I had always found Igor suspicious, but I never in my wildest dreams imagined he would be that perverted old man.
“Insane!”
In the end, I could only clutch at my head. I had barely escaped the danger of being sold to a kidnapper, but now it was as good as walking into the tiger’s den of my own accord.
I truly had no idea that what I started—to uncover Igor’s suspicious activities—would lead to this.
As I sat down on the floor, burying my head in my hands, the man’s aggressive demeanor somehow subsided.
“…My name is Mateo. The boy next to me is Salim, he’s 10 years old and from Palestine. We are all rare Awakened, are you, too?”
“…”
“I guess so. The owner here doesn’t discriminate between objects and people, as long as they’re rare. He simply collects whatever he can get his hands on. The rarer you are, the longer the period he plays with you.”
“Plays with us?”
“Yes, he plays with us like toys until we break. We desperately wish he would just get sick of us. Because when our condition gets bad… he immediately throws us away.”
My eyebrows instinctively furrowed at those words.
The man used the term “throws away,” but to my ears, it sounded like “kills when we become useless.”
This bastard is truly wicked.
If what I heard in the warehouse was true, he probably wasn’t just “playing” with them.
I wondered why everyone had a translator device behind their ear—it seemed the people locked in the rooms came from diverse nationalities.
The claim about helping children suffering from war was definitely a lie, and perhaps he was secretly abducting children with rare abilities from those places.
The worst-case scenario was the possibility that he didn’t just abduct them, but that he had bought them through human trafficking.
I ground my teeth and looked sympathetically at the boy in the room next to mine.
He said he was from Palestine.
Anger flared up inside me at the fact that a child, who had already suffered enough from war, had become merely the sacrifice of a dirty desire.
“First… I’ll let you out.”
My mind wanted to grab Igor by the collar immediately, but before that, I needed to evacuate the captured people to a safe place.
But something was strange.
The padlock, which should have shattered with just a slight touch, was strangely unmoving.
It wasn’t a special item either.
It was a common, large iron padlock that could be found anywhere, but shaking it several times did no good.
“Why won’t this open?”
As I clung to the padlock, my face flushed red from exerting too much force, Mateo, who couldn’t bear to watch, stopped me.
“Wait a minute, did you, by any chance, drink flower tea before you came here?”
“…Huh?”
Seeing me pause, he lowered his shoulders as if he had expected it.
Then, with a look of utter disappointment, he slumped onto the bed weakly.
“That, that’s a poisonous plant that makes your abilities disappear… It looks like getting out is out of the question. Everyone here drank it.”
“No, wait. Something like that exists besides Numenstone?”
“The poisonous plant grows on Numenstone, that’s why. I heard it’s even harder to obtain than Numenstone, but the owner of this mansion… seems to have a lot of it.”
With that, Mateo scanned the rooms lined up in the hallway.
I, too, silently stared at the rooms, then rubbed my eyes in despair.
I couldn’t believe such a poisonous plant existed, but the reality that I had suspected something yet still brought about this result was even more unbelievable.
I slowly clenched the fist that no longer felt like it had any power.
Whether it was a characteristic of the poisonous plant or not, I felt no sense of abnormality.
It felt so familiar, almost as if I had never had any ability to begin with.
When wearing Numenstone or entering an EX Dungeon, my abilities vanished instantly, making it easy to notice.
However, because the flower tea’s effect appeared gradually, I hadn’t realized it at all until now.
“But if he’s doing this because of rare abilities, why bother taking away our abilities?”
“He’s a non-Awakened person.”
Ah.
That single statement immediately made sense.
It would be nearly impossible for an ordinary person to control this many Awakened people.
Given that he administers the poisonous plant and locks them up like this, it seems he’s obsessed with the existence of the rare Awakened themselves, rather than the abilities they possess.
Given the situation, I couldn’t help but start to worry.
“…So, can the abilities be restored?”
“They can be restored. You just have to drink an S-Rank antidote.”
That remark came from the boy named Salim in the next room.
I turned my head and saw the boy was still plastered against the small window in the same position as before.
S-Rank Antidote.
It was the potion that saved my life when I was poisoned by the boss monster in the ‘First S-Rank Dungeon.’
It seemed that since it was a poisonous plant, the antidote would work, but the S-Rank one was an item that was difficult to obtain, so much so that I had needed Do Soohyuk’s help back then.
‘How am I supposed to get that again…’
Feeling utterly helpless, I held my forehead.
“Let’s just get out of here first, I’ll use a knife…”
Just as I let out a deep sigh and fumbled at my waist, my hand paused.
The place where something should have been felt strangely empty.
“My item pouch.”
I checked and twisted my body everywhere, but I couldn’t find it, no matter when it had disappeared.
There’s no way something that was securely attached could have fallen off by itself.
I could only conclude that Igor had secretly taken it.
The only moment I was truly off guard was when I bumped into him in front of the study.
“This crazy old geezer…!”
I almost let out a shout but managed to clench my teeth.
I pressed my lips together and swallowed the sound, just in case someone was outside.
With both my item pouch and my ability gone, all I could do was quietly escape the mansion and ask Cha Rui for help.
If so, I had to hurry before Igor returned.
‘If I get caught here too, it’ll all be for nothing.’
I quickly scanned the people clinging to the window and backed away toward the stairs.
My heart felt heavy turning my back on these people, but there was no other way right now.
“I’ll come back to save you. I promise to come, so just hold on a little longer.”
“Wait!”
At that moment, Mateo urgently called me back as I turned to leave.
“If you happen to run into him, never resist him.”
“Don’t resist?”
“If you do, he’ll implant a ‘Slave Bug.’ You know what that is, right?”
“Slave Bug…”
I knew it very well, of course.
They kept appearing whenever a situation like this arose, despite being described as hard to find.
My expression instantly twisted as I recalled the slender, wiggling parasitic creature.
“Gasp. Phew…”
After scrambling up the stairs, I finally reached the fireplace.
I was so out of breath; as my ability disappeared, my stamina had returned to being garbage.
I paused to catch my breath and called for Chirpy, and the bird, as if it had been waiting, immediately scurried onto my palm.
I needed to firmly instruct it in case of any unforeseen circumstances before going outside.
“Chirpy, you heard what I said, didn’t you? You absolutely must not come out.”
‘Chirp…’
At that, Chirpy puffed up its cheeks in complaint, but eventually nodded after constant persuasion.
I had given the exact same warning last time, so it must have accumulated a lot of disappointment inside.
My words were as good as telling it not to perform its duty as a spirit.
But Chirpy’s safety was far more important to me than anything else.
I had personally confirmed how serious that perverted old man was about rare things, so of course, I was worried.
It was clear that the moment Chirpy revealed itself, he would become desperate to capture it somehow.
‘How dare he. Not a chance.’
I carefully stepped into the drawing room, tucking the downcast Chirpy into my jacket pocket.
Since I didn’t sense any presence, Igor luckily hadn’t returned yet.
But as I traced my memory and reached the front door, hope melted away like snow.
Despite the effort of getting here without being detected, the front door wouldn’t budge.
I checked the lock repeatedly and even kicked it with all my might, but all I got was a sore leg.
“Damn it!”
I quickly gave up on going out the door and approached the window instead.
I thought it would be easy to break the large picture window, but again, the situation didn’t go as planned.
It didn’t even leave a small scratch, as if mocking my thoughts.
Thud!
I irritably threw the chair I was holding onto the floor and fumed.
I couldn’t stand the anger anymore, whether I was caught or not.
“Is this reinforced glass or something!”
No matter how strong the reinforced glass, some sort of scratch should appear after repeated impacts like this.
But since it was so perfectly intact, it must have been made of dungeon byproducts, not ordinary glass.
Unless there was a special purpose, there was no reason to use such windows in a normal mansion.
“Phew… This guy was really determined.”
But it was in the very moment I was catching my breath.
My head reflexively snapped back as I suddenly felt a presence behind me.
To my surprise, someone was right there.
A massive man was standing silently, just an arm’s reach away.
