Chương 19: The Prisoner Experience (1)

Hale quickly came to a glaring realization: being a prisoner was an utterly miserable experience. The heavy iron chains trussed around his body caused him constant discomfort. He couldn't even find an angle to lean his back against the bars without sharp metal links digging into his spine. The terrain made the carriage bounce violently, and a dozen eyes kept staring at him through the bars without a moment's pause.

Unable to take it any longer, Hale called out to the guards outside, "Hey, any chance you can unchain me while I'm sitting inside a locked cage?" Silence. Nobody bothered to respond. A short while later, he tried again.

"I'm really thirsty. Could someone hand me a gulp of water?" Still, not a single soldier turned their head. Hale's temper flared slightly.

"Prisoners are still human beings, you know! I haven't had a single drop of water since noon. Humans can literally die without water after a few days!" Hale harbored a bad habit that he had carried over from his past life: whenever he felt anxious or trapped, he tended to babble incessantly. So even with zero feedback, he kept trying to strike up a conversation.

"I ate lunch pretty early, so I'm actually starving right about now."

"In my old... er, back on Earth, prisoners are allowed to read books. Does anyone here have a novel to lend? Then again, with my arm chained up, turning pages would be a nightmare..." Yet the guards surrounding the carriage treated his voice as background noise. Exhausted from talking to a brick wall, Hale attempted to collapse flat onto the carriage floor, only for the chains wrapped around his chest to dig painfully into his ribs.

He let out a sharp yelp, tears of sheer physical frustration welling in the corners of his eyes. As the sun sank below the horizon, the temperature plummeted dramatically. Hale felt an instant wave of regret for taking off his heavy cloak earlier and leaving it behind; he was freezing. His voice took on a noticeable shiver as he called out again: "Hey, joking aside, could I get a blanket? Otherwise, I'm going to turn into an icicle long before we hit the capital."

Evidently finding his constant chatter unbearable, Venessa nudged her mount closer to the iron transport cage.

"What is it you actually want?"

"A warm cloak and some water. And unchain my arm." Venessa met his gaze with a cool, detached look.

"There is no need for such clumsy deception, Hale. These ankle shackles and this cage are designed to completely neutralize the Mana output of ordinary mages, but you are hardly ordinary. I am well aware that those suppressors are not enough to stop you from channeling fire magic to keep yourself warm." Hale paused, pondering her words for a moment before letting out a long, defeated sigh.

He hadn't intended to disclose his memory loss so early, figuring that if he maintained an aura of a dangerous archmage, they might treat him with a modicum of caution and respect. But keeping up the facade was proving utterly impossible.

"To be completely honest with you... I didn't just lose an arm; I lost all my memories too. I physically cannot cast magic right now. So either hand me something to keep warm, or you're going to be hauling a frozen corpse by sunrise." Venessa repeated his words slowly, as if ensuring she hadn't misheard: "Lost your memories?"

"Yeah. I forgot everything about my past. I'm practically a brand-new person now. Do you buy that?"

"So... you do not remember who I am either?"

"Wait, did the old me know you personally?" A sudden, bad premonition crept into his chest.

"Don't tell me I held a personal grudge against you too?" Considering "Hale Wallace" had practically pissed off the entire continent, adding a Archmage to his hit list wasn't exactly out of the ordinary. Venessa remained silent for a long moment, offering no answer. Hale didn't particularly care whether she believed his story or not, continuing unabated:"Hey, what exactly happens to me once we reach the capital?"

"... You will stand trial before the High Court."

"Guaranteed maximum penalty, I assume? What's the highest sentence here? Beheading?"

"Drawn and quartered by five horses."

"Well... considering I'm missing an arm, I guess it'll just be four horses then?" Hale caught himself rambling again, but he couldn't stop the words from spilling out.

"Though, wasn't I technically a prince once? Is there any chance I can opt for a somewhat gentler execution? Like a lethal sleeping potion paired with poison?" Before he could finish, a sharp sneeze escaped his nose. The chill was getting unbearable. If I can't find a way out of here, he thought grimly, I might as well generate a massive fireball and incinerate myself first. Then again, rumors suggested burning to death was agonizing.

A sudden, violent explosion would be far better—instantaneous, with zero time to process the pain. Or perhaps freezing himself solid inside an ice block. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. But if I die here, Maddie is going to be heartbroken. Ryan will probably be pretty down too. So he needed to focus on engineering an escape first. Hale sneezed once more. The sun had set entirely now, and the guards had lit roadside torches. The night air grew increasingly biting.

"Hey, aren't we supposed to be stopping at an outpost town? Aren't you guys moving a little too slow?"

"Transporting a high-tier criminal requires avoiding densely populated civilian zones," Venessa replied flatly.

"We are making camp outdoors tonight." Hale's eyes widened in horror. The chill was already cut-throat at dusk; spending an entire night exposed to the elements in his current state meant guaranteed hypothermia. A notorious, feared archmage dying of frostbite inside a transport cage—the sheer absurdity of it was almost comedic. Left with no alternative, Hale was forced to try utilizing his internal Mana to generate warmth, just as Venessa had suggested.

To manifest and control fire, mages typically linked their internal core to atmospheric elements through the gateways in their hands. But while executing the Sky Walk technique earlier, he had realized he could open a primitive energy connection through his feet as well. If connections can be established in the hands and feet, is it possible to connect the entire body? He didn't need to conjure a massive fireball capable of roasting himself alive; he just needed to raise his ambient temperature by a few degrees.

After trying for a few minutes, he realized it was a total dead end. Elemental manipulation required absolute, singular focus at the point of contact; attempting a full-body elemental sync was pure fantasy. So Hale pivoted to a different approach. Previously, he had aggressively pushed his Mana outward to grab and manipulate atmospheric elements. That approach resulted in an uncontrollable surge that sucked his Mana reserves completely dry.

The core principle of magic, however, was circulation—there had to be a balanced intake and output. So this time, he attempted to draw a tiny stream of environmental fire energy into his body through his left hand. Just a fraction, at a painstakingly slow pace... Gradually, Hale felt a subtle warmth spreading through his limbs. He didn't have to worry about an uncontrolled magic surge this time because the energy flow felt restricted—likely owing to the mana-dampening shackles around his ankles.

Around midnight, the escort party stopped to rest beside a cliff face. Venessa's troops immediately set about pitching tents, lighting campfires, and preparing rations. Throughout the entire process, at least twenty pairs of eyes remained fixed on Hale's cage. While his body felt reasonably warm now, his mental stress hit an all-time high. He was terrified that Maddie would attempt a reckless rescue tonight. He knew better than anyone how stubbornly devoted that dragonborn maid could be.

The mages in the unit had likely heard reports of Maddie's night raids in Raveno as well, frequently scanning the dark canopy above, on guard for a massive pair of wings bursting from the clouds. Suddenly, a guard shouted, "Southwest sky!" Hale's heart skipped a beat. Looking toward the horizon, he spotted a massive pair of wings gliding through the clouds. Yet, despite the sudden surge of tension through the camp, the airborne silhouette made no move to dive.

It merely circled the perimeter at a high altitude for a brief moment before vanishing back into the dark. Hale let out a quiet breath of relief. Maddie was keeping his strict warning in mind. The intense mental strain of the day finally caught up with him, leaving him drowsy. But the moment he drifted off, his passive magic regulation slipped, and the biting cold instantly snapped him awake again. When the hell is this winter going to end? Hale wondered bitterly.

This season felt as though it had been dragging on for an eternity. A guard casually tossed a large chunk of hard bread through the iron bars. Hale assumed it was his dinner, but he wasn't desperate enough to discard his remaining dignity by picking it off the dirty floor with his teeth. Doing that in private was one thing, but not with a dozen soldiers staring dead at him. Moments later, Venessa carried a wooden chair over, placing it directly beside his cage.

She ordered two guards to set up a braziers nearby, ignited the coals with a flick of her finger, and sat down.

"I will take the night watch myself," Venessa announced calmly.

"Leave ten guards on rotation; the rest of you get some sleep. We still have a two-day march ahead of us." A senior lieutenant stepped forward, looking concerned.

"You require rest as well.." Venessa replied, "I will catch up on sleep inside the carriage once dawn breaks. I am counting on you all then." As the supreme authority of the unit, her orders were absolute. The unit selected the ten most reliable soldiers to form a perimeter—five assigned to watch the cage, while the other five maintained constant vigilance over the surrounding perimeter and sky. Hale took the initiative to break the quiet, addressing Venessa: "Hey, do you happen to know Emma?"

Venessa sat with her back turned toward his cage, so he couldn't catch her expression. She remained silent for a long moment before asking softly, "You claim to have lost your memories, yet you remember Emma?"

"No, I don't remember her. But I happened to find out that I did something terrible to her in the past, didn't I?"

"Emma is dead. You killed her," Venessa stated, her voice icy and flat.

"That's not right. She has to be alive." The system explicitly said she could still be saved, didn't it? Venessa spun around in her chair, her violet eyes reflecting the flickering orange glow of the brazier.

"Can a person trapped inside an ice seal for seven straight years truly be considered alive?"

"Uh... if it's not ordinary ice, it might be possible, right? Like some kind of magical ice seal?" Venessa let out a dry, bitter laugh.

"So you do remember. Yes, Emma has been encased in your ice seal at the academy for seven long years, hovering in a state worse than death. Not a single archmage has been able to shatter that seal. Are you satisfied now?" Hale immediately seized upon the key phrase: the academy. Dropping his tone, he spoke earnestly: "I want to make amends for what I did. If I release Emma from that ice seal right now, would that qualify for a reduced sentence?" Venessa's brow furrowed.

"You want to save Emma?" Hale nodded repeatedly. Venessa weighed his words for a long time, unable to lie: "What you did to Emma is merely one entry on a very long list of atrocities. If you truly manage to free her, it might earn you a quicker, less humiliating execution." So basically, a death sentence is still guaranteed regardless. Hale had already anticipated as much.

Saving Emma would only net him a 1, 000-point Karma deduction out of his staggering ten-million-point debt; it certainly wasn't a magic ticket to pardon a lifetime of war crimes.

"Even so, I still need to break her out of that seal. Once we reach the capital, I hope you can convince the others to let me attempt it." Hale offered the statement casually, though in truth, he had zero intention of letting himself be dragged all the way to the capital floor. Here, he still has a chance to team up with Maddie and escape; once he was locked inside a heavily fortified capital dungeon, his odds of survival dropped to absolute zero.

The radiating warmth from the nearby brazier gradually seeped into his cage, and the heavy weight of exhaustion finally overtook him. Resigning himself to the inevitable, Hale closed his eyes, allowing himself to drift off to sleep in the most uncomfortable conditions he had ever endured.