Chapter 35 – The Big Gamble

Sending Sophia to escape on her own was incredibly dangerous, but it was the most viable path forward.

Halunar had told me that the secret passage was built by the very Pope who commissioned this Cathedral, intended as his private escape route. It was a one-way passage that could only be opened from the inside.

That Pope had reigned in peace for twenty years, never once having to use that emergency escape route until his death. After he passed away, it faded into oblivion, and no one knew of its existence anymore. So the probability of Sophia escaping undetected was quite high.

Once Sophia made it outside, she wouldn’t be able to find Rachel on her own. Rachel, in all likelihood, was still under the thumb of the Royal Family. That was why I told the girl to find Henry McCaley.

This was where my riskiest bet lay.

Upon receiving that cryptic message from me, he would undoubtedly have to come here for a face-to-face meeting.

If his act of killing Princess Claire hadn’t been an accident, it was possible we shared a common goal: returning Rachel to her rightful place. If so, I might have just gained a powerful ally for the present.

In a worst-case scenario – if Henry’s killing of Claire was purely accidental or driven by some other political motive unrelated to Rachel – then both Sophia and I would likely forfeit our lives tonight.

This was my final solution for the current situation. If it failed, I would have Halunar reset everything back to the very first day.

The mere thought of spending another month catering to that brat Jullius made my already anemic body feel nauseous. But I had no better alternative.

Lost in these wandering thoughts, I drifted into an unconscious slumber. It was so deep that I felt as though I’d only closed my eyes for a moment, yet when I opened them, broad daylight was streaming in.

Someone was repeatedly striking the iron bars of my cell with a metal rod, creating a deafening, ear-splitting racket.

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“Sleeping like the dead, are we? Get up! Someone wants to see you!”

That sentence jolted me awake instantly. Had my gamble actually paid off?

Afterward, I was escorted to the surface. My hands were bound with rope, and the mana-suppressing shackles remained clamped around my ankles. They led me into a small room within the Cathedral, where Henry McCaley sat waiting.

He was clad in black knight’s armor, his sword still hanging at his hip, his face a mask of total indifference.

Even in my first Isekai life, despite having traveled with him for nearly two years, I had never been able to fully grasp the nature of this man.

Henry dismissed the guards and signaled for me to sit in the chair opposite him. I was just about to ask about Sophia when he spoke first.

“Who exactly are you?”

I froze, my mouth hanging half-open. The question felt… strange.