“Ah, why are you hitting me? Ouch!”

“Isn’t this guy crazy? If you’re going to die, die alone. Why is this chaos happening?”

Glenn grabbed Arendt by the collar and shook him, but no one stopped him. Even Richt just looked away and sighed.

Eventually, Arendt freed himself from Glenn’s clutches.

Arendt, who had shaken off his senior, expressed his annoyance by shaking off his clothes.

“Oh, really. Why are you doing this after all my hard work?”

“Hard work? Hard work? What on earth did you do to make things like this?”

“What did I do?”

Arendt shrugged his shoulders shamelessly.

“…”

The knights who had been growling fiercely suddenly became dumbfounded.

“By now, there would be chaos among them, trying to find the fake gold coins. If they leak out, this place would be finished too.”

What if someone were to be caught carrying that money by local police and leak out information about where the counterfeit gold came from?

That would be a huge disaster for the casino operators.

The situation outside was vivid even without having to imagine it too much.

The mercenaries hired by the casino would be sweating profusely by now, blocking the entrance and controlling the entry and exit of people.

If necessary, they might have to search through the customers’ pockets themselves. In the process, it was also their responsibility to deal with the customers’ strong protests that would naturally arise.

“The security here has become lax… there might be a few mercenaries left, but they’re no match for our seniors.”

That means they are now completely out of the casino’s surveillance network.

Furthermore.

“And this place seems like a good enough place to achieve our purpose.”

The knights suddenly came to their senses at the strangely persuasive words.

This was a dark, dank prison. A damp prison where anyone would have been locked up.

The front was blocked by an iron gate with iron bars, and the four sides were blocked by flimsy walls that showed signs of having been eaten by rats.

Beyond that, he sensed a presence that he had not noticed until now. Saif looked around without knowing what was going on.

Rider muttered blankly.

“…Really?”

“…It’s been noisy since a while ago. Is someone here again?”

As if that one word were a signal, a feeble voice came from beyond the prison cell.

That was the beginning.

“What happened?”

“There wasn’t a fight, was there…?”

Terrified voices began to flow out from here and there.

Arendt slightly curved the corners of his lips as if to tell people ‘look at this’.

“How is it? I told you guys we achieved our goal.”

Why is this real?

Why on earth does this method work?

The knights just gaped at the unbelievable reality and looked up into the empty space. Only Arthur and Richt, who could say that this kind of situation was familiar, looked at them with pity.

The sympathetic gaze of Saif, who had already been treated severely by Arendt, was a bonus.

Meanwhile, urgent voices were heard from beyond the prison.

“By any chance… are you from outside? How’s the situation?”

“The situation is not much different from when you fell for the tricks of the bad guys and ended up here. I kicked their ass, so take comfort in that for now.”

Arendt responded nonchalantly and tilted his head slightly.

“It would be better for both of us to talk about the details face to face. We also need to find out if the person we’re looking for is here.”

“Talk face to face? How?”

“What’s so difficult about that?”

When Arthur asked with a furrowed brow, Arendt simply nodded toward the wall.

“Surely you can break a thin wall like this, right?”

“…”

The knights’ faces rotted away.

“If it’s too much trouble, you can just kill some time until they come back.”

But as has been the case throughout this journey, they didn’t have many options.

In the end, the knights chose to roll up their sleeves and swear.

When they were dragged in, their weapons and swords were all taken away, but honestly, it wasn’t that big of a problem.

If it had been built for the purpose of detaining heinous criminals, it would have been built more sturdily, but this place was used to lock up debtors who were addicted to gambling.

The walls of a prison that was made of a large space and made of partition walls could easily be broken down with just a few blows of magical power.

There was no response from outside the prison, despite the loud noise. As Arendt said, it seemed like they had run out to take care of business.

Anyway, it was a good thing for them.

As one wall came crashing down, a gaunt man trapped in the room beyond blinked in confusion.

“Ah, no. This is…?”

“Are you hurt anywhere?”

It was absurd that the wall that had confined him for so long had collapsed so vainly, but he nodded for now.

The bare-handed rescue operation continued for a long time, and finally… the last remaining wall was able to be broken down.

“This is the first time in my life that I have done something so ignorantly…”

Glenn muttered in a complicated tone, looking down at his dusty hands.

As Arendt said, the results may be good, but was this really okay?

But, despite his discomfort, he no longer felt like blaming him as he watched the crowd of people huddle together in the largest room.

If it weren’t for that guy’s idea, it would’ve taken a lot longer to find the people caught here.

“There are twelve in total. I think these are all of them.”

Arthur gathered the people together and reported to Richt after counting their numbers. The people sitting in a crowded place looked up at the knights with anxious eyes.

Richt groaned.

“There are more people than I thought.”

“Those who aren’t here would have been sent elsewhere to do labour.”

At that moment, Saif, who had been silent, quietly intervened.

“Labour?”

“Yes, usually when they can’t pay their debts, they make them work that way to earn money.”

“…That old man is right. If they could move, they were all dragged outside.”

A boy who had been observing the situation opened his mouth. The boy, who looked to be in his mid-teens at most, was holding his younger sister close to him.

Arendt furrowed his eyebrows.

“Why is a child here?”

“My father owed money… so I was locked up instead. They said they took my father to a quarry.”

Those children were taken hostage to prevent their father from escaping.

The knights’ faces hardened. It seemed that the others were in the same situation.

There were a few elderly people who didn’t look like they would ever try their hand at gambling, and the rest seemed to have been imprisoned here after sending the group that had come to gamble with them to a labour site.

Tsk, Arendt clicked his tongue and asked them.

“Then, is there a priest named Declan here?”

“That person was also taken somewhere else.”

This time, the one who gave the answer was an old man in shabby clothes who was sitting listlessly.

“I thought he was just another ordinary young man who came to the casino, but later I found out that he was a priest. He prayed for us, but he said that he could not cause trouble for the temple and that he would go to the labour site of his own accord.”

“Sir, do you know where that is?”

“I don’t know for sure, but… I think he went to the same place as my son.”

The old man nodded his head slowly in response to Richt’s question.

The man who had asked the question first raised his hand and asked.

“Who are you? Are you from the police force and came to rescue us?”

“No, we got caught too.”

They were left speechless by the words that came out of Arendt’s mouth.

Even the knights.

The man, who had been absent-mindedly moving his lips, barely came to his senses and stammered as he asked.

“Yes? But this… even the prison was easily destroyed…”

“What? Are you dissatisfied? Is there a law that says people who can easily break out of prisons can’t gamble?”

“…”

There was nothing more for them to say after that.

As the people kept their mouths shut, Arthur sighed deeply and scratched his head.

“He may speak harshly, but don’t worry, he won’t do anything harmful.”

In any case, the idea of ​​hiding one’s identity just in case was sufficiently conveyed to his colleagues. They, too, would have understood the expression of intent to not ask any more questions, since they were not fools.

When the situation was resolved, Richt spoke again.

“Does anyone know where the labour site is?”

“It’s a quarry that takes about three days to get from here.”

A pale-faced young man raised one hand and muttered.

“I know because I was dragged there and came back.”

“Why are you here?”

“I collapsed while working… and I had to switch places with my colleagues.”

Arendt nodded dryly.

“That’s right. If it’s called a quarry, it shouldn’t be that hard to find. What about the communication crystal ball?”

“Fortunately, this wasn’t taken. All the weapons were confiscated, though.”

Since they had decided to leave the palace with a day to spare, it was time for Laius and his party to arrive nearby.

Richt took out the communication crystal ball that he had kept hidden well in his pocket.

Under the dim light of the prison, the crystal ball was dragged out, with a nice, big crack on it.

“Uh?”

Foolish words came out of Richt’s mouth. All the knights froze. Even Arendt’s eyes widened, as if he had not anticipated this situation.

“…”

A hellish silence flowed.

“Ah, why did it turn out like that?”

“…Now that I think about it, I hit a wall earlier.”

Richt barely managed to answer the question Rider stammered out.

It seemed like it had broken during the chaos.

They were dragged along without even being able to put up a single proper resistance.

Normally, it wouldn’t have been a problem to shake off those guys, but once they realized Arendt’s intentions, they had no choice but to surrender themselves to the violence.

After that, no one was willing to open their mouths.

They found the missing people and even created an excuse to invade with counterfeit gold coins, so now they thought all they had to do was call in the knights from outside and wait for them to join them.

“We’re screwed.”

Arthur blurted out his thoughts, speaking for everyone.

The people who were trapped also realized that the situation was becoming serious and began to look at each other.

Saif, his face pale, strode towards Richt.

“Then what do we do?”

But there was no way he could answer that.

The knights’ eyes began to look increasingly rude as they looked at Richt.

Richt felt wronged by the reproachful stares that said, “Can’t you even take care of one communication crystal ball properly?” Who would have thought that things would turn out like this? It was all because Arendt was going wild.

Richt glanced sideways at the damn apprentice knight who was the cause of all this with a little resentment.

Arendt, who had been staring at the floor with his arms crossed for a while, opened his mouth.

“Saif, do you know the geography around here?”

Saif, who was suddenly pointed out, nodded absentmindedly.

Eyes filled with half anticipation and half worry gathered around Arendt.

Arendt lived up to their expectations.

“Now that it’s come to this, there’s nothing we can do. We have no choice but to confront them head on.”