TEB Ch 105

“Who….who”

Liev responded cynically to the faint voice again.

“It’s none of your business to know who it is. I’m helping you because I don’t want to hear about someone dying while I can’t even leave.”

The soldier’s eyes widened at the sound of Liev’s words in Airenese. How much longer could it have been? The sound of the soldier breathing became louder as the weight lightened. Finally, as the shelves emptied and Liev pushed down the top shelf with his injured and worn-out hands, the expression on the soldier’s face, which had been twisted the whole time, finally found peace.

As Liev silently removed books from the next bookshelf and moved them one by one, the soldier suddenly spoke to Liev.

“You… are you the prisoner who was locked up in the Dungeon earlier?”

After listening to only the Imperial language the entire time, when he suddenly heard comprehensible words he understood, Liev was taken aback and almost dropped the book he was holding in his hand.

“What did you just say?”

He looked at the soldier’s face with a bewildered expression, and the soldier, still with a pained face, replied with a faint smile on his lips.

“There are Airen people around me. My younger brother married an Airense woman, so I learned a little Airense to be able to talk with my new family.”

The pronunciation was just as slurred as when Liev spoke the Empire’s language, but the sentence structure was quite sophisticated. It didn’t seem like a skill he just learned in a day or two for fun. Liev looked at the soldier’s face again with a sense of caution, wondering if this could be a story he made up to get his sympathy. While silently clearing the shelves, as he was thinking about the worst possible scenario that could happen when he was done, the soldier spoke up again.

“You’re really a strange person. Usually people would have left by now.”

Of course, that’s what Liev intended to do. If he had met the soldier while escaping from the prison, he would have knocked him unconscious with the tool he had in his hand and run away. But now he was in this state, injured and unable to move. Even if someone were to call him foolish or naive, he had nothing to say.

What? I can’t help it because I feel uneasy.

The main reason was that no matter how many times he went around in circles, he couldn’t find an exit, so he had to come back. But even if he had found a way out of that situation, he would still feel uneasy.

I don’t know what the situation is like outside, but it definitely doesn’t seem to be good. So the chances of him being able to search this collapsed fortress and find and treat any injured individuals are slim. but he couldn’t just turn a blind eye to it. If he were with Renard right now, he would have wanted to help them. He didn’t want to be the kind of person who decides whether to save someone or not based on whether Renard is here or not. That’s all it was.

“……”

Without paying attention to the soldier’s words, Liev lifted the last bookshelf and pushed it to the side. With all his strength, he pushed the heavy furniture out of the way, revealing a twisted leg underneath.

“Ugh….”

No matter how good Liev’s stomach was, he couldn’t help but have a troubled expression at the sight of such a painful injury. What should I do about this? With this kind of injury, there was no way there wouldn’t be any lasting damage. It seemed impossible for him to even stand on his own two feet.

“Is it really that bad? I can’t feel anything below my knees anymore, so I thought it might be bad.”

The soldier cautiously asked, observing Liev’s reaction. Liev only nodded his head without saying a word.

“Yeah, I thought so. Thank you for helping me. Ugh, let’s go the way I promised.”

The soldier tried to lift himself up, using his arms as support. But when his injured leg was pulled and the pain surged through his body, he grimaced and sat back down. When Liev reflexively tried to support him,he heard a loud thud, followed by the sound of Renard’s roaring in pain.

“……!”

When Liev’s expression momentarily distorted and he looked in the direction from which the sound was heard, the soldier, who could see only Liev’s face in the dark, shouted urgently.

“Hurry, we have to get out of here quickly!” Hurry up, just you!

Then the soldier struggled to stand with a pained expression on his face, then gestured towards the north, pointing north.

“If we go that way, there will be a dead end at the end. But if you feel around the wall carefully, there should be a hidden passage leading to the surface. It’s designed not to collapse no matter what happens, so you can escape through there.”

Liev felt even more confused by the soldier’s urgent attitude. Even if he were to believe his words and head in that direction, Actually, this was the only way to go.

But what about this man? Was he supposed to leave him here like this? Someone with an injured leg? This was not at all what he had in mind when he first decided to help him.

In this urgent situation, the distant sound of a dragon’s cry rang out again, causing Liev to gulp and swallow dry saliva in his throat.

***

“Ha…..”

In the dark passage, he cautiously made his way down with a heavy burden on his shoulders, unable to see the end of the maze no matter how far he walked. Each step was precarious, feeling along the narrow gap with his hands, his whole body was tense, and it was difficult to even keep him balanced. After walking for a while, Liev stopped to catch his breath and leaned against the wall.

The place the soldier had mentioned earlier was a passage that was not visible before it appeared. It was so narrow that only one person could barely enter, and it seemed to be only used in emergencies. Liev, who had been trying to escape alone, eventually returned to the soldier.

“Damn it…”

And he even showed him the way out. He couldn’t just leave him alone. Liev went back to where the shelves had fallen and tried to carry the soldier on his shoulders, but the soldier resisted, saying that it wasn’t necessary. But Liev refused. The soldier, whether he was grateful for Liev’s help or had decided to rebel because his superiors were no longer trustworthy, told Liev about Renard’s current state. The result was a situation where we couldn’t feel relieved or completely despair.

“That’s why things seem to have been going too well.”

While tracking down places that had been affected and attacked along the mountain range, there was never a moment when the group was in danger. They only encountered monsters that could easily be taken care of by the abilities of our group. Why didn’t they suspect anything until now? It meant that the monsters were only within the areas that the Empire could control. Before falling into the trap, he thought the reason for this was simply to make it seem that the Imperial Army was defending the border zone. But through the soldier’s words, he found out that there was a different reason.

“Our technology isn’t advanced enough to capture a dragon at once… So they made a trap to lure the dragon in without him even realizing it.

It was a trap so large that it didn’t even look like one, the attack was a location.