Chapter 101
- I Accidentally Became the Final Boss
Anyway, to start with the conclusion: I was caught by Elliot and dragged away.
Tied tightly to a chair with rope in Elliot’s room, I contemplated the underground passage of Happy House.
The tunnel Eden and I had traveled through led directly to the Kintne branch of the Sinclair Hotel. To think the passage in Happy House extended all the way to Kintne… It was astounding.
Just as Charlie Green, who had been captured in Brunel, had said, it seemed Elliot really was the leader here.
‘But why did it smell so foul in the place I was just in?’
I had been too flustered after being caught by Elliot to even think about looking around the room.
However, as if he had urgent business, Elliot had tied me up here and stepped out for a moment. Of course, he had confiscated my axe, but that wasn’t much of a problem.
‘To be precise, I wasn’t dragged here; I let myself be caught.’
I clicked my tongue as I scanned the empty room. In truth, I could snap the ropes binding my body whenever I felt like it.
The reason I remained obedient instead of doing so was to turn this unfortunate encounter with Elliot to my advantage. I needed to gather information about the Kintne survival camp. I also had to find out how Elliot planned to attack Brunel.
Charlie Green, back at Happy House, knew less than I expected. It seemed he was a mere bottom-feeder being used by Elliot. I needed someone else to dig for accurate information.
‘Maybe I should kidnap someone else before heading back.’
Their base of operations was the Sinclair Hotel.
I had the advantage here because I knew the Sinclair Hotel better than anyone else. At the very least, I likely knew the hotel’s structure and systems better than Elliot did.
I also reflected on the novel <Love in a Ruined World>. Even if minor plots had veered off course, I had learned through my phone calls with Aurora that the main progression was still moving forward.
In the novel, Aurora’s group visits Brunel about six months after the world ends. They had mentioned the road was blocked at Westmore, but I didn’t know how they had managed to bypass it in the original story.
I was paying the price for having skipped the middle episodes because they were boring… This is why you should never skip parts when reading a novel. Phew.
Anyway, it was mentioned then—
[In Kintne, where we stopped briefly, there were survivors. A significant number of them, at that. However, we could not save them.
They were all ‘Badon’ addicts.
—From the novel <Love in a Ruined World>]
—it had said.
‘Badon’ was a type of narcotic powder.
Inhaling this powder allowed one to temporarily forget the pain of injuries. Furthermore, depending on the person, it could even cause hallucinations. In a world overrun by monsters, being addicted to drugs was incredibly dangerous.
Nevertheless, Elliot had turned all the survivors in his camp into drug addicts. It was likely to control people easily and discard them like disposables.
While the novel didn’t cover the Kintne arc in detail, there was a mention that Elliot had intended to use the camp people as effective combat shields.
‘Wait, but didn’t the novel say Kintne was under attack from somewhere?’
It didn’t specify who the attackers were, but there was mention that the opposing side was also after the Badon.
Right. In a world like this, it wasn’t all that strange for people to crave drugs.
‘By the way, Charlie Green didn’t look like he was addicted to Badon yet.’
That meant the current Elliot hadn’t spread Badon to the Kintne survivors just yet.
Unless the main plot of the novel had been completely derailed, Elliot would eventually secure ‘Badon’ through some route. While I didn’t know exactly when that would be, I fortunately remembered where he would obtain it.
‘If he hasn’t found the Badon yet, maybe I should strike a deal with him.’
I could tell him the location of the Badon and get the information he has in exchange.
As I’ve said before, in a world like this, whoever holds the most information has the upper hand.
However, that would create the slightly annoying problem of me having to take responsibility for recovering the Badon on my way back.
‘Hmm, that’s a bit too much trouble…’
After agonizing over it for a while, I decided to put that idea on hold for now. Still, I might find a use for that information later.
‘Regardless, I wonder if Eden is okay.’
He must have been panicked by my sudden disappearance. Eden was the kind of man who would surely scour the entire hotel to find me.
There didn’t seem to be any monsters inside this hotel, and Eden could easily handle ordinary people who weren’t monsters. Of course, he might struggle if surrounded by several people with guns…
But even in such a situation, Eden would be fine. I trusted his abilities.
In that case, it would be best for me to gather as much information as possible before Eden came to find me.
As if on cue, Elliot entered the room. A pipe was once again perched between his lips. Upon seeing me, he flashed a delighted smile.
That damn heavy-smoker bastard, he’s smiling?
But since I couldn’t act on my temper, I stayed quiet and watched him beam.
“Ah. To think we’d meet in a place like this. It must be fate.”
“Do you want your fate to end right here?”
Elliot’s eyes widened at my response. Soon after, he burst into a boisterous laugh.
“You want to kill me.”
“Whether you die or not is none of my concern.”
“Then? What is our Sinclair Princess’s concern? You’re suspicious from head to toe.”
No, even if the world has ended, I’m still a suspicious person. For some reason, my eyes feel like they’re about to sweat.
“You lived your life acting so refined, so why have you changed like this? Ah, well. The world’s turned out like this, so it’d be weirder if you hadn’t changed. Even the great Sinclair heiress is nothing special.”
What is this smoker bastard talking about? I almost forgot about gathering information and nearly threw a punch.
“Lady Cherry… why is your first thought always to hit someone?”
The words Eden had once said to me suddenly came to mind, and I calmed down a bit. Right. Let’s stay calm for now, Cherry. I’ll give him a satisfying beating on my way out after I’ve gotten all the information.
I did my best to curl the corners of my mouth into a smile.
“What are you doing here?”
At my question, Elliot exhaled a cloud of pipe smoke and answered leisurely.
“I’m building a new kingdom.”
A new kingdom? It seemed Elliot had lost his mind a bit more since the world ended.
“How did Lady Sinclair get in here? I pride myself on our security being quite tight.”
He scanned me with narrowed eyes. It felt like a thin snake slithering over my body, sending chills down my spine. It was a chilling gaze. The eyes of a psycho truly were different.
Enduring his unpleasant stare, I got to the point.
“Want to exchange information? If you give me the information I want, I’ll tell you the flaws in your kingdom’s security.”
For now, I set aside the matter of the Badon, as it didn’t seem useful at this moment.
Elliot’s eyebrows shot up sharply. He fell into thought for a moment with the pipe in his mouth. Then, after a short while, he pulled a nearby chair over and sat down across from me.
Crossing his long legs elegantly, he asked, “Fine, I’ll listen to what you have to say before I kill you.”
The one dying is you, you asshole.
Again, I swallowed my curses and smiled back at him.
It seemed Elliot was relaxed because he thought he could kill someone like me in an instant if he felt like it. It made sense; there was no way he could know about the Super Strength I possessed.
“Ah, wait. Before that, let me ask one thing. I saw the newspapers too. That a Sinclair is in Brunel.”
At Elliot’s question, I flinched for a moment and swallowed my words. From the perspective of someone trying to find out how he planned to launch a further attack on Brunel, it was a very tense question. Though there was no way he could know that the person who had annihilated the search party he sent to Brunel was me.
Elliot watched me quietly as he puffed on his pipe. The foul smell of tobacco brushed against the tip of my nose. That ill-mannered jerk.
He was examining my face from various angles as if he found me fascinating.
“I naturally assumed you’d be dead, so how is a weak little girl like you still alive?”
“It would be strange for me to be dead when you’re still alive.”
Elliot stared blankly for a moment with the pipe in his mouth, blinking his eyes, before suddenly bursting into laughter.
“Pwahahaha!”
While he laughed like a madman, I glanced at the room’s entrance. Two men who had followed him in were standing guard by the door. Each of them held a rifle in their hands.
“I thought you were a boring woman, but you’re actually quite alright.”
“I don’t think you’re alright, and you’re certainly not interesting. What should we do?”
For whatever reason, Elliot burst into laughter again. As if my words were truly the funniest thing he’d ever heard. He seemed a bit insane. Which part of my dialogue was even funny?
Elliot gestured toward the man at the door. The man handed something he was holding to Elliot. It was my weapon, the axe.
“You were carrying something like this. It doesn’t suit you.”
“You won’t say that once you see how I swing it.”
Elliot didn’t believe me and simply sneered. He changed the subject as if my words weren’t worth listening to anymore.
“So… did you see them?”
What?
I was a bit surprised by Elliot’s sudden question, but I asked calmly as if nothing were wrong.
“…What are you talking about?”
Elliot exhaled a long puff of smoke and smiled.
“You came from Brunel. I sent some of my boys there, but none of them returned. I wondered if our Princess might have seen them.”
Elliot stared intently at my face with the pipe in his mouth. It was a blatant gaze, as if he were filleting my entire body like a fish.
I looked at the axe in Elliot’s hand. I could break the ropes with a bit of strength, and I could easily reclaim the axe by striking Elliot in the back of the head to subdue him.
Elliot was close, within my striking range, and if the men with rifles tried to shoot me, I could just use Elliot as a shield.
Since it had come to this, I might as well strike Elliot in the back of the head without waiting for Eden. It would be faster to subdue him by force and get the information that way.
