Chapter 83

Chapter 83: Chapter 83

Hunter G clenched his fists as he stared at Berthanon. No one knew how evil this man was, or maybe they did, but they didn’t care.

Poisoning him just because he wanted answers that could come the easy way if they let it? What a bastard!

"Do you understand me?" Berthanon asked again, the smile on his lips widening.

Hunter G gritted his teeth, the words coming out like he was forcing it. "Yes sir."

Berthanon paused for a moment, his squinted eyes fixed on Hunter G. Then he stepped out from where he was standing and walked towards Hunter G, like a predator stalking his prey. It made Hunger G disgusted.

"You’re one the best dogs I trained, Hunter G, and no matter what, the dogs I trained will always belong to me. If they think they can get out of the cage I made for them, then they’re mistaken. I’ll never let them leave. So it’s better to take those thoughts out of your head."

Hunter G clenched his fists. "Yes sir, I understand."

"You may leave. Once I’m done, we’ll begin the memory search."

FLASHBACK ENDS.

Zeke clenched the empty syringe in his hand, staring at the blue residue inside it. This was the reminder of the last batch of antidote he had managed to hide away, and he had been saving it for an emergency just like this. He had hoped he wouldn’t need it for now, but Berthanon had left him with no choice after poisoning him. Now, if the old bastard refused to give him the proper antidote within a few hours, he would die.

"That fucking bastard is so foolish!" Zeke cursed, his fingers tightening around the syringe. "How does he expect to get answers by threatening the very people he’s trying to get information from? Does he think Ingrid will suddenly become cooperative after what he did to her? If I’d known he was going to pull something like this, I would never have brought her here. I should have taken her to another Hunter’s Guild where she’d be safer."

Freya stared at him, unable to believe what she was hearing. "Are you out of your mind? You’re the one who’s been poisoned, Zeke! You’re coughing up blood, and you can barely stand, yet you’re sitting here worrying about Ingrid? What about yourself? Berthanon has already shown you that he doesn’t care whether you live or die as long as he gets what he wants. After failing to get anything useful from Ingrid, do you honestly think he’ll be generous enough to give you the full antidote?"

She grabbed his shoulders, forcing him to look at her. "Think about it! As long as Ingrid remains unconscious, Berthanon has an excuse to keep you waiting. He’ll tell you to get her to talk first, then he’ll claim he needs more information, and before you know it, those nine hours will be gone. He’s going to drag this out until you have no choice but to obey him, and by then, you might not even be able to stand."

Zeke looked away, his jaw tightening. He knew Freya wasn’t wrong, but he refused to believe Berthanon would actually let him die. He was one of the strongest hunters in the Guild, someone they relied on for dangerous missions that most others couldn’t handle. Losing him would create problems for the Guild, and Berthanon was too calculating to throw away such a useful asset without considering the consequences.

"Berthanon won’t let me die," he insisted, trying to sound more certain than he felt. "I’m one of the Guild’s aces. He knows what I’m capable of, and he knows how much trouble he’ll have if I’m gone. He might be a bastard, but he isn’t stupid enough to throw away someone like me just to punish me for disagreeing with him. He’ll give me the antidote before the time runs out. He has to..."

A violent cough cut him off. Zeke doubled over, clutching his chest as blood surged into his mouth. Freya hurried to support him, but when he spat the blood onto the floor, both of them froze. The blood was much darker than before, almost black in the dim light, and thick clots were mixed into it.

"Zeke?" Freya whispered, her voice suddenly trembling. "What is this? Why are you coughing up blood again? Didn’t that antidote work?"

Zeke couldn’t answer immediately. He stared at the blood on the floor, confusion replacing his anger as he struggled to understand what had just happened. The antidote should have stopped the poison from progressing, at least temporarily.

He had prepared it using the formulas recorded in the Hunter’s Guild Ledger, which contained the known poisons and their corresponding antidotes. He knew the entries in that ledger better than most people in the Guild, and he had personally checked the ingredients before preparing the antidote he kept hidden.

There was no reason for it to fail against a registered poison. Unless the poison Berthanon had used wasn’t the one he thought it was but that was impossible because all the poison that Berthanon could use was registered and he had created a herbal antidote for the poison using the Star Glow Herb he had found once. It should at least slow it down.

"Why didn’t it work? I don’t understand..." Zeke murmured, confusion evident in his eyes.

"You created the antidote yourself, right? Did you do something wrong? Or you made the wrong one??"

"How could I have made the wrong one? Even if I did, that flower counters against all poisons registered and usable for now. Even if it’s a new and unseen one, it’s supposed to slow things down. So unless Berthanon had sneaked into my room and exchanged the antidote for something else, there’s no way I would...!"

Zeke’s gaze slowly dropped to the syringe in his hand. Earlier, he had been too distracted by the pain to examine it properly after injecting himself, but now that he thought about it, something felt wrong. He raised the syringe toward his face and carefully opened it, bringing the tip close enough to smell the remaining blue liquid.

His expression changed. He smelled it again, this time more deeply, hoping he had mistaken the faint chemical scent. But the result was the same. The substance inside the syringe smelled different from the antidote he had prepared, and even the faint bitterness lingering in the air wasn’t what he remembered.

"No," he muttered.

Freya leaned closer. "What do you mean, no? Zeke, what’s wrong?"

He ignored her and turned the syringe around, examining its surface with growing panic. He had marked the original syringe with a tiny scratch near the base, a small detail that would be easy for anyone else to overlook but impossible for him to miss. He had done it deliberately to distinguish the real antidote from any other substance he might store nearby.

The mark wasn’t there. For a moment, he simply stared at the smooth surface, unable to accept what his eyes were telling him. Then his fingers began to tremble, and his face drained of what little color remained.

"Fuck!"

Freya flinched at the sudden shout. "What happened? Tell me!"

"They switched it!" Zeke exclaimed, his voice breaking with disbelief. "Someone switched the syringes! This isn’t the antidote I prepared!"

He looked toward the drawer across the room, remembering how Freya had searched through it in a panic. She had grabbed the syringe she found and brought it straight to him, and he had been too busy fighting the poison to notice that anything was wrong. Whoever had switched them must have known where he kept the antidote and had replaced it with something that looked almost identical.

But who could have done it?

Freya was the only person who knew about the hidden antidote, and she would never deliberately give him the wrong one, she also brought it out from his drawer. That left someone who had entered his room before they returned, someone who knew what he was keeping and had enough time to make the switch without being noticed.

Berthanon. The realization struck him with such force that he tried to stand immediately.

"I need to..."

His legs gave way before he could finish speaking. He fell back against the bed, his body suddenly too weak to obey him, and the syringe slipped from his fingers onto the floor.

"Zeke!"

Freya lunged forward and caught him around the shoulders, but his head lolled to one side. She shook him, calling his name again and again, yet his eyes had already begun to lose focus. His breathing grew shallow, and the blood on his lips made him look even paler.

"No, no, no! Zeke, open your eyes!"

She slapped his cheek lightly, desperate to keep him conscious, but his eyelids fluttered once before rolling back. His body went limp in her arms, and his head dropped against her shoulder.

Freya screamed. "ZEKE!"