L laid his back against the uneven wall. On a rare occasion of wisdom, he had decided to retrieve his clothes from the river bank before showing his face in the village. Though they were rough and damp with water, having them on was still leagues better than sitting his naked buttcheeks on the filthy stone floor.

This is seriously getting tiring. What happened to me ruling the world and stuff? L grimly thought. His wrists were shackled behind him in the most uncomfortable way they could imagine. He had spent the past couple hours in prison morphing his hands. The more he focused his mana into them, the more he was able to tap into their shape and form. It was an exhausting and long process, but he was able to come up with pretty viable tools. He was able to change them into iron tough gauntlets, sharp claws, a mana storage function, and was even able to change his fingers into somewhat tense tentacles, of which will no doubt prove to be the most useful out of the four. They were temporarily alterations, as L could feel them slowly returning to their natural state once he closed their mana channel. They would last a couple minutes, at this state, but earlier if they were to take damage.

Fortunately, L had three different mana channels he could use. More, if he was a mage. Much more, in fact, as when the system rewards him with a new mana channel, he will, in the end, get three--one each different mind of his. Anything regarding the magic was effectively tripled, but only in rare cases of cooperation, of which is becoming increasingly scarce ever since the day of the operation.

“Mhmm, hmm, mhmm?” L said. His mouth was stuffed with a wet rag in order to prevent him from casting any curses, of which he had none.

A guard he was not familiar with him stood beyond the iron bars. He was a big fellow, with thick skin and limbs heavy with fat. Though he had leather armor on and a decent mace at his side, he reeked of incompetence. “Shut it, you murderer. We’ll put you on a pike soon enough,” he said, giving L a dirty look, and just in case that his distate was not evident, he also spit to the side and called L a punk.

Having his head stuck on a pike, or being stuck to a burning stake were not attractive endings to L. The debuffs for those type of violent deaths were not slight in the last bit.

“Mehm,” L said, thanking the guard for his input. Escaping was somewhat of an issue, as the shackle was made of sturdy wood and linked with iron. That, in itself, was not where the difficulty came from. His legs were also bonded together with a thick chain of iron, no doubt handy work of the village blacksmith, Kullburd. And while the rag had no effects on L, as he was no mage, it did prevent him from taunting the guard into doing something stupid.

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It was unexpected, that they would go this far. In a way, it benefited L more than it harmed him, as he had no desire of escaping anyway. He needed to stick around in the village, and for the slight price of discomfort, L was able to slightly understand one of the lead officer’s personalities. They did not fool around, it seemed.

The door into the jail rooms swung open, forcing iron hinges to scrape against the stone ground. The first guard L had met in his first few minutes in this world, and who had thrown L in here, walked briskly past the empty jail rooms and stood before the only occupied one.

“Luke! We hanging him?” the prison guard said, giddily. “Oh, oh! What about cuttin’ his head off?”

Luke turned a stern eye towards the guard. He was an old man, by medieval standards, in his late forties, with haggard skin and lowered eyebrows. His head was nearly shaved, and an unkempt beard was growing alongside his chin.

“Keys,” he said, putting his hands in front of him.

The other guard looked slightly shaken up as he went to fetch them from behind the desk. After receiving the keys, Luke wordlessly opened the gates and walked in. He towered before L, who looked up to him with frowned eyebrows.

Luke bent down, and began to unlatch the locks.

The other guard jumped up. “W-What?! We letting him go? After he murdered Thrawl?”

Luke ignored the other guard's babbling and removed the rag from L’s mouth. He then stood up, and walked out of the jail without as much as a word to L.

“He speaks truth. We found evidence of a Bugbear and Vathiá in the vicinity.”

“B-but Thrawl...How could he die so easily to filthy monsters!”

Luke breathed heavily, shaking his head. “We found his daughter’s blood on the bank, as well as her basket of clothing. He lost his head, then. Probably charged like a manic. Our magician--”

There is a mage in this village? No wonder they know so much. The mage is a trusted one, too, for the skeptical guard to overlook this.

“--tracked the mana that leaked out of him. He died while in the river, from a hail of arrows on the other side.  He was dragged and then eaten in the wild,” Luke said. He looked at the other guard, his face heavy and his voice rough “Any other concerns?”

The other guard shook his head. “N-no. I mean, what do we do with him?” the guard said, as he pointed at L, who was stretching out and keeping quiet.

“We leave the coward alone. He’s a weakling who ran away from the battle once he saw the odds turn against him. We have no need for him, let him roam the streets until we find a reason to poke him with a spear,” Luke said, and walked out.

L followed suit. He grabbed his weapons, the short knife and old bow that Thrawl had given him, nodded smugly at the infuriated guard, and left the prison.