Vol. 2 Ch. 82

At midnight, in an abandoned wine cellar, Leon and his daughters were discussing how to extract information.

Leon rubbed his wrist, bloodstains faintly visible on his knuckles. "Torture is no longer effective. If he was going to talk, he would’ve done it after the first punch. If he hasn’t by now, more hitting won’t change that."

"Dad, your punch isn’t exactly comparable to a normal person’s punch," Aurora remarked, realizing something. "Wait, I need to check if those two are still alive."

Leon held his younger daughter back. "Relax, I controlled my strength. I’ve interrogated people before, back during the war, though not very often."

Noa raised an eyebrow. "During war, intelligence is crucial. If you rarely interrogated prisoners, where did the information come from?"

Leon shrugged. "We just bulldozed through. What information did we need?"

Noa rolled her eyes in disbelief.

"Simple and brutal, totally fits my impression of you, Dad," Aurora concluded seriously.

"But we can't bulldoze through this time," Noa said. "The enemy has the advantage, and we’re in the dark about too many things. To find the exact location of the Heartscale, we have to get it out of Nacho and his deputy."

Leon thought for a moment and asked, "Your mother used to know magic that could extract memories from prisoners. Do any of you know how to do that?"

The three sisters exchanged glances, then shook their heads in unison.

"None of you learned that incredibly useful magic?"

"Did you?"

"I didn’t either, hehe—ouch!"

Noa elbowed her father in the ribs.

Leon reminisced briefly about the days of bantering with Rosvisser.

"So, what now?" Aurora asked. "Torture doesn’t work, and none of us know memory magic. Are we just going to sit here and wait?"

"The Sharp Blade trio didn’t find Nacho at the manor, so they’ll probably report to the Empire right away, and they’ll begin searching for us," Aurora continued. "We don’t have much time. We need to act fast."

Although they needed to hurry, there didn’t seem to be any good ideas to get the two captives to talk.

After a moment of contemplation, Leon suddenly spoke up, "Do you know about the prisoner's dilemma?"

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Leon opened the storage room door, where only Nacho was tied up, his hands and feet bound, unable to move.

Seeing Leon, Nacho scoffed.

"You monster… why couldn’t you just stay in the grave? It’s been twenty years. Why come back now?"

At this point, Nacho had regained his composure. Whether Leon had come back from the dead or something else had happened, it was clear that Leon had come for him.

But Nacho hadn’t survived the last twenty years for nothing.

He looked at Leon and spoke slowly.

"Well… it seems I’ve fallen into your hands. But… even so, the situation must be quite troublesome for you, right?"

Leon stood in front of him, looking into his eyes without saying a word.

"You kidnapped me in such a hurry, trying to extract information about the Heartscale. That means it’s important to you, isn’t it? But you don’t have much time. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have risked provoking the royal family."

"If you can’t get the information out of me, then even if you kill me, your plan won’t progress, and the Empire will soon be on your tail."

"The Silver Dragon Clan has already been disbanded, Casmod. You don’t have any backup. If you fail, you’ll end up in a fate worse than mine. Am I right?"

Nacho, with twenty years of experience in politics, had learned a thing or two about negotiation.

If both sides had chips on the table, there was no need to give up easily.

He gazed at Leon, as if showing off to this man who had once seemed untouchable.

"Hmm, you’re right," Leon admitted, much to Nacho's surprise.

Nacho licked his lips, preparing to further analyze the situation and pile on the pressure by pointing out all of Leon’s disadvantages.

He loved this feeling of being hated but untouchable.

That was until Leon took out the dinner knife he had used earlier from his pocket.

Nacho panicked, instinctively swallowing. "W-what are you going to do…? You can’t kill me. You don’t dare kill me. I’m a royal, and I have the information you need. If you kill me, you’ll never find out where the Heartscale is!"

"Besides!—Afterward, you won’t be able to capture anyone else who knows this information. The Empire will immediately tighten its defenses at the slightest disturbance."

Leon rubbed his forehead impatiently. "Are you finished?"

"......"

"Your deputy, Scott, already told me where the Heartscale is. So…"

Leon shrugged as if disappointed. "You’re no longer of any use to me."

As he spoke, Leon waved the knife casually.

The blade glinted coldly in the dim light, flashing before Nacho’s eyes.

"No, no… that’s impossible, Leon. You’re bluffing."

Nacho tried to suppress the growing terror and anger. "Scott would never betray the Empire."

"Whether or not he betrayed the Empire, I don’t know," Leon said. "But ten minutes ago, he betrayed you. My people already knocked him out and took him away. By the time he wakes up, we’ll be long gone from the Empire. As for you…"

Leon tapped Nacho’s face with the flat of the knife. "Think about it. If you die, who would take your place?"

That sentence was like a fuse, igniting all of Nacho’s buried fears.

He began thrashing wildly, but his restraints held firm.

Seeing Nacho’s violent reaction, Leon smirked inwardly. As expected, this old fox had become too attached to the power he had clawed his way to over the years.

His master had been right—these politicians were all the same.

"Calm down," Leon said lazily. "The more you struggle, the less precise my knife will be. If you die in too much pain, I’ll feel really guilty."

His voice was so insincere that it might as well have been written on his face.

With that, Leon slowly moved the knife toward Nacho's carotid artery.

The blade began to cut into the skin, and blood started to seep out.

"Wait!" Nacho suddenly shouted.

"What?"

"How did Scott describe it to you?"

"You don’t need to know that," Leon replied. "By this time tomorrow, I’ll be walking out of the Empire with the Heartscale in my hand. Unfortunately, you won’t be around to see it. What a pity."

Leon continued lowering the knife.

"Scott only knows the storage location! He doesn’t know the shift schedules or the password for the security posts!"

Driven by fear and fury, Nacho decided to offer up information to save both his life and his position.

If it was just about dying, Nacho wasn’t afraid.

Ever since he’d tasted power, he knew this day might come.

But he couldn’t accept having Scott take over the status and power he had worked so hard for.

Absolutely not.

"Oh?" Leon asked, drawing out his words. "Aren’t you afraid of betraying the Empire? What if someone finds out later?"

"Blame it all on Scott," Nacho suggested.

Leon raised an eyebrow, fully understanding the implication. "Yeah, sometimes the dead are more useful than the living. Dead men can’t talk."

Leon, a classic example of that principle, knew it all too well.

He took out a piece of paper and a pen from his pocket, tossing them in front of Nacho. "Write down everything you know about the Heartscale. If it doesn’t match up with Scott’s information, I’ll kill both of you."

With great difficulty, Nacho grabbed the pen with his tied hands and began writing frantically.

Meanwhile, Leon could barely contain the grin threatening to break out on his face.

Ten minutes later, Leon stepped out of the storage room, and just then, Noa emerged from the other storage room.

Father and daughter exchanged glances, reading the same word on each other’s faces:

Success!

"Wow! It really worked!" Moon exclaimed, turning into her father’s biggest fan, showering him with praise.

Aurora, witnessing such an interrogation technique for the first time, was equally impressed. "You got the information just by talking them into it."

"If you capture two or more prisoners, the prisoner's dilemma is almost an unbeatable interrogation method," Leon explained.

"When faced with it, Nacho and Scott only had two choices: stay silent or betray each other."

"But they can’t communicate directly."

"So, whether to stay silent and protect their partner or betray them to save their own skin… who knows?"

"Either way, the advantage is ours. With a few simple interrogation techniques, it’s easy to get the information we need."

Moon let out a long "Ohhh" of admiration. "That’s amazing!"

She might not fully understand, but her dad was amazing nonetheless!

Leon and Noa compared the information provided by the two captives. The location of the Heartscale matched perfectly.

"What should we do with them?" Noa asked.

"Knock them out and keep them here for now as hostages," Leon replied. "We don’t know what other trouble might come our way. Having hostages is always useful. And even if the Empire doesn’t care about them and decides to burn all bridges, we can still deal with them later."

Leon nodded. "Good. I'll set up a plan here to keep the Empire's people from finding them."

"Got it," Noa replied.

Leon looked down at the information in his hands.

Once they had the Heartscale, they could activate the reversal magic.

He had to go back.

He must go back.

"Rosvisser… wait for me. You have to… wait for me."