Chapter 237: Collecting the Debt from a Holy Knight Woman
Helen looked at Ryan with evident suspicion in her gaze. Seeing the cold expression on her leader’s face and the way he evaluated the wounded prisoner, the black-haired warrior already knew exactly what he intended to do.
The woman of the holy knights, still cowering against the cold basement wall, looked at him with profound doubt for a long moment. Ryan’s recent words and his imposing presence clashed with the terrifying church reports she knew all too well.
But then, seeking to cling to any small hope of survival in that dungeon, she responded with great uncertainty.
"Then... is it true, you are a healer?" the girl asked with a very trembling voice.
The prisoner kept her gaze glued to the hard stone floor. She spoke in an almost inaudible tone due to the constant fear she felt being surrounded by such powerful monsters.
After swallowing hard with great difficulty, she slowly raised her gaze to meet Ryan’s dark eyes.
"Please..." the girl pleaded in despair.
She nodded quickly at her own question, as if trying to convince herself that she was facing a compassionate healer and not a cruel murderer.
"Does that mean you will spare my life?" she asked, revealing profound doubt and a small spark of hope in her damp eyes.
’Of course not,’ Ryan thought with total coldness in his mind.
He completely ignored the woman’s plea for mercy, showing not the slightest empathy for her tears or her pitiful state.
With that simple, naive question and her own verbal nod, he already had the exact consent he needed to process his hidden skills on her without fail.
After thinking about it for a brief second, he stretched out his gloved right hand a bit more. Ryan positioned his open palm directly over the badly wounded body of the frightened girl.
He began to gather a dense amount of his healing mana at his fingertips.
’That only means I will get all the information out of you. And with this method, I will make sure that nothing you answer from now on is a lie.’ Ryan thought, maintaining his unwavering expression under the dim light of the torches.
"Recovery," Ryan pronounced with his deep, emotionless voice.
After receiving the direct impact of the advanced healing skill, the girl shifted abruptly in place.
The thick iron chains that bound her to the wall clanked several times with a loud, heavy metallic echo.
The warm, magical light enveloped her figure completely, immediately going to work on every injured muscle and bone. She quickly looked down, checking her own body with evident disbelief on her dirty face.
The visible wounds, the severe cuts, and the deep bruises that Helen’s brutality had left on her skin disappeared completely in an instant.
Her pale complexion regained its natural color and her rapid breathing stopped being so irregular.
"I don’t feel any pain anymore..." she murmured, touching her own abdomen with trembling hands and marveling at the healing miracle she had just experienced.
The young knight likely had even more internal damage than what could be seen with the naked eye under her torn combat clothes.
It wasn’t very hard for Ryan to imagine, considering who the violent person was that captured her and dragged her to the villa. It would be quite natural to assume that she had at least one or two completely broken ribs.
Surely, she had tried to face Helen with all her meager strength to defend herself, or tried to run for her life at the last possible moment.
"Now, you are going to answer all the questions I ask you truthfully," Ryan ordered, slowly lowering his hand to his side.
They were extremely simple and direct words.
At first glance, they didn’t sound like something out of a severe or torturous interrogation typical of the dark dungeons of this world.
But for those who knew the king’s dark secret, they knew perfectly well that these were not simple words thrown to the wind.
Ryan had just issued a direct command through his skill.
It was an unbreakable command from an immense magical debt that was about to be collected. The system’s contract activated immediately, binding the will of the healed prisoner to the voice of her temporary savior.
The girl blinked a couple of times, feeling a strange and heavy pressure in her mind that forced her to submit. The natural resistance she felt toward the enemy vanished all at once, replaced by a strong induced loyalty.
"Yes... master..." the holy knight girl uttered, letting the words slip from her mouth without being able to control them at all.
"Master?" Ivis murmured from the back of the small room, tilting her head slightly in confusion.
The imposing dragon woman had not yet witnessed the true effect of Ryan’s unique power in action. At least not in the incredibly direct and humiliating way that nearly every person present in that room had experienced it firsthand.
Even though her lady Ophelia was indeed a direct victim of that strange debt skill in the past. It was highly likely that the proud demon queen hadn’t told Ivis anything about it in their strategy talks.
At the very least, she wouldn’t have shared those intimate and shameful details of her own temporary defeat at the hands of a healer. Despite the fact that Ivis had already verified for herself that very strange things happened among the members of Ryan’s group.
She probably only came to interpret it as a simple and vulgar lewd scene provoked by Helen’s base instincts in the dungeon.
Ivis never considered the real possibility of an extra system power that would force them and drive them to those extremes of complete submission.
"Huh? Why did I say that..." the chained girl murmured, covering her mouth with both hands.
The prisoner opened her eyes in terror as she realized what she had just said against her own will and religious beliefs.
"How interesting..." Ivis murmured instead.
The dragon woman crossed her arms, showing a wide smile full of complete and genuine curiosity for the mysterious control talent.
Ryan ignored the frightened prisoner’s sudden confusion and the water dragon’s attentive analytical gaze. He kept his attention focused solely on obtaining the valuable answers he needed for his impending war.
"Good, now you will tell me what you were doing in Kallistia," Ryan ordered sharply, imposing the weight of the system into every syllable of his voice.
The girl tried to resist, clenching her jaw with great force, but her own body disobeyed her completely. The magical need to please her healer was far stronger than any oath she had made to the holy human church.
Even if she had already stated that she would tell what she knew without reservations, she had never experienced anything like this, and trying to resist was something she did out of inertia.
"Yes... master..." the girl responded again with a submissive and trembling tone.
"I went to that distant place along with my captain because the holy knights were going to gather there in secret to receive the saint."
She recounted the facts with an empty gaze, forced to give up her faction’s hidden movements.
"Several of us had orders to fly over the surroundings of the massive city on wyverns. Our main mission was to patrol the area to ensure there were no hidden demons or any extra trouble."
She took a long pause, swallowing hard with great difficulty as she felt her throat parched from the tension.
"The S-rank hero, William, was supposed to bring Saint Priscilla back under his complete protection," the chained woman continued.
"I was just scouting the skies in the area with my captain to clear the route back. That was when we saw this woman flying alone in the sky, and we decided to launch a surprise attack on her."
"Ha, ha, ha, and in the end you turned out to be just a bunch of weaklings," Helen intervened immediately from behind.
The black-haired warrior openly mocked the prisoner, puffing out her chest with great pride as she remembered the recent fight.
"Yes, we lost..." the holy knight woman accepted from the floor, looking at Helen out of the corner of her eye.
"But that was solely because my captain ignored the new warnings," the prisoner added, compelled by the debt to tell the truth.
"I suppose that in a way, you were just very lucky in that encounter," the girl stated.
"What are you saying, you worthless trash?" Helen grumbled instantly, baring her teeth with evident fury.
The warrior took an aggressive step forward, ready to strike the prisoner for daring to belittle her immense physical strength.
"Keep quiet," Ryan ordered, raising a hand and cutting off Helen’s noisy words immediately.
"What exactly do you mean when you say he ignored the warnings?" Ryan asked, frowning.
The girl trembled under Ryan’s intense, questioning gaze, but the truth kept flowing from her lips without her being able to stop it.
"Master... that’s because there was a change..." the girl confessed with a broken voice, revealing her faction’s greatest secret.
"The heroes’ weapons can no longer affect the holy knights."