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14. Childhood Friend – The Rules of the Back Alley

Leo opened his eyes in a dark warehouse. Straw was scattered across the floor, and the sound of horses could be heard from somewhere. It wasn’t just one or two.

As he tried to get up, his arms were restrained.

Though it was too dark to see, he realized his arms were tied behind him and anchored to a post.

He twisted his body and struggled, but his bound arms wouldn’t budge.

Since his arms were secured low on the post, pushing against the ground with his feet only resulted in his back hitting the post.

“Lena! Lena!”

He shouted, knowing it was futile. If he didn’t do something, it felt like his chest would burst.

After yelling until his throat was hoarse, someone opened the warehouse door, glanced inside, and then shut it again. From the brief opening, he saw the outside was dark.

“Hey, you bastard! Get over here! You little shit!!”

He threw out all kinds of curses. But the closed door didn’t open again, and Leo gasped for breath in the darkness, nearly collapsing.

Lena had been taken. He heard they were putting her up for auction tomorrow.

Anxiety surged, but his body wouldn’t move.

Where had it all gone wrong?

‘The innkeeper must have known I was out hunting. He heard it from some merchant.’

The merchant who introduced them had sold them out.

‘But how did he know I went hunting? I never mentioned it.’

Perhaps Lena could have said something. That damn merchant was polite enough to talk with Lena occasionally.

But that was irrelevant now.

Lena was what he worried about most.

He had to escape somehow, but there was no way to free his arms. It was too dark to see even a step ahead, so there was no room to think. What could he even do with the straw scattered on the floor?

The coldness rising from the ground chilled Leo until morning.

When dawn broke, thin rays of sunlight filtered through the wooden walls, brightening his view.

Only then could he take in the warehouse around him. As expected, bundles of straw were piled everywhere, and Leo was tied to a large central post. It appeared to be a stable warehouse.

Yet still, there was nothing he could do.

The floor was just straw, and he couldn’t see any tools. In fact, the stacked bundles of straw were out of his reach.

Leo was simply left abandoned.

Aside from the moment when the door opened last night, no one had come.

He tried to dig into the ground with his feet and push against the floor, but the post sunk too deep into the ground to budge.

He shook his arms, attempting to free himself, but there was no hope. When he turned his head, he noticed the thugs hadn’t just tied his wrists, but his entire forearms to the post.

Even that was secured near the bottom of the post, so seated as he was, he couldn’t apply any force or wiggle his fingers to do anything.

It felt hopeless.

As evening approached, the so-called captain who had taken Lena arrived. Leo bit his lip and glared at him.

“…Where’s Lena?”

“Well, well? You still haven’t given up, huh?”

It was a time of pain, his body numb, hungry, and thirsty. He had spent a full day with absolutely ‘nothing happening.’

For anyone else, it would have been a time long enough to break their stubbornness, but Leo endured.

Thanks to consciously recalling modern society. Otherwise, he would have broken down mentally.

The captain seemed unwilling to answer his question and merely nodded his head.

The people who followed the captain proceeded to gag Leo and blindfold him. Then he was tossed into a leather sack and treated like a piece of cargo on a carriage.

– Clatter clatter

The carriage set off.

“What’s going on?”

Voices hovered in front of him.

“Can you believe he ended up sold to the princes? But whatever that girl said, they want him too.”

“What if he somehow manages to escape? That could be troublesome. He’s got some skill with a sword… Should we break an arm or two?”

“I’d love to do that, but… no. If they say so, then we comply.”

After some time, the carriage stopped, and Leo was brought down.

“Leo! Let me go.”

He heard Lena’s voice from a distance, but that was all.

Leo twisted his body and yelled, but only muffled sounds escaped his lips. Someone roughly grabbed him and he felt his limbs go limp as he was dragged somewhere.

[ Lena’s final job has been decided. ]

That wasn’t it.

It wasn’t that his limbs had gone limp; it was that the world around him and his body had vanished. With a sensation he could hardly get used to, he felt himself floating as the ending arrived.

[ Thank you for playing Lena Raising. ]

[ Lena ]

[ Final Job: Prince’s Concubine ]

[ Marriage Partner: Aton de Lognum ]

[ Leo ]

[ Final Job: Assassin ]

[ Marriage Partner: Unmarried ]

[ Childhood Friend Ending: The Princes’ Toy ]

– Born in the village of Demos, Lena had a happy childhood. Though poor, her parents’ warm attention… (excerpt) …arrived in Nevis but was captured by thugs. Lena was sold to the princes of the Lognum Royal Family. With Leo’s life as collateral, Lena became a concubine and secretly helped Leo escape before committing suicide. –

– Born in the village of Demos, Leo had a happy childhood. He lost his mother early… (excerpt) …arrived in Nevis but was captured by thugs. Leo was detained in the mansion of Prince Aton de Lognum. After escaping with Lena’s help, Leo lived for revenge. He barely succeeded in exterminating the thugs but failed to assassinate the prince and was sentenced to death. –

The image of Lena, adorned beautifully yet cheaply, flashed before him. Her gaze, obscured by clothes that could be easily stripped away, was utterly lifeless.

Leo was consumed by despair, unable to think as he slowly breathed his last.

The essence of Minseo ripped through Leo’s fragments and emerged.

‘I really want to give up on everything…’

This time, he had failed miserably.

Not only did he not make Lena a princess, but he had also failed to protect her. Instead, he brought her to the capital only for her to suffer.

The plans he had set were heading towards the dump.

Why the thugs targeted Lena and Leo was a mystery, but the princes of the Orun Kingdom who were closest were trash.

There was no way that a humble girl like Lena would fall into a fateful love with such trash. Even if she hadn’t been caught by the thugs, the outcome would have been the same.

Minseo wanted to give up.

It had already been over a year since he entered this game.

He missed Chaehwa terribly.

He wanted to return to his parents.

But Minseo’s hopes were rejected with the abrupt text signaling a restart.

[ You have not cleared Lena Raising. ]

[ Leo, you were too naive. After this, Leo wiped out the ‘family’ responsible for Lena’s vengeance. With that achievement, we present you with the information of {The Rules of the Back Alley}. ]

[ Restarting. ]

As he listlessly watched the intro video he had seen before, a cold wind slapped his cheek.

Before he knew it, he had become Leo Dexter, holding a sword like an idiot.

“Leo! What’s wrong?”

Lena Ainar stood before him, holding a sword.

He had longed to see her as a warrior who died on the battlefield, but now he felt no motivation whatsoever.

The scenario reward revealed just how foolish and naive he had been.

“…I’ll head in first today.”

Leo scratched his head and left Lena behind to return to his room.

Back in the familiar room where he had spent months until Lena became a warrior, he threw himself onto the bed.

Burying his face in the cold blanket, he mulled over the tedious {The Rules of the Back Alley}.

The last scenario had gotten tangled when Hans had first introduced them.

Hans sold them out in a big town.

To be precise, it wasn’t a selling; he merely informed the people here that there was an easy target to take.

Summarizing Hans’s introduction using {The Rules of the Back Alley}, it meant that even if they got caught, there wouldn’t be any repercussions, and that they should happily head to the largest slave market in the world on their own, then charge a transportation fee, and pass them to another side for a commission.

Leo nearly ripped his pillow in frustration.

In the past scenario, they had not received kindness. They had been led by malice disguised as kindness.

Slaves were a very difficult commodity to transport.

During transit, the value of a slave significantly dropped, and depending on the distance, usually one out of three would die during the journey.

So how delighted they must have been to see us happily making our way toward the slave market willingly while paying!

And Leo, in his naivety, had walked into the inn introduced by the merchant until the very end. At that time, the merchant had been scanning the area for a sign.

The deep marks on the inn’s door frame were not from rotting, but a mark indicating it was an inn for those who received people to sell.

Perhaps the merchant and the innkeeper didn’t even know each other.

Leo pounded his pillow again in frustration.

How pathetic I was to be so naive to the point of foolishness.

*

“You’ve changed a bit, haven’t you?”

The next morning, Leo mixed swords with Lena. She immediately noticed his change.

“Just now, here. Why did you come in like that?”

“If I enter like this, then next time I can do this.”

As Leo slowly rewound the motion he had just made, Lena wore a look of disbelief.

“Wait? It’s novel, but what am I supposed to do?”

“Shall we try again?”

This time, unlike the last, he adapted quickly.

In the past, he had been beaten by his father from day one, but the {Swordsmanship} he had acquired before, combined with the training he had done until Lena became a warrior, yielded different responses.

Lena found Leo’s swordsmanship interesting, and while his father was displeased, he understood his son’s curiosity and willingness to try something different.

In just one day, the mood had lifted significantly.

Leo Dexter’s robust body not only swung the sword effortlessly but also helped him regain his confidence.

When he fought the thugs at the inn, the previous Leo had only managed to kill one of them. But this Leo Dexter, whether he won or lost, would have sent most of them to their graves.

Leo, sweating as he clashed swords with Lena, collapsed onto the frosty ground. Lena, perhaps exhausted as well, laid down beside him.

‘What will happen in the war?’

The major event of the engagement scenario, {War}, would break out at the end of this winter.

He had thought long and hard about it all night but found no way to avoid it.

In just a few days, he and Lena would come of age. The now adult Lena would go hunting with her father and become a warrior, and as a warrior, she would fight in the war instead of her father, the Great Warrior.

If he could just stop her from going hunting, it would be simple, but that wasn’t an easy task.

Lena wanted to be a warrior, and she was stubborn about it.

Even if he told her a war was going to break out in a few months, she wouldn’t care whether to believe it or not.

In fact, the last time, Lena had even boasted that she would become a knight when she went to war.

‘And then she never returned…’

Leo gently held Lena’s hand lying next to him. She flinched slightly but remained still.

He had even thought about pushing her down the stairs.

He was trying to injure her somehow to prevent her from going hunting, but this way wouldn’t work.

Winter was the easiest season to hunt.

Animals reduced their roaming due to the cold, leaving easily traceable tracks, and with fewer leaves, there were fewer hiding places. If they bled, it would be easy to track them, and transporting game would be much simpler with sledges.

Moreover, warriors of the village had no work during winter, so the hunting teams continuously went out. It wouldn’t be impossible to do something bizarre a few times to keep Lena from hunting, but anything beyond that would be impossible.

Lena would inevitably become a warrior before the war broke out.

He thought about the {event} of capturing the Old Phantom Fox.

If Lena returned with some wounds after achieving the monster hunting feat, Dehorman would likely use it as an excuse to keep his daughter off the battlefield.

But hunting that monster together was impossible. At least it wasn’t feasible yet. He didn’t want to become prey to a creature while trying to avoid a war.

Lena wiggled her held hand. When he turned his head, he saw her playing with his hand.

Adorable Lena.

Leo steeled himself. This time, he would definitely protect you.

He lifted up his body while still holding Lena’s hand and urged her forward. It was time to train.

He thought again as he tightened his grip on the sword.

The princess… was uncertain.

Was it even possible to make a princess in this engagement scenario… he still hadn’t found any clues.

Perhaps there could be a way once they went to war.

So I will go to the battlefield with Lena.

*

“It’ll be cold, so take this and drink with Leo.”

Lena received a water jug handed to her by her mother.

The jug was filled with Odur tea and sloshed around.

This tea was made with Odur leaves that had been slightly fermented, and when warmed, it chased away the chill.

She bundled up two cups and made her way to the backyard where Leo was still swinging his sword.

Feeling sorry to interrupt his focus, Lena sat in a chair, sipped her tea, and watched Leo train.

Amidst the flurrying snow, his sword-swinging looked really impressive.

‘Why has Leo been acting like this lately?’

His practice time had noticeably increased.

Leo had always been diligent, but for the past few days, he seemed desperate, like a person being hunted.

The first time she met Leo was three years ago, when her father invited a retired knight to their home. The first impression of the boy her age was soft.

Compared to the other friends from the tribe, he seemed a bit more gentle. After only seeing rough tribe members, it felt refreshing to meet a lad who was polite and well-spoken.

‘Back then, I never imagined I’d be engaged to him.’

Among her peers, Lena had been quite skilled with weapons, but she had found herself on her knees in a duel against that gentle lad.

Afterward, she learned swordsmanship from Uncle Noel and fought fiercely, developing a bond, and about a year ago, got engaged to that gentleman. Lena felt proud that the man swinging the sword over there was the one she was to marry.

Lena’s dream was to become a knight. Though being a warrior of her tribe was nice, she aspired to become a knight like Uncle Noel to protect the castle and her tribe.

However, after her engagement, her dream shifted a bit. Lena wanted to become a knight alongside Leo.

“Leo! Come drink this and then continue!”

Thinking he was done with practice, she called out to Leo. He waved from afar and walked over.

He looked impressive coming fully armored. Steam rose from between the gaps of his armor, and as he removed his helmet, droplets of sweat poured down.

“Thanks. I was just thirsty.”

“Hey! If you drink it like that, you’ll get drunk.”

Leo lifted the jug and gulped it down.

He soon set the empty jug down with a ‘thud’ and playfully tapped Lena’s head before walking away.

Staring vacantly at Leo, Lena hung her head.

“Geez… What’s wrong with him these days…”

Lena’s face flushed bright red.

Maybe she had drunk too much Odur tea.