CHAPTER 3

[Unknown]

[Jail]

The cell was silent.

My mouth was dry, and I could taste the bitterness from that awful food they were giving me. Having had less than a cup of water the past several days made my lips comparable to a desert. My eyes burned from lack of sleep, and when I blinked, I felt the crust that had gathered in the corners of my eyelids crack and fall.

A small rumbling sound came from my stomach.

I haven’t eaten yet, and it would still take around three hours for the guard bringing food to come by.

I spat a thin spittle, trying to remove some of the bitterness from my mouth.

Within this hellhole, they’ve tortured me. Beat me, held my head underwater, and shoved pills down my throat that made my nose bleed. Now, the cell smelled awful—vomit and blood made a thick sludge beneath my kneeling feet.

Basically, I’m being beaten here quite lovingly. Hmmm...... isn’t this a bit too much?

Is this a place for Masochists? Probably? Probably not. I don’t know—rather, I don’t want to.

Time becomes blurry whenever you don't do much.

This place has a monotonous dread to it, the kind that a person in an asylum would feel being locked up in one room for the rest of their lives while the screams of other equally insane people echo through the empty halls that seem to go on forever. The people there scratch the walls, slam their bodies to the door, and pull their hair out.

That place can madden people.

Maybe I am mad. Have I gone mad? That's not possible, is it?

I'm overthinking again. Let's not jump to conclusions.

I inhaled the musty air of the cell and thought deeply.

As far as I’ve observed, I’ve identified a pattern in the timing of their visits, all from judging the sound of their footsteps.

— If the steps have a short stride, it’s the one who brings food.

— If they have a long stride, it’s the one conducting a regulatory inspection.

So on and so forth. That was it. My days had dwindled to a dull routine of deciphering the meaning of footsteps.

This is rather tedious. Honestly, there wasn’t anything else I could do.

I accepted that there was no chance of me getting out of here with my current physical condition, not to mention the chains wrapped around my wrists.

But that’s not my current concern. My real worry as of now is what's happening in my head.

I’ve been getting plenty of migraines and strange dreams lately. These don’t seem to stem from drugs or exhaustion. Instead, they were more like fragments of memories.

I’m reincarnated as another person. That was something I understood immediately.

Not only was my body replaced, but I also inherited this person’s memories.

In those dreams, I see people who wear fancy attire, maid outfits, and jewelry made out of gems. It was an extravagant life, you could say. However, as of now, most of it is still a blur.

All I could take from it were the horns protruding from their heads. I looked at mine at the murky reflections of the dripping water, and it was also there when I moved my hair to the side—a small goat-like horn stuck above my left brow.

From what I could tell, I’m a demon, and the guards are humans.

Demons—a kind of fantasy world where they do exist.

There are ‘demons’ I’ve encountered in the past, but those so-called demons aren’t explicitly shown, and they can trick you out of your money the moment you receive it. They more or less blend in with normal people, but the demons here are a race instead of the corporations or corrupt politicians. I can count this as one of the few positives of this world—that you can see if that person is a demon or not. This is the only positive that I can genuinely acknowledge.

This is, as I’ve mentioned, a hellhole. Not a grand adventure of a Hero, or a beautiful palace where you’re greeted by the king.

“Oh, great Hero! We request your power to defeat the Demon King!”

Well, if I had been in that situation, I’d rather kill myself than accept that 8th-grade epic of a Hero trying to save the world.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

That isn’t how reality works.

The world wouldn’t be saved if the Demon King were killed. I suppose it would solve one problem, but not the majority of it. The slaves bought by the nobles would still be there, poverty would still be relevant, and heck, even the thing that governs over the demons would be gone, meaning that they wouldn’t have a ruler to keep them in check.

What would they do now? Kill all the demons? Commit genocide? Some kind of Hero is that.

The fact that I wasn’t reincarnated as such does make me feel a tad bit happy.

But being here doesn’t—even I can hate this place.

This jail cell, this shithole.

I wouldn’t say shit, as in the word to describe feces—no, I take it as the other meaning of shit. The one that depicts something to be shitty. Essentially, this is the kind of shit that describes something so miserable it makes the word “shit” seem like an understatement.

In hindsight, the word describes itself. I don’t need to say it further.

Just as I was questioning my sanity, the unmistakable clang of the cell door broke through the stillness of midday.

A step came in front of me.

It was loud, considering it had been hours since I heard a notable noise. Then another step—now it was closer. I didn’t pay it any mind—my thoughts were wandering on their own.

The clopping sound went around the chamber and then stopped in front of me.

A black, shiny shoe.

“Stand up,” said a voice.

I unconsciously stood up. Over the days, I learned a few words—’stand up,’ ‘eat,’ and ‘kneel.’ They were all I ever understood after the countless repeated screaming in my ears.

Suddenly, the shoe swung into my right thigh. A sharp pain followed, and my half-sleeping body felt awake. I knelt to that pain.

Looking up, I saw the man in the suit. The gigantic man lifted my head. His eyes were like the first time I saw it—uninterested, uncaring.

“[This fucker isn't talking. Are you sure none of you didn’t hit his head?]”

He turned his head.

“[I don’t think we did.]”

A man standing by him spoke. The man in a suit looked at me with an unsightly face.

“[Could the informant have been wrong? Shit. Just when I thought I’d have something to present to them. This dullard can’t even speak.]”

“[There is a chance Demon Lord Dantalion silenced his own child.]”

The man in a suit laughed at the other. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but I could recognize that most of them had a tone of insulting me.

“[To think that those shitty Demon Lords would even use their own children in their petty power struggles is quite the assumption you have there. Well, you may have a point on that. Those bastards would even roll down in pigs’ muck just to get that.]”

A stone below the gigantic man was crushed as he stepped over it. He stared at me for a while and frowned.

“[I suppose we could just present this shit like this. He better worth a grand.]”

He chuckled and left.

“Haahhh......”

A drop of water echoed as I took small breaths, trying to dull out the pain.

It was silent again—an annoying silence.

“......”

Annoying...... it’s unimaginably annoying......

Who does this person think he is?

If I were to blame someone for this situation I’m in right now, it’s him. Or maybe it’s me. Could there be anyone else?

I grit my teeth.

Is this hatred? Do I feel angry right now? I haven’t felt like this in a long time.

Anger was a waste of energy—my father made me realize that well enough. Even the smallest twitch of my eyebrow to him was an insult. He’d beat me senseless for it. That’s why I buried my anger. I buried my emotions.

Fine.

I’ll keep that anger.

For now, you will have that debt. I’ll have you pay that debt soon enough.

. . .

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The outside was now dark.

Only small patches of the iron bars were lit by the dim light of the torches. The shadow of one of the guards was there as per his schedule.

My mind was half awake. I couldn’t sleep with the pain going through my body.

My eyes were fixed in the shadow of the guard. Consider it something similar to watching a midnight television broadcast. Aside from being a subject of torture, I would come back to this like a tired salaryman sitting on his sofa watching sports—this is my entertainment for the day.

As I thought of that shadow as the next best thing to porn, it suddenly became a blob and slowly inclined to the ground.

Huh? That...... wasn’t supposed to happen.

There was a distant moan of pain echoed nearby. Then a soft thud followed and broke the oppressive silence of the cell.

I can hear the clinging of keys as someone opens the metal door. They cautiously looked around and walked towards me.

On this particular night, someone came when no one had come before. Maybe I'm imagining things. It may be due to the awful food they were feeding me that I'm even hallucinating now. Or maybe not? Have I become insane?

Either way, those are irrelevant at this moment. My full attention was on the unknown person closing in on me.

As he came closer, I was able to see more of him.

It was a man in a black mantle. On his head was a horn. His eyes had a golden hue to them and shone with an unsettling glow against the indistinct background of black.

He knelt and looked at me.

When he reached out his hand, I impulsively backed myself away with the little strength I had left. The man paused in his knelt position and cautiously waved his hands as if he were taming a wild animal.

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a key, then inspected the chains that wrapped around my wrists. The metal was dirty and encrusted with grime.

Leaning in, he whispered in my ear, his voice too low to hear. Then he removed the cuffs from my hands and wrapped a clean cloak around my shoulders.

Carefully, he grasped my arms and poured a violet liquid onto my wounds. When the liquid touched my skin, a burning pain came as it dripped down my elbows.

Strangely, after a few seconds, the pain began to lessen, followed by a sudden wave of drowsiness that spread throughout my body.

I tried to pull my hands away from him, but I was too weak.

I tried to resist it, but I was too tired to stay awake.

My eyelids became heavy.

I slept......

. . .

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