CH 4

Chapter 4. The Emperor worth two silver leaves(3)

Translator: BaeBae

“Grab it!”

The one gladiator who quickly analyzed the situation cried out.

The closest gladiator desperately grabbed the metal chain but all he could do was hold on for dear life as the creature dragged him around left and right.

Gladiators hurriedly rushed out of the cave before the creatures turned it into chaos.

Only one was left behind. Baldy was sprawled on the floor and had pissed himself.

“Fuu, Fuck….”

He tried numerous times to forcefully get up but the strength had left his legs. He gave up and sat back down on the wet ground.

Out of options, he hopelessly started to crawl towards the cave exit.

Then, his gaze shifted to Juan. Juan was a few steps away from the same place as before.

He wasn’t moving towards the crazy woman.

Very slowly,Juan walked towards the back end of the cave.

Beside his foot lay a broken pickaxe that slaves tossed it away before escaping.

Juan picked up the pickaxe.

It felt strange that Juan’s tree branch-alike arms could even lift it up.

Juan lifted the pickaxe and brought it down against the wall.

For baldy, this situation seemed like a prank.

He was about to enjoy his moment when Juan suddenly woke up, the creatures started causing havoc and upon standing up Juan started to pry at the wall with his pickaxe.

But above all this, the most laughable point was his uncertainty at whether he pissed his pants when he thought creatures were rushing at him, or whether it was when he had made direct eye contact with Juan.

**********

A fist sized stone was pulled out from the wall the moment the pickaxe slammed against it.

One could feel a small pleasure at the pile of dirt pouring down from the wall.

Juan again gripped the pickaxe and lifted it up. Before, Juan was finding it difficult to even lift a broken pickaxe, but now was expertly axing against the wall.

It had been a while since he’d done any pure physical labor work.

During when he was emperor, a few magical chants could achieve tasks beyond imagination.

But even without chants, he had thousands, tens of thousands of subordinates willing to do his bidding.

Now, all he had was just one pickaxe in his possession.

Clang!

As the pickaxe struck down at a rock buried under the dirt, his arms shook. Looking at it on a positive note, it meant his swings had plenty of power behind it.

This physical labor was unintentionally providing an effective workout for Juan’s body.

Naturally, cave widening construction work was something that a 9 year old couldn’t handle.

Even for an adult, pickaxe was heavy to lift and proper meals were not distributed as well.

Normally, overused muscles repair with time and come back more healthy than before, but doing such tiring cave work didn’t help strengthen the muscles but only ruptured it making it worse.

Luckily, Juan’s body was constructed on mana.

Mana composed his body and kept it going.

The fact that Juan’s body was weak could be interpreted positively; it would take only a bit of mana to restore it.

For more,

But cozied inside her warm cuddle, Juan slowly started to forget the feeling of the black blade. The day gradually dulled until it disappeared.

*********

“Hey, kid!”

During work, he turned his head responding to him being called.

Person who bothered him the most after the crazy woman was the Faun.

The mistake laid in talking to him once. Being a Faun, his ability to climb walls were excellent, so he was working in areas that were more dangerous.

“You seem much better than before when you were acting like a corpse?”

“……. could you bugger off. Ahlil [1].”

“Ahlil? Using antique words are we. Nowadays everyone calls us half breeds. Well, though we still like being called ahlil more.”

For more,

The expensive parts would have been sold and parts like intestines and lean meat would have been tossed in.

Boiled until the bottom of the bot started to burn, this eradicated most toxin’s inside creatures.

A few people still did get stomach aches, but ironically, those parts contained vast amounts of mana, so it wasn’t all too bad.

A normal person did not have the ability to accept the mana and had to release most of it out, but Juan was absorbing every bit of mana as he ate.

He made a bitter smile.

The sensation of moving around, breathing in and out, sleeping, eating and drinking, all these actions were telling Juan to live on, to become stronger. It was building up strength within him.

Even the sound of the prayers close by.

While chewing on the unknown identity of meat inside the porridge, Juan looked about.

A considerable number of people were eating just like Juan, but there were quite a lot that were praying like the crazy woman. Looking at them, Juan felt confused.

Gods were mostly dead.

He was confident of this as he killed them with his own hands.. The ones that were alive fled to places that they could never return from.

Listening closely, their prayers were not raised to gods.

“Without a doubt, eventually the emperor will rise and help us from this suffering…..”

It was a prayer none other than to Juan, the emperor.

Juan felt strange.

He was enthroned as a saviour of humanity.

But most of these slaves were half-humans and the few humans there, were mostly people captured from outside the empire.

For these folks to be praying to the emperor, it was difficult to say if they were foolish or truly unfortunate.

Not only slaves, but gladiators, soldiers, even the inspector prayed to the emperor.

In the past, Juan did see people giving him praise but would have never thought this to be the case for people in the lowest social ladder. Even the Faun had his hands tightly grasped together.

[1] Ahlil – What half breeds were called back when Juan was emperor.