Chapitre 4: 3. A cigarette butt
"Name?"
The guard sat across from Noland Lee, asking without lifting his head. A yellowed notebook lay open on the table in front of him.
"Noland Lee Jarvis."
"Age?"
"Twenty-one."
The guard flicked his ink pen at the floor, scribbling some words carelessly in the notebook:
"Ah, you can speak fluently already and without any confusion in your consciousness. It seems that the severe vomiting and diarrhea didn't damage your brain."
"Vomiting and diarrhea?" Noland Lee was slightly taken aback.
"Yes, vomiting and diarrhea." The guard glanced at Noland Lee, a warning in his gaze:
"If anyone asks what happened on the carriage, you only have these few words, got it? Vomiting and diarrhea."
The guards on the train must be afraid of someone leaking that sleeping powder was brought onboard.
It was an unexpected incident with potentially big or small consequences.
It all depended on how the informant handled it.
Beneath the eaves, Noland Lee honestly replied:
"Yes, vomiting and diarrhea."
"Good." The guard nodded in satisfaction, pinching the cigarette in his mouth with his fingers, flicking ash into the ashtray on the table before moving it back and taking a hard drag.
As he exhaled a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling, he lamented:
"If only all the sin soldiers were as honest as you. It would save us a lot of trouble. Cleaning up blood, sweeping glass fragments, and fixing windows; I was almost outdone by the trouble those two bastards caused."
The guard wrote a few more words and continued talking to himself, seemingly treating this task of taking a statement as a rare break.
"Why do you think those two sons of bitches wanted to escape through the window? Did they think they could escape from the Suffering Borderland just because they dug up a few graves and sold some illegal tomb artifacts in South Capital Province? What delusional fools..."
Seeing the guard in a good mood and wanting to pry some information, Noland Lee timely asked:
"Chief Officer, according to you, are those two tomb raiders?"
The guard's eyes lit up at being called Chief Officer and his liking for Noland Lee increased. He grinned:
"Heh, tomb raiders? They are far more skilled than ordinary tomb raiders; they are tomb-robbing masters with some fame in the illegal forces of South Capital Province."
The guard took a drag of his cigarette:
"... I don't know the specifics.
"All I know is that these two are very good at stealing artifacts from ancient graves and have never failed. They are well-versed in tomb mechanisms and the obscure ancient Tatis language."
"If it weren't for their internal strife over the sharing of the spoils, local officers would have had a much harder time capturing them now."
Noland Lee narrowed his eyes slightly.
He keenly detected an unusual detail.
There were only three sin soldiers in the carriage he had been in before.
These were himself and the tomb-robbing brothers who met their end.
The tomb-robbing brothers were proficient in the Tatis ancient language.
So was Noland Lee.
Three individuals proficient in that language, all with some expertise in archaeology, were placed in a single carriage to be watched.
Was it a coincidence or intentional?
If it was intentional, what was the purpose behind the person who arranged it all?
As Noland Lee pondered, a wailing whistle sounded from the front of the steam train, followed by the harsh noise of brake pads coupling with the wheels.
The steam train was slowing down.
The journey was about to reach its final destination.
Noland Lee temporarily broke away from his thoughts and looked out the window, pressing his face against the glass to see ahead.
The towering city walls rose up on the horizon, blocking part of the overcast sky.
Behind the walls was a stone fortress with a distinctly medieval architectural style, with the flickering lights on the outer walls and corridors barely visible.
"Alright, Sin Soldier Noland Lee Jarvis, your graveyard has arrived."
The guard closed the notebook in front of him and stuffed it into his pocket.
"I have a pretty good impression of you... Don't die too quickly. If you are cautious enough and careful enough, you might survive three corps tasks."
The guard held the door handle with one hand and pinched out the cigarette in his mouth with the other.
He placed the remaining bit of the cigarette in front of Noland Lee:
"Take it and hide it well. Cigarettes are the most sought-after thing in Korabo Legion. Remember what I said, vomiting and diarrhea."
"Yes, Chief Officer. I understand." Noland Lee watched him leave.
He picked up the pathetic cigarette butt, waved it in the air a few times to let the guard's saliva dry quickly, and finally tucked the cigarette butt into his waistband.
This must be the guard's hush money.
It might even become a lifesaver.
...
The steam train entered the Legion Fortress, slowly stopping its heavy body.
Amid the long whistle of the train, Noland Lee was escorted off by guards and saw his fellow travelers.
About 30 sin soldiers were disembarking from a distant carriage.
Like Noland Lee, these men had violated the Empire's law and had been sent to the Suffering Borderland as sin soldiers.
However, their situation was somewhat different from Noland Lee's.
Noland Lee became a sin soldier as a result of the operation of the Debt Inheritance Act and the Individual Debt Processing Act.
From beginning to end, neither Noland Lee nor the original master had ever harmed anyone with violence.
But apart from him, the other sin soldiers were thieves, robbers, and murderers, full of instability and aggression.
Simply executing them would be a waste of the Empire's resources spent on them.
So, they would be sent to the Suffering Borderland as cannon fodder.
When cannon fodder knows they are cannon fodder, then trouble comes. They won't sit back and wait for death to come.
If management and control are slightly neglected, these highly explosive and dangerous men will revolt.
For this reason, the soldiers who came to receive the sin soldiers used a special tool to manage them.
That was the Electric Shock Collar.
Once this hard and icy metal ring was fastened around the neck of a sin soldier, any sin soldier who dared to defy orders would immediately be subdued by the sizzling electric current.
Noland Lee had one of these on his neck as well.
At the same time, he received his sin soldier uniform—a gray coat covered in dried bloodstains.
On the front and back of the coat, there were a series of numbers. This was the sin soldier's identification number, replacing their names from now on.
After all, there was no need for soldiers to remember the names of sin soldiers, who could die at any time.
Noland Lee's sin soldier identification number was 888.
Three eights, prosperous all the way, was the definition in his original world before crossing.
But in the unfamiliar world after crossing, the number 888 had no special meaning and would not guarantee his success and fame.
Cadeaux
-- Cadeau
reçu État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone