Chapter 236: The Secret of the Meeting
After arriving at the basement where the prisoner of the holy knights waited for Ryan to begin his questions.
She, quite unusually for a devout holy knight, agreed to answer all the questions asked of her, or at least that is what she had said minutes before.
After finishing that sentence, the girl fell completely silent. Her eyes widened, losing all the color in her face in a single second. Her terrified gaze fixed directly on the imposing figure standing behind Ryan.
"Dragon..." the girl murmured with a broken voice.
But she cut herself off abruptly, shutting her mouth with great force. She bit her own tongue hard from the immense shock of seeing Ivis so closely.
The pain in her mouth made her react instinctively.
Cough, cough, cough.
She began to cough violently, trying to catch her breath in the damp environment of the basement.
"What... is that really a dragon?" the prisoner asked, her hands trembling visibly.
"Why... no... this must be a sick joke."
She shook her head repeatedly, refusing to believe that the creature in front of her was real. The thick iron chains that bound her arms and feet clanked with a loud echo.
The metallic noise bounced against the walls, betraying the uncontrollable trembling of her body. She closed her eyes in despair and let her head fall forward, surrendering to the fear.
Her breathing hitched suddenly, filling the heavy silence with very short and rapid gasps. She clearly felt intimidated to the core, feeling the panic constrict her chest.
The reality of her miserable situation hit her with an overwhelming force that was impossible to ignore. Not only was she tied up, beaten, and unarmed in a territory completely unknown to her.
But she was also in the direct presence of two lethal S-rank heroines who were staring at her. Either of those two women had enough strength to kill her without the slightest effort.
But the worst part was that she was also facing a true SS-rank dragon.
A nightmare creature that radiated a suffocating pressure just by breathing. The dragon woman looked at her with such cold indifference that it made her feel like a mere insect.
And as if all that terror wasn’t enough, the most wanted criminal in all of humanity was right there. Ryan was standing right in front of her, dominating the room with his dark presence. In this woman’s judgment, he was clearly the undisputed leader commanding these monsters.
"Wow, the poor thing went into total shock seeing Ivis up close." Mirian’s voice echoed.
The slender archer crossed her arms beneath her chest, breaking the dense tension in the room. She looked at the trembling prisoner with a smile full of heavy irony and mockery.
"I think... I won’t get out of here alive..." the chained girl began to murmur.
Large tears of frustration and fear began to gather in the corners of her eyes.
"It can’t be... right after I managed to join the holy knights, this happens to me..."
Her words came out very broken, drowned by pure panic and the terror of an imminent death. She muttered to herself, completely losing hope of ever seeing the sunlight again.
Then, Ryan decided to intervene so as not to waste any more valuable time listening to her useless laments.
Standing a very short distance away, Ryan stared down at her.
His intense green eyes gleamed in the gloom of the torchlit basement. His cold and calculating gaze pierced deep into the frightened soul of the young prisoner.
"Don’t get distracted," Ryan told her with a voice so firm and deep that it echoed off the walls. That simple, authority-laden command cut the girl’s panic attack off at the root.
"Tell me right now, what is that reason?" he demanded, maintaining an imposing and relentless posture.
The girl shuddered violently upon hearing the commanding tone in Ryan’s voice.
She snapped her head back up, moved by a profound survival instinct. It was as if that cold demand had suddenly brought her back to the reality of her interrogation.
She blinked a couple of times to clear the tears clouding her blurry vision.
Her brown eyes shifted slightly toward the spot where Ivis waited in silence. Instinctive fear ran down her spine once again at the sight of the dragon woman’s silhouette.
But she immediately pulled her gaze back and looked Ryan straight in the face with great submission. She avoided making eye contact with the dragon at all costs, terrified of provoking her wrath.
She preferred to focus solely on the dark-trench-coated leader who was asking her the questions.
"Yes..." the prisoner nodded very slowly, swallowing hard to moisten her dry throat.
She breathed in a much calmer and deeper manner, filling her lungs with air.
She made a huge mental effort to regain her composure and formulate coherent answers.
"A little over a week ago, Lady Priscilla was visiting the great city of Kallistia... And then, there was a severe emergency alert sent to the church. We were informed that the main entrance of the capital was attacked by a violent adventurer."
The woman began to recount, recalling the recent orders and movements of her superiors. The girl paused briefly, remembering the destruction described in the official reports.
"An extremely dangerous adventurer, wielding a massive boomerang," she detailed in a nervous voice.
The prisoner swallowed again, feeling a knot form in her stomach.
She did not look away from Ryan’s serious face for a single second.
"And from what I can see now, I assume that adventurer was you..." the girl added in a whisper.
She pieced the information together in her head with obvious fear of retaliation.
She had just realized the true power and identity of the man keeping her prisoner.
’Yes, that was definitely me,’ Ryan thought to himself without changing his expression in the slightest.
He remembered the massive disaster he had caused at the towering gates of that human nation.
He had to crush guards and adventurers alike as he left the city.
But he wasn’t about to explain himself to a simple enemy hostage.
"Continue," Ryan ordered immediately, completely ignoring the prisoner’s accurate assumption.
He wasn’t going to let her derail the main topic of the interrogation with her doubts.
"What exactly was the saint doing in the city of Kallistia?" he added in a highly demanding tone.
"I have absolutely no idea," the chained woman replied, shaking her head quickly.
"I am a new member of the holy knights, they just assigned me to this important mission. I don’t know exactly what someone so important would be doing in that city," she defended herself.
The girl shrugged, showing genuine ignorance regarding high-level matters.
"She’s lying." Alicia said suddenly, taking a step forward from the shadows of the basement.
The loyal wolf assistant spoke in an unusually serious tone, showing a lot of hostility.
Alicia’s sharp senses scanned the prisoner’s physical reactions in search of deception.
"It’s not a lie, I really don’t know!" the girl exclaimed with heavy panic in her voice.
She pressed her back against the hard wall, trying to get away from the wolf girl. The prisoner felt a fresh, profound terror at seeing the latent threat in Alicia’s eyes.
"But what I do know is that due to that severe conflict at the entrance, plans changed."
The woman said frantically, speaking fast to avoid any kind of physical punishment.
"Lady Priscilla used a teleportation stone to go straight to Hero William."
The holy knight explained, letting out all the valuable information she knew from her superiors.
"They were supposed to meet up normally much further down the road. But that surprise attack on the capital only accelerated the process of their meeting..."
The girl took a deep breath, feeling that she had revealed important secrets of the church.
’I see, that would perfectly explain why those two were together,’ Ryan thought in silence.
His cold mind processed the new data at astonishing speed, piecing together the big picture. He understood why he had found them traveling as a team after his escape from the city.
’But what kind of relationship do those two actually have?’ Ryan wondered, frowning slightly.
’And why did she go straight to the hero instead of seeking safe refuge within the church?’
The relationship William might have with Priscilla was something they had been very careful not to reveal when they met in the distant town.
These were logical doubts that were forming and multiplying rapidly in Ryan’s head. Something didn’t fit with the usual behavior of a figure so sacred to humans.
’But going about it this way, I doubt I’ll get the truth, so if she really knows things, I can only find one quick and easy way to find out...’ Ryan thought. He crossed his arms under his dark trench coat and looked at the prisoner with great intensity.
"Answer me, do you want me to heal your wounds right now?" Ryan asked her directly, extending his hand over her.