Early the next morning.
There was an unprecedented uproar in Nouvelle Vague.
"WHAT THE HELL !"
A thunderous shout shook Level 9.
Colonel D'Ordume D D'Orcdile. One of the leading candidates to become the next head of the prison.
He turned his head, his expression filled with rage.
A group of mid-level officers, including Lieutenant Colonel Bastille, stood behind him, heads bowed.
It was because of the escape of Night Hound in the middle of the night.
Colonel D'Ordume had frantically scoured his men after reports of Vikir's disappearance.
But nothing had been reported, except that a mysterious doctor had slipped out of the prisoners' quarters under the guise of quarantine.
Colonel D'Ordume was barely able to contain his anger as he realized that the reason why the siege was so weak in the first place was due to the mysterious explosives found in the Level 10 sector, and Colonel D'Ordume's unreasonable orders to reassign the guards in order to force the construction work around them.
"There was nothing unusual about the night before, how couldn't anyone notice until it came to this?"
At Colonel D'Ordume's accusation, the guards all lowered their heads and remained speechless.
Then. A dispatch came in.
"Sir Colonel, I think you should go to the fifth floor!"
D'Ordume's thick eyebrows arched at the report from his out-of-breath subordinate.
The next thing he knew, he was running up the stairs to the fifth floor.
"What the hell...."
The first thing he sees is a giant hole in the wall of the Gulper Eel tank.
The next thing he saw was a large number of dead gulper eels floating in the water.
He couldn't even begin to estimate how many eels had been swept out of the water.
Luckily, the flubber mucus filled in the holes, so the flooding wasn't too bad, but the loss of so many gulper eels was devastating.
It is very difficult to raise gulper eels, and even in the process of becoming an adult, sudden or mysterious deaths occur frequently.
Their growth rate is also extremely fast.
An adult gulper eel could cost as much as a ship, and the loss of such a creature was unspeakable.
... However, Colonel D'Ordume's focus was elsewhere.
Gulper eels were nowhere in sight.
The problem was the little girl squatting in the corner of the tank, shivering.
Wrapped in a towel from the guards, drinking warm sea cow, she was BDISSEM!
" ... What's going on?"
D'Ordume asked in disbelief.
BDISSEM snorted and answered.
"I was trying to catch an escaped prisoner last night and lost him."
"No, I don't know why you're here in the first place... haa."
D'Ordume sighed, pressing a hand to his forehead.
Just then, a figure approached him.
"What are you doing here? You have been slow."
Colonel Souaré. She eyed him with a sneer.
"Is that how you're going to became head of the warden?"
"Shut up, Souaré. I was off duty last night, a once-in-a-year occurrence."
"Aha- so you were out of the loop while I dealt with the flood damage, the gulper eel deaths, and BDISSEM's security?"
"...."
D'Ordume didn't answer.
He merely grinded his teeth with such force that they seemed to wear down.
Souaré looked around.
"Thank goodness Brigadier General Flubber took care of that hole in the wall. There's some flooding damage, but it's nothing that can't be repaired with the labor of Level 1 prisoners. The loss of the gulper eels is a pity, but so be it. We'll just have to be satisfied that BDISSEM is safe. We could have had a major accident of epic proportions."
"...Where are the prisoner?"
"Why are you asking me that? It's not even my jurisdiction. I'm just cleaning up the damage."
He's right.
It was D'Ordume's job to capture the prisoner, and Souaré's job to torture them and keep them in solitary confinement.
D'Ordume couldn't help but ask the trembling BDISSEM.
"Where are the prisoner?"
Then BDISSEM jumped, more startled than necessary, and cried out.
"He's dead!"
"... dead?"
D'Ordume was silent for a moment.
There was no way anyone could have escaped from Nouvelle Vague.
With no mana, limited strength, and a body weakened by poor diet and harsh labor, it would be impossible to escape from this harsh environment while wearing the BDISSEM restraints.
On top of that, this is 10,000 meters below the surface of the sea.
But the job had to be done.
"Then where is the body?"
D'Ordume asked in a hard tone, and BDISSEM quickly averted her gaze.
"...He went out to sea on a gulper eel."
"Then he's not dead."
"Of course he's dead!"
BDISSEM had a point.
In fact, there was no way to get to the surface on a gulper eel.
It was a military secret that only the wardens knew, a secret that the prisoners would never know.
The fifth floor of the Nouvelle Vague, where the gulper eels are kept, is surrounded by more than 3,000 circulating currents, of which only one leads to the surface.
This means that it's all about which point you push the eels to, and without knowing the exact path, there's only a 0.00033101622% chance of reaching the surface if you choose a random path.
The rest of the time, the gulper eel is left to wander in circles in the depths of the sea at the mercy of the currents, returning to where it came from, a journey that can take as long as a hundred years, and by the time the gulper returns, the person in its stomach is reduced to a skeleton.
"He doesn't seem to have any idea what the circulation currents are that lead to the surface, so he's bound to get caught in a trap current, and he'll be stuck in the deep for the rest of his life."
" ... Maybe? It sounds like you didn't see it."
"Yes, yes, yes, I saw it, Haa, I saw it, and I saw him ride a gulper eel out of that hole in the wall before I passed out!"
BDISSEM desperately answered.
D'Ordume crossed his arms and was silent for a long moment.
" ...You did indeed witness his last act, didn't you?"
"Oh, that's right! What are you looking at me for? And no matter what, I'm the one who cares... don't look at me like that!"
BDISSEM broke out in a cold sweat.
Because she was lying now.
'I can't tell you that I passed out and then woke up and he was gone!'
If she did, it wouldn't be just another day in captivity.
When Warden Orca returned, she might be locked up as a prisoner for life.
"Yeah. There was a hole in the wall! He tried to drag an eel out. He probably took the eel with him, and he's probably wandering around somewhere in a daze right now. Fucking asshole!'
BDISSEM rationalized herself. She said it was something that could not be helped.
And Souaré 's testimony coincidentally backed up BDISSEM's words.
"Come to think of it, the guy who came into the cell this time said something strange, the one on level eight, the guy Sakkuth or something, he said that the Night Hound was about to break out?"
"Sakkuth? the plague leper?"
"Yep. He said some guy named Vikir tipped him off about the escape. I thought it was bullshit and ignored it, but he was right."
The testimony of Sakkuth De Leviathan, who is currently in solitary confinement for his role in a recent riot, was pretty conclusive.
BDISSEM was eventually cleared of the charge of missing an inmate.
"Hey, that's it, I'm going back to my room."
Fearful of being reprimanded by the warden and belittled by subordinates, BDISSEM decided not to dwell on the matter and kept her mouth shut.
D'Ordume felt suspicious in many ways, but decided he could not pursue the investigation further.
A hole in the wall. The missing gulper eel. BDISSEM's unwavering testimony.
In the end, D'Ordume could only nod.
"Night Hound died trying to break out of Nouvelle Vague. I suppose we can treat it that way."
"Well, I agree, it's a shame, he was quite charming."
Even Souaré nodded in agreement.
D'Ordume found Vikir's name in the list he was carrying and scribbled it down.
With that, Night Hound was officially declared dead in Nouvelle Vague.
"Send a mana transmission to the surface and have it recorded."
D'Ordume roughly tossed the register with Vikir's name crossed out to one of the junior guards beside him.
"Yes, sir. Colonel."
The junior guard bowed his head deeply and took the list with both hands.
He turned and walked away to fulfill D'Ordume's orders.
Souaré caught a glimpse of the junior guard's sideways glance as he walked past her.
He wore a tattered guard's cap, unkempt bushy hair, and a large burn scar across his face.
And a crisp uniform that looked brand new.
The name tag on his chest patch, which looked like it had been freshly inlaid, read 'Garm Nord'.
'The atmosphere is strange? Was there a guy like that among your subordinates?'
Souaré shook off the thought.
'Eh, what the hell.'
She was a colonel and the next head of the prison, there was no way she could remember the names and faces of such a lowlife.
Right now, it was more important to Souaré to make up for the mistake Static D'Ordume had made and put on as much color as she could.
"Anyway. Let's wrap this up. I'll take a look upstairs."
"...."
D'Ordume merely puffed away at his cigar.
The Nouvelle Vague prison break, which could have been an unprecedented event in history, ended somewhat in vain like this.