Chapter 699 — The Unshakable "Tenant"

In brand-new boots and a crisp uniform, sporting an impressive array of chest badges and armbands, Warden Maximilian walked down the prison corridor with his head held high. A man of about thirty, his hair neatly combed and his beard trimmed to perfection, he wore a reserved smile as he walked, keys and a baton jangling at his belt.

This was a newly built prison, as new as the city's "Administrative Hall." Inside were broad, bright corridors and sturdy, handsome cells. One of Maximilian's daily duties was to patrol every corridor and room with two guards, ensuring no inmate escaped, harmed himself, vandalized the detention facilities, or brawled in secret. It was a rather tedious job, but for a man who loved regularity and order as much as Maximilian did, it suited his tastes perfectly.

Everything was normal in the general control section. The inmates here were mostly petty thieves and drunken troublemakers, some of whom did not even deserve to be in prison at all—they had been sent here for a few days' temporary holding only because the Public Order Office's holding cells were full. They dared not defy the guards, and they generally refrained from secret brawls that would only extend their confinement, so patrolling this area was always the easiest and most pleasant part of the rounds.

After passing through the general control section, Maximilian led the two guards toward the superhuman containment section. Before the stairway leading underground, the warden glanced at the heat exchangers and ventilation units working normally on the wall beside him.

Once he had confirmed everything was in order, Maximilian could not help muttering under his breath: "Truly a fine age we live in... even doing time is this comfortable."

Down a flight of steps and through a barred gate stood a heavy alloy sluice gate. Reaching it, Maximilian adjusted his belt and uniform, his expression turning a little more serious.

Beyond the gate lay the prison's deep level, the rooms reserved specifically for holding superhuman criminals.

From this section onward, sensing runes and alarm devices that detected magical fluctuations were everywhere, the cells were far sturdier than those elsewhere, and numerous traps and mechanisms designed to counter spellcasters had been installed. Though no superhuman riot had occurred since the section was built, Maximilian, who had faced superhumans on the battlefield, still raised his guard by instinct and grew serious.

Unconsciously he touched the scar low on his chest—a wound once opened by a superhuman's searing blade. Recalling that burning pain, he switched on the shield generator at his waist and pressed the mechanism at the back of his baton, making sure "magic countermeasure" was ready to fire at any moment.

The two guards accompanying him checked their own equipment as well, then stepped forward, one to each side, and pressed two keys against both sides of the gate at the same time.

With a creak and grind of machinery, the heavy gate slowly opened before Maximilian.

The warden turned his head slightly and ordered his subordinates: "Check the wards."

The two guards went off to inspect the integrity of the protective runes, while Maximilian stepped through the gate and took a look inside.

The rooms used to contain superhumans were noticeably fewer than the ordinary cells outside—only four small individual cells in all—and at this moment the entire section held just two prisoners.

In the first room on the left was a brash arcanist brought in just yesterday. After getting severely drunk, he had killed a neighbor's dog with an arcane missile because he mistakenly believed the dog had challenged him to a sacred duel. That deplorable act meant that, after paying compensation in accordance with the law, he still had to spend a week here—though Maximilian suspected the arcanist would spend at least half of it sobering up.

This was a fellow to watch carefully. After all, he was still drunk, and there was no telling when he might mistake a guard coming to inspect the cells for another duelist and send an arcane missile his way too.

The "tenant" in the second room on the right had been here quite a while: a druid of unknown origins, locked up for unlicensed spellcasting and illegal entry. In Maximilian's eyes, this taciturn druid was a somewhat "safer" sort, gloomy temperament notwithstanding.

After confirming that the drunken arcanist was still raving, Maximilian went straight to the cell of the druid named "Badwindel" and rapped his baton on the alloy bars inlaid with magic-conducting material. "Hey, inspection time."

In the tiny cell, a middle-aged man in a gray-white prison uniform sat on his bunk with his back to the door. Hearing the noise behind him, he stirred his arm and said without turning his head: "Hold on, I'm just about to solve this one."

"...Ha, you really have made yourself at home," Maximilian said, half angry, half amused. "I never should have gotten you a math textbook to pass the time—just look at what you've drawn all over the walls!"

In the tiny cell, almost every wall and stretch of floor had been covered in a dizzying array of numbers and symbols, along with improvised poems and short phrases—a lively sight indeed. Scribbling on cell walls could be called a "cherished hobby" of many prisoners, and the guards had always turned a blind eye to it, but this was genuinely the first time Maximilian had seen anyone write two whole walls' worth of equation systems and verse. This was truly the most peculiar prisoner he had ever met.

Maximilian, who had once spent a short time as a knight's apprentice, could read, but what that Bad on the walls had written was still beyond his understanding. He could only judge by instinct that the prisoner in there must have some background—though what superhuman didn't?

Inside the cell, Bad on his bunk finally finished solving his equation. The middle-aged man with the scruffy beard and hair stood up, setting down the scratch paper and pen in his hands as he said: "Don't worry, sir, I'll wipe it all off myself afterward."

"Of course you'll wipe it off—because you'll be writing new equations!" Maximilian glared at Bad through the bars. "I came to inform you that your detention period is up again. You can leave tomorrow. Once you're out, go to the Administrative Hall right away and register for a population transfer..."

The warden was barely halfway through when he saw Bad in the cell casually fish a small, hard, secretly hoarded piece of flatbread out from under his pillow and fling it at the wall not far beyond the bars. With astonishing wrist strength, the scrap of bread struck the wall like a stone shot; a layer of protective light rippled across the surface, and an alarm immediately began to sound...

Maximilian and the two guards, who had just walked in, had no time to stop him.

"Damn it! You can't keep using this trick to extend your detention every time!" Maximilian shouted furiously. "This is a prison, not a hotel where you can keep extending your stay day after day! Do you even hear—what are you two standing there for? Go turn off that blasted alarm!"

The two guards rushed off in a fluster to silence the alarm, while the drunken arcanist in a nearby cell began raving loudly. Bad, in his cell, shrugged at Maximilian: "It's nice here. I'm not going anywhere."

"Next time I'm going to search every last thing in your cell—your pen and your flatbread, I'm taking them all," Maximilian said angrily. "Then we'll see how you cause trouble."

Bad thought it over, then said quite seriously: "I'm not a frail mage. I could set off the alarm with a booger if I wanted."

Maximilian: "..."