Chapter 4: -prisonment (2)

Chapter 4 – To Prison (2)

“G-get her down now!”

Kyle, who was the first to regain his composure, urged them to pull Elena down quickly.

He realized that the execution, which was supposed to announce the end of the Emperor and the Empire and the dawn of a new era, had turned into a spectacle of fear and chaos.

“Her neck! Sever her neck!”

Elena’s execution method was changed to decapitation by guillotine.

Towards Elena’s slender neck, caught in the hastily assembled guillotine, a massive metal blade weighing tens of kilograms plummeted from several meters above.

“What is this stiff, irritating thing you’re doing?”

However, the blade failed to sever Elena’s neck and bounced off.

Even from the guillotine, she chuckled and mocked the revolutionaries who couldn’t even scratch her body.

“Shoot her!”

Decapitation was replaced by execution by firing squad.

However, not only small-caliber bullets but also large-caliber cannons failed to break Elena’s body, merely destroying the pole she was tied to.

“Are you giving me a massage because I might be stiff from being tied up?”

Kyle turned pale seeing her perfectly fine after a cannonball, large enough to demolish a house, flew and struck her body.

The revolutionaries were terrified by the monstrous appearance, which seemed to transcend mortal limits and should not have been revealed at this point, and the fervor of the previously excited crowd began to descend into chaos.

“My, you seem quite flustered… *oof*.”

Elena, completely forgetting her victory’s leisure, scoffed at the revolutionaries who were hell-bent on killing her.

The revolutionaries, after gagging her mouth which wouldn’t stop mocking and provoking, poured firewood and oil over her body, tied to an iron stake, and set her ablaze.

‘This will only backfire. Kyle Brauner, are you truly planning to make only bad moves like this?’

Elena yawned amidst the warm flames tickling her body and gazed at Kyle in the distance.

The very act of attempting immolation, knowing that strangulation, decapitation, and explosions had failed, was proof that the revolutionaries were wavering.

“How can this be… Commander, the witch isn’t dead again…!”

The revolutionaries despaired at Elena’s appearance, emerging from the completely charred ashes with not a single strand of her beautiful, brilliant silver hair harmed.

There was no tragic downfall of the empress they had anticipated.

Her appearance, emerging from the ashes completely naked, was not unsightly or obscene, but rather reached a level of mystery and wonder.

Showing such a spectacle to the public any further would only be detrimental to the revolutionaries.

“…Stop it. It seems impossible for us to kill that wicked witch who sold her body and soul to the devil with our own strength.”

In the end, Kyle restrained his revolutionary comrades who were attempting to tear Elena’s limbs apart by chaining them and pulling with the power of a magic engine that could even haul several-ton trains.

If they couldn’t kill her, another method was needed.

“Let’s dig deep, restrain her entire body, and bury her alive.”

“How about tying her up, putting her in an iron box, welding it shut, and throwing her into the distant sea?”

‘Crazy bastards. Utterly cruel.’

Elena, whose execution was temporarily halted, let out a hollow laugh as she listened to the revolutionary leaders’ meeting through her extrasensory perception.

There was no more room for leisure.

They were desperate to somehow get rid of the demon before their eyes.

However, contrary to their misconception, all the situations unfolding now were merely Elena’s choices.

Both her deliberate defeat and capture, and her rejection of various methods of death.

Being buried alive or drowned was definitely not what she desired.

Even if someone among the revolutionaries came up with an execution idea for Elena that would impress everyone, it wouldn’t happen if it didn’t please Elena.

“No. Let’s do this instead. In my opinion, unless we guard that witch for a thousand years, she will surely resurrect someday and try to dominate this world again.”

Amidst this, Kyle, who had been silently listening to his comrades with a stern face, opened his mouth and offered his opinion.

Compared to his comrades who were becoming extreme due to their lack of composure, it was an opinion that quite pleased Elena.

After some discussion, the revolutionaries decided to follow Kyle’s suggestion.

There were no other good options anyway, and Kyle’s standing as the leader of Equitas, who had just succeeded in overthrowing the Millennium Empire, was simply too formidable.

****

“We raised our swords, believing in justice. And that blade, at this very moment, endlessly questions: is death truly a fitting punishment for the worst witch?”

Kyle stepped forward to deliver another speech.

It was an occasion to announce her fate to everyone, with Elena kneeling on the ground.

In his speech, Kyle presented it as if he had intentionally not killed Elena.

There was no other choice.

It was right after a successful revolution, and revealing his incompetence to the whole world would be a fatal blow.

He had to save face.

“We shall seal Elena Dren Barbatos within the heart of the blood-stained old Empire, in a prison of thought. From this moment forth, Elena Dren Barbatos shall be sealed in the ‘Abyss of Tartarus.’ No one present here, nor anyone in the future, shall ever release her. The existence of the witch sealed there shall be a warning, and her silence, the weight of the freedom we have won.”

Kyle sentenced Elena to a lifetime sealing, from which no one in later generations could ever release her.

The Abyss of Tartarus was an ancient ruin, an underground labyrinth located on the Empire’s frontier.

The revolutionaries decided to convert it into a massive prison.

Elena would be imprisoned there, thoroughly controlled, and forever forgotten by ordinary people.

That was the final punishment the revolutionaries imposed on the deposed Empress.

“There’s no more time to waste. Take her away now.”

“If I disappear, will the world you truly desired come to pass?”

Kyle, who had descended from the platform amidst the cheers of the crowd, spoke coldly as he watched Elena being dragged away.

However, Elena, without resisting, grinned at Kyle.

At her sneer, as if she knew something, Kyle watched Elena’s retreating figure with a grimace.

After Foundation Day, precisely three weeks after the revolution succeeded.

It was when the Baltira Empire collapsed, and the last Empress Elena received her final judgment and disappeared from the public eye.

‘This scenery is magnificent.’

After being sentenced to lifetime sealing, Elena remained imprisoned in the imperial palace’s underground dungeon for exactly one more month before she began to be escorted.

The magic train carrying her departed the capital and began heading towards the northwestern frontier of the Empire, where vast wastelands stretched out.

Elena turned her head to look out the train window, feeling the wind brush against her cheek.

What unfolded there were colors she had never once seen within the imperial palace.

First, her vision was filled with the rugged and vast yellowish-brown land.

Over the quietly parched wasteland, cracked earth and rocks shaped by long winds were scattered far and wide.

The setting sun, slowly dipping below the horizon and bathed in twilight, dyed the vast land with its own colors.

At the end of that wasteland, a wide grassland suddenly unfolded as if the boundary had shifted, representing another form of life.

Unlike the sculpted gardens of the imperial palace, where it felt as if she was the only living thing, the wild grasses here danced freely with the wind, mingling with nameless flowers.

Beneath the impossibly high sky, a hawk circled and cried out, its cry sounding like a declaration of unbridled freedom.

Elena unconsciously drew a breath.

Since her transmigration, she had not left the imperial palace for a single moment, having to work by receiving reports from ministers in the open and from the Black Shadow Corps in the shadows.

Her life before transmigration was no different.

It was the first time she had ever truly seen such a vast and quiet natural space.

“Such a place… existed.”

The single sentence that escaped Elena’s lips was her own tired truth, not that of a witch or an empress.

Having laid down her burdens, she finally saw the world.

Not through the splendid imperial palace or the ministers viewed from a high throne, but through the wind of this one piece of wilderness and the living fields belonging to the very empire she had ruled.

“Welcome, ‘former’ Empress.”

Just then, the moving train stopped, and a group of people greeted her.

‘What is this guy?’

Elena, who had been enjoying the feeling of traveling to a foreign land, made a blank expression as she saw a skinny man with a somewhat sinister smile beaming at her.

“I am Krasen Bellstein.”

He introduced himself quite courteously.

And upon hearing that name, Elena’s eyebrows twitched subtly.

It was a name she pulled from her memories.

‘That’s strange. Wasn’t that name supposed to be on the villain’s side?’

In her memories of the original story, Krasen Bellstein was one of the crime syndicate leaders who would be dealt with by the protagonist, Len Knaits.

Although it wasn’t mentioned in the original story, Krasen Bellstein at this point was active as one of Equitas’s mid-level executives, utilizing his unique eloquence and social skills.

Furthermore, he had now been promoted to warden of Tartarus, the prison where Elena would be confined, advancing even further in his career.

As Elena threw off the burden she carried as the final boss and fate began to twist, he became one of the beneficiaries.

“It goes without saying, but don’t expect to be treated like an empress here.”

Krasen chuckled, then abruptly grabbed one of her breasts, kneaded it, and whispered menacingly.

Elena read the overflowing lust in his eyes and sighed.

“Ah, that concept.”

Elena did not tolerate it.

Even while firmly restrained by magic suppressors, she drew upon her magic to create a blade and severed Krasen’s head in a single stroke.

Krasen’s head, still bearing his sinister grin, was separated from his neck and rolled on the floor, spewing blood.

Krasen was originally one of the important awakening materials for the protagonist, Len Knaits, in the original story.

‘Who cares?’

Originally, she would have considered all such things, but Elena had now given up on everything.

Yawning at the surrounding people who were aghast at the sudden murder of the warden, she began to stride towards the large labyrinth visible before her.

“What are you doing? Aren’t you going to lead the way?”

“What in the world… ”

She chuckled and turned her head, causing the pale deputy warden to falter.

She was a tall woman of foreign descent with copper-colored skin and dark brown hair.

“As long as you don’t do anything foolish like that fellow just now, I’ll behave quietly. What’s your name?”

“Lu-Lunara Elke.”

Elena, looking at her as if she found it endearing, spoke in a somewhat gentle voice, and the deputy warden hesitantly revealed her name.

Her words, that she would behave quietly if they didn’t do anything foolish, were not a lie.

Indeed, when Lunara, full of tension, led her to the prison, she did not resist and merely followed along quietly.

“But change the lighting. It’s too drab.”

Though she did grumble that she didn’t like the thoroughly designed interior of the prison.