From a Broken Engagement to the Northern Grand Duke's Son-in-Law

The sea roiled with unnatural darkness. A heavy silence descended, as if the sky and water’s surface had been submerged in stillness.

Lovan Tree Prison.

A fortress of iron, housing only the absolute worst of the continent’s most heinous criminals. Once inside, no one ever emerged. Visits and bail were concepts as foreign as mercy itself.

This was our destination.

“Rumor had it that it was underground. Was that true?” Roxen asked, his expression dazed as he stared into the churning depths.

Indeed, Lovan Tree Prison was submerged in the deep waters of the Calt Sea.

“It’s true. The ones inside aren’t human anymore. They’re monsters,” I murmured, my gaze fixed on the distant horizon where steel met water.

To enter those waters, we needed a special type of vessel—a submarine, a warship owned by the state. It was, of course, impossible for us to simply acquire passage on one.

“Then how do you plan to get there?”

“You ask the obvious.” I turned to face my unit, decision crystallizing in my mind. “We’ll have to seize one. Come, let’s go be thieves.”

We formed a plan to steal a submarine from the Kingdom of Lovan.

* * *

“We’re criminals,” Hans whimpered, trembling in a corner of the stolen vessel.

We were now inside a submarine, transporting a group of convicts to Lovan Tree in place of the guards.

Naturally, the actual guards were sleeping soundly back at the docks, knocked unconscious but otherwise unharmed.

“Hey, it’s fine! Once we escape to the Demonic Realm, they’ll never catch us,” Lancelot joked.

“How is that fine?!” Hans’s voice cracked.

“If not that, our captain will figure something out. He may not look it, but he’s the legitimate heir of House Berg.” Lancelot pointed at me, attempting to placate Hans’s fears.

Honestly, if I used the Berg name, I could probably extricate myself from this mess. 

But I had no intention of doing so. If I did, I would never have brought these people with me in the first place.

“I’ll be sure to visit you in prison,” I said to Lancelot, my face impassive, before turning my attention elsewhere.

In contrast to the noisy corner where my unit huddled, this section housed the criminals bound for Lovan Tree—a collection of the absolute worst offenders. 

Murder, arson, rape, human trafficking. It seemed they had committed every crime imaginable.

“Imagine the whole lot of you sharing the same charges. Impressive,” I observed, letting my gaze drift across the shackled prisoners.

They watched me with wary eyes, having learned their lesson after our initial encounter.

“But at least you’re all looking polite now. Isn’t that right?”

At my question, punctuated by the soft tapping of my fingers against the submarine’s hull, the prisoners nodded hastily.

After we’d seized the submarine, they had, of course, demanded we set them free. Some had even tried to fight us in a desperate bid to escape.

But it was all futile effort.

Being sentenced to Lovan Tree was an indication of the severity of their crimes, not a measure of their strength. In the end, they were all subdued by my unit and me. 

Now, they were being led along meekly.

“Louis. Is that it?” Lea asked, pointing through the porthole to a massive structure rising from the water.

A grand, gray edifice. Its colors were muted, yet its sheer scale made it impossible to miss.

The prison loomed like a dead leviathan, its bulk casting shadows even in the dim underwater light.

I nodded. “Yes, we’ve arrived.”

The prison of heinous criminals, Lovan Tree.

We had reached the place where our final companion awaited.

* * *

Thud. Thud.

“Captain, is it always this empty here?” Lancelot asked quietly, soon after we entered the prison.

We were dressed in guards’ uniforms, but the disguise had proven unnecessary. 

There was no one here to hand the prisoners over to.

“Man… This is practically a ghost town,” Lancelot murmured, tilting his head as he answered his own question.

I was just as puzzled.

It shouldn’t be this deserted. Even for a prison, it was too quiet. The guards who were supposed to receive the criminals, the knights who should have been guarding the entrance—not a single one of them was anywhere to be seen.

“Something feels wrong. Stay on your guard,” I said softly to my unit, leading the prisoners forward.

How long had we walked through those corridors?

“What is this?” Lea’s eyes widened, her hand flying to her mouth.

The inside of the building was filled with corpses. They were embedded in the walls, drained of all blood, hanging from the ceilings. The flesh of some had even exploded outward like grotesque flowers.

The bodies were strewn everywhere, with no discernible pattern to their deaths.

“This is grim,” Roxen muttered, his brow furrowed in concentration as he examined the carnage.

From their uniforms, the dead appeared to be guards and knights. But the problem was that none of the inmates here should have been capable of something like this.

Something had definitely happened here—an event that had never occurred before my regression. And given the power required to commit such an atrocity, there was a ninety-percent chance it was related to the Demonkin.

“We’re dropping the guard act. All units, prepare for combat.”

I spoke in a low voice, my gaze falling on the prisoners walking ahead.

And then—

Thuk! Thuk! Thuk! Thuk!

I shot my arrows, ending the criminals’ lives with swift precision.

“My apologies. I don’t have the luxury of looking after you as well.”

Their presence here was proof enough of their monstrous crimes. Besides, when I had asked them on the submarine, not a single one had claimed to be here unjustly.

Squelch.

I stepped over the blood of the fallen and moved on.

We were on the first floor. Our destination was the prison’s lowest level, the fifth basement floor.

“Let’s go.”

I headed for the lower levels, my breath steady as I braced for whatever dangers lurked within.

* * *

Meanwhile, at that very moment, deep inside the prison, a woman in restraints was tapping the back of her head against a wall.

“Ah, what kinda doesn’t serve a meal for a week?” she muttered with a sigh.

It had gotten noisy outside a few days ago. But then at some point, the meals had stopped coming.

The sounds of life from the next cell had long since vanished.

She was hungry and bored. This was beyond a simple mess.

“Ugh. If you keep this up, I’m leaving,” she called out loudly.

But from the outside, there was still no answer. Only an ominous silence echoed through the prison.

“Hah...”

The woman let out a long sigh and dropped her head.

It had been nice here—they fed her and let her sleep on time. But it seemed it was time to leave.

Crr-creak—!

“Hmph!”

Shred—!

The woman twisted her body, and the restraints tore apart. They ripped like wet paper and fell to the floor.

With a grunt of effort, she stretched and stood up.

Thump.

She reached out and tapped the iron bars of her cell. And then—

Screech—!

She bent the bars aside, tearing through them as if slicing a cake.

“Ahh, so hungry.” The woman rubbed her stomach and mumbled to herself.

She didn’t know what floor she was on, but finding food was her first priority.

“Hey, mister! Do you have any food... oh, you’re dead.”

The woman glanced into the cell next to hers, then tilted her head and scratched it. 

For some reason, all the other inmates on her floor were dead.

“Wonder why?”

She kept tilting her head, but no answer came to mind.

With a shrug, she started walking again.

“Ah, whatever. Someone must’ve come and killed them,” she said, her tone almost cheerful.

And with that, she continued on her way.

* * *

“…Very grotesque,” I muttered, taking in the scene around me.

We had walked a long way from the entrance, but no matter where we went, it was like a museum of corpses. It felt as if they were on display.

The brutal sight had Hans covering his mouth, fighting back vomit.

“Urp...”

“Don’t throw up here. The smell of bile mixed with all this will be unbearable.”

“Hrrf... yes...” Hans managed, nodding weakly.

Still not a sign of anyone alive.

I scanned my surroundings. Everywhere I looked, there were only corpses.

Had a Demonkin spawned here and then escaped?

It was possible. If all these bodies were part of a summoning circle to call forth a Demonkin, it would make a certain kind of sense.

However, it was unlikely it would have been summoned just to do nothing and then return.

To go through all the trouble of summoning it, only to send it back to the Demonic Realm? That was nonsensical.

Which meant either something was still here, or I was wrong about the nature of this massacre.

I shook my head, lost in thought.

Just then—

Grrrrrr.

A low growl echoed through the hall, and a presence made itself known before us.

My unit members gripped their weapons, ready for battle. I, too, readied an Aura-infused arrow, my eyes locked on the darkness ahead.

Shapes stirred in the shadows.

“Grrrrrr—!”

They stepped into the light—skin a sickly blue, eyes vacant, movements jerky and mindless.

Dead Walkers. They reeked of demonic energy, like a plague made flesh.

One... two...

Their numbers surged, swelling like a snowball down a slope and fast becoming an unstoppable horde.

“Well, isn’t this just a fine mess.” Lancelot let out a hollow laugh and tightened his grip on his spear. “Can we even beat those things without a priest?”

“You seem to be a man who believes in the power of the gods. A devout follower, perhaps.”

“Not really. So, do we need one or not?”

“Aim for the head. Once the head is destroyed, they won’t get back up.”

Saaaaaah—!

I overlaid the invocation onto my arrow, creating a serpent-dragon. The creature flicked its tongue, its eyes fixed on the Dead Walkers.

“Kill them.”

The moment my command fell, it lunged.

Saaaaaah—!

The serpent-dragon’s fangs bit into a zombie’s skull.

Crack!

With a sickening crunch, the Dead Walker crumpled to the floor.

As I had predicted, it did not move again.

Spurred on by the serpent-dragon, my unit members charged the horde.

Shhhk!

K-k-k-k-krak!

Auras flared in every color, painting the hall with chaos and carnage.

This was the first floor of Lovan Tree Prison—our first battlefield.