By the Grace of the Gods: Volume 14 [Parts 1 to 4] by Roy

Author:Roy
Language: eng
Format: epub

***

Once we’d cleared enough cursed energy, we marched into the tower with light slimes on our heads and an emperor scavenger slime leading the way.

The tower had a donut-like blueprint. Starting with the warden and executioner’s quarters on the outside, it moved to guard posts, holding cells for inmates on death row, then the gallows in the center.

To prevent inmates from escaping, I’d been told, the passages within the tower were somewhat mazelike. The abandoned structure was dark, but the light slimes on our heads did a fine job of lightning our way.

Whatever Undead were left inside didn’t pose a problem either. The corridors were narrow, so once the enormous emperor slime blocked them, any corporeal Undead had no way to run. The Undead wardens that came rushing to the entrance were being pushed back like a rolling tide. Occasionally, a wraith passed through the walls, where they had presumably avoided any smoke that had filled the tower. But each of them was taken care of by a single Light Shot. As long as I focused on detecting magical energy and could sense a wraith approaching through the wall, it wasn’t a difficult task.

“I expected grueling work when we observed the city from the outside, but no such luck,” Reinbach joked.

“The slimes have helped us approach this in the safest way... But this is almost too easy,” Sever said.

“Oh, Mister Sebas. Can we have some water?” I asked.

“Right away.” Sebas cast a spell and generated several liters of water, which the emperor slime happily drank up. After ten seconds, the massive scavenger jiggled, and I sensed that it’d had enough.

“‘That’s enough,’ it said. Thank you,” I relayed.

“I can help with that much any time,” Sebas said.

We kept walking for some time after that, through what seemed like a sizable tower. Of course, all the compartments it once housed explained its size.

“We should find midnight dew below the ground level,” Reinbach reminded us.

“It normally grows wild in dark places, like caves. So, the Starving Gallows fits the bill,” Remily said.

“That brings back memories... I used to visit every year while training new recruits. Those stairs are perfect for lower-body conditioning,” Sever reminisced.

“The stairs are that long?” I asked.

“Didn’t I tell you?”

“Only that it was a place where inmates were executed by starvation, but nothing about its structure.”

“All right, then I should tell you, even though it won’t be a pleasant description,” Sever warned before starting.

The only things the Starving Gallows held were a spiral staircase that led deep underground, and a pair of shackles at every step. Every day, a new death-row inmate was chained to the top of the stairs, bumping every surviving inmate down by one step. Rinse and repeat, so an inmate would descend further from the sun every day.

Once the inmates were bumped down and the dead were removed, they received some stale bread and water. At this point, I wondered how the place was called the Starving Gallows when the inmates were fed. The bread and water were not an act of mercy, though, nor were they poisoned.

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