Chapter 95 - 94: Black Death Prison

Chapter 95: Chapter 94: Black Death Prison

’Seeing this, I knew Morici was fooled by the Nulis Federation. They never intended to kill Gutaf, or else they would have provided more powerful Extraordinary weapons.’

’Sure enough, the player who had previously collected and organized this information held the same view.’

’The Nulis Federation’s goal was probably to force Gutaf to use his Superpower to save himself, thereby pushing for a change in the game.’

’And that’s what happened. After the bloody coup, the third round of the game began the era of Superpowers and Card evolution.’

’Why would the Nulis Federation do this? What exactly do they know?’

...

Before he learned that the game had a defensive mechanism, Chen Qi would have probably doubted the Prime Minister’s deduction that "Maurice was tricked by the Nulis Federation."

But knowing this premise, Chen Qi could deduce it himself.

As the Sovereign Country to the surrounding smaller nations, Chen Qi didn’t believe for a second that the Nulis Federation had no Transcendents.

After the King’s Game began, it was impossible that the Nulis Federation hadn’t conducted probes.

The most likely scenario was that they dispatched Transcendents of the Awakened Tier to investigate, as apprentices were still too weak compared to the armies of small nations.

And once a Transcendent entered the Lanyu Kingdom, their fate went without saying.

No matter how stupid the Nulis Federation was, they wouldn’t have treated Gutaf, the one who created all this, as an ordinary person.

But during the bloody coup, they only deliberately instigated it, without providing any Extraordinary weapons.

How could the armaments of a small nation like the Lanyu Kingdom possibly kill a Transcendent?

Chen Qi even suspected that the various assassination attempts Gutaf had previously faced were also just a form of probing.

After these probes, they obtained the information they wanted and only then began to set everything in motion.

But what was the Nulis Federation’s purpose in doing this?

Upgrading the King’s Game from a management-style game to a Superpower combat game, no matter how you looked at it, was like nurturing a tiger that would cause future trouble—the threat had only grown larger.

Chen Qi couldn’t figure it out himself, but it didn’t matter. Cloze Jic would step in and handle everything.

He just needed to keep reading.

...

"I believe that to understand all of this, we must trace it back to the origin of the game."

"For example, what kind of existence is the game itself?"

"And how did Gutaf create the King’s Game?"

"Great minds think alike. Several other players are already working on this, but my status obviously grants me access to more information."

"After several years of investigation, we have finally pieced together a complete origin of the event."

"Although there are certainly many missing pieces, we can at least reconstruct the full story of how the King’s Game came to be."

"As the protagonist of this story, Gutaf, the creator of the King’s Game, is naturally the starting point of our investigation."

"We started from the year of Gutaf’s birth, combing through his life experiences over and over."

"Before the age of 20, Gutaf was very ordinary and unremarkable. His life story was just like that of many other young people from the same period."

"After turning 20, Gutaf entered society and began working in the import-export trade."

"During this period, he came into contact with all sorts of people, but the ones who influenced him the most were the Dimia Gang."

"Partly through their coercion and partly through their funding, Gutaf became a smuggler."

"Perhaps because he was too skilled, within just a few years, Gutaf had become one of the top ten smugglers in the entire Lanyu Kingdom. But a tall tree catches the wind; Gutaf and the Dimia Gang suffered a joint attack from their competitors."

"The Dimia Gang was severely weakened, and Gutaf was thrown in jail, locked up in the Black Death Prison, which the Lanyu Kingdom used to hold serious offenders."

"And this was the beginning of everything. We also believe the Black Death Prison is the source of it all."

When writing this, the Prime Minister had repeatedly circled the name "Black Death Prison," clearly reminding the reader of its importance.

...

’Black Death Prison?’

Chen Qi searched his memories. He had lived in the Lanyu Kingdom for over 20 years and had never heard of such a place.

’But Gutaf was actually a smuggler... you really can’t judge a book by its cover. His official biography said he was a legitimate businessman.’

’Thanks for the informative tidbit, Mr. Prime Minister. You’ve really gone to a lot of trouble. Please, by all means, completely expose His Majesty our King.’

Filled with boundless respect for Cloze Jic, Chen Qi continued reading.

The next long section described the origin of the Black Death Prison.

It was a story that could be traced back over a thousand years, and if one went back even further, it could be traced to the demise of the Mountain Ghost.

Several thousand years ago, a meteor fell from the sky, shattering the largest mountain range in the Lanyu Kingdom and turning it into the present-day Chaotic Star Rock.

Although it’s unknown if this was related to the death of the Mountain Ghost, after the mountain range was shattered, the magnetic Mist that had enveloped the entire island did indeed disappear.

As a result, outside human forces began to enter on a large scale. This was because the meteor’s impact, which had shattered the mountains, had also endowed the island with vast mineral resources.

Mining has always been a labor-intensive industry. As more and more outsiders arrived, the island’s level of civilization rose sharply.

Eventually, after several hundred years of evolution, the original mining companies united to form a nation, which was the predecessor to the Lanyu Kingdom.

Although the vast majority of the Lanyu Kingdom’s population consisted of outside immigrants, the local indigenous people had not been wiped out.

They still worshipped the Mountain Ghost and lived in the harshest environment of the Chaotic Star Rock.

Originally, the two sides kept to themselves, but as time went on, all the easily accessible ore was depleted.

The profit-seeking mining companies naturally set their sights on the Chaotic Star Rock, which they had previously left untouched due to its harsh environment.

That was where the real prize lay.

What followed was a matter of course. After countless struggles, the two sides finally reached a compromise.

The major mining companies could enter the Chaotic Star Rock to mine, but as a price, they had to provide offerings to the Mountain Ghost.

For giants like the mining companies, they had plenty of ways to procure death row inmates.

To keep up appearances, they joined forces to establish a prison within the Chaotic Star Rock, specifically for holding death row inmates.

This truly killed two birds with one stone, and both sides were delighted.

Several hundred more years passed. The main mineral deposits of the Chaotic Star Rock were also depleted, leaving only the most difficult to extract, and most valuable, rare metal elements.

However, a large portion of these rare metal elements was located within the territory of the indigenous people. The mining giants had no choice but to seek out the natives again, intending to negotiate with them.

They had expected another difficult struggle, but they never imagined that the indigenous people were already on the verge of extinction.

In just a single month, the native population had dwindled from hundreds of thousands to only a few thousand.

The mining company representatives who visited the native tribes at the time were scared out of their wits, thinking they had encountered a great plague.

But the answer they got from the natives was utterly "bizarre."

The hundreds of thousands of natives who had mysteriously disappeared had apparently been eaten by the mountain.

To be precise, they had been eaten by the death row prison inside the mountain.

The natives’ two-thousand-plus years of sacrifices had finally stirred up some major trouble.

The follow-up to this matter was, naturally, that the mining companies joyfully relocated all the remaining natives.

Although the mining giants did not encounter any incidents of the mountain eating people after they moved in,

for their own safety, they still didn’t shut down the prison located deep inside the mountain, even though the natives were gone.

By this time, the prison had already earned the name Black Death Prison, a name that made all death row inmates tremble in fear upon hearing it.

But strangely, for the next several hundred years, the prison never caused another mass-death incident.

It did, however, gain an even more terrifying rumor.

Once any prisoner was sent to the Black Death Prison, they could absolutely not leave until their Sin had been absolved.

And if anyone foolishly tried to escape, they would become completely lost inside the mountain and be eaten by it.

For a thousand years, this legend had never been disproven.

The unlucky Gutaf was sent to this very prison by his competitors in the 33rd year of his life.