Chapter 117.1: Interviewing
PART 1/2
Erani, Ainash, and I all stood around Ripley, who was sitting disarmed on the ground.
She’d said she was friendly to our cause in some form, but we still took the basic precautions, taking her combat gear, searching her for any Enchanted items, searching the surrounding area to ensure it wasn’t a trap, and so on. Ripley stayed silent throughout the whole endeavor, simply allowing us to do what we needed without complaint.
While we did this, Astintash came up to speak to us.
“I am gracious for your help,” it had said, “and I am glad we reached an agreement. Now that the enemy is dispatched, I will take my leave.”
And with that, it just flew off. Really, part of me was expecting something more. But I supposed that, to a Dragon, killing massive swaths of life and taking part in gigantic battles was just like any other day. The only strange part of this whole situation to Astintash, I suspected, was the fact that it ended up forming a temporary alliance with a couple of Humans.
And it didn’t seem to want to keep that alliance, considering how soon it left. We held up our end of the bargain, and it held up its. Nothing more to it.
After that, we took Ripley away from the battlefield. Even though we didn’t find any soldiers tailing us or hiding in the shadows, we couldn’t be certain there wasn’t anyone around, so going to some other remote place would probably be a good idea.
Plus, even if there really wasn’t anyone around, who was to say they weren’t getting reinforcements as we spoke to come back and attack us? Sure, Astintash would probably be keeping an eye on the area to ensure nobody came back—and the Demons most likely knew that—but we couldn’t say for certain.
But really, I just wanted to get away from all the corpses. I’d become familiar with death ever since I’d gotten the Minute Mage Class—much more intimately so than I’d have liked—but that didn’t mean I liked it. Astintash wasn’t exactly clean with its crushing of heads and burning of the masses, and even if I was somewhat used to the sight, I didn’t feel like I could ever get used to the smell.
So we continued further into the mountain valley with Ripley in tow as our prisoner.
It took about an hour before we felt comfortable enough to sit down again—partially because it took about an hour for everyone to get their Mana back and for me to get back enough Stamina for another activation of Regenerate—but once we decided to rest, it took all my strength not to just collapse into the ground.
The past day had been much, much longer than it had any right to be. Both mentally and in a literal sense. I’d used Time Loop twice, each time going back four hours. That meant the day had lasted around thirty-two. And I’d spent at least half of that time actively dealing with life-or-death scenarios. I wanted nothing more than to just fall asleep—preferably for at least a week.
But we still had a prisoner with us, so I couldn’t do that just yet. Hopefully Ripley wouldn’t cause us any problems. She’d been too low on Stamina for the past while to try and fight back, but taking some time for us to regenerate ourselves also meant she got to as well, and it was possible that she might do something like activating Berserk to try and fight us in a last-ditch effort to escape. So we needed to stay on guard.
Ainash just wanted to kill her—not that I was particularly surprised by that—but she agreed not to. Definitely a step up from her prisoner-killing exploits of the past, though I wasn’t sure if praising her for just wanting to kill someone was really all that much better than going ahead and doing it. Still, I couldn’t help but feel a bit proud of her progress.
While we walked, I’d also been finishing up the practice for all of my Spells. I’d Leveled up to 18 in the previous fight, earning me some Stat Points, a Spell Choice—which I still needed to go through, once we got some time—and a new Rank for my Soft Cap. That Rank was 10, meaning I could get all of my Spells up to the first Upgrade point without having to deal with the Soft Cap, now.
Though I wouldn’t actually be able to Upgrade them without Spell Crystals, which I had a distinct lack of, currently. Still, I went through and at least got them all to the Spell XP threshold, if just for the sake of making my Status look nice and clean.
Threshold reached. Ray of Frost XP has reached 355.
Consume a Cold Spell Crystal or a Curse Spell Crystal to increase Ray of Frost Rank to 10.
So I got quite a few of these notifications for all of my Spells, each informing me of the Spell Crystals I’d need. Once I got all of them maxed out, I just went back to practicing Noxious Grasp.
Once we were ready, we sat Ripley up against a rock and tied her hands behind her back with part of Ainash’s whip—she was sure to turn off the flaming aspect of it before we did that—and then we got to the actual questioning part of our encounter.
“So, what is your exact relationship with the Demons?” I started our interview out with. We’d been secretly communicating through Ainash and trying to figure out how we’d conduct our interrogation, and ended up deciding on a basic line of questioning.
Ripley gazed up at me. She seemed to have a mix of respect and anger in her eyes, though I wasn’t sure how the two coexisted when directed at the same person. Shaking her head, she grunted. “You had to start off with the hardest question, huh?”
“Just try your best to explain.”
“Well the problem is that I barely know, myself.” She sighed. “As a kingdom, it seems like we’re subservient to them, at this point. The king has ordered a ceasefire on all fighting against the Demons. Obviously some people refused to stop, but they were… dealt with. Swiftly.”
“What about you, personally?”
“I’m their enemy. And if that makes me an enemy of the kingdom too, so be it. I’m tired of fighting for their side. What happened here,” she gestured around, “sacrificing all of those soldiers’ lives against the Dragon, it’s sick. They knew it would happen. Hells, we were briefed on it. They called us ‘VIPs,’ the ones that were supposed to survive. They knew that Dragon would attack, and so they told the soldiers to fight back, no matter what. Deserting meant torture, then death.”
I nodded. “So the VIPs…”
“We were given special rings to get teleported out once things got too dangerous. Everyone else was essentially supposed to distract the Dragon while we went and killed you. They wanted to get you alone. And apparently the kingdom felt like it was worth sacrificing the lives of a thousand good men and women to a gods-damned Dragon for that cause.”
“And you disagreed?”
“‘Course I did. Couldn’t really do much about it, though. I wasn’t planning on doing anything, either. But when I was under Berserk, I wasn’t really thinking straight. Made the decision there and then to just fuck ‘em and get away.”
“So you don’t plan on going back, then?”
“Hells no. If they want to kill you, that’s their business. And if you want to survive, that’s yours. But I won’t be dying for either of those causes. They don’t have anything to do with me.”
“Don’t you want to help us take down the Demons, then? If we worked together—”
“I’m just going to stop you there. This is your fight. I don’t want to hurt you, and I sure as hells want to see those Demons sent back to where they came from, but… I don’t think you understand what you’re up against.”
“Why don’t you try enlightening us, then?”
She just shook her head. “It’s hopeless to try and take them down. They made sure to beat that into me. And one day, it’ll be beaten into you, too. I’m not going back to the kingdom, and that includes fighting against them, as well as with them.”
“So then you’ll be traveling to the Barinruth Empire with us, then?”
She laughed. “As far as I know, I’m still your prisoner. I assume that we’re operating under ‘what you say goes,’ right? In that case, I don’t think I have a choice.”
I pursed my lips. “Guess so. But I was hoping to establish a bit more of a friendly relationship, if you’re not going to be working against us.”
“If it was up to me, I’d get the hells away from you as fast as I could. You’re a magnet for danger. The Demons may kill me on sight now that I’ve deserted, but they’ll be actively looking for you. And I don’t wanna be near when they see you.”
I grunted. “That’s fine, I guess.”
“Anyway,” Ripley said, her face suddenly growing much more serious, “down to what I wanted to tell you in the first place. Something’s wrong with Koinkar. The kingdom is corrupt, sure, but the king, too. He’s different.”
“The king is different?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, but he’s not acting right. Something more serious is going on than just some extortion. I think they’ve infiltrated us to our core.”
Updat𝒆d fr𝒐m freew𝒆bnov𝒆l.c(o)m