82 Wait for Me
, Roswiser
At midnight, in some abandoned wine cellar, Leon and his daughters were brainstorming ways to gather intelligence.
Leon rubbed his wrist, with a few drops of bl**d on his knuckles, “Torturing him won’t work; if he was going to talk, he would’ve blabbed after the first punch. If he’s not talking now, more punches won’t make a difference.”
“Dad, does your punch even compare to a normal person’s punch?”
Aurora seemed to realize something, “No way, I have to check if those two guys are dead or not.”
Leon pulled his youngest daughter back, “Relax, I’m controlling my strength. I’ve done interrogation before when I was in the military, but not much.”
Noia raised an eyebrow, “During wartime, intelligence is really important, right? If you rarely interrogated prisoners, where did you get your info?”
The old man shrugged, “We just bulldozed our way through, who needs intelligence?”
Noia rolled her eyes dramatically.
“…Hmm, simple and brutal. Very fitting for my dad’s stereotype,” Aurora chortled.
“But this time we can’t just bulldoze,” Noia said, “The enemy has the numbers, and there are too many unknowns. If we want the exact location of the Heartguard Dragon Scale, we have to get it out of Nacho and his buddy.”
Leon pondered, “Your mom used to know a magic that could probe a captive’s memories; can you guys use it?”
The three sisters exchanged looks and then shook their heads in unison.
“You didn’t learn such a useful spell?”
“Did you learn it?”
“I didn’t learn it either, hehehe—oh cr*p!”
Noia elbowed her dad.
Ah, those days of flirting with mother dragon…
“So what now? Torture doesn’t work, probing magic is out, are we just going to twiddle our thumbs?”
Aurora chimed in, “The Sharp Blade Trio went to the manor and didn’t find Nacho; they should alert the Empire to start a search immediately. We don’t have much time; we need to act fast.”
But even though they needed to hurry, there weren’t any good methods to make those two spill the beans.
After a moment’s thought, Leon suddenly said, “Do you guys know… about the prisoner’s dilemma?”
……
Leon opened the storage room door, revealing Nacho all tied up.
He was bound hand and foot, unable to move.
Seeing Leon walk in, Nacho sneered, “You monster… why can’t you just stay in the materials for twenty years? What are you doing back out?”
At this moment, Nacho had regained his composure.
Regardless of whether Leon was alive again or was some other mystery, it was clear he was causing Nacho a heap of trouble.
But Nacho hadn’t been idle for twenty years.
He looked at Leon and said slowly, “Ah… anyway, I’m in your hands now. But… even so, your situation is pretty messy too, right?”
Leon stood in front of him, staring into his eyes, silent.
“You’re eager to kidnap me to extract information about the Heartguard Dragon Scale, which means it’s important to you, right? But you’re running out of time, or else you wouldn’t dare mess with royal people.”
“If you can’t extract the information you want from me, then even if you k*ll me, your plan is still at a standstill and you’ll catch the Empire’s attention.”
“The Silver Dragon Race has been disbanded, Casmod; you have no backup. If you fail, a fate worse than mine awaits you. Am I wrong?”
Nacho had picked up some tricks during his twenty years in power.
If both sides had chips, there was no need to fold immediately.
He grinned at Leon, as if to flaunt his current self to this hard-to-k*ll fellow.
“Hmm, you’re right,” Leon casually replied.
Nacho was taken aback; he didn’t expect Leon to concede so easily.
Nacho pressed his lips together, planning to keep analyzing the situation and laying out all of Leon’s disadvantages to pile on the pressure.
He relished the feeling of being disliked yet untouchable.
Until Leon pulled out a dining kn*fe from his pocket.
Nacho panicked, swallowing hard, “W-What are you planning to do… you can’t k*ll me, you wouldn’t dare! I’m a royal, and I have information you want! If you k*ll me, you’ll never find out where the Heartguard Dragon Scale is!”
“And, and! After that, you won’t successfully catch anyone else who knows about this either. The Empire will be on high alert at the slightest disturbance!”
“No matter how strong you are, you can’t capture a royal member inside a web of tight defenses!”
Leon rubbed his temples impatiently, “You done?”
“……”
“That subordinate of yours, Scott, already told me where the Heartguard Dragon Scale is. So…”
Leon shrugged, pretending to be regretful, “You’re of no use to me now.”
As he spoke, Leon waved the kn*fe in his hand.
The blade glinted coldly, dazzling Nacho’s eyes.
“N-No way, Leon, you’re bluffing me.”
Nacho suppressed his anger and fear, “Scott would never betray the Empire.”
“I don’t know if he would betray the Empire, but he definitely sold you out ten minutes ago. My people have knocked him out and taken him away. By the time he wakes up, we’ll be gone from the Empire. As for you…”
Leon tapped the kn*fe against Nacho’s cheek, “Think about it: if you d*e, who’s going to take over your position?”
Those words were like a fuse, igniting all of Nacho’s bottled emotions.
He struggled violently, but his arms and legs were firmly bound, making movement impossible.
Seeing Nacho’s fierce reaction, Leon chuckled inwardly.
As expected, this old geezer had climbed to his position, stuck in the marvelous quagmire of power and unable to escape.
Master was right; these politicians were all the same.
“Alright, just behave. The more you squirm, the less precise my cuts will be, and I’d feel real guilty if you ended up in too much pain,” Leon said lazily, practically wearing a ‘fake sincerity’ badge.
With that, the dining kn*fe slowly approached Nacho’s carotid artery.
The blade sank into the skin, bl**d oozing forth.
“Wait!” Nacho suddenly shouted.
“What?”
“How did Scott tell you… about the location?”
“That’s none of your concern; by this time tomorrow, I’ll probably be swaggering out of the Empire with the Heartguard Dragon Scale. Well, you probably won’t see that scene, what a pity.”
The kn*fe kept descending slowly.
“Scott only knows where the dragon scale is stored! He doesn’t know the shift times or the code words!”
Fueled by fear and anger, Nacho decided to trade information for his life and position.
If it was just about dying, Nacho wasn’t afraid.
From the moment he grasped power, he knew a day like this might come.
But he couldn’t accept that the position and authority he worked so hard for over twenty years would be snatched away by Scott.
Absolutely unacceptable.
“Oh? That would be betraying the Empire. Aren’t you afraid someone will find out?” Leon asked leisurely.
“I can just blame it all on Scott,” Nacho replied.
Hearing this, Leon raised an eyebrow; he understood the underlying meaning, “Well, sometimes it’s better to be dead than alive, because dead people can’t talk.”
As a classic scapegoat for ‘dead better than alive,’ General Leon could relate all too well.
He pulled out paper and a pen from his pocket, tossed them in front of Nacho, “Write down everything you know about the Heartguard Dragon Scale. If it contradicts what Scott just told me, I’ll dispose of you both.”
Nacho struggled to pick up the pen with his bound hands and began writing furiously.
He didn’t notice the barely contained smirk creeping onto Leon’s face.
Ten minutes later, Leon walked out of the storage room, and coincidentally, Noia emerged from the adjacent storage room.
The father and daughter exchanged glances, and on their faces, they saw two words:
Done it!
“Wow! It really worked~” Moon transformed back into Dad’s little fan girl, showering him with compliments.
Aurora was also seeing this kind of interrogation method for the first time; it was basically just verbal finesse to extract information.
“If we capture two or more prisoners, the prisoner’s dilemma becomes almost an unsolvable interrogation method.”
Leon explained,
“When faced with the prisoner’s dilemma, Nacho and Scott had only two choices: stay silent or betray each other.”
“But they couldn’t communicate directly.”
“So, whether to stay silent and protect their partner or betray each other to hold onto what they have… Heh, who knows?”
“But no matter how they choose, the initiative is in our hands. With just a few interrogation skills, getting out the information is a piece of cake.”
Moon let out a long, “Oh, impressive!”
Even if she didn’t understand much, Dad was still awesome!
Leon and Noia checked the information provided by the two; the locations of the Heartguard Dragon Scale matched perfectly.
“What are we doing with them?” Noia asked.
“Knock them out and keep them here as hostages,” Leon said, “Because we don’t know if there will be other troubles in the future, having hostages as bargaining chips can never be a bad thing. And even if the Empire doesn’t care about their lives and plans to destroy everything, we can still deal with them later.”
Noia nodded, “Understood. I’ll set up an illusion magic here, so the Empire won’t find them.”
“Good.”
Leon looked down at the information in his hands.
Once he got the Heartguard Dragon Scale, he could activate the reversal magic.
He had to go back.
He must go back.
“Roswiser… wait for me, you must… wait for me.”
