55. The Foolish Escapees (Combined Chapter)

The word "slave" was not the only thing Lewis wanted to complain about.

The timeline being post-medieval, the Kaer Morhen Prison, and the various hints dropped by the setup all told him one thing: when it came to making plans, reality always caught you off guard.

However, the surprises were not over yet.

As color rushed back into his field of vision, the first thing to assault his senses was the sound of gunfire.

His initial reaction, relying on his still-blurry vision, was to search for something resembling a wall nearby.

*Are they going to execute me by firing squad right out of the gate?*

Clearly, he had worried for nothing. The moment his hand brushed against a wall, his vision fully cleared, though the surroundings were pitch black and reeked of sewage, as if his face had been jammed directly into a drainpipe.

At the same time, Lewis noticed a chain binding his wrists. His clothing was light and thin; he was definitely not wearing [Kenny's Orange Jacket]. Key bound items like [Johnson's Iron Rod], [The Folding Stool], and [Emil's Mask] were nowhere to be found.

Just as he was about to open his system panel to figure out what was going on, footsteps suddenly echoed from above.

Tap, tap, tap—

A rapid sequence of boot heels struck what sounded like stone slabs.

Lewis curled up in the corner and looked up. Light, resembling that of a kerosene lamp, filtered down through the circular holes of a stone grate overhead. He slowly inched backward, making sure not to expose himself to the beam of light.

Along with the light came human voices.

"Where are the others? Are there really only these few?"

"Why the hell did you have to kill them!"

"But... how was I supposed to know a single bullet would kill them? I just fired blindly, and they all took headshots."

"Go find the rest of them! Hurry!"

As the light shifted, Lewis made out his surroundings: he was in a subterranean tunnel resembling rammed earth, wearing white prison-issue garments.

Three other guys dressed just like him were sprawled out on the ground.

He quickly scanned the three of them, instinctively gathering intelligence:

The tall one had tattoos on his face, and the calluses on his hands were thin; he couldn't be ruled out as some sort of street punk.

As for the other two, the short one had very thick calluses on his hands, while the guy with glasses had smooth-looking skin. These two most likely fell into the category of "honest folks."

After processing all the information, Lewis frowned deeply. *I'm in the middle of a prison break, and these three guys are definitely not the type to get along. So... is this an "accidental" jailbreak?*

A so-called accidental event generally referred to a situation where people hadn't originally planned to escape, but simply lucked upon a tunnel left behind by some predecessor and wandered right in.

What chilled Lewis to the bone, however, was that judging from the trio's gear, they had started their journey of escape without making any real preparations upon discovering the tunnel.

It's over...

I've been lumped with amateurs.

The footsteps overhead faded, and once the light source vanished, silence enveloped the surroundings.

Lewis opened his quest log, prompting a long string of notifications to pop up:

[Main Quest: Eliminate the Unseen Elder]
[Remaining Time: 29 days, 15 hours]
[Quest Level: Lv20 ~ Lv25]
[Special Hint 1: You are currently locked in handcuffs, preventing bound equipment from appearing and disabling your inventory slots. Please find a way to escape the prison and find a method to unlock the handcuffs in the wilderness to restore your inventory and bound gear.]
[Special Hint 2: Your current personal stats fall into the category of an ordinary human. Once the handcuffs are removed, your original stats will be restored.]
[Special Hint 3: Information regarding your teammates can only be viewed after unlocking the handcuffs.]
[Prologue Quest Triggered: Untie the Shackles]
[Quest Rewards: 100 Gold Coins, 150 EXP, Random Card x1, Personal Stat Unlock]

Lewis thought to himself, *Throwing a difficult problem at me right off the bat, huh... Well, it's not actually that hard. But the worldview and mechanics are vastly different from before; I need to take a long-term view on certain things...*

"Let's go..." someone muttered, followed by the clatter of chains dragging across the ground.

*Whatever, I might as well follow them for now,* Lewis thought. He flexed his elbows, and guided by the clanking of the chains, he bent his knees and slowly followed behind.

They hadn't walked far when someone spoke up, "Hey, wait for me...!"

Lewis paused for a second. *Making normal-volume sounds during a prison break—is that really a good idea?*

"Keep your voice down!" someone hissed.

That guy had the right idea, but spoke even louder...

Lewis trailed behind, pondering. *I have a strong feeling these guys broke out entirely by accident...*

Not long after, faint purple light began to glow from the surroundings. The light source came from a species of luminous fungi rooted in the earth, and no footsteps other than their own could be heard here.

Only now could Lewis properly examine the three companions of his "jailbreak."

All three were skin and bones, most likely starved, filthy, and reeking of body odor. They all had the typical features of pale-skinned folk, though layers of grimy mud made their skin tone lean toward a deep, sickly yellow.

"Stop shoving me!"

"Damn it."

Lewis followed closely, listening to their various amateurish bickering, while scanning his surroundings for anything that could open the handcuffs.

At that moment, they reached a fork in the road.

The shortest of the bunch let out a sigh of defeat, sat down on a rock, and said, "Hold on a second... I'm damn tired. Let's figure out how to open these cursed handcuffs first."

The other two glanced at each other. The tall guy walked over, slapped him across the back of the head, and snapped, "Is this the time to worry about handcuffs?!"

"But with these things on, moving around is a huge pain. If we have to crawl through any pipes later, someone might hear us."

"Either you do as I say, or I'm hitting you again."

"You bastard..."

The third person, a guy wearing frames without lenses, smiled and said, "Alright... stop fighting for a moment, let's keep moving."

The tall guy said, "Charlie, you take the lead. Which fork should we take?"

Charlie: "I don't know."

The short guy: "Don't look at me, I have no idea either. Let's just pick one at random."

Lewis asked, "Three big guys, did any of you happen to draw a map of the escape route?"

The three of them turned to look at him. The tall guy retorted irritably, "Is your brain filled with shit? We found the tunnel while working a shift together and bolted right in. When would we have had time to make a map?"

This was... way too amateurish. Lewis forced a smile and asked, "Can you tell me what happened beforehand?"

This time, the man named Charlie answered, "And then the few of us ran in here."

"I heard gunfire, and someone shouting to go find the rest of the people."

"That must have been Lagon's gang. They were planning to scale the low wall and break out today, and their location happened to be right above us."

"One more question: when we entered this place, did anyone seal the entrance?" Lewis asked.

All three fell silent, and Charlie even slapped himself on the forehead.

"That's not important!" the tall guy declared.

"Idol, it *is* important! We were in too much of a rush and forgot to seal the entrance!"

Lewis didn't even know how to complain anymore. *Are all prison breaks in this joint this casually handled?*

Since the entrance wasn't sealed, the pursuers would likely catch up in no time.

He continued asking, "So, are we in Kaer Morhen?"

"Friend... are you out of your mind?" Charlie shook his head, looking exasperated. "We've been stuck in Kaer Morhen Prison for three months, and you're still asking?"

Lewis lowered his head. *Kaer Morhen Prison... The witcher stronghold of Kaer Morhen turned into a prison?*

The tall guy chimed in, "Stop talking nonsense! What do we do now? Charlie, you've got lots of ideas, think of something."

Charlie shook his head. "We still need to keep moving forward... As for which fork to take... how about we just pick one at random?"

"Blow on your hands to warm them up, then stretch your arms out toward both paths. Sense which way cools down faster. Whichever side cools down quicker means there's a draft, and a draft at least proves it's not a dead end." They looked at Lewis, who was speaking. "Though it might not actually work; I haven't tested it yet."

Charlie followed the instructions half-believingly, then pointed to the left and said, "It seems to be this way."

"Hey, look what I found!" The short guy suddenly plucked a luminous fungus and said, "This stuff is worth a fortune as a medicinal herb. Let's pick a bunch more, and once we get out of here, we'll be fucking rich!"

"How much is it worth?" the tall guy asked.

"Let me calculate..."

Lewis had no choice but to interrupt. "Should I remind you guys... since we didn't seal the entrance, it's about time we got moving."

*If I didn't need meat shields... I would have left long ago...* Lewis muttered inwardly, following right behind Charlie as the second person to enter the left tunnel.

Along the way, Lewis's mouth didn't rest for a moment as he kept firing questions.

"What year is it?"

"1850..."

"Are there any witchers in Kaer Morhen?"

"Witchers went extinct ages ago."

"What kind of work do we do as slaves every day?"

"Hey, can't you talk about something meaningful for once?!"

Faced with the tall guy's vicious warning, Lewis shrugged.

Merely knowing that it was the year 1850 and that witchers had long been extinct—those two pieces of information were more than meaningful enough.

Lewis quickly pieced things together. The *Witcher* game's timeline concluded around 1275, meaning the current timeline had jumped forward by nearly 600 years. If the technological tree hadn't taken a bizarre turn, they should have transitioned from the medieval era into the steam age. On the other hand, Kaer Morhen, once the gathering place of the Wolf School witchers, was now a prison.

From the life-simulator-like narrative prior to entering the scenario, it was clear that some organization was searching here for a way to become witchers.

The world's timeline had changed.
The organizational structure had changed.
The dangers they faced had also changed.

He only hoped that future developments wouldn't introduce tropes like: *The vampire clan descends, a supreme vampire named Dracula appears, the Unseen Elder becomes Dracula's servant, and challenging the Unseen Elder requires traveling to Castlevania.*

On the bright side, Marger's [Kenshi Character Creation Card] truly brought him closer to a crucial secret treasure—the method to becoming a witcher.

As he pondered this, having reached a relatively open cavern, they spotted a tattered quilt spread out on the ground with an iron pot turned upside down beside it.

The three fellows rushed over as if pumped full of adrenaline.

"Hey, look! Someone must have lived here, the exit must be just ahead!"

"Check if there's any food."

Lewis looked at the three fools and took a deep breath. "These three idiots... no, utter morons."

In the *Witcher* universe, if you found traces of "camping" inside a cave, you had better run, because you could never be sure what kind of entity was doing the camping.

"Damn it, hell!"

The tall guy flipped over the pot, revealing a complete set of human bones inside.

"Damn, what the hell is this!"

"There's a fucking monster here!"

The tall and the short guy roared like a pair of simpletons. Lewis desperately wanted to stuff the pot down their throats. *What are you yelling for?*

"If I didn't need people to take the hits for me, I would have left long ago..." Lewis sighed helplessly, walking over to examine the skeleton. "Looks like his flesh has already been processed and digested in some creature's stomach."

"Is this a time for jokes?" Charlie said.

"What kind of creature is it?" the short guy asked.

Lewis pointed toward a small tunnel not far ahead, where a humanoid creature was crawling out, and said casually, "Well, that one."

"That... is that a person?"

"A cannibal."

"No, wait, it looks familiar. Damn it... let's run back... it must have companions..."

Truth be told, the moment Lewis spotted this creature, running was no longer an option.

With the distance being less than 20 meters, several malnourished prisoners and slaves encountering a monster in a tight, narrow cave had no other outcome awaiting them except death.

"Probably not. This guy is a solitary creature." Lewis picked up a bone as thin as a wire and poked it into the handcuff's keyhole, searching for the tumblers as he spoke. "Judging from its feeding habits and the tracks on the ground, you can roughly tell it lives alone. Hmm... a solitary monster in the *Witcher* universe that likes using a pot should be a wight."

According to Lewis's knowledge of *Witcher* lore, wights looked like humans who had starved for eighty years without dying; rather than fighting, they usually preferred fussing over the stews bubbling in their giant cauldrons.

They were solitary beings, and there was never any rumor of these creatures appearing in packs.

By the time he finished speaking, the wight had already climbed to its feet.

Although wights didn't look like friendly creatures, they wouldn't pose a threat to anyone unless provoked.

Entering its territory, however, was the ultimate provocation.

The three fools had originally intended to run, but the moment they saw the wight emerge, they realized how greatly they had overestimated their own courage.

Their legs had turned to jelly; they couldn't run fast at all.

And just as they turned around, the crisp click of the handcuffs springing open echoed out, accompanied immediately by the wight's approaching roar.

[Prologue Quest Completed: Untie the Shackles]
[Quest Rewards: 100 Gold Coins, 150 EXP, Random Card x1, Personal Stat Unlock]
[All your equipment is now available for use]

The short guy looked back just in time to witness the scene.

The wight lunged toward Lewis, who was closest. But the handcuffs clinked to the ground, and in that split second, his prison uniform transformed into a rather peculiar orange outfit, paired with loose brown trousers and boot-like footwear.

Facing the wight head-on, Lewis swiftly drew [Johnson's Iron Rod] from his waist and precisely jammed the rod straight into the charging wight's open mouth.

At the same time, he rapidly opened his inventory and pulled out the [Replica Glock 17 Pistol].

Right then, a brand-new panel popped up before his eyes.

[Teammate Spawn Locations]
[ID 5899, Marger, spawned in Novigrad]
[ID 5950, Chaba, spawned in Cintra]
...