The sheer desperation of the Holding Cell was both a weight and a cover. The dozens of chained figures around Lee Heuk-jae were lost in their own private hells—some weeping silently, others staring at the timber ceiling, entirely empty. They saw nothing. They noticed nothing. They were the perfect, tragic background noise for his first act of insurgency.
It was just past seven in the morning. The Garrick Guard, Henchman-A, had finished clearing the refuse and was now posted outside the barred door, periodically pacing the short corridor or loudly rattling keys.
Heuk-jae needed to get into the supply room.
The lock on the main door was a heavy, sliding iron bar secured by a standard master padlock—the kind that required two specific tools to pick. But Heuk-jae knew the real weakness. The supply room shared a thin, patched-up partition wall with the holding cell, and the wall was secured on this side by two small, decorative, iron brackets. The kind of brackets that The Evering developers had used in the game to teach players that sometimes the simplest structural elements were the key to bypassing high-level obstacles.
He waited for Henchman-A's footsteps to fade down the hall toward the latrine pit—a five-minute window, reliably.
Heuk-jae carefully lifted the loose floorboard covering the end of his chain and slipped his foot out of the loop. The collar remained, heavy and humiliating, but he was mobile. He moved silently, his calloused feet barely disturbing the straw, until he reached the partition wall.
The closest slave to the wall was an old woman, thin and deeply scarred, who simply blinked at him, her eyes lifeless. Heuk-jae gave a slight, almost imperceptible shake of his head—don't move—and she just turned her gaze back to the floor. Survival instinct, or perhaps just exhaustion, kept her silent.
He located the first iron bracket. It was held in place by two square-headed, ancient iron nails, deeply rusted into the wood.
Option 1: Break them. (Requires Strength 10.) Impossible.
Option 2: Pull them out. (Requires Stealth 7, Agility 6, and a leverage tool.)
Heuk-jae reached into the knot of his coarse, tunic-like shirt. He pulled out the item he'd acquired during the morning chaos: a sharp, flattened piece of bone, likely from yesterday's stew, which he had quickly scraped to a thin edge while feigning fear.
He inserted the bone sliver under the head of the lower nail and began working it back and forth, using the rough wood as his fulcrum. The noise was a high-pitched, metallic squeak—loud enough to be dangerous, but nearly covered by the low, constant moans and coughs of the prisoners.
Click.
The first nail gave way, pulled out just enough to grip. Heuk-jae quickly pocketed it. He repeated the process with the second nail, sweat instantly beading on his forehead despite the cool, damp air.
Two minutes remaining.
With the second nail out, the iron bracket came away clean. The wooden wall behind it looked solid, but Heuk-jae knew better. In the novel's lore—specifically, Chapter 3, Volume 4, detailing the supply logistics of Garrick Mercenaries—this section of the wall was hollowed out to create a shallow, illicit weapons cache for the guards.
He pushed hard on the wall where the bracket had been. The rotten wood groaned, splintered, and gave way with a muffled crack. A space large enough for a person to slide through—a tunnel of maybe two feet—was revealed.
He slid into the darkness, pulling the loose splinters back into place. He was in.
The supply room was small, freezing, and stocked with exactly what the novel promised: barrels of dried rations, coils of rope, and a rack of replacement weapons and tools. The 'Sliver of Hardened Steel'—a six-inch length of high-carbon blade steel intended for guard-dagger maintenance—was stored exactly where it should be: wrapped in oilcloth on the bottom shelf of a cleaning cart.
Heuk-jae snatched it up. The steel was cold and heavy, a primitive but infinitely superior tool to the bone fragment.
As he was wrapping the steel in his shirt to muffle its sound, he heard the heavy footsteps of Henchman-A returning from the latrine. The guard stopped right outside the partition wall.
Warning: Guard Proximity Critical.
The guard began fiddling with the contents of the adjacent room—the main cache. Heuk-jae could hear the loud clank of iron axes and the sching of blades being drawn and re-sheathed. Heuk-jae had only one option left.
He flattened himself against the cold, damp stone of the far wall. He took a deep, steadying breath and began to focus his thoughts.
[QUEST HINT ACTIVATED: SLAVE ESCAPE - DAY 1]
Borin's Phobia Trigger (Recalled Data): Borin requires direct sight of the infestation, or a compelling, localized noise that suggests it.
Heuk-jae knew the guard outside had orders to keep the slaves quiet. Any unusual noise from the inside of the supply room would instantly attract the guard's attention—and probably get Heuk-jae killed on the spot. But a noise from outside?
He looked up. A small, square ventilation shaft ran along the ceiling, connecting this supply room to the outside of the building, above the yard where the guard animals were kept. He couldn't reach it, but he could throw something small and hard.
He grabbed one of the loose iron nails he had just pocketed. Taking careful aim at the ventilation grille, he hurled the nail upward. It struck the metal grille with a sharp, echoing PING.
The guard outside froze. "What was that?"
Heuk-jae immediately followed up with a perfect impression of an angry, territorial cat. It was a guttural, furious sound—a desperate, drawn-out YOWLL!
The guard outside, already on edge after the rat incident, immediately latched onto the cat sound. "Those damn feral things! Borin told me to burn them!"
The guard quickly unlocked the main door and bolted out into the corridor, cursing loudly as he went to investigate the "feral things" bothering the horses.
Heuk-jae used the diversion—a six-second window—to slip back through the hole in the wall, pulling the wooden splinters and the metal bracket back into place. He had barely settled the loose floorboard over his chain when he heard the guard's heavy boots returning.
"Nothing," the guard grumbled, sliding the outer bar back into place. "Just wind."
Heuk-jae rested his head on the straw, his heart slowing from a gallop back to a fast trot. He had the steel sliver. He had broken free from his immediate confinement. He was no longer an inert prisoner, but an active player.
His next objective was the most difficult of all: turning that crude piece of steel into a functioning key capable of unlocking the Drake-Forge collar—a task that required silence, darkness, and hours of work without drawing the slightest bit of attention.
He waited for the sun to sink lower, for the dim lantern to grow even dimmer, and for the 14:00 shift change to pass. The night was coming, and with it, the only chance he had to fabricate his freedom.