sort of thing. I'd been the one leading the team, so I couldn't be talked around, and I shouldn't be.
Fortunately, nothing had gone wrong so far. Then again, tomorrow was a trial the Lord himself would attend. Even a man who thought with his dick wouldn't pull something tonight.
This timing... is almost too convenient.
It was late at night. I'd planned to make my move at dawn, but this timing was actually pretty good.
I immediately knocked on the door and called the jailer.
Unlike the other cells, the solitary had nothing but a small barred window at the top of the door and a slot at the bottom for food.
Clank!
The upper hatch—just wide enough to see a pair of eyes—slid open, and the jailer approached.
"What do you—"
I'd been waiting for this. I shoved my hand through the bars and pressed a finger to his temple, right beside his eye.
"What the—!"
The jailer's eyes went wide. I immediately poured mana into my finger and gave his temple a light shove.
Thud.
A soldier who hadn't awakened to mana had no way of resisting my attack. In an instant his brain rattled in his skull, his eyes rolled white, and he crumpled to the floor.
I fed mana into the door handle, mapped the mechanism, and popped the lock with ease.
Basic mana manipulation. They didn't know we'd awakened to mana, so they'd locked us in an ordinary prison. That was a fatal mistake.
Then again, just a few days ago we'd been fighting for our lives at the north gate without using so much as a scrap of mana. It would have been stranger if they'd expected us to be able to use it after only a few days. And this fluently, no less.
One hour.
I had to be back before it was up.
Visitation was one hour, and during that time one jailer would be watching them. That jailer was probably one of Johann's plants. I'd just knocked the other one out. So for a while, there wouldn't be a single jailer in the underground prison. Every prisoner had been conscripted into the fighting, and food was scarce, so the cells were empty.
That was how dire things were for the castle.
I slipped out of the underground prison at once.
Destination: Johann's room.
I'd considered other approaches, but this one was the most effective, the most dramatic, and the most satisfying.
I'd show him exactly what the Code of Hammurabi looked like.