Chapter 57

Fury

Sylas woke up back in the forest, surrounded by the chattering trio. For a moment, he was calm. Collected. Proper. But… just for a moment. Before the trio even knew what was happening, Sylas roared at the top of his lungs and heaved to his feet, stealing a sword from Tenner and swinging it crazily into the tree.

“FUCK YOU! FUCKING FUCK, YOU FUCKING CUNT-ASS BITCH-ASS, TOE-SUCKING, EYE-FUCKING, ASS-TAKING FUCKING PIECE OF FUCKING SHIT!!” usually, he was able to stiffen his emotions—no matter how inflamed they got. However, they never got quite this inflamed—he was beyond angry. Dyn had ruined what could have been at least another month and a half of body training that would have transferred over.

“S—Sylas, what’s wrong!? What’s happened?!!”

“Are you alright?!”

“S-slow down! You will hurt yourself!” the trio quickly shot to their feet as well as the shock waned slightly. Still, the sight was… strange, to say the least.

"Haah, haah, haah," Sylas was panting as he let go of the sword—he'd done considerable damage to the poor tree, nearly breaking it in fact. Nonetheless, despite being exhausted, he was still angry. Usually, even when people did something outright evil—he held back. There was the reset, after all. He'll either stop them from doing the evil thing or make it fail. This time… it was different. "That goddamn piece of garbage. Even if I heave my soul, I'll cut your fucking head off myself, you sniveling, motherless, unloved, shit-eating mutt. AAAAGGGH!!!" bending over, he picked the sword up yet again and started swinging.

The other three didn't dare step in for fear of accidentally meeting the edge of that blade. The most shocked of them all was Tenner, actually—though the swings were clearly wild and uncalculated, there was some serious strength behind them. In fact, he suspected that if a single one of those swings were to hit any of the three, they’d either die or be crippled for life. Was… was he always like this? No. No, he certainly wasn’t—Tenner knew that much.

Sylas exhausted himself some ten minutes later, unable to even stand any longer, sitting and heaving heavily. At least, the system was true to its word this time—all the work that he put into his body… paid off. Though he visibly still appeared decrepit and weak, he knew that was simply a ‘visual effect’, so to say. He felt his strength, the potential each time he grasped the sword’s handle. But still… it could have been so much more.

“… a-are you alright?” Valen swallowed a mouthful of saliva and approached, asking. He truly had no clue as to what just transpired—for a moment, it seemed as though the Prophet had gone mad. No, he still felt as though the man had gone mad.

“No,” Sylas replied. He was already planning on resetting the loop, so it didn’t matter. “When we return to the castle, we need to prepare some gallows. Some fucking heads will be rolling like rocks down a mountain. Goddamn those motherfuckers. So much wasted potential… fuck!!!”

Without elaborating on what he meant, some few minutes later—once he was certain he could control himself—he sneaked a dagger from his belt and slit his throat, ending yet another life.

You have died.

Save point ‘Ignorant Awakening’ has been initialized.

There he was, back again. Though he could still feel the fire burning within, it had subsided considerably—at least, now, he could control it. Though he remained silent and moody, he managed to return to the castle without wilding out, at least. One joy at the moment was the fact that Dyn and Tebek would likely die several times due to the loop resets. And even if it cost him his sanity, he wasn’t going to make their deaths either clean or painless.

“Tenner,” he said the moment they stepped within the castle’s boundaries. “Take a couple of your most trustworthy men, find Tebek, kick him in the balls, and toss him into a dungeon.”

“Yes—what? C-Captain Tebek?” Tenner asked.

“Yes,” Sylas replied emotionlessly, glancing at him. “Do it.”

“Y-yes,” Tenner nodded after briefly glancing at the Prince who acknowledged it. Though Valen had no idea why Sylas requested something like that, the trip north had convinced him never to doubt the man. Tenner sped off right after while Ryne, Valen, and Sylas made their way into the main wing of the castle.

“Care to elaborate now?” Valen asked when the three entered the room and settled down slightly, breaking the awkward silence.

"A traitorous scum," Sylas ground his teeth. "Once, I was even willing to forgive him, seeing how we lack seasoned veterans. But twice? Fuck, the gall of that piece of garbage."

“T-twice?”

“He was one of the culprits behind the initial invasion,” Sylas’ words shocked both Valen and Ryne. “And, I’ve seen it in my vision—he overheard our conversation about what we saw in the north. Right after, he will have tried to make contact with a group of bandits and criminal garbage led by a man named Dyn east of here. Dyn…” Sylas gritted his teeth even harder upon saying the name. The first execution, he decided, he’d burn the man. Burn him alive.

Some fifteen minutes later, a few knocks on the door signaled to Sylas that it was likely Tenner coming to report. As he suspected, the Captain walked in right after and, after the courteous greeting, informed them that Tebek was caught trying to sneak out of the castle and was immediately tossed into the dungeon.

“Let’s go,” Sylas stood up. “You stay.” He glanced at Ryne.

“But—”

“Stay.”

“… yes.” She obediently nodded, seeing how stern he was, and watched the three men depart.

Though he’d been to the dungeons once, Sylas hardly recalled the path there—after all, it was a long, long time ago, during the first bout with Baron Cyrs where he had Valen capture the man. As such, he let Tenner guide the way, down through the winding corridors and spiral stairwell that led deeper underground. The humid and stuffy air immediately brought back the distant memories. Though, technically, it hasn’t even been a month since Baron’s return to the castle, it was likely well over a year for Sylas. At least he thought so, quite unaware.

The group paused near one of the cells on the left, where a torch hanging on the wall was burning bright, revealing a sorry-looking figure that lay chained to the wall. Tebek truly looked miserable—it seemed that, doubling on Sylas’ preposition, Tenner took it to heart that the man tried to escape the castle.

“What is the meaning of this?!” Tebek growled, playing the role of an innocent man.

“How were you planning on contacting the bandits?” Sylas asked immediately—that’s all he wanted to know.

“W-what… what are you talking about?! Were you the reason I was put here?! Prince, don’t listen to the madman! I am innocent!”

“THE HELL YOU ARE!!” Sylas, further angered by the man’s attitude, roared coldly. His voice echoed throughout the dungeon, belting against the cold walls. Tebek stiffened in place, not even recognizing the man in front of him. “For each lie that comes out of your mouth, I’ll have Tenner cut off one of your fingers. Each time you try to divert blame onto others, I’ll have him cut a piece of your cock. Each time you try to plead for your life, I’ll have him shove a rod up your fucking ass. You will die—be certain of that. The only thing you can do is make this easier on yourself by being honest,” though most of Sylas’ current anger was caused by Dyn rather than Tebek, seeing as he could hardly wait a month for the other one to show up, Tebek was to suffer. It wasn’t as though the man didn’t deserve it—after all, he did betray the castle… twice. It was just that, with Dyn, it was a bit more personal to Sylas.

“…” by now, Tebek was visibly shaking. However, Sylas didn’t seem to care.

“I’ll ask you again—how were you planning on getting in contact with the bandits?”

“… L—L—Lyn,” Tebek stuttered, his jaw dancing as though frostbitten.

“Lyn? What the fuck is lyn? Some kind of an animal?” Sylas questioned.

“Not what, who,” Valen said. “It’s one of the women servants of the castle. One of those who were quite… relentless with me, back in the day. What about her? What does she have to do with the bandits?”

“S-s-she escaped,” Tebek said. “L-Left me a letter. Said she went east. To bandits.”

“… she escaped?” Valen frowned. Though he often considered punishing the women, he never went through with it. After all, most of them apologized—several times over—and even if he could hardly forgive them, it wasn’t as though they had free labor to spare so that he could start executing people left and right. Until he heard what Tebek did, he was even going to plead with Sylas to forgive the man specifically because of that.

“Y-y-yes,” Tebek stuttered.

“… I wasn’t going to say anything,” Sylas sighed. “But this castle… has some shit loyalty.”

“I… I’m working on it,” Valen blushed briefly, though Sylas’ comment was hardly aimed at him and was mostly the ‘just in general’ type.

“Did you get the message out?” Sylas asked.

“N-no, no,” Tebek shook his head. “I—I didn’t get to.”

“Good,” Sylas nodded. “Keep him here, starve him out. Tenner, draw up a plan of invasion. I want to storm their camp and obliterate them. All before the Cold Snap.” Sylas walked out right after, leaving the two men to helplessly glance at each other and sigh.

“His vision… must have been quite terrifying,” Valen said to Tenner as the two walked out shortly after. “I’ve never seen him behave like that. Even up north.”

“Hm,” Tenner nodded. “Something is… different about him. It’s not just the anger. He seems… more confident?”

“Oh well,” Valen sighed. “I will work with Ryne to build up our defenses. You plan the attack with the other Captains. If there truly is a group of bandits bold enough to attack us… well, we can’t just leave them be. Good luck.”

“Likewise.”