Chapter 82: Wait for Me, Rosvitha

At midnight, in an abandoned wine cellar, Leon and his daughters were discussing how to obtain information.
Leon massaged his wrist, his fists spotted with blood. “Torture probably won’t work. If they were going to talk, they would have talked after the first punch; if they won’t talk, more punching won’t make them talk.”
“Dad, is your punch even comparable to a normal person’s?”
Aurora seemed to realize something. “This won’t do, I need to go check if those two guys are dead or not.”
Leon held back his youngest daughter. “Relax, I controlled my strength. I’ve done interrogation before when I led troops in war, though not much.”
Noia raised an eyebrow. “During wartime, intelligence must have been very important, right? If you rarely interrogated prisoners of war, where did your intelligence come from?”
The old father shrugged. “We just pushed straight through. What intelligence did we need?”
Noia rolled her eyes speechlessly.
“…Hmm, simple and brutal, very much matches my stereotypical impression of Dad,” Aurora concluded matter-of-factly.
“But we can’t just push through this time. We’re outnumbered and there are too many unknowns. If we want to know the exact location of the heart dragon scales, we can only work on getting it from these two guys, Nacho and company,” Noia said.
Leon thought for a moment and asked, “Your mother used to know magic that could probe prisoners’ memories. Do any of you know how to use it?”
The three sisters looked at each other and shook their heads in unison.
“Such useful magic and none of you learned it?”
“Did you learn it?”
“I didn’t either, hehe— Ow!”
Noia raised her hand and elbowed her father.
Ah, reminds him of those days of flirting and bantering with the dragon mother…
“So what do we do now? Torture won’t work, and no one knows memory-probing magic. Are we just going to wait it out?”
Aurora said, “The Three Daggers went to the manor but didn’t find Nacho. They should immediately notify the Empire to begin search operations. We don’t have much time, we need to hurry.”
However, even though they needed to hurry, there wasn’t any good way to make those two talk.
After thinking for a moment, Leon suddenly spoke up,
“Do you know about… the Prisoner’s Dilemma?”
……
Leon opened the storage room door. Only Nacho was inside.
His hands and feet were bound, unable to move.
Seeing that it was Leon who opened the door, Nacho coldly snorted,
“You monster… why couldn’t you just stay properly in that coffin… It’s been twenty years, what are you doing coming out now?”
At this moment, Nacho had also regained his composure.
Regardless of whether Leon had come back to life or whatever other reason, he had indeed come to cause trouble for Nacho.
But Nacho hadn’t wasted these twenty years either.
He looked at Leon and said slowly,
“Ah… no matter what, I’ve fallen into your hands. But… even so, the current situation is quite troublesome for you too, isn’t it?”
Leon stood in front of him, looking into his eyes, silent.
“You kidnapped me so urgently, wanting to get information about the Heart Dragon Scale from my mouth, so that thing must be very important to you, right? But you don’t have much time, otherwise you wouldn’t risk getting involved with the royal family.”
“If you can’t get the information you want from my mouth, then even if you kill me, your plan will still be at a standstill, and you’ll also attract the Empire’s attention.”
“The Silver Dragon Clan has already been disbanded, Casmode. You have no backup, and once you fail, what awaits you will be an even more tragic fate than mine right now, am I right?”
Twenty years in officialdom had taught Nacho something about the art of negotiation.
If both sides hold cards, don’t rush to surrender.
He looked at Leon smugly, as if showing off what he had become to this seemingly immortal fellow.
“Hmm, you’re right.”
Nacho was stunned, he hadn’t expected Leon to admit it so easily.
Nacho pursed his lips, planning to continue analyzing the current situation, laying out all the unfavorable conditions for Leon to put some serious pressure on him.
He just loved that feeling when others disliked him but couldn’t get rid of him.
Until Leon took out the dinner knife from his pocket that he had gotten from the dining room.
Nacho panicked, unconsciously swallowing, “What- what are you going to do… you can’t kill me, you don’t dare kill me, I’m from the royal family, and I have the information you want, if you kill me, you’ll never know where the Heart Dragon Scale is!”
“And- and! — After this you won’t successfully capture anyone else who knows this information, in today’s Empire, even the slightest movement will immediately put them on guard.”
“No matter how strong you are, you can’t capture a royal family member in this tight net!”
Leon impatiently rubbed his brow point, “Are you done?”
“……”
“Your deputy Scott just told me the location of the Heart Dragon Scale. So……”
Leon shrugged regretfully, “You’re of no use to me now.”
As he spoke, Leon waved the dinner knife in his hand.
The blade gleamed coldly, flashing in Nacho’s eyes.
“No- impossible, Leon, you’re bluffing me.”
Nacho suppressed the rage and fear in his heart, “Scott would never betray the Empire.”
“Whether he would betray the Empire or not, I don’t know, but he did betray you ten minutes ago. Now my people have knocked him unconscious and sent him away. By the time he wakes up, we’ll have left the Empire. As for you……”
Leon extended the dinner knife and patted Nacho’s face, “Think about it, if you die, who will replace your position?”
These words were like a fuse, completely detonating all the emotions in Nacho’s heart.
He struggled violently, but his hands and feet were bound tight, completely unable to move.
Seeing Nacho’s intense reaction, Leon laughed inwardly.
Sure enough, this old fellow had climbed to his current position and was already deeply mired in the wonderful quagmire of power, unable to extricate himself.
Master was right, these officials are all the same.
“Alright, be still now, the more you move, the less accurate my knife will be, and if you die too painfully, I’ll feel very guilty,” Leon said lazily, he might as well have had the words ‘fake courtesy’ written on his face.
As the words fell, the dinner knife slowly approached Nacho’s carotid artery.
The blade slowly cut into the skin, blood seeping out.
“Wait!” Nacho suddenly shouted.
“What?”
“Scott… what did Scott tell you?”
“You don’t need to worry about that, anyway, by this time tomorrow, I’ll probably be swaggering out of the Empire with the Heart Dragon Scale. Well, you probably won’t see that scene, what a pity.”
The dinner knife continued slowly downward.
“Scott only knows where the dragon scale is stored! He doesn’t know the shift times of those posts and the secret passwords!”
Driven by fear and rage, Nacho decided to use information to save his life and position.
If it were just death alone, Nacho wouldn’t be afraid.
From the moment he held power, he knew he might face such a day.
But Nacho couldn’t accept that his position and power, earned through twenty years of bitter work, would be taken by Scott.
Absolutely unacceptable.
“Oh? This is betraying the Empire, aren’t you afraid of being discovered later?” Leon asked unhurriedly.
“Just push everything onto Scott,” Nacho said.
Hearing this, Leon raised his eyebrows, understanding the meaning behind these words, “Yes, sometimes dead men are more useful than living ones, because dead men can’t speak.”
As a classic scapegoat for ‘dead men being more useful than living ones,’ General Le had deep experience with this.
He took paper and pen from his pocket and threw them in front of Nacho, “Write down everything you know about the Heart Dragon Scale, if it doesn’t match with the information Scott just provided, I’ll kill you both.”
Nacho struggled to pick up the pen with his bound hands and began writing frantically.
He didn’t notice at all that General Le was barely able to suppress his smile.
Ten minutes later, Leon walked out of the storage room, coincidentally, Noia also walked out of the storage room next door.
Father and daughter exchanged glances, and they both saw two words on each other’s faces:
Success!
“Wow! It actually worked~” Muen once again became her father’s little fan, not sparing any praise.
Aurora was also seeing such an interrogation method for the first time, getting information purely through talking.
“If you capture two or more prisoners, the Prisoner’s Dilemma is almost an unsolvable interrogation technique.”
Leon explained,
“When facing the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Nacho and Scott only have two choices: keep silent, or betray each other.”
“But they can’t communicate directly.”
“So, whether to use silence to protect their comrade, or use betrayal to protect everything they have… heh, who knows.”
“But no matter what they choose, the initiative is in our hands. Just use some small interrogation techniques, and getting information becomes as easy as turning your palm.”
Muen let out a long “Oh,” “So amazing!”
Though she didn’t really understand, Dad was still so cool!
Leon and Noia cross-checked the information provided by these two people, the location of the Heart Dragon Scale matched completely.
“So how do we deal with them?” Noia asked.
“Knock them out, keep them here temporarily as hostages.”
Leon said, “Because we don’t know if there will be other troubles later, having hostages as bargaining chips is always worthwhile. And even if the Empire doesn’t care about their lives and decides to go down together, we’ll still have time to deal with those two.”
Noia nodded, “Understood. Then I’ll set up illusion magic here first, to prevent the Empire’s people from finding them.”
“Good.”
Leon looked down at the information in his hand.
Once he gets the Heart Dragon Scale, he can activate the reversal magic.
He must go back.
He has to go back.
“Rosvitha… wait for me, you must… wait for me.”