It was an easy feat for Zion to escape the prison. He could have escaped earlier, but he wanted to wait for the king, who came to see him right as he had expected. But now, when Rhesus was gone, Zion also didn't have any desire to keep staying behind bars and wait for death.
As soon as the time came for the guards to change for the second time, Zion moved from his position. He had the royal knife that was still with him and a sharp ladies' hairpin that he had used earlier for opening the princess's prison. After glancing at the dark corridor and ensuring that no guard was outside, he pulled out the knife from his robes and inserted it in the lock.
It was a good thing the guards had missed out on the knife and the hairpin of the ladies that he had still safely placed hidden in his inner robes. After a few seconds, the lock opened up with a click, and he quickly removed it from the knob before pushing the prison door. From what he had observed, the guards would take at least five to ten minutes to change and gather at this place again.
So he pursed his lips and put those things back in the pocket of his inner robes, and moved outside stealthily.
"007, is there a guard around me?"
The system didn't come but answered in a solemn voice. "Nope."
Zion frowned at this. Why didn't they have anyone monitoring him this time? He could tell that they wanted to get rid of him as soon as possible. That's why they hastily put him behind bars with an excuse that he was perhaps one of the main suspects of Oswin's murder. They should have tailed him after listening to the king's words.
But now, when Zion thought about it a second time, something flashed in his mind that made him pause his footsteps. There could only be two reasons why the enemy would leave you alive: In the first case, the villains would be too busy planning a fatal attack such that they would leave him alone for a while, giving him a momentary peace before a disaster. This would only happen if the enemies had been a hundred percent sure that they could achieve success without bothering the good guys.
And the second case would be when the enemies had failed to fulfill their goals, not having enough resources and time to deal with the hero. Consequently, Zion could tell that it would be the first case because he hadn't done anything yet to attack the murderer to such an extent that the black-cloaked man would move toward failure.
When Zion thought of this, his brows furrowed deeper. If that were the case….
The kingdom was definitely in danger, and he was close to losing this mission!
"Hey, system." Zion quietly hid in the shadows and asked, "Will the randomly chosen case be worse than now if I failed this mission?"
The system was silent for a moment. He still remembered he had told his host about what could happen if Zion failed the mission. The system would forcibly choose any random case if the host were to fail in a task, but he hadn't told his host the details. Now that his host had asked him the same thing again, he could tell that the current mission was close to an end, and that would probably lead to failure. 007 pursed his lips and popped out in front of Zion, and hesitated before opening his mouth.
"It'll be hard and the last chance at living. The difficulty level of that case would be doubled, and you won't get any points. If you pass, you can continue living, but if you fail, you will die and not get a chance to return to your original world." The system paused and thought for a while as if trying to remember what else he had forgotten. "You also have to give back ten times the current points to us as compensation for failure. Of course, this would be possible if you hadn't taken any loans and you still had enough points in your account. But now that you have a loan…."
Zion squinted his eyes. He understood what the system wanted to say. "I would die and have to pay up those points in some other way, right?"
"Something like that. In the situation you're in, you won't even get the last chance to stay in this world and solve cases. Plus, you would be punished after you reincarnate as compensation to get those points back in the form of karma points." The system shook his head and sighed. "Although I still don't know what the punishment would be since no host took a loan in the first world itself."
Zion went silent for a moment after this. He had heard these words 'karma points' from the Methu man back then. It should mean that the system would suck away all the good karma from his next life and the lives after that until all the points could be given back.
That meant if he failed to finish this mission, he would probably be living hundreds of lives filled with misery. A wave of shiver crawled up his spine. Although he was fearless, he really didn't want to reincarnate so many times in different kinds of miserable situations!
After taking a deep breath, he glanced at the system and said, "Okay, you can go. I'll make sure to pass this mission by hook or by crook."
The system went back into hiding, but his mood fell into depression as he glanced at his host still walking through the prison corridor in the shadows. There was one thing he didn't tell his host. If Zion were to fail this mission, this world would probably end with the destruction of everything. This was a confidential message that he shouldn't tell the host in any case.
The reason was, if the hosts are given too much information at the start they end up getting too afraid to do anything. So the higher-ups in the heavens created this rule for the system to avoid such a tragedy.
When 007 thought of how everyone in this world could probably end up dying horrible deaths, he pursed his lips as a hint of desperation flashed in his eyes. He said to himself, "Host, please make sure to pass this test. Lives of millions of people are on your shoulders."