77
“Let me emphasize once again. I am not food.”
“Okay. You’re not food.”
“What about cooking?”
“I can do it if you don’t eat me.”
They had repeated this conversation across the iron bars countless times. Yeon Ji-ho, finally feeling relieved that he had managed to drill this into Baal’s head, decided to test him one last time.
“Alright, now I’m going to put my hand through the bars.”
“Okay.”
Yeon Ji-ho raised his white hand and slowly inserted it through the bars, starting with his fingertips. Just as his wrist had gone through, Baal’s face moved like lightning.
By the time Yeon Ji-ho blinked once, his hand was inside Baal’s mouth.
“Ugh!”
Startled, Yeon Ji-ho let out a dying groan and squeezed his eyes shut. However, instead of pain, he only felt dampness on his hand, so he cautiously opened his eyes again.
He saw Baal chewing with Yeon Ji-ho’s hand still in his mouth.
“I told you I’m not food!”
“I dibn’t bibe. (I didn’t bite.)”
“You shouldn’t put people’s hands in your mouth at all!”
Yeon Ji-ho quickly pulled out his hand, relieved that he hadn’t been bitten. His hand was covered in saliva and smelled terrible.
As Yeon Ji-ho looked down at his hand in despair, Baal smacked his lips. He swallowed and asked Yeon Ji-ho again.
“Not even one finger?”
“No.”
“How about trading for one of mine?”
He suddenly stuck his hand through the bars. It was a mess of calluses and scars, with even the nail of the pinky finger missing. Yeon Ji-ho couldn’t understand what he meant by offering to trade.
“You eat too.”
“I said I won’t eat it!”
“Tch.”
When Yeon Ji-ho strongly refused, Baal finally withdrew his hand. Watching this, Yeon Ji-ho kept pressing his forehead.
It felt like at least 30 minutes had passed since he started arguing with Baal through the iron bars. He needed to figure out a way to escape, but he couldn’t just let Baal out for fear of being eaten whole.
Yeon Ji-ho painfully understood why all of Gorgon’s beasts had predicted that Baal wouldn’t be able to function properly as a person.
“Sigh, if those people from earlier come back…”
They say words have power.
As soon as Yeon Ji-ho muttered those words, a clicking sound was heard from above. Then, voices of what seemed to be guards were heard, causing Yeon Ji-ho’s heart to race.
“Ah, why do we have to check on a guy who can’t do anything with his limbs all tied up every hour…”
“That’s because he’s doing us a favor. At first, it was no joke. You just didn’t see it yourself back then.”
The conversation between what seemed to be two people grew louder along with the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. Yeon Ji-ho froze, unable to do anything but stare at Baal.
However, Baal didn’t seem to have any intention of helping, like banging his head against the wall to drive them away as he had done before. He just kept scratching the back of his neck with a bored and annoyed expression.
Finally, the guards reached the deepest part of the underground.
“Ah, uh…”
“What?! There’s a person, there’s a person here!”
“Damn it, grab him first!”
The two guards simultaneously drew their swords from their scabbards. Startled by the sharp sword points even in the underground, Yeon Ji-ho raised both hands in surrender.
The guards, disregarding Yeon Ji-ho’s surrender, approached slowly with their swords pointed at him. Yeon Ji-ho’s Adam’s apple trembled with tension, having never been at sword point in his life.
“Identify yourself first, you bastard!”
“Huh? What? Ah, I, I’m, uh, John…”
“How did you get in here?!”
Unable to give his real name, Yeon Ji-ho blurted out the first name that came to mind, which happened to be John. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to be an unusual name here, as the knights didn’t find it strange.
Yeon Ji-ho rolled his eyes to glance into the prison, where Baal was sitting sprawled out, not paying any attention to the situation. Realizing he had to handle this situation on his own, Yeon Ji-ho took a deep breath and spoke.
“I’m a servant working in Hwangseong… I got lost and wandered in here.”
“Huh. You need to say something that makes sense. Do you know how tight the security is here? And you’re saying you got through all that because you got lost?”
“Really? But I didn’t see a single person on my way here.”
Yeon Ji-ho deliberately looked them in the eye to convey his innocence. Fortunately, he had taken off the robe he was wearing earlier while arguing with Baal.
The guards still looked at Yeon Ji-ho suspiciously, but with a slightly less guarded attitude, they asked:
“Where do you work?”
“Ah, I work in the kitchen of Hwangseong…”
“Oh, the kitchen? I know the head chef, should I go ask him?”
“Yes, please do.”
Yeon Ji-ho deliberately responded without backing down. If he didn’t answer here, suspicion would only grow.
Then one of the guards patted the other’s shoulder and said:
“Hey, let’s take this guy outside first.”
“What? Where are we going?”
“Where else? We should go to the interrogation room first. To properly verify his identity.”
At those words, Yeon Ji-ho’s shoulders tensed up. If he was dragged out of here, it would be over. With that thought, his legs froze and wouldn’t move.
“Hey, you there. Stop talking and come with us.”
“I… I can’t go.”
“What? Is this guy crazy? Move now!”
When Yeon Ji-ho grabbed the prison bars and wouldn’t move, they finally approached him. As they tried to pry him off and take him away, Yeon Ji-ho just closed his eyes tightly and held on.
As his resistance was stronger than expected, the guards’ actions became rougher. Just as one of the guards grabbed Yeon Ji-ho’s collar and pulled forcefully, it happened.
Thud.
“What was that? Did you feel that just now?”
“Huh? What?”
“It felt like the ground moved a bit…”
Crack.
Those words couldn’t continue. Because at that moment, the iron bars behind them were ripped out with a loud cracking sound.
Yeon Ji-ho’s eyes widened as he felt the iron bars he had been holding onto so desperately being lifted into the air. He quickly let go, and the bars fell backwards with a loud noise.
Seeing this, Yeon Ji-ho muttered involuntarily:
“What did I just see…?”
The guards, who hadn’t been using their swords until then, gripped them again and pointed them this way. Then, the culprit who had torn out the iron bars, Baal, revealed himself from the darkness inside.
His appearance, emerging from the darkness, was simply enormous. As if his neck was stiff, he tilted his head from side to side as he walked out of the prison on his own. His body, filled with muscles from head to toe, was incredibly threatening even with just that simple movement.
“Ah, I’m hungry.”
Those were the first words Baal said after escaping from prison. He glanced at Yeon Ji-ho and then, as if Yeon Ji-ho was some carefully preserved food, said with a satisfied smile:
“I have to keep my promise.”
Simultaneously, the two guards rushed towards Baal. However, Baal unhesitatingly offered his arm to their swinging swords, then grabbed one guard by the nape of the neck and threw him against the wall.
Blood started flowing from the arm cut by the sword. Baal, ignoring his bleeding arm, slowly walked towards the remaining guard.
“P-please spare me…”
“I’m hungry.”
“Please, ugh…”
The guard, who had somehow dropped his sword, fell to his knees and started begging. Baal looked at the man crying and pleading before him with an extremely bored expression and spoke:
“But you don’t taste good.”
With those final words, Baal grabbed the guard’s head and slammed it hard against the wall. Yeon Ji-ho squeezed his eyes shut at the horrific sight.
How long had he kept his eyes closed? Yeon Ji-ho took a small deep breath when he no longer heard anything. Not only the guards, but even Baal’s breathing couldn’t be heard.
Finally, Yeon Ji-ho made up his mind and slowly opened his eyes. And he was terrified at the same time.
“Tsk.”
Baal had somehow approached and was now crouching in front of Yeon Ji-ho, who was sitting down. He was looking at Yeon Ji-ho while barely swallowing the drool that was about to drip from the corners of his mouth.
“I’m hungry.”
To eat or not to eat. To eat or not to eat.
It was clearly evident that he was contemplating this. And right in front of Yeon Ji-ho.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
Ahh..dude chill!