6 The Dungeon

"What is all this?"

Rain only gave a single glance towards the guards surrounding him before he turned to face Olivir.

"Don't play stupid with me."

The Lord sneered, his face contorting with disdain and anger.

"Don't tell me you haven't been providing your potions to those human adventurers, you clearly have been helping them and betraying me!"

Rain was dumbfounded.

It wasn't the fact that his shop had been discovered by the lord, it wasn't as if he was trying to hide it from anyone. The only thing about his shop that he was hiding was his own identity from the humans.

No, it was the fact that either the lord only just now discovered it, or the lord had already discovered it but was only just now doing anything about it.

Based on his knowledge of the lord's character, Olivir should definitely have done something sooner if he suspected Rain of being a traitor.

"Although I do admit to selling potions to humans, it's not as if I was selling them high level purifying potions, not that I could even if I wanted to. Since you don't pay me much of a salary, and most monsters and demons don't need my potions, I went to a human city. I didn't do anything that went against the laws of Revene City, let alone betray you. If I wanted to betray you, I could've easily–"

"Enough! Guards, confiscate the commander's seal and take him away!"

Olivir interrupted Rain, signaling for the guards to bring him to the fortress's underground dungeon. One of them stepped forward to take away his black dragon token, the one he had just used to prove his identity to the soldiers at the gate.

The seal allowed the user to mobilize the main forces of Revenar Fortress. If the lord was taking it away, that meant Rain was losing his position as the commander.

It'd be a shame if it weren't for the fact that he didn't really care about such a position. The only reason he accepted it in the first place was because he wanted to help the current lord according to the former lord's last words.

Rain calmly surrendered, allowing the guards to lock chains around his wrists and ankles. After all, he was an alchemist, not a fighter. Usually, he would have one of his subordinates with him to protect and fight for him. Although he had decent stamina that came from staying up several days in a row to complete various potion experiments, he didn't have the physical strength or knowledge to be able to take down even a barely trained soldier.

The guards marched him down several sets of stairs, until the corridors were lit only by dimly flickering torches. The group of guards plus one prisoner passed by several cells, though most were empty.

It didn't take much thinking for Rain to realize that it was because most of the previous prisoners were traitors who were given an unfair trial before being executed, almost immediately after being imprisoned.

Finally, he was shoved roughly into a cell, stumbling and nearly falling.

When the guards left, Rain took the opportunity to examine the chains. It seemed to be pretty standard stuff, or at least, standard for a suspected betrayer by Olivir's standards.

The chains were enchanted with a spell that disrupted mana, preventing the prisoners who were chained up by it from simply using spells to break out of the dungeon.

Before he could try grabbing the hidden pins in his shoes to try to pick the locks on the chains, a low and hoarse voice echoed through the stone corridor connecting the cells.

"Looks like we've got ourselves a newbie. Who are you, and what are you in for?"

The hoarse voice laughed, sounding like one of the port sailors who smoked and drank all day if they weren't at sea, or at least the human ones. All the demon or monster sailors he'd met never had such hoarse voices unless it was their natural voice because their throats usually wouldn't be ruined by smoke.

Rain decided to reply. Anyways, it'd give him something to do while he waited for Kavi to come break him out or bring him his potions.

"I'm Rain, an alchemist. I was put in here because I sold some potions to humans. What about yourself?"

"I'm Joseph, a retired boat captain. Would you like to hear my story?"

Rain was about to nod, but then he realized the owner of the voice he was chatting to would probably be unable to see his actions. So he voiced his agreement instead.

After Joseph retired from sailing, he opened up a tavern near a large port. Because it became the new closest place for sailors to get a drink, his tavern did fairly well, which angered the owners of a rival pub that had previously been the closest place for sailors to get a drink.

The owners of the rival pub decided to take his tavern out of the picture by framing him with the crime of slandering the lord, which was apparently punishable by death. Luckily for Joseph, there were several of his customers who were willing to vouch for him, so he wasn't executed. Unfortunately for him, the judge still sentenced him to several years in prison.

The hoarse voice sighed with what seemed to be either boredom or frustration.

Rain was about to wonder, "Was the lord maybe getting more paranoid?" before he thought that he should be more confident and remove the maybe, plus the question mark. Otherwise the lord probably wouldn't have only just now thrown him into a prison cell.