"Two... are my parents."
"You don't have any brothers or sisters?"
"No...there were, but they died when I was little."
"I'm sorry, that's unfortunate."
"No misfortune, Count." Colin shook his head. "This kind of situation is too common here. The environment and hygiene here are poor, and even the doctors are worse than elsewhere. You can find almost all the cases here, especially in places where slaves live together. They don't take any precautions."
"Is that why you hate natives?"
"That's part of the reason, but not all - who likes a guy who quarrels all the time? Besides, the priests always say that everyone is equal... But where is this place? It's Sicinna! It's Manion! We all know it's a lie..."
"It seems that you are resistant to many things."
"...I don't think it's my fault, Count. In fact, I'm not considered radical among the locals."
"So which line have you carved yet?"
"It should be the seventh...you-?"
This time Colin did not finish his answer. He stared at the face shrouded in dark shadows with wide eyes. His whole body suddenly began to tremble violently and he tried to escape.
But he was heavily guarded, not to mention the knights including Belmaren, he could not even defeat the jailers alone.
"He wants to run!?"
"Hold him down!"
Several jailers rushed forward, but this time Colin struggled so violently that the worn wooden chair was kicked over in the chaos. They finally managed to regain control of him.
"kill me--"
Colin's behavior this time was very different. He began to beg.
"Kill me, Count..."
"I can't say...I can't say..."
"They threatened you?"
Hitzfeld walked forward slowly, and as the distance got closer, Colin finally got a clear look at that delicate and charming face that was fragmented by the eye patch.
"They said they would kill your parents if you told them, isn't that right?"
Colin just panted and didn't answer.
"You should have had a good lunch," Hitzfeld continued. "It should have had meat. Was it duck? Or rabbit?"
Colin's breathing became heavier.
"That's how the oil on your shirt and glasses came from... But I know you're actually a very neat person. Even when you were in jail and were taken out for interrogation, you would clean your boots. So it's hard for me to imagine that such a person doesn't know the value of his clothes, and it's even harder to imagine that he would use clothes and pants worth thousands of serras as rags."
Colin's lips opened wide, and he seemed to be having trouble breathing normally.
"So for a person like this, the oil stains on his lens are even more suspicious. I wonder if the broken side is a deliberate disguise, just to be able to remove the lens and carve a message somewhere he occasionally leaves behind..."
"After all, prisoners are subject to body searches. Knives and spoons are not immune to prison guards' searches."
“But the glasses are different.”
"Especially a pair of glasses that are already broken and have greatly reduced their value."
"do not talk--"
Colin begged for mercy and sobbed.
"Stop talking, Count... I can't tell you... I can't tell you... ah..."
"Your only hope now is to believe that we can protect your parents." Hitzfeld interrupted him firmly, "Don't hesitate, don't fantasize, you have no other choice."
"You think I won't be able to find it if you don't tell me?"
"The prisoners move around in the same few places every day, Mel Colin -"
She raised her voice.
"You're just wasting time for nothing."
"Turn left in front and take the stairs to the playground." Colin completely collapsed, spewing out a string of words, "Go up to the middle platform... There are notches every few steps... Put them all together and you have..."
"Just what?"
"It's my situation here..."
"That means there are 'them' in the prison." Hitzfeld nodded slightly and immediately pointed to the warden: "Seal this place off."
"Huh?" The warden stared.
"Some of your men betrayed you. Don't you want to know who they were?"
"oh oh!!!"
The warden finally reacted and immediately waved his hands: "You all heard what the count said! Hurry up! Tell the people above to close the gate! Tell them it was my order! From now on, not a single insect is allowed to leave!"
"How often?" Hitzfeld asked Colin again.
"Every morning when I go to the playground, I carve..."
"When you were trying to dismantle the fragments, your lens was missing, and no one suspected it?"
"I was always arranged to go alone."
"Angus Belmalen." Hitzfell looked at the Whitebeard Knight.
"Anytime, Count!"
Belmaren, Ashley... and several Silvers were looking at her with excitement and surprise.
This interrogation is amazing!
Goddess, she is so awesome!
"Come with me to the dungeon." Hitzfeld was not optimistic.
"No problem—but why?"
"If that's the case, then we were already exposed when we came in... They have been paying attention to whether Colin has revealed the truth. They are willing to use this method because they are afraid that someone will contact him secretly. There are deep things involved behind this."
“So it’s fast,” she added.
“…We must prevent those guys from silencing us.”
Chapter 27: The Bone Trap (Three-in-One)
With Hitzfeld's reminder and urging, these people acted vigorously. Not only did they seal off the entire prison fortress immediately, but the warden also led them quickly down to the water dungeon on the bottom floor.
The environment here can only be described as difficult to describe. After all, it is a place with perennial dampness and waterlogging. The air is filled with a rotten and dilapidated smell of mold. Hitzfeld can only be thankful that there are no mosquitoes in the Ice Moon Corridor now, otherwise visiting would become a torture.
This corridor was very deep, and at first glance, the layout was no different from the floor where Colin was staying. But according to the jailer's explanation, she knew that the mystery was in the structure inside the cell - each room here was dug a few meters deeper, and the water inlet and outlet were connected in the middle, which could accommodate a water level of up to 2 meters.
After listening to this, Hitzfeld could only sigh at how capable the person who created the water dungeon was in researching crooked ideas. Even though the temperature here in Manion was relatively higher, Bingyue would be frozen to death if she stayed in this place.
She really wanted to open the door and check with the jailers, but the warden thought that she was an "important official of the kingdom" after all, and it would be unbecoming for her to see such things, so he strongly suggested that she just stand at the door.
That's not the point, she only cares about efficiency.
The jailers checked a total of 17 cells, where employees of the "Dab Human Resources Company" were imprisoned, including Josiah, the young man who betrayed his class for love.
During this time, the warden introduced them to the working and operating principles of the water dungeon, and said that "although these people did not pay like Culkinson, he still did not abuse them too much." He emphasized that "the water is very shallow" and "only up to their calves at most."
"We released a lot of water," he said. "It's actually very wasteful... You may not be able to imagine the price of water here, and generally speaking, those who are sent to the water prison are serious criminals who will be on the road tomorrow, so releasing water is completely unnecessary under normal circumstances."
Hitzfeld didn't comment, but asked curiously, "Are those people always so quiet?"
She was asking about the 17 prisoners being held.
Because as Colin said, they are a group of "habitually noisy guys". Different cultures and different customs have created different lifestyles. These things that are engraved in the bones are difficult to change, so the silence here is not normal.
The warden seemed to have thought of this as well. His face suddenly changed and began to turn slightly pale. He no longer spoke about the operating principles of the water dungeon. He just stood there listening to the noises coming from the depths of the corridor, occasionally changing his feet to support his body, and the knuckles of his cane were white from being pinched.
The results came out quickly. Several jailers returned one after another in horror and reported to them an unfortunate news - everyone in the dungeon was dead.
"How could this happen? How could this happen!!!"
The worst guess became a reality. The warden grabbed a man by the collar and roared, "Didn't I ask you to keep an eye on this place? I can't sleep well every day just to hand this person over to the count safely. What do you want me to do? How could this happen???"
"Okay, everyone's dead." Hitzfeld couldn't bear to watch it anymore. His shock and anger were real, but this performance was mostly just for her.
He is just afraid of being held accountable here.
"What exactly happened?" She looked at the other jailers. "How did these people die?"
Belmaren was quicker than her. Just as she was asking carefully, the Whitebeard Knight had already taken a few Silver Knights to look through the dungeons. They came back shouting that "they were drowned!" and "Everyone was soaking in the deep water."
"It wasn't like this when we checked in the morning," a prison guard said to Hitzfeld cautiously. "We checked it carefully when we checked it... The water was only up to their ankles. Maybe there was something wrong with the sluice gate, which caused them to be soaked to death..."
"You guys are crazy!!" Ashley wasn't targeting anyone, she just stood there muttering to herself.
Belmaren said drowning was a very kind way of speaking, but the jailer was telling the truth - soaking to death! Listen! This was equivalent to seventeen people being locked in a dark and damp cell, watching the water slowly rise above their heads. During this time, they must have struggled frantically and called for help, but no one came to help them. They were choked to death in slow despair.
For a moment, she could hardly tell whether this way of dying was more cruel or being eaten by Brace Island was more cruel.
Although it was meaningless, Hitzfeld still suggested an autopsy.
The warden cooperated well and had all the bodies dragged out, looking over at her from time to time.
...There is actually a most critical issue here, which is why the water release gate has an abnormality.
He was the only one who had the key to the control room. There were two keys in total. One was carried by him at all times, and the other was hidden in a secret drawer on the wall next to the bedside table at home. Whether this was a simple accident or someone had found a way to make a copy of the key to control the release of water, he couldn't get away with it.
So the warden was very anxious. He was too lazy to look at the corpses and kept thinking in his mind how to explain when the countess asked about it later.
Hitzfeld checked it very carefully.
There is a position called coroner in the prison - in order to prevent some jailers from faking their deaths and escaping, the body will only be thrown out after an exact autopsy has been performed. She happened to have borrowed a pair of brand new gloves.
I pinched here and pressed there with gloves on, then opened my eyelids and shone a flashlight, and nothing seemed special.
The eight bodies examined so far were indeed dead and had indeed been drowned. They had bruises and abrasions on their wrists or ankles, which were probably the signs of violent struggles.
"Isn't this place important?" She continued to ask the jailers while doing her job, "You only check it once in the morning?"
The jailers looked at each other.
This... Of course it is important. After all, it is the place where serious criminals are detained. How can it not be important?
But, as the warden just said, most of the serious criminals sent to Fort Sibs will most likely die soon. Who would care about how these people are doing?
Even if they really died, they would be dead, and no one would care about them.
There was no answer, but Hitzfeld himself had figured it out.
These people were just thinking out of habit. If it weren't for her, the so-called special envoy of the kingdom, she estimated that Sisburg might even give Colin's six people better treatment. As for the 6 people lying here...
She wanted to say in her heart that these people might be paid and killed by the warden, but then she changed her mind and thought: They were involved in the death of Bishop Dicket, and considering the degree of shamelessness this person had shown, he was not crazy enough to embezzle such black money.
"Too arrogant! Too arrogant!"
Belmaren paced up and down nearby, cursing as he went.
"How dare you kill someone in front of me! How reckless! The murderer behind this must be severely punished!"
"..."
Several Silver Knights looked at him with strange eyes, all of them with a depressed look as if they wanted to say something but couldn't.
Sir, have you forgotten that you came in here just to kill these people?
Now that they're really dead you're upset again, isn't that a bit...
“It’s because of us.”
Ashley asked tentatively.
She felt that this was very obvious - he didn't die earlier or later, but died when their group of people came. She felt that the person who did this must be trying to shift the blame.
"In this way, the people of that tribe will think that we are avenging Bishop Dicket. After all, what happened to Knight Belmaren before... I don't think we can explain it yet."
Hitzfeld looked up at her in surprise. She didn't expect Ashley to be able to see this position.
It seems that she has finally gained enough understanding of the evil nature of human hearts, which is a good thing from the perspective of self-protection...
wrong……
Pausing the action, she suddenly realized a crucial piece of information, which was why Bishop Dicket died?
