Chapter 72: Break Out.
The door, which was closed by the guards, creaked.
"Hurry! You did not close it properly," the female guard shouted.
The guards moved and tried to push the door back, but they were being pushed back.
"Use more strength," the female guard shouted, but it was futile, it was too late.
The door was getting opened, berserkers came out one by one, and suddenly it was fully opened.
A large number of berserkers clashed with the guards.Amidst the berserkers, Yan walked, the berserkers who tried to approach him slipped as he was walking forward.
No guard noticed him as they were busy dealing with the berserkers. Yan then sped up and took cover behind a cell wall as more and more guards arrived.
The chaos only increased. Amidst it, Yan moved without anyone detecting him and arrived outside the administration room.
No one was in the room. Yan entered it and found Officer Luna's nameplate on one of the desks. He walked over to it and searched through the papers on the table.
His eyes eventually fell on the final line of one of the papers, which contained clues pointing to the restaurants in the city.
Yan then moved to the cell where he was imprisoned and opened it.
Tan Suzi, who stood at the corner, took a deep breath and asked, "So, it's you? What's actually happening?"
"The berserkers escaped their cell," Yan said.
"Didn't you say you can handle them? Go there, why have you come back?" Tan Suzi asked.
"I will be going out for a while, and when I come back, I will knock on the room three times, open it right then," Yan said.
Tan Suzi looked at him. "You are going to jailbreak? Yan, that would cause trouble for our mission."
"I am not, I will be back, I believe the general whom we are searching for is responsible for this situation," Yan said.
"I am going," Yan said and left the place immediately.
He walked and hid behind the walls whenever he saw guards moving towards the cell of the berserkers, and then he quietly slipped through the exit and arrived in the outside world.
Then he moved towards the restaurant, especially the restaurant that made him feel like he lost something.
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Restaurants rarely looked suspicious, they smelled of broth and oil, of cheap wine and burnt grain, places where travelers loosened their belts and merchants forgot caution for the length of a meal.
Sunset City had many of them, and that morning,
Luna intended to see them all.The first was a squat wooden building near the eastern market, its beams blackened by years of cooking smoke. When Luna stepped inside, the clink of bowls and the easy noise of morning trade died instantly.
The owner hurried forward, wiping his hands nervously on a stained cloth. "Officer... is something wrong? My customers are just—"
"Inspection," Luna cut him off, her voice flat.
She didn't wait for an invitation as the guards moved through the kitchen, checking wine jars and storage shelves, even prying open the narrow cellar beneath the floorboards.
They found nothing but cabbage, dried meat, and a room full of irritated diners.
Luna left without an apology.
The second restaurant was a narrow gap wedged between a butcher and a cloth merchant. This owner didn't hide his nerves behind a cloth, he hid them behind a shout.
"Do you know how much tax I pay every month?" he barked, hovering over the soldiers as they searched. "Is this what I get back? Harassment?"
Luna's men ignored him, systematically turning over barrels and poking through the kitchen fire pit.
When they found nothing out of the ordinary, only the sour smell of cheap wine, Luna felt her patience lessening.
She stepped back into the street, the owner's voice still trailing after them like a bad smell. She unfolded the street map, her finger tracing the district with slow, deliberate pressure.
"There is one more nearby," a soldier said, his voice dropping an octave.
Luna looked up. "Which one?"
The soldier hesitated, shifting his weight. "It belongs to Noble Ura."
For a moment, no one spoke. Nobles complicated things. Not the powerful ones, they were predictable, but the minor ones who lived in the narrow space between privilege and ambition.
They demanded respect they hadn't earned and possessed just enough influence to make a report disappear.
Luna folded the map with a sharp snap. "We will check it out anyway."
The third restaurant stood at the far end of the street. It was larger and better maintained, with a freshly polished sign and clean windows.
The door stood slightly open, yet the place felt wrong as no voice came out.
Luna pushed the door open as the guards followed her inside, the scene, at first glance, appeared normal.
Every table was occupied, but the air was heavy with a stillness that didn't belong in a dining hall where everyone kept their heads down.
The food had become cold for so long.
One man sat with his hand frozen, chopsticks hovering halfway to his mouth. A fly landed on the rim of his bowl, then crawled across his unmoving knuckles. He didn't flinch.
A guard took a careful step forward.
The wooden floor creaked, a sound that seemed to travel through the room like a stone dropped into a deep well.
Slowly, as if responding to the vibration, a head lifted, one more head lifted, then another.
Their eyes weren't drunk or tired.
They were red, the veins beneath the skin darkened.
A man's fingers began to twitch, another's shoulders trembled with a low, vibrating thrum.
"...Officer," the soldier nearest the door whispered, gripping his sword tightly.
Luna's gaze swept the hall.
"Do not move," Luna said, her voice low.
But the people were already rising.
The movement was stiff, as if the bones inside their bodies didn't quite belong to them anymore. One man lifted his head fully. His red eyes locked onto the soldiers.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then he smiled.
The other person next to him also smiled, then another, until the same smile spread across the room.
In that instant, the silence shattered as chairs overturned, tables were thrown, and the entire room of berserkers rushed towards the door, towards them.