Chapter 49
Shattered Lake Prison, Cafeteria
Ashe looked at the crab roe tofu, lemon berry cheesecake, and golden pineapple juice before him. His nose was filled with the aroma of these delicacies, but he had no appetite.
These dishes were no ordinary fare, available only on the cafeteria's secret nu which prisoners couldn't access even with high contribution points.
Supposedly these dishes were considered premium luxury cuisine on the outside, with ingredients worth a third of an average person's monthly salary.
And the taste lived up to the price - Ashe suspected the chef had used magecraft, as he, a city boy worn down by MSG, almost swallowed his tongue after the first bite due to the sheer deliciousness. It was so good it made one feel content to die after eating it.
But thinking of his impending death sapped his appetite entirely.
The other condemned shared similar feelings. So took a bite but ate no more, so wept as they ate, and others held their cutlery backwards, the unsharpened edges the only thing keeping them from triggering their neck chips' anti-suicide warnings.
Only two ate with gusto - the blue-skinned cannibal and the elf Valcas.
They seed unbothered by the impending Blood Moon Tribunal. The cannibal shoveled the food in with his hands, ordering plate after plate, while Valcas demonstrated ten ways to properly hold cutlery with elegance as if dining in a revolving restaurant atop a skyscraper.
"Having trouble eating? Need any help?"
The kindly voice of the guard Nago was like a whip soaked in salt water, making all the condemned shudder and quickly bend their heads to eat faster.
Even Ashe was no exception.
The reason the condemned were so cowed by Nago was due to the "monitoring" they had endured all afternoon, which had completely worn down their defiance. Facing a guard who could control their neck chips, even the most stubborn obeyed - if you didn't obey, your head would be guided into obedience.
To be fair, Nago hadn't done anything too extre to them.
He hadn't even touched a hair on them.
There was no physical harm at all.
He just made the condemned follow his schedule.
For example, at altis - if soone didn't eat, Nago would activate the chip control system and make them eat through voice commands:
"Open your mouth, put the food in your mouth, chew once, twice, three tis, swallow..."
Or when watching videos - if soone didn't watch or fidgeted, Nago would turn them into a model viewer:
"Sit properly, hands on your knees, watch the screen, blink once every five seconds."
Or when breathing fresh air on the observation deck, Nago said their superiors wanted group photos to rember the occasion, with the following requirents: tidy attire, smiling faces, good ntal attitude, harmonious group atmosphere...
Undoubtedly the condemned alone couldn't satisfy these demands, so Nago provided a little "help".
Ashe got off easy, just lying on the ground smiling up at the cara, but Valcas went above and beyond - sitting on the cannibal's shoulders with his hands atop his head in fake cat ears, his gaunt, gloomy face beaming a sweet smile at the cara.
And one shot wasn't enough, they had to take multiples, posing from suave to chumming it up. All kinds of ntal attitudes were covered.
After being contorted into various poses by Nago, the condemned were completely numb, just wanting to satisfy his demands quickly and be done with it. So even thought it'd be better to just skip to the Blood Moon Tribunal.
Destroy us quickly, we're tired.
Thus at Nago's words, they imdiately abandoned their morose thoughts and hurriedly ate their al.
At this mont, Nago's pressure exceeded even that of the impending Tribunal.
After all, "death" was still uncertain.
But "a fate worse than death" was right before their eyes.
Ashe glanced around the empty cafeteria and quietly asked the man beside him, "How co no one else is here eating dinner? I can understand skipping lunch, but don't the others still need to eat?"
The man next to him was nad Archibald Harvey. His dark skin and curly hair made him look like a laborer, but he was actually a night shift worker - a janitor who handled corpses.
So may wonder how disposing of corpses could warrant the death penalty. This had to do with the standards of death - in the Blood Moon Kingdom, only bodies declared dead by a licensed dic were considered corpses.
Without a dic's pronouncent, even if your head was off, legally you were still alive.
dics could truly resurrect people who had lost their heads, and many "dead" bodies could still be saved.
Thus backroom workers like Harvey who helped underground organizations dispose of bodies didn't get sympathetic labels like "accomplice
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