“Are you going to t*rture him or something?”

The condition of the hostage was crucial if they were to propose terms of negotiation in exchange for his release. What use was a crown prince who wasn’t well in mind or body? To t*rture him would be to abandon negotiations.

At Burke’s question, Ethan stroked his chin before speaking.

“We’re nullifying the magic around Rigo at the moment, but we don’t know how long that will last. We don’t know much about their magic. If there’s another artefact that can disable the nullifier… or even if there are more artefacts like the one we saw…”

If even one of these assumptions proved true, this wouldn’t be a war that mercenaries could survive without magic.

This time the foolish Crown Prince lost the moment because he was too busy flaunting his power, but that doesn’t mean the other royals will be equally foolish.

After easily inferring the rest of Ethan’s words, Burke frowned. Now that the war had begun, it wouldn’t end until one side was completely destroyed.

“If we can use him, we should.”

Negotiations were off the table. After seeing such an artefact, what could they do on their side? They were the weaker side – they had to use whatever they could to increase their chances of winning, even if only a little.

While he accepted the necessity of the interrogation, he still had one question.

“But this so-called Crown Prince – wasn’t he originally just the powerless 17th prince with no support from any nobles? And didn’t he force his way into the position of Crown Prince by putting the Emperor under some kind of hypnosis or something?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t think this guy knows everything about the Imperial Palace. How much useful or true information could he really give us – like secrets that only the Emperor knows, or critical information about the other royals?”

Without power, you don’t have access to information. Since the 17th Prince had probably forced his way into the position of Crown Prince, there was a greater chance that he didn’t know anything useful.

“On the other hand, maybe he became Crown Prince because he knew something others didn’t.”

“That’s true.”

Burke ran a rough hand through his hair.

The Emperor suddenly fell into a hypnotic state. The other royals were silent. The one who had discovered the artefact capable of silencing them all was the Crown Prince, now imprisoned in the Guild’s underground cell.

“This is going to be a long day.”

Burke rolled his stiff shoulders and gave a bitter smirk.

***

Ethan’s hands were merciless. Blood and flesh splattered with each blow.

“And who said they’d extract the information first?”

Burke leaned against the wall behind him, clucking his tongue.

What Ethan was doing was less like interrogation and more like venting his anger through a brutal beating.

“Ughhhhh…”

“You’re going to kill him at this rate.”

Ethan looked down at Burke’s warning.

The prince’s eyes were so swollen and bruised that the blood vessels in the corners had burst, turning the skin a purple shade – he couldn’t even open them. His trousers were soaked, reeking with a sour stench.

The man lay sprawled on the filthy floor, oblivious to his own humiliation. His limbs twitched, grotesquely bent from the slow crushing of the bones in his fingers and toes.

Ethan, who had just mocked Edwin, casually shook the blood from his hands.

Burke, turning his gaze away from Ethan, shrugged.
“Still, it’s kind of funny. All it took was losing a bit of magic, and look at him now.”

Here, the presence or absence of magic was enough to determine whether someone was considered human.

The more magic you had, the more privileged you were. The less you had, the more you were despised.

Ethan, once hailed as the king of mercenaries, was a Randall – a race of magical beasts who were treated as less than human. Because they had no magic, they were despised, and all of their kind were condemned to live as slaves for life.

They took the form of humans, but their bodies were more beast than man. Legs strong enough not only to keep up with four-legged beasts, but to outrun them. Fists strong enough to shatter blades. Hearing sharp enough to pick up sounds from afar. Eyes that could see as clearly in the dark as in the light.

In every way, they were superior to humans.

But because they lacked magic, they were treated as beasts and forced to live as slaves.

But in retrospect, the Randalls were nothing short of saviours in this place.

How many mercenaries had Ethan rescued?

How many magical beasts had he slain?

This was a place where social status meant nothing when you couldn’t even see a step ahead.

When survival was all that mattered, who had time to care about anyone else?

“It’s not that they lost a spell – it’s that they only had magic to begin with.”

For generations, the nobles had enjoyed the privileges of magic – and the power that came with it.

With magic and the authority it gave them, they crushed the lower classes, treating them like carpets so they wouldn’t have to set foot on the ground.

They maintained this system for at least hundreds of years.

Whatever it was in the beginning, the nobles of today are nothing more than pimps – chaining the lower classes with magic and driving them with the whip of social hierarchy.

So what happens to those who are freed from the chains of magic?

There will be a rebellion, of course. A whip might work on one or two people – but if you’ve got dozens coming at you, it’s useless. You can’t whip them all.

Soon the world will lose not only magic, but mana itself.

For now, it’s being suppressed for the sake of the war, but when things settle down, they’ll wake up one morning without mana, lost and confused.

This war will take the lives of many nobles, and many – perhaps all – of the royals who rule over them will die as well.

They’ll have a fit, not because of the loss of mana, but because of the loss of their rulers and their power.

Of course, Ethan had no intention of getting involved in any of that.

Whatever happened to everyone else had nothing to do with him.

He had joined this war for one reason and one reason only – for her.

The damned bastard had a high chance of finding her, using the ancient ruins as a clue.

“But this was unexpected.”
“What was?”
“Who would’ve thought the crown prince couldn’t use magic?”

At those words, Ethan clicked his tongue.
During the first few beatings, the crown prince had lashed out in rage, unprovoked, venting his frustration on his own.

They’d assumed he had no political backing, but who could’ve imagined a royal born into that lineage would be unable to use magic?

It may not have been obvious when he was a child, but as he grew older, this critical flaw came to light – and from that moment on, Edwin’s fortunes took a nosedive.

There was a reason he used the ancient artefact on the Emperor.

He even used it to deceive others with magic.

For him, the artefact had been the turning point that changed his destiny.

But now he had lost everything.

Despite being Crown Prince, Edwin was dull, stubborn and foolish – clinging to his pride and nothing else.

Now he was nothing more than a madman who’d completely lost his mind.

Ethan’s violent outburst had been partly fuelled by all this.

He ran a rough hand through his hair and turned around.

“Are you going to see If?”

“Yes. If I don’t go soon, she’ll throw a fit.”

He had already stayed longer than he should have. Leaving Burke to clean up, Ethan stepped out of the basement.

Thanks to If’s help, Ethan had no trouble getting around despite the loss of his right arm.

He had recently left the infirmary and was currently staying in the Guild’s on-call room.

His home was far from the entrance to Rigo, and in such an unstable situation, he couldn’t afford to be so far away.

Of course, after the kidnapping, there was no way he could leave her alone at home.

In the end, Ethan decided to stay with her inside the guild building.

Unlike the rough fixtures in his own home, he gripped the smoothly finished wooden handrail as he climbed the stairs.
They’d built it to be fairly sturdy — the steps didn’t creak once, holding Ethan’s heavy frame with ease.

Soon, he reached the second floor and let a faint smile tug at his lips.
He could sense a presence from inside quietly making its way to the door.

Creaaak.

“You snuck out without saying a word last time, remember?”

Ethan laughed, almost like a sigh.

How frantically he had run around looking for her when she had disappeared after being left alone in the room.

When she had run into his arms, Ethan had held her tightly and stepped into the ready room with her.

Moments like that reminded him of their trip to Rigo together – just the two of them.

Take away the war and it was almost the same. No use denying it.

“Ethan disappeared again.”

Her lips curled into a pout, clearly unhappy even with his brief absence.

Ethan sat down on the bed and planted a soft, quick kiss on her lips to soothe her.

“It was only for a moment. I came right back, didn’t I?”

“Where did you go?”

“To investigate something.”

He couldn’t exactly say he’d been out torturing someone, so he avoided the truth and chose a more neutral word.

“Investigate?”

“Yeah. The artifact we saw—if we put it in your words, it was controlled by the human crown prince from this world.”

“Controlled… That’s not quite right.”

Mumbling as she chewed on her lip, If tilted her head.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not that he controlled it — the artifact just didn’t attack him because there was an error in the code.”

What now? Ethan frowned at the strange combination of words he didn’t understand.

“Code? Error?”

If rolled her eyes slowly, thinking.

How was she going to explain this?

Blocked once again by the ever-frustrating wall of having to explain things, If furrowed her brow.