Trapped in a Game That Flopped

Chapter 51

Episode 51

By the time the sensation, which had returned first to his fingers, spread through his whole body and he shot upright.

The woman was completely gone.

Just like an illusion seen in a dream.

As he groggily scanned his surroundings, his gaze, like that of one who had just woken, suddenly landed on something.

[Sleep-Inducing Potion x 199]

[S-Grade Healing Potion x 1]

[S-Grade Antidote Potion x 1]

His blood-red eyes flashed sharply for a moment as he looked at the items left where the woman had disappeared.

"Ha."

He laughed, his lips twisting into a savage sneer.

He wasn't sure what the sleeping potions meant, but he pretty much understood the rest.

It was a rather expensive combination used to alleviate potion addiction when a neutralizing agent wasn't available.

'So this is what she meant by repaying the debt.'

Without a second glance at the sleeping potions, he reached out, roughly snatched the two S-Grade potion bottles, and shoved them into his pocket.

'Pink hair.'

He was repeating it to himself several times, so as not to forget the afterimage of the woman who had vanished like an illusion.

"Your Highness."

He suddenly sensed a presence approaching.

Kassel finally tore his gaze from the empty air and turned his head.

Bright blond hair, blue eyes, a stuffy and boring face.

It seemed the master of the estate had brought a few knights and climbed the tower, picking his way over the stairs that hadn't been destroyed.

"I came in a hurry when I heard a great disturbance at the tower..."

"..."

"Your Highness... did you personally dispose of the monster that was released from its seal?"

There were one or two things he didn't understand, but circumstantially, anyone could see that the prisoner.

No, the deposed Crown Prince, had defeated the Hailey family's long-standing nemesis.

Furthermore, he had restored their forgotten heirloom.

It was clearly so...

Adam's emotionless eyes swept past the monster, which lay dead with its belly split open, and the sword the Crown Prince was holding.

His gaze, which had been scanning the half-destroyed top of the tower as if searching for something else, returned to Kassel.

"However, the apothecary who was with you..."

"So this is what she gave me and yammered about."

The Crown Prince, whose gaze had followed Adam's down to his own hand, suddenly scoffed.

"She made something just like me."

Kassel stared at the sword in his hand with sharp eyes for a while, then finally tossed it away without any lingering attachment.

Kang!

The sword, which looked extraordinary at a glance, embedded itself diagonally into the stone floor, as if it were soft earth.

He stared at the solid sword, which didn't even tremble, with sunken eyes, then turned his head and gave a cold glance.

"Adam Hailey."

Suddenly called by his full name, Adam dropped his attitude of treating him as a non-person and immediately dropped to one knee.

"Your command."

As the Count prostrated himself, the knights behind him also quickly knelt.

No one here regarded Kassel as a prisoner any longer.

From the moment he killed the sealed monster and saved the Hailey family, he was already their lord.

"In that case, if the prisoner is no longer a prisoner, what happens to the Hailey family, who failed to properly attend to him?"

Adam had no idea why, at this moment, the words of that gloomy bastard, who wasn't even here, came to mind.

As if he had known all along that things would turn out this way.

It was then.

"I will give you this sword."

An unbelievable declaration came from the Crown Prince.

Adam, who had lowered his head, flinched and looked up at the sword.

His two blue eyes wavered.

The restored heirloom looked like a weapon of immense power, even at a glance.

But one couldn't claim something that had been broken, lost its light, and forgotten by its descendants as an heirloom.

Therefore, the owner of the restored sword was the Crown Prince, not him.

That's why he couldn't guess why he was handing over the legendary sword he had just revived so easily.

Even without handing over the sword, Adam had already shown his willingness to pledge loyalty.

"...May I ask why you are giving me the sword?"

Adam hesitated, then asked.

"Because I have a task for you."

The answer that came back, however, was unexpectedly simple.

"Find someone."

"Who..."

"The apothecary you hired for my insomnia."

The man, who had turned his gaze from the sword, stared into the distant, empty air, just as when he had first been discovered, his blood-red eyes flashing.

"Find that bastard and bring them back to me."

[Kassel Ludwig feels a strong interest in you.]

A system window that the person in question couldn't see popped up meaninglessly, then vanished.

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

The deposed Crown Prince, who had been brought in and detained in a wretched state, was moved to the estate, receiving the utmost hospitality.

No one opposed the Count's decision.

It would have happened anyway, even if he had continued to be treated as a prisoner.

This was because the prison where the prisoner had been held was completely destroyed, thanks to the newly awakened monster's rampage.

The Hailey family's restored heirloom, which Kassel had nonchalantly left stuck in the ground.

Adam, who didn't feel much interest in the bizarrely shaped greatsword, remained with his knights to investigate the top of the half-destroyed tower.

Examining the dead monster's corpse, Adam was inwardly astonished at the cut.

It was truly magnificent skill.

A clean cut from the maw to the anal sac, preventing the demonic energy and organs inside the monster from leaking out.

'On top of that, he defeated the monster in less than an hour.'

It was unbelievable speed.

According to the ancestors' memoranda, passed down to the head of the family for generations, it was written that it took three full days and nights just to seal the arch-monster.

The monster that attacked Hailey was an ancient arch-monster, with a long body over 40 meters, and it wields the hard shell characteristic of an arthropod.

It has two pairs of antennae, over 50 pairs of legs, and 99 pairs of teeth in layers.

Its weakness is the single eye inside its maw.

Attacking it will cause it to faint and quiet down for a short time, but it will soon rampage and attack violently.

The first family head, Sepitraon Hailey, sealed it with his life force immediately after stabbing its eye with the 'Ancient Sword Reborn from Swallowing Darkness,' Lumiekar...

In the fierce battle with the monster, there were dozens of casualties, and the Count's estate collapsed once and had to be rebuilt.

But to kill the monster in such a short time, with such minimal damage.

The knights and servants he had left at the estate, just in case, also testified that they had been distracted by the sudden thunderbolt and fire and hadn't noticed what was happening at the tower.

It meant his power was just that overwhelming.

'Was the Crown Prince that powerful?'

Adam, who hadn't paid him much attention other than knowing he had a very cruel and violent disposition, was cursed, and was called the 'Lord of Nightmares,' felt a new sense of perspective.

'...But why is he looking for the apothecary?'

Adam recalled the events of a few moments ago.

Honestly, when Kassel Ludwig had offered to hand over the greatsword, he had been extremely tense.

If he intended to plot treason right now, there were quite a few things to prepare.

Even if he had been cast out as a prisoner, he was a man who had been born and raised in the Imperial Palace and was adept at all sorts of schemes.

There was no way he would easily give up the ancient sword he had restored for no price.

But he was quite perplexed by the 'price' that was demanded.

'That apothecary bastard must have caused some trouble before fleeing.'

From what he had experienced in their short time together, the newly hired apothecary was a sassy and flimsy bastard.

He always wore beggar-like attire, in a robe far too large for his body, as if he had no money to buy clothes, and he often spouted impudent words.

'And on top of that, how he fawned over money.'

He was at least quite competent, so Adam had planned to just wait and see, but.

He couldn't understand what on earth the bastard had done to make the Crown Prince search for him so murderously.

However, the bastard had a record of exterminating the Darkness-Eating Centipedes and saving Serina's life, so he couldn't just let the Crown Prince kill him.

"Ha..."

Adam let out a short sigh, his head starting to ache.

He finally tore his gaze from the monster's corpse and straightened his bent body.

The moment he was idly scanning the ruined prison.

His eyes suddenly shot wide open.

In a corner, something was stuck in a gap between the broken bricks, shining.

He strode quickly toward it.

Then he mercilessly dug through the rubble.

"Why is this..."

In the gap that was immediately revealed, lay the thing he had given the apothecary the previous night.

The artifact, a heptagon, was vibrating, pouring out different colored light from its seven corners.

But that, too, was brief.

Pii-yuu...

The vibration gradually subsided, and the light in the gems went out, one by one.

Then, in an instant, it crumbled into ash.

It was a common destruction phenomenon in magic tools that had exerted power beyond the magic engraved in their gems.

Adam immediately raised his head and looked at the sky.

He could see the transparent, rainbow-colored barrier that had been covering the entire domain fading away.

The mysterious barrier that had suddenly appeared, just before the swarming monster hordes could sweep over Hailey.

It had protected Hailey firmly until the monster swarm retreated and the wildfire that had spread through the village was completely subdued.

Even before he could be surprised by the fact that the source of the barrier, which he couldn't figure out, was the S-Grade Defense Artifact he had given the apothecary.

Adam's head snapped around.

Back to the monster's corpse, which he had glanced at dryly just moments before.

"...Ha."

This time, after scanning it thoroughly, a hollow laugh finally escaped his lips.

He had only read about it in records and had never seen it in person, so he hadn't recognized it.

The numerous legs that should have been attached to the centipede-type monster's corpse were gone.

The two pairs of antennae, and even parts of the shell, hard enough to be used as a weapon, were gone.

"...They took everything that could be sold."

He was an infuriating and confounding bastard.

It wasn't enough that he had gotten on the Crown Prince's bad side; he had also completely ignored the order to take Serina and flee before the disaster.

He'd turned an artifact worth a commoner's house into ash, and even stolen parts of a monster corpse that belonged to the Hailey family.

He was a bastard who deserved to be captured and executed immediately, but...

For some reason, Adam couldn't stop the hollow laugh that kept escaping.

[Adam Hailey feels a strong fondness for you.]

Similarly, a system window that the person in question couldn't see popped up meaninglessly, then vanished.

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

"...Fuck. What was that?"

I flinched and shivered at the sudden chill that ran down my spine.

It was at that moment.

[The S-Grade Defense Artifact effect has stopped.]

The system window informed me that the Hailey domain-wide defense effect had ended.

The damned Hailey quest was finally over.