"Didn't you say you were leaving for the capital? Why are you still lingering around here?"
Nox tilted his chin sharply at Ethan, his tone cutting and condescending. Ethan’s face twisted into an irritated scowl.
"I’m not going. Plans changed," Ethan replied curtly.
Cherry interjected quickly.
"It seems faster to find the underground passage to Notium, so Sir Ethan decided to help us clear the way instead."
With the roads blocked at Westmore, this route might indeed be the more efficient option. They’d already found a passage leading to the Brunel police station, which gave them hope.
"Ah, good. Everyone’s here. I brought that bastard," Vanilla announced as she entered the salon. A man tied tightly with ropes was being dragged behind her.
It was the sniper from the Kintner survival camp. According to José, his skills were utterly pathetic.
"Wasn’t his name Charlie?"
"Charlie Green," Vanilla confirmed, forcing the man to kneel before them. Then she slapped him hard across the face, silencing his struggles.
Cherry was no slouch when it came to being intimidating, but Vanilla clearly had no interest in maintaining even the slightest pretense of refinement.
‘Well, except for Nox, no one here really looks like an aristocrat,’ Harrison thought, glancing at Nox. Lounging leisurely on the sofa, Nox wore an amused smile, as though the entire situation was some kind of performance for his entertainment.
‘Not that Nox is a conventional noble himself,’ Harrison mused.
Vanilla removed the sock stuffed into the trembling man’s mouth. The moment his lips were free, he began to wail.
"Please, spare me! Spare me!"
"Should I gag him again? He’s noisy," Vanilla asked, looking around. The man froze and clamped his mouth shut.
It was time to interrogate him, but Cherry merely blinked, sitting silently, while Nox and Ethan showed no signs of taking the lead.
Harrison sighed and stepped forward, addressing the man.
"Where are you from?"
"K-Kintner," Charlie stammered.
"You had a well-equipped scouting party. I assume you’ve set up a survival camp there?"
"Y-Yes. We’ve converted the Sinclair Hotel into our camp. There are about 50 survivors."
"They outnumber us," Ethan remarked dryly.
Cherry shook her head.
"Not quite. A good number of them died after coming here. According to the village chief, who kept count while burning the bodies, excluding the Royal Army imposters, they lost about 14 people."
Subtracting 14 from 50 left 36.
Fifty was not a small number, but it was unlikely they were all combatants.
Charlie Green himself wasn’t a professional sniper. José had called him unskilled and clumsy, likely someone who had only recently picked up a rifle and been assigned the role due to basic aptitude.
Even if Kintner had 50 survivors, their combat losses must have been significant, given how few of their fighters remained.
"Wait, they’re using my hotel as a survival camp? The nerve! Living in my hotel and then coming here to loot me?"
Cherry’s indignation was palpable, though the invaders likely hadn’t known she was in Brunel. From her perspective, however, their actions were an affront.
As Harrison observed her, he realized she was using phrasing reminiscent of Ethan’s. Ethan noticed it too, casting her a peculiar look, but Cherry remained oblivious, entirely focused on examining Charlie.
Harrison glared daggers at Ethan. Was he corrupting her speech now? Nox, catching Harrison’s expression, also shot a reproachful glance at Ethan, who raised his hands in surrender, confused.
"Why are you raising your hands, Sir Ethan?"
"Good question. I don’t know either," Ethan replied, awkwardly scratching his cheek as he lowered his hands.
The group’s attention returned to Charlie Green.
"What’s your goal, then?" Harrison asked.
Charlie hesitated, swallowing hard as he glanced nervously at the group.
Harrison’s reputation as a sharpshooter, Ethan’s prowess as a skilled officer, Cherry’s monstrous strength with her axe, and Vanilla’s deadly precision with a shotgun were all fresh in his memory.
Charlie had seen it all from the rooftop, tied up by José, and he knew better than to provoke them. If he angered them, they wouldn’t just kill him; they’d make him wish for death.
"Our goal was to occupy Brunel," he admitted cautiously. "If there were survivors, we planned to enslave them."
Harrison recalled the reports of Kintner’s intent to seize Brunel’s hills and force its villagers into servitude.
"So the reason for targeting Brunel was the hill behind it?"
"Yes. The mountain behind the mansion. Beyond it flows a large river. The mountain isn’t very high, so it’s not particularly dangerous, and it seemed useful for hunting wildlife and gathering food. Kintner is flat and doesn’t have anything like this."
"That’s not your idea, though, is it? To know so much about this hill, you must either be from Brunel originally or a long-time resident of Kintner."
At Harrison’s question, Charlie nodded obediently and began spilling everything he knew.
"Y-Yes. Elliot Ready—well, we call him El. He’s the leader of our camp. From what I’ve heard, he used to be the manager of the Sinclair Hotel Kintner branch."
The manager of the Sinclair Hotel Kintner branch?
But Harrison had never heard that name before. He knew the list of managers from every Sinclair Hotel branch by heart.
Updat𝒆d fr𝒐m freewebnσvel.cøm.
Stroking his chin, Harrison pondered. Elliot Ready. Not a manager, but the name sounded familiar. Where had he heard it before?
‘The manager of the Kintner branch was Maddox. Could it be him? Maybe he changed his name after the apocalypse.’
As he was thinking, Cherry, who had been quietly listening, suddenly erupted.
"Ah! Elliot, that bastard!"
Cherry shot up, shouting. Everyone turned to look at her.
"Manager? Please, that guy’s a noble!"
"Do you know Elliot Ready?" Harrison asked, surprised.
Cherry nodded furiously, clenching her fists, her teeth grinding in frustration.
"Elliot Ready Vernonham. That’s his full name."
The middle name confirmed it—he was a noble. Harrison searched his memory for any prominent noble families in the capital with the name Vernonham but came up empty.
"That jerk! I met him a long time ago. I took him as my partner to a party, and that arrogant bastard had the nerve to mock me for acting above my station, saying I wasn’t even a real noble!"
Cherry’s voice rose, her temper flaring. Harrison had never seen her this worked up before.
Cherry, who had endured countless insults from socialites without flinching, often laughing off their jabs with her head held high—this was something else.
"The kind of girl who would rather spend time dressing up than gossiping," Harrison mused. Yet here she was, venting about someone with an intensity he hadn’t seen before.
"And you accepted his invitation to partner him?" Nox asked, his brow furrowed in clear displeasure.
"It was my father’s request," Cherry snapped. "He said Elliot was the son of an old friend. And honestly, I didn’t think much of it. He was handsome, you know? No nobleman ever looked quite as good as him."
At this revelation, the three men fell silent for a moment, processing yet again how much Cherry valued a good-looking face.
Meanwhile, Harrison recalled an event involving Chairman Sinclair that this seemed to tie into.
"And he was a complete psychopath," Cherry continued. "The party we went to was hosted by the Wiffend Barony. At one point, the baron’s son insulted him. Not that I felt the need to intervene—after all, the guy had just insulted me for not being a proper noble. I let him deal with it himself."
Cherry shuddered, clearly disturbed by the memory.
"Later, the party got boring, so I stepped out into the garden. That’s when I heard something strange. And there he was, in the middle of an empty garden, stabbing the Wiffend baron’s son in the thigh with a sword. But the creepiest part? He was smiling. Like he was having the time of his life. His eyes were practically gleaming with excitement. And then he said—what was it again?"
Cherry lowered her voice to mimic Elliot’s tone.
‘Someone like you belongs under my feet.’
She shuddered again, visibly unsettled.
"Ugh. Even thinking about it now gives me chills. He’s a total psycho."
"Ah, I remember that incident," Ethan said. "It was one of those unsolved cases, wasn’t it? The baron’s son later claimed he stabbed himself in the leg. He ended up losing the use of that leg entirely. So this is the truth at last."
"He was coerced," Cherry said bluntly. "The Wiffend baron’s son was no saint. He had a nasty habit of ruining his servants and discarding them. And apparently, he was also into men. That night, Elliot caught him harassing a servant in the garden. Who knows? Maybe he even gathered evidence later. Either way, the baron’s son never spoke out against Elliot again."
Elliot Ready was even bolder than Harrison had imagined. A powerless, unnamed noble pulling such stunts against the Wiffend family? That took guts.
"That’s when I made up my mind. Men are all the same, so I’ll just focus on their faces."
"That’s a strange conclusion," Nox pointed out, but Cherry didn’t seem to hear him.
Charlie, meanwhile, sat in stunned silence, overwhelmed by the whirlwind of conversation.
"He’s seriously insane. You could tell from the start he was rotten. He’s the kind of guy who’d laugh while committing murder," Cherry said bitterly.
Vernonham. Neither Nox nor Ethan had ever heard of such a family.
"They’re barely nobles. My dad had to bail them out of gambling debt once. And now he’s gone and set up camp in my hotel? Impressive, I’ll give him that," Cherry sneered sarcastically.
Charlie shrank back, unnerved by her demeanor.
He’d already been terrified after witnessing her casually decapitate monsters with her axe, but listening to the chilling stories about Elliot, combined with the group’s overall demeanor, made the air feel suffocating. None of them seemed entirely sane.
Then again, given the state of the world, wasn’t it a miracle anyone here hadn’t completely lost their minds?