Serena and the Mysterious Labyrinth - Chapter 344

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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344. Prison Break Veteran (2)

“If you called me, then speak.”

‘We moved while holding hands. It was good that we held hands.’

In the second round, even though she had been holding Ralph’s hand, when she opened her eyes in the cell, they were separated from each other.

But Krom had moved while still holding hands.

‘Why is that?’

Curious about the reason and racking her brain, Serena let go of Krom’s hand and observed his condition.

He looked fine on the outside. He had ten fingers and one more eye than the Princess.

“Is there anything strange? Are you dizzy, or can’t move your body? Do you feel another soul?”

“Don’t know. Seems like it might be thanks to the charm the skeleton lady gave me.”

Krom looked at the magical tool Countess Nex had given him with curiosity.

Then suddenly, as if he lost interest, he observed the surroundings.

“Oh my, it’s really a prison cell. Amazing, I could die. Ah, I’m already dead.”

Krom looked around the cell and exclaimed with wide eyes in admiration.

Ralph, who was imprisoned for the fourth time but couldn’t remember the previous three times, also admired and examined the cell.

“It’s like a prison from a novel!”

“But it stinks a lot. Seems like a place to put people who are gonna die.”

“Didn’t I say the standards would be strange? It seems we were really imprisoned for murder.”

Three people who had killed one in a hundred thousand gathered together.

Though there was no way to know how each of them remembered their murders, the three looked at each other and smiled bitterly.

“Still, I’m glad to be imprisoned together with the Princess!”

“Right. Two is better than one, three is better than two. Krom, does seeing it directly bring anything to mind?”

“Wait a little bit.”

Krom thoroughly investigated the cell. Serena wanted to see the skills of Krom, who was a prison veteran, so she waited quietly.

The first thing Krom checked was naturally the barred door.

“Ah, it looks like it could be destroyed! Should I break it?”

“What idiot opens the door and escapes from prison?”

“Huh? But Krom also checked the door.”

“This is basic!”

Krom took out lock-picking tools and unlocked the barred door.

“They took away weapons, but didn’t take this. How ridiculous.”

By the way, Krom’s carving knife hadn’t disappeared either.

Serena thought the carving knife seemed more dangerous, but Krom took it for granted.

“The blade is dull and small. Even the prison I was in before let this much slide.”

Krom slightly opened the door, confirmed that no alarm sounded or guards came running, then locked the door he had just opened again.

“Even if you can pick a prison door, not picking it is proper etiquette.”

“Is that so?”

“What if showing off skills unnecessarily makes it harder to pick doors? What if there’s a fire in the prison, how would you escape? Would the soldier who became a knight take responsibility?”

Having acquired a free pass to the barred door, the next place Krom examined closely wasn’t the wall where a stone was rattling loose, but the toilet in the corner.

It was called a toilet, but it was nothing more than a hole dug in the corner. Krom carefully measured the diameter of the hole in the floor and said something surprising.

“I think I can get out through here?”

“Through the toilet hole?”

“Hey. I’ll go to the adjacent cell.”

Krom gathered only minimal items like lock-picking tools and put his head into the toilet.

At the bold move that even the Undead Crone couldn’t dare to follow, Serena and Ralph gaped and couldn’t close their mouths.

Krom used his small frame to slip into the hole and disappeared.

Not long after, Krom spoke through the toilet hole.

“I’ve arrived.”

Perhaps because he was speaking into the hole, his voice echoed slightly.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. The adjacent cell is empty with no owner. I think I can go to other cells connected through this hole. Should I go or not?”

‘He can go to all the connected cells. That means I can open the treasure chests!’

There was no need for Serena to move through the disgusting hole. Krom could open the doors from inside.

“Krom. First, try going to all the cells you can reach.”

“Got it.”

When Krom entered the hole, slightly echoing sounds came from the hole.

While escape was still far off, they were happy to be able to enter other cells, but an ominous sound came from the corridor.

Clank.

The sound of metal scraping and hitting stone. It was the appearance of guards.

‘And there are many! This isn’t ordinary patrol, they came to escort us.’

While thinking about why a group of guards suddenly came, Serena remembered what she had told the party before the strategy.

‘Right! I told them to find a way to contact me first. They must have applied for visitation right away!’

This was a disaster. Serena urgently shouted into the hole.

“Krom! Come back! Guards are coming!”

“What? Ah, I see. They’re ignoring me and passing by? Are guards allowed to do that?”

She had already figured out that if he was in another cell, the guards couldn’t see him.

The problem was whether visitation would still be possible when they discovered there were insufficient prisoners in the cell.

“Come quickly!”

“I’m coming!”

She could hear Krom crawling hard through the passage, but the guards’ steps were faster than Krom’s.

“What should we do? They’re here!”

A group of living armor stopped in front of the cell where Serena and Ralph were.

Five guards simultaneously examined the inside of the cell.

Though not visible now because it was bright, if the lights had been out, five pairs of glowing eyes would have overlapped in the cell.

“Krom, stop! You can’t come!”

“I’m almost there, why do you keep changing what you say!”

If Krom came out of the toilet while the guards were looking at the cell, it would only result in being caught red-handed trying to escape.

‘If they find out people are missing, they’ll do emergency patrol. I can let him in then.’

There was a high chance of missing the visitation opportunity, but it couldn’t be helped.

Serena was waiting to hear a loud whistle sound when the guard in front of the door moved.

Click.

The barred door opened and the guards entered.

They put shackles and handcuffs on Serena and Ralph, connected chains to the shackles, and dragged them to the corridor.

‘Huh?’

Serena was confused by the guards’ unexpected behavior.

However, remembering being kicked for falling due to shackles, her body faithfully followed the chains.

“They seem to be dragging us away. What about Krom?”

Last time Serena had told him to calm down, but this time the knight who heard nothing was confused and asked the Princess.

Sorry, but Serena didn’t have the presence of mind to answer either.

‘Is it okay without Krom? Are we going to visitation like this?’

If it were a real prison, she could at least read the guards’ expressions to guess the answer, but with monsters moving mechanically, that was impossible, which was frustrating.

‘Ah! I don’t know!’

Serena loudly asked Krom, who would be left alone.

“Krom! Please investigate the other cells as planned!”

Krom stuck only his head out of the adjacent cell’s toilet and said.

“You’re not going and never coming back, are you?”

“I’ll come back! I’m counting on you!”

Clank clank clank. The Princess and knight were taken away surrounded by the group of guards.

Suddenly left alone, Krom confirmed there was no one around to hear and grumbled.

“Damn it, what a mess.”

***

“Even if this body is worn out, isn’t this too much?”

Krom muttered until his mouth, which couldn’t produce saliva, went dry.

Though there was no subject, the target of her grumbling was clear.

“I said I’d do everything you asked. You’re not leaving me alone though.”

Despite her grumbling, Krom visited every cell she could reach as the Princess had ordered.

While moving between cells, she did discover treasure chests but didn’t touch them.

‘What if an undead touches it and gets cursed.’

Actually, Krom did want to try opening the treasure chests.

The greed that had dominated her life when she was alive had mostly disappeared upon death, so it wasn’t that she coveted the treasure.

She was curious about the fun of opening treasure chests.

When she first fell into the labyrinth, she had opened treasure chests under Lucas’s orders, who was worried about traps.

But back then, even if she opened treasure chests, the treasures inside couldn’t become hers, and she couldn’t enjoy it since she didn’t know when she might be cut down by a sword.

Perhaps some regret remained, as her long-retired fingers twitched whenever she saw treasure chests.

Krom suppressed her desire to open treasure chests with undead patience.

She didn’t want to presumptuously touch treasure chests and have her contract terminated, only to wander the labyrinth suffering terrible pain.

“What’s the point of opening treasure chests when I’m dead. Even if treasure comes out, I can’t use it…”

The Undead Crone felt bitter about the fact that she had died without being able to spend the money she had saved by even selling drugs.

Thinking of a few glittering gold coins and silver coins, Krom examined the magical device Countess Nex had given her.

She didn’t know what had been done to it, but the blood was drying much slower than she had expected when she received the magical device.

“At this rate, I can move for a long time. Mages are really amazing.”

One disappointing thing was that wounds no longer healed.

She had gotten scratches all over her body while moving through narrow passages, and unless Neet restored them with magic, these wounds would never heal.

Except for the lack of pain, moving was exactly the same as when she was alive. No, rather, since her body moved better than when she was alive, she naturally ended up using her body roughly.

Just a moment ago, she had tried to pull out a bone to pass through a suddenly narrowed passage, only to realize just in time that she wouldn’t be able to put it back in.

If she hadn’t remembered, she would have been dangling one arm the whole time, becoming a burden.

“Can’t go any further this way. I should do something to make following worthwhile.”

Returning to the first cell, Krom took out a small chisel and hammer after brief consideration.

Then she crouched down and chipped at the wall crevice where the stones were loose.

The Undead Crone chipped at the wall with unbelievably fast speed despite her dull-looking appearance.

If Serena had seen that skilled technique, she would have asked if she had escaped prison by digging through walls.

For reference, Krom had once escaped by digging through the floor.

‘I thought about giving up when it felt as stuffy as being a worm. But this is going well.’

As Krom was inwardly satisfied while chipping at the wall, the sound of a guard’s footsteps came from the corridor.

Krom quickly hid the chisel and hammer under the mat and sat upright in the center of the cell, facing forward. Then she waited for the guard to pass by.

Clank clank clank clank.

While comparing the labyrinth guard’s footsteps to real guards’ footsteps, Krom remembered an important fact.

“Damn it! I saw them just pass by earlier!”

Without realizing it, she had acted the same way as when she was imprisoned while alive.

Krom clicked her tongue at herself for being pathetic.

‘Didn’t even know they were in different cells. I saw it clearly myself.’

The fact that the labyrinth’s monsters were stupid was common knowledge that even Krom, who had awakened from being buried in a tomb, had picked up in the lobby.

Krom took out the chisel and hammer from the mat and resumed her work.

Whether the guard’s footsteps approached or not, she didn’t care and cheerfully chipped at the wall.

Piiiiiiiiiii-!

A loud whistle sound echoed through the corridor and cell, then the world flashed.

A red light flashed so brightly that even undead Krom couldn’t keep her wits about her, then a giant X appeared on the wall.

The hammer and chisel she had been holding disappeared, and all her hard work was restored. Seeing the giant X that had appeared on the wall, Krom had an intuition.

“I’m screwed.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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