Elena recalled a specific technique from her past lives—one that inflicted intense pain without leaving a single mark.
The hero who had mastered it knew how to effectively punish wrongdoers.
She had only used it lightly on the manager, but he had broken far more quickly than she expected.
‘I thought he’d hold out longer.’
Elena removed the sock from his mouth.
He looked as if he had surrendered completely.
He immediately began to wail.
“A-anything,” he sobbed.
“Hic’, ask me anything.
I’ll answer it all.
Everything!
‘WaaAh, I was ready to talk from the start, but my mouth was gagged… ‘hnnng’…”
He was already promising answers before she had even asked a question, so terrified that he seemed ready to spill every secret he had.
It was a pathetic sight—a man who unhesitatingly made others suffer was now crying over a few slaps.
‘I went easy on him because I thought he couldn’t take it.’ Perhaps this was the side effect of her leniency.
Elena decided to soothe him with a bit of kindness.
“Shh, be quiet,” she cooed.
“If you’re too loud, I might feel like hitting you again.”
The manager’s tears vanished instantly.
He clamped his mouth shut and darted his eyes around the room.
“Are we ready to talk now?” she asked.
“Y-yes, ma’am.”
“I want to see the list of illegal passengers.”
“Not just the regular list?”
“The illegal passenger list.”
“It’s in the ceiling of my bedroom at home.”
The answer came too quickly.
It was strange that he was not screaming for help.
An inn like this could not be very soundproof, and the innkeeper had practically been licking his chops when she arrived.
They were clearly in cahoots; any suspicious noise should have brought him running.
Yet the manager was being far too compliant.
“Are you planning to run away while I go get the list?” Elena asked, her voice sharp.
“No, ma’am!
It’s really there!” His expression was a desperate plea for her to believe him.
“Why are you being so cooperative?”
“Because I have experience with this!”
“What kind of experience?”
“Something similar happened before!
Being honest is the way to get hit less.”
He gave a servile little laugh, as if begging for mercy.
Elena had come to meet him in person for a simple reason.
Camila had said he was petty.
If she had stood him up, he would have held a grudge and likely refused her passage on a ship later.
It seemed absurd, but she knew such a thing could genuinely happen.
So she had come, and he had behaved exactly as she had predicted.
She, in turn, had beaten him up exactly as planned.
His reaction afterward, however, was just bizarre.
“You went through something similar and still did the same thing again?”
“They told me to live as I always had.”
The people who made such a demand were strange, but this man who actually followed it was something else entirely.
Was he incapable of remorse?
“And you just listened to them?”
“I’m only human!
I was careful for a while.
But what was I supposed to do when my bones ached every time I even thought about doing something bad?”
“Then why did you go back to your old ways?”
“I think they had someone watching me, because they came to see me again one night.” The manager shivered at the memory.
“…They told you to live as usual?”
“Yes.
So I started acting out like I used to.
I was terrified they would come back.”
This man and those people were all unbelievable.
“Didn’t you think that if you kept doing bad things, you’d end up getting beaten by someone else like this?”
“I’m kind of a big shot in this city,” he said with a pathetic sliver of pride.
There was so much she wanted to say, but Elena decided to let it go.
His cooperation was a blessing, and she was not here to reform him.
She was here for information.
The list was her objective, but the manager was a complication.
Leaving him tied up felt risky, yet she could not take him with her.
As she pondered what to do, she realized the answer was right in front of her.
“Do you remember everyone you smuggled out?”
“Uh, um… I don’t remember all of them.
It’s harder if it’s been a while,” he stammered, eyeing her nervously.
He was clearly worried she would beat him again for not remembering.
“Oh, I’m sure you’d remember her,” Elena said sweetly.
“She was a stunning beauty.”
The manager’s eyes widened as if they would pop out of his head.
“Eek!” he shrieked.
He suddenly had a fit, thrashing about despite his bonds.
“…What’s with that reaction?”
As if that was not enough, he squirmed his way to the wall, huddled against it, and began to tremble and mutter.
“I knew it, that woman was a witch.
To get tangled up like this again… How long do I have to suffer this humiliation?”
He seemed to have forgotten Elena’s presence entirely, lost in his own terror.
Annoyed that he was calling the woman she presumed to be her mother a witch, Elena nudged him with her foot.
“Hey.
Snap out of it.”
“Aack’!”
The manager finally became aware of her again and let out a bloodcurdling scream.
He looked up, his face a deathly pale mask of genuine terror.
“What happened between you and that woman?”
“A-are you chasing her, too?
Who in the world is she that so many people are after her?”
‘You, too.’ That one phrase was all Elena needed to guess the situation.
“When you said you went through something similar, you weren’t punished by that woman, were you?
You were beaten by the group that was chasing her.”
“That woman hit me, too!
Her husband even joined in!
They were a terrifying husband-and-wife thug duo!”
His words confirmed it.
The couple had to be her parents.
“You got hit because you were in the wrong,” Elena snapped, her patience wearing thin.
‘What right do you have to raise your voice?’ she warned him with a glare.
“……”
‘Wicked wench,’ the manager’s eyes shot back.
He was the one who had done wrong first, yet he was completely incapable of remorse.
‘Should I hit him more?’ Elena’s mood soured.
She felt a sudden, intense urge to teach the manager what real violence felt like.
“S-so, what was your question?” he asked, his survival instincts kicking in again.
He was quick on the uptake, at least.
“That woman—no, that couple.
Where did they go?”
The manager fell silent.
His eyes darted around, a clear sign he was plotting something.
“It would be best not to lie,” Elena said, kindly raising her fist as a reminder.
He immediately backed down.
“They went to Delis!”
“Delis?”
“Yes, it’s a port city in the Empire!”
‘So they returned to the Empire.’ A wave of relief at being able to track her parents again was quickly followed by a surge of worry.
The conversation had confirmed her fear.
Someone was chasing them.
‘And a group at that.’
It felt like the deeper she went, the more worries piled up.
‘I have to go to Delis.’
With her destination set, Elena crouched down to meet the manager’s eyes.
“Wh-why are you looking at me like that?” he whimpered.
“When is the next ship to Delis?”
“There’s one tomorrow.”
“You can arrange a spot for me, right?”
“B-by illegal passage?”
Elena gave him a look that said, ‘what kind of obvious question is that?’
“Of course I can!
No, I ‘want’ to prepare it for you!”
Elena smiled, tidied the manager’s disheveled appearance, and kindly walked him home.
“Alright, go on in,” she said at his doorstep.
The manager warily opened the door, glancing back at her in disbelief.
“Be at the port at 10 in the morning tomorrow,” he said, trying to shut the door quickly.
But a hand shot out and blocked it.
“Wh-why…” he stammered.
“I don’t think I told you something important.”
“Something important?”
“If you haven’t lied to me, and I depart without any problems, then we’ll never see each other again.”
The manager’s expression contorted at Elena’s bright, cheerful smile.
“…And if I did lie, or if there’s a problem with your departure?”
“Then we’ll see each other again,” she said, her voice dropping to a silken whisper.
“Not casually like this.
But intensely.
So intensely your bones break.” Elena smiled gently and patted his shoulder.
He flinched with every touch.
“You don’t think I only got you because your guard was down, do you?”
His pupils wavered, betraying that he had indeed been thinking just that.
Elena smiled brightly and stomped her foot.
‘CRACK!’
The floorboards splintered where her foot had landed.
The focus vanished from the manager’s eyes.
“Your bones aren’t harder than this floor,” Elena said sweetly.
“Let’s not see each other again after tomorrow.
Understood?”
The manager nodded his head frantically.
With light steps, Elena headed back to the inn.