…Boom!
Waves of rock fragments and lava spread in all directions, creating an earthquake and tsunami.
All the prisoners and guards lifted their heads and looked at Vikir.
"I will not."
Vikir expressed his unwillingness to speak in brief words, and it was a revolutionary statement that shook the very foundations of Nouvelle Vague.
Prisoners work and guards supervise. This is because this was the system that kept the Nouvelle Vague alive.
....
For a moment, silence filled the whole place.
Vikir thought to himself.
'It's almost time for the guards to start whipping.'
According to the Nouvelle Vague manual, if a prisoner refused to work, the guards could use whips, batons, or knives to punish them.
... but?
Things turned out a little differently than Vikir expected.
"Huh! A riot on level Nine!"
"This, this, this, this, this is beyond our ability to handle!"
"Backup! Call for backup!"
"Kyaaahhhh! Blow the horn!"
The guards screamed like girls, their faces drained of color and turned to A4 paper.
Soon, the red horn, the most serious warning sound, echoed heavily throughout the workshop.
ttuuuuuu! ttuuuuuu! ttuuuuuu! ttuuuuuu!
As soon as they heard it, even the most distant prisoners dropped to the floor with their hands covering their eyes and ears, their mouths open, and their waists raised.
They braced themselves for a possible massive shockwave, a move that was apparently practiced often.
"...."
Vikir closed his mouth, suddenly feeling sick.
'Now that I think about it, I heard that all of my comrades who escaped before regression were imprisoned at around level 3 or 4.'
A Level 3 or Level 4 prisoner rioting would certainly be treated differently than a Level 9 prisoner rioting.
But I didn't realize it would be this different.
Vikir, who had simply refused to work, was being treated like a terrorist who had come to blow up Nouvelle Vague.
…jeobeog! …jeobeog! …jeobeog! …jeobeog!
The clatter of military boots broke the cheaply frozen atmosphere of the workshop.
Guards of the highest rank.
Fierce-looking men, each with a sword or two emblazoned on their shoulder epaulettes, gathered in scrums of dozens.
Beside them were a circle of captain-ranked guards, each wearing a three-diamond insignia.
At the head of the line, a Bastille lieutenant colonel spoke.
"Night Hound. Resume your labor at once, or there will be only punishment."
He was in charge of various events, such as entrance ceremonies and execution ceremonies, and management of labor camps, and was a high-ranking prison guard ranked just below the fifth warden in the Nouvelle Vague.
Upon hearing the stern warning, Vikir raised his right hand and slipped it into the pocket of his prison uniform.
The moment he pulled his hand out of the pocket, all the guards tensed up.
seug-
But what emerged from Vikir's pocket was a fist with only his middle finger extended straight out.
…ppadeug!
A line of blood stood on Bastille's forehead.
"Suppress him! Even if you kill him, I won't hold you guilty!"
At those words, the guards in front of him raised their weapons and rushed forward.
Huge unyielding swords, massive maces, murderously sharpened longswords, heavy axe blades, and long, gaunt daggers fell upon Vikir without warning.
Vikir stroked his chin and pondered.
'I don't see the face I'm looking for, so why don't I just run around a bit until it comes out?'
At the moment, Vikir's eyes saw the guards flying at him with mana, and their attacks were extremely slow.
Although he couldn't use his mana due to the BDISSEM handcuffs, it wasn't difficult for him to dodge their attacks thanks to the Physical Resistance, Magic Resistance, and Reflexes stats he gained in the Hell Tree.
Vikir's psychic nerves, which had blossomed to the extreme, were complemented by his experienced combat senses.
Puff-puff-puff!
With a few swipes of his head from side to side, Vikir dodged all of the attacks and soon slipped around the back of the scrum organized by the consular guards.
Then, the high-ranking guards who were building a siege network behind them were startled and surprised.
"Hiig, we can't get through!"
"Don't be silly! He can't use mana anyway!"
"Kill him!"
Each of the guards drew a baton or sword and swung it at Vikir.
But.
"Bad judgment."
Vikir swung the BDISSEM chains around his wrists and ankles in the air, knocking them all away.
Clang-woosh!
The BDISSEM chains, meant to restrain the prisoner, became a weapon.
The snake-like chains snapped the guards' noses, cracking their bones.
Vikir continued to pummel the three guards with his fists, feet, and elbows, then broke through the encirclement of the higher-ranking guards.
"Ugh! kkeug!"
"Keuhag!?"
"Whack-"
One by one, the lower-ranking guards were knocked out by Vikir's blows.
"Ugh! What's wrong with him, he can't use mana!"
But it was only natural for the guards to react this way.
Woosh!
Vikir thought to himself as he stomped on the face of a Major-level guard who followed him the rest of the way.
'They say the guards at Nouvelle Vague are mostly evil, and they're right.'
No sane prison guard would come to work in such a dreadful place.
Most of the guards here at Nouvelle Vague have been demoted for excessive harshness or corruption.
Most of them are human beings who are no different from the prisoners except for the clothes they wear.
Vikir knew this because he had seen and heard many testimonies of how the guards took out their perverse desires and stress on the prisoners.
Then.
"...!"
Other figures entered Vikir's vision.
Older faces with less grime than the high-ranking guards.
Guards of the so-called rank, the lowest class in the Nouvelle Vague, were gathered in groups of twos and threes, pointing their swords at Vikir.
Every single one of them was trembling.
"Stand, the seniors are down, now it's our turn!"
"As a prison guard of the Great Nouvelle Vague, I will never back down!"
"Yo, be brave! Let's fight!"
But no one stepped forward.
They were still too young and weak to jump into something that would surely kill them.
'They must be about the same age as the students at the Colosseo Academy.'
Vikir thought as he looked at the new recruits in front of him.
Then.
Fit-
Vikir felt a streak of lightning pass across his cheek.
Bam-bam-bam.
A few strands of hair fell off his head from the sharp blow.
"...!"
Vikir turned his head in disbelief.
A determined-looking female guard stood there, a knife tucked into her waistband.
She looked to be in her late teens.
She had a pretty face, but her stern expression made her look much more seasoned than her years.
A diamond was pinned to her breastplate, along with a nameplate that read 'Kirko Grimm', a ranking badge indicating her so-called rank.
Vikir stared in pure admiration.
He could tell by the way she'd wielded the sword and the lead sword earlier that this girl's talents were not ordinary.
'A rare quality. Comparable to Tudor or Bianca or Sinclair... or perhaps even Camus or Dolores.'
A girl with the potential to rival even the young heroes of the Colosseo Academy.
Why would someone with such wasted talent be in a place like this?
'Kirko. Didn't any hero have a name like that before the regression?'
Even the guards of Nouvelle Vague, who had declared themselves uninvolved in worldly affairs during the first half of the Demon War, had come to the surface to fight demons during the second half of the Demon War.
The situation was as bad as it was.
However, none of the female heroes who rose to prominence during that time were named Kirko.
'...With all her talent and skill, why wasn't she known?'
Vikir looked at Kirko with a bit of a question in his eyes.
"Hot!"
With no one else moving, Kirko alone bravely drew his sword.
Another lightning-like slash, this one touching the peak of Sword Expert.
'Such a waste.'
Vikir dodged Kirko's sword with a paper-thin gap.
…kwang!
He stretched out his snake-like grip, grabbed Kirko by the throat, and slammed him to the ground.
"keoheog!?"
Kirko hit the floor, vomiting.
Vikir had just lifted his foot to pass by Kirko's side.
"Oh, no!"
There was another guard blocking his path.
Garm. Lieutenant Garm Nord.
A guard who was known as the 'asshole' among the prisoners as well as the guards.
This reckless junior guard stood in Kirko's way and started a confrontation with Vikir.
"...."
Vikir lowered his gaze in a strange way.
Kirko slumped to the floor, moaning, and Garm standing in front of him in desperation.
Whatever the relationship between the two crybabies was, it wasn't a pleasant one for Vikir.
"Get out of the way."
"Oh, no, Kirkoman...!"
But Garm couldn't finish his sentence.
Pfft!
Vikir raised his hand in annoyance and slapped Garm across the cheek.
…Kwakwakwak!
Garm was sent flying backwards in an instant, knocked out cold.
"keueug!?"
The gathered guards stamped their feet, helpless to do anything about Vikir.
Vikir, meanwhile, could not outrun all these guards without expending mana, so he could only look for gaps in the encirclement.
Just then.
"What's the commotion?"
A gravelly voice came from the top of a cliff far up the slope.
A voice as heavy as boiling water.
All the guards' faces lit up as if they'd seen a savior.
A man stood on a cliff, looking down at them.
He had jet-black skin and eyes that burned yellow.
His short hair, the scars that covered his face and body, his log-like biceps, his waist, and the muscles that packed his body so tightly that his uniform was about to burst.
D'Ordume D D'Orcdile.
One of the five pillars that support the Nouvelle Vague.
One of the Five Warden, the most powerful of the Five.