By Zephyria The prison guard who came to deliver Leonardo Blaine’s lunch found the food untouched and stared silently at the figure sitting against the wall.
As Leonardo Blaine looked up at him, only raising his gaze from the floor, the guard clicked his tongue, opened the prison door with a key, took away the old meal, and placed a new one down, saying,
“It’s your loss if you don’t eat it.”
Even as he said that, he seemed afraid to get too close, placing the meal as close to the bars as possible before firmly locking the door again.
Then, he glanced at Leonardo Blaine’s face again and again, before scolding the prisoners next door who were clamoring for him to give them the food that was going to be thrown away anyway, telling them to be quiet, and leaving through the door at the left end of the corridor.
The muttering of the prisoners continued behind the sound of the heavy iron door closing. Leonardo Blaine, who had been sitting blankly for a long time, finally looked down at his wrist again.
The thick Magic Stone handcuffs on his wrist were connected to the wall with a sturdy chain, and because of this chain, no matter how hard he tried to grab the bars, he could only go right up to them and couldn’t touch them. It seemed that, in case of an emergency, they had cleverly adjusted the distance, considering his history of escaping from specially made iron cages.
Feeling that he had regained some of his strength, Leonardo Blaine took his back off the wall and looked at the window behind him. The small window at the top was not only sturdy in itself, but also very narrow, so even without bars, it would be difficult to fit his head through.
He quietly stared at the window, and thought as he saw the shadow of the bars created by the sunlight coming in at an angle.
‘Since I came in here, I haven’t heard the clock tower bell, so the sound from the outside is blocked. The guard just brought me lunch, so it must be a little after noon….’
‘The outside is surrounded by prison walls, and the light comes in from the top in the center. The opposite side doesn’t get any sunlight at all, so where I am is east. The shadow of the bars is almost vertical, with a slight slant to the left, so this place is the southeast building of the Council.’
The southeast side of the Council was quite far from the main building, and the atmosphere of the building itself was dark, with strict control and surveillance. He had heard that the interior was quite complex, and it seemed that the reason they had blindfolded him when they moved him here was for security.
‘It’s a good thing I vaguely looked at the geography while begging to go out for a smoke back then.’
As soon as Leonardo Blaine roughly estimated the location, he immediately got up and grabbed the chain connected to his handcuffs, making sure it didn’t drag on the floor. This was because the guard guarding the prison might hear the sound and come back.
Then, in that state, he closed his eyes and counted the seconds, walking a few steps within the distance he could go. He was a little worried about being detected by the sensors, but he predicted that they wouldn’t judge such a small movement as abnormal behavior.
A few seconds later, he opened his eyes again and visually calculated the distance he had walked.
‘I came straight here in about 10 seconds, and then turned left for 15 seconds, wasn’t it? I passed through three doors in the middle, and came down the stairs, so this must be an underground space where they arbitrarily dug out the middle to let light in. But the stairs I came down were circular, so the depth is ambiguous….’
Leonardo Blaine repeatedly lifted and lowered his legs, roughly estimating the height of the stairs he had come down.
‘If I go down the stairs 18 times, I felt the same light on the right. It was about 75 times, so it’s about 4 floors underground. The height of one floor is about 3 meters.’
Next, he touched the wall to determine the hardness of the prison’s inner wall. As expected of the Council’s prison, the hardness of the rock used was considerable.
He couldn’t do anything about it with his strength alone, and he couldn’t use enough magic to break through it with the thick Magic Stone handcuffs on.
“Are you trying to escape or something?”
As he was racking his brains, Leonardo Blaine suddenly stopped at the voice coming from across the way. He slowly turned his head and looked at the source of the voice, and the prisoner in the diagonally opposite cell was stuck to the bars, looking at him and smiling unpleasantly.
He had been quiet for a while, so he thought he was losing interest, but. The prisoner, who was showing his yellow teeth and looking dirty, made him frown involuntarily. Even if it wasn’t because of his appearance, he had been spouting all kinds of obscene remarks except when he was sleeping, and if he even made eye contact, he would jokingly say vulgar things as if he wanted to sleep with him.
Moreover, he had been in this prison for quite some time, and he spoke to the guard without hesitation when he approached. Even if he didn’t want to hear it, listening to their conversation, he learned that the reason he was imprisoned here was related to sexual scandals, and that he had already been in here three times for the same problem.
Leonardo Blaine had been thoroughly ignoring his existence, thinking that he had been imprisoned in a place with such a scoundrel even though they could have imprisoned him anywhere. But now that he made eye contact with him, it suddenly occurred to him that someone who had been here for a long time would know a lot about this prison.
Leonardo Blaine quietly watched the prisoner and opened his mouth, which had been closed all along.
“Hey, where is this place?”
“Oh, oh! He finally spoke!”
“What? He spoke?”
The prisoner was flustered, as if he didn’t expect him to answer. Then, the prisoner in the cell directly to Leonardo Blaine’s left also reacted to the words and asked back. Leonardo Blaine frowned even more, feeling like he was trapped in a cage and being watched.
The prisoner smiled at him.
“Here? Where else but a prison. You got caught and thrown in here, and you don’t even know that?”
It was such an obvious statement that Leonardo Blaine didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he looked at the small window behind the prisoner’s head and asked.
“What’s on the other side of that window?”
At his gesture, the prisoner turned around and looked at the window on the wall behind him, then turned his head back and pointed behind him with his thumb.
“That?”
As Leonardo Blaine nodded, the prisoner chuckled and asked back.
“What will you give me if I tell you?”
At the brazen words, Leonardo Blaine made a dumbfounded expression and waved his hand as if he had no business with him.
“Never mind.”
“Ah, you’re so impatient. There’s only another prison behind here. It’ll be the same as the window behind you.”
The prisoner hurriedly added, as the conversation was about to end. However, it was the same unremarkable answer, so Leonardo Blaine couldn’t hide his disappointment. The prisoner, who thought that now was his chance after a few conversations, kept talking to him without paying attention.
“Hey, hey, what did you do outside? Looking at your face, did you do something like making a living with your face?”
“…….”
“You should forget about escaping from here. I’ve tried it a lot, but it’s like an impregnable fortress here.”
The prisoner on the left suddenly interrupted, as if he was hooked on the word “escape,” and began to list his past escape attempts like heroic tales. However, the endings were all the same: he was caught before long, and he hadn’t seen the internal structure properly, so it wasn’t very helpful.
They had so much to say, and once the topic was decided, they continued the conversation among themselves even if he didn’t answer. Leonardo Blaine was about to do what he had been doing and wrapped the drooping chain around his hand again. But the next thing he heard was something that bothered him.
“Whatever the case, you have to be careful at times like this. These days, the security, which was already bad, has become even more brutal because of that Leonardo Blaine.”
As soon as his name came up, his head turned automatically, even though it was a meaningless conversation. Leonardo Blaine stood in place for a moment, then put down the chain and sat on the floor, listening for anything that could be a clue.
From the looks of it, these prisoners didn’t seem to know that the person next to them was Leonardo Blaine.
As he seemed to be interested, the prisoner diagonally across from him looked at him and asked.
“I heard that guy caused a ruckus in the Imperial Capital, so if you came in this morning, did you see that guy causing trouble that day? It’s a pity I didn’t get to see it. How could a guy escape from a transport cage and give Kajard a hard time? Amazing―.”
“I heard he had some good luck too. At that time, something like a glass bottle flew and broke, and the horses that pull the cage, right? They were surprised and ran wild, or so I heard? The guards were all talking about that that day.”
‘A glass bottle?’
Leonardo Blaine, who had no idea that there was such a thing hidden in the story of how he was able to escape from the transport cage, smoothly raised one eyebrow. He had felt that the horses pulling the cage were suddenly excited and running fast, but it was because a glass bottle had flown and broken….
Leonardo Blaine, who had been silent, asked the prisoners in the air.
“Who threw that glass bottle?”
“I don’t know. Wouldn’t it be one of the people there? Anyway, those humans are stupid.”
The prisoners ridiculed the citizens who were at the scene at the time and chuckled among themselves. The topic quickly went off on another tangent.
Leonardo Blaine thought that there was nothing more to be learned from their conversation, so he rested his chin on his arm, which was draped over his knee. However, the prisoner across the way thought that it meant he wanted to talk to him, so he pulled his butt closer and said to him with a lewd smile.
“But, aren’t you worried that I’ll tell the guard what I just saw?”
He seemed to be talking about how he had been moving around with the chain in his hand, doing this and that with his eyes. If he showed signs of trying to escape, he would be subject to intensive surveillance, so he seemed to be trying to threaten him with that. Leonardo Blaine retorted with a cold gaze.
“Are you threatening me?”
“Oh my, what are you saying?”
As the prisoner smiled slyly, Leonardo Blaine replied nonchalantly.
“If you’re going to tell, go ahead. I’ll kill you before that.”
He didn’t get anything out of it, and he was in a bad mood because the scoundrel kept talking to him after he had shared a conversation, so he didn’t like it at all. The prisoner blinked, as if he didn’t expect such words to come out of Leonardo Blaine’s mouth, and closed his mouth.
He was quieter than expected, so Leonardo Blaine thought he had come to his senses and would stop, but the guy who had been in prison for the third time as a repeat offender was even more hopeless than he thought.
The prisoner showed his yellow teeth again and grinned, making a ring with his fingers. Then, he repeatedly poked another finger into it and said to Leonardo Blaine.
“You’re going to kill me with this? Oh, thank you.”
The sound of another prisoner laughing hysterically followed, as if he was having so much fun. Looking at that, Leonardo Blaine seriously had the urge to kill, even though he knew he couldn’t.
‘Should I really kill them?’
He thought it was a waste of oxygen for those guys to breathe, but he shook his head and calmed himself down.
However, just passing by was not a good feeling because that face, which was constantly grinning at him, was not a good feeling, so Leonardo Blaine lightly loosened his fingers and raised his hand from afar towards the prisoner in front of him.
As the prisoner watched the hand with interest, wondering what it would do, Leonardo Blaine said.
“Hey, stay still.”
“Huh?”
“It’ll explode if you get hit wrong.”
Leonardo Blaine closed one eye and aimed the tip of his finger in the direction between the prisoner’s legs.
He was wearing Magic Stone handcuffs, but he could use a subtle amount of magic, so he was just going to scare him appropriately. Originally, he was going to hide the fact that he could use other attributes of magic as much as possible, but now that he had even had his magic power extracted, what was the point?
He lightly flicked his finger in the air, as if he was flicking his forehead. Then, the condensed air from his finger shot out between the prisoner’s legs, as if it was being fired.
A moment later, thwack—a sound like a gourd splitting open rang out, and the prisoner who had been smirking turned pale, collapsing backward without even a scream.
Leonardo Blaine, uncharacteristically flustered by the sight, froze with his hand outstretched.
“Uh…? Mistake.”
He hadn’t meant to hit him, but somehow, it seemed he’d landed a direct hit. The prisoner to his immediate left, thinking the fallen man was joking, continued to chuckle until the prolonged stillness made him wonder aloud, his voice laced with doubt.
“Hey? You’re still acting, right?”
Leonardo Blaine glanced up at the sensor again, a bit worried. Fortunately, the movement hadn’t been too drastic, and the red light flickered a few times before quickly fading.
Besides, the prisoner to his left hadn’t seen him, blocked by the wall, so there were no witnesses. Leonardo Blaine breathed a sigh of relief.
* * *
“His primary attributes are fire and electricity, but he can use all four of the other major elements of magic. In other words, he’s an All-Rounder.”
In the Council’s assembly hall, Hugo Agrizendro couldn’t help but be amazed by the data displayed on the screen at the front.
He wasn’t the only one. From the Council’s combat-ready senior personnel to the executives, staff, and councilors, everyone gathered in the hall buzzed with excitement, marveling at Leonardo Blaine’s magic component analysis report presented by the medical staff.
All-Rounder.
It referred to a mage capable of using all four major elements of magic: fire, water, earth, and wind.
All-Rounder mages were extremely rare, not only in Laina Rogia but throughout the other empires as well. Moreover, even among those classified as All-Rounders, the range of abilities outside their primary attribute was often insignificant.
However, in Leonardo Blaine’s case, fire and electricity were so exceptionally developed that they threatened to unbalance the others, yet he could still wield the remaining three elements with considerable ease.
Having two primary attributes was already considered a sign of innate magical talent, but being able to use all four basic elements meant he was a genius.
This All-Rounder mage, who had been shrouded in mystery, was too valuable to pass up—the first genius to emerge in the Council since Hugo Agrizendro’s magic component test twelve years ago.