How the Prince Makes Friends Chapter 83

After failing to guess the coin correctly yet again, the host bit his lip and ordered the burly man to bring him a dog.

When the burly man brought in a tiny puppy that couldn’t even open its eyes and shoved it into the cage, the hunting dog reacted violently, barking furiously.

The children, who had momentarily forgotten about the hunting dog’s presence, hurriedly fled to the opposite side of the cage when it began rampaging.

Nihil glanced at the hunting dog, then picked up the wriggling puppy and examined it from every angle. Its pulse was a little weak, but it didn’t seem sick, and it was relatively clean.

Nihil approached the children, huddled together and handed the puppy to Rianus, whispering quietly.

“Shel, take good care of it. Even if the hunting dog gets loose, it won’t attack recklessly while its puppy is here.”

“Okay.”

“And don’t do anything that draws attention.”

“Got it.”

Without saying anything more, Nihil turned and went back. If the others attracted unnecessary attention, protecting them would become more difficult and troublesome in all sorts of ways. Besides, handing over even one puppy had already made the spectators conscious of the children again.

Nihil deliberately raised his voice to draw their attention toward himself.

“Ugly mister, do you have any more candy?”

“……”

Having been fooled twice already, the host didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he eyed Nihil warily.

“Mister, if you guess wrong this time, give me some candy. If you win, I’ll give you the keys.”

“…Fine. But this time, I’ll toss the coin.”

As he spoke, the host held out his hand for the coin. Nihil simply tilted his head as though he didn’t understand.

When Nihil continued staring blankly at him, the host grew irritated.

“You have to give me the coin before I can toss it!”

“What? This belongs to Neil! Why are you trying to take my stuff?”

“Are you planning to pull some trick with that coin…?”

“Oh! You don’t have any money, mister! Okay, I’ll lend you some special money! But you have to give it back after you use it, okay?”

“……”

A gambling den employee borrowing money from a little kid because he had none of his own.

The host looked as though he wanted to argue further, but he seemed to realize that doing so would only make him look ridiculous. Gritting his teeth, he accepted the coin Nihil tossed him.

The coin went flying again.

Nihil had never expected the host to play fair in the first place, so he decided to choose an answer at random.

Naturally, Nihil lost.

“Hurry up and hand over the keys.”

“Hmph! Everyone gets it wrong sometimes.”

Nihil took the key ring from his clothes and separated out one key that definitely wasn’t for the cage.

The host demanded to know why he wasn’t handing over all the keys, but Nihil stubbornly insisted that they had agreed to exchange only one item at a time and continued the game.

And, of course, Nihil went on to lose every round.

The number of keys he had kept dwindled until only two remained: the key to the dog’s enclosure and the key to the cage where the children were being held.

“Waaah… I only have two left.”

“Your life will be over soon, too.”

“This time, I’m the one tossing the coin! You keep getting it wrong because you’re the one throwing it!”

“Hmph! Who knows what kind of trick you’ll pull!”

“Hmm… Then let’s play a different game.”

“What? Who said you could decide that?!”

Nihil decided it was time to switch gambling partners to rekindle the interest of the spectators, who were beginning to grow bored.

The host, unwilling to let go of his chance to reclaim the keys, continued to protest. But the moment Nihil pulled a gold coin from his clothes, every spectator, including the host, stared at him with wide eyes.

“Whoever here can guess the number on this shiny coin gets to have it.”

“Y-you! Where did you get that?”

“I found it! Isn’t it pretty? I’ve never seen a copper coin this shiny and clean before!”

Rianus lowered his head in embarrassment when he heard Nihil calling a gold coin a copper coin.

Did I look just as stupid when I mistook that dirty gold coin for an ordinary copper coin?

Pan leaned over and whispered after seeing the coin.

“Hey, I’ve never seen a copper coin that shiny, either. Are copper coins supposed to be that color?”

“…That’s a gold coin.”

“Huh?”

“It’s worth a thousand copper coins…”

“W-wait… How many is a thousand?”

Pan spread his fingers one by one, but with only ten fingers to work with, he couldn’t quite picture a thousand. He tilted his head in confusion.

Watching him, Rianus resolved to make sure these children received a proper education.

“One gold coin is enough for a commoner family of four to live on for a month.”

“A month… How many nights is that?”

“A month is about twenty-eight to thirty-one days.”

“Oh…”

“Um, so with one gold coin, four people can eat three full meals every day for about thirty nights without going hungry.”

Only after Rianus explained it in simple terms did Pan, who hadn’t understood the value of the gold coin, widened his eyes in astonishment.

“T-then isn’t that a huge amount of money?”

“It is… a lot of money.”

In truth, a single gold coin probably wouldn’t even cover the cost of one button on the clothes in his wardrobe. But for these children, it was undoubtedly a fortune.

Rianus felt conflicted at the thought that a single button from his clothes could feed so many people.

The appearance of the gold coin set the spectators’ eyes ablaze.

In the casinos frequented by nobles, where hundreds of gold coins changed hands, one gold coin was practically nothing. But this place was different. No matter how deep their debts ran, they probably didn’t exceed a hundred gold coins.

Pan trembled as he watched Nihil smile brightly while holding enough money to cover four people’s living expenses for a month.

“H-hey! Shouldn’t you stop your brother?”

“My brother is drawing everyone’s attention by himself so they won’t bother us. We mustn’t interfere.”

“Why’s he doing that?”

“He needs to buy time and protect us until the guards arrive.”

“You called the guards?”

At the mention of the guards, one of the children lowered his voice and asked,

“When? C-can we get out of here?”

“When they brought us here to sell us. We figured out where this place was, and the cat, Jane, and Dave probably went to report it together.”

“You left it to the cat and the other kids?”

As the words left it to the cat, despair filled the children’s eyes.

“…It’s not just any cat, but… anyway, don’t worry. Even if the guards somehow don’t come, getting the few of you out of here won’t be that difficult. You’re all the children who were captured, right?”

“Who’s going to get us out? Hey, your friend might be amazing, but wouldn’t that still be difficult? Even if we just held hands and walked out openly, I doubt more than two of us could get out.”

Pan grumbled in an attempt to ease the tension.

But perhaps the joke about only two of them escaping sounded too real to the others. One child turned deathly pale, shoved Pan aside, and tearfully begged to be rescued first.

Pan was so bewildered by being pushed that he was about to snap at the child, but Rianus quickly intervened, telling them not to make a scene.

“Don’t fight. And Neil isn’t the only one here. There’s also that big brother over there.”

Rianus subtly nodded toward Evan. The children couldn’t tell whom he was pointing at among the crowd, so they asked,

“Who?”

“The tallest guy over there. He’s really strong.”

Pan looked at Evan, who was a whole head taller than even the burly men guarding the gambling den’s entrance, and asked hesitantly,

“That huge guy who looks like a bear?”

“Yeah. If we’re ever in danger, he’ll break the cage and come inside.”

“Oh… That’s… really reassuring. Now I understand why you two have been so relaxed.”

“So don’t worry too much. Just stay quiet.”

Rianus tried to reassure them, but the boys, who had already endured terrible things, still seemed anxious. They kept glancing at Evan as they spoke.

“D-do you think it wouldn’t be better to ask your brother to rescue us right away? It’s been a while since you got here, but the guards still haven’t come… Sharton Street isn’t even that far from the guard station…”

The child hesitantly continued,

“And will the guards even believe what the cat and your brothers tell them? I know your cat is smart, but maybe… they think kids like us aren’t worth rescuing…”

“No, that’s not it. There are accomplices among the local guards, so they went to call the Royal Guard instead. They need to raid everything at once—the drug warehouse, the local guard station, the inn where children are sold as rabbits, and this gambling den. That’s why it’s taking a little longer.”

After explaining, Rianus glanced at Evan once more.

Evan briefly met Rianus’s eyes, took a pocket watch from his pocket, and checked the time. Then he tapped it twice casually, waited a beat, tapped it once more, and put it away.

“About twenty minutes… I think.”

Evan’s signal meant the guards would take another twenty to thirty minutes to arrive. But Rianus deliberately gave the children a shorter estimate to reassure them.

“The best way to help is to stay unnoticed until then.”

“J-just tell them to get us out now.”

One of the children still seemed too anxious to bear it and continued whining tearfully.

Rianus understood why the children wanted to leave this place immediately. However, if they didn’t thoroughly catch the adults responsible for these crimes, there was no telling where else they might buy and sell children or subject them to cruel deaths. Rianus had no choice but to be cautious.

“But if we do that, everyone here will escape. I know you’re scared, but please hold on a little longer. Okay?”

“Just tell them to help us now…”

Rianus tried gently coaxing the child, but he wouldn’t give in.

What should I do…?

Rianus grew anxious, worried that the child might start crying loudly. He was terrible at comforting other people. He had always been the one who needed comforting.

Pan grew irritated beside him and taunted the child for being a crybaby. But the boy had witnessed another child being bitten to death by the dog with his own eyes. All he wanted was to escape this horrible place. He never wanted to see such a cruel sight again.

Eventually, the short-tempered Pan snapped.

“Hey, quit whining. You’re being noisy.”

“What would you know? You just got here!”

“Even if I don’t know anything, I know we can’t make a scene right now!”

“H-hey, you guys, don’t raise your voices…”

Rianus nervously tried to calm them down, but their emotions seemed to be getting the better of them, and their voices grew louder.

“Why…!”

“P-please, if you shout…”

“Why not?! Just tell them to help us now!!”

In the end, the child’s voice rang loudly through the arena, and a sea of cold gazes turned toward them all at once.

In the oppressive silence, the child’s voice echoed several times off the walls. Then true silence descended.

Perhaps his legs had given out under the weight of everyone’s attention. The child collapsed to the floor and gasped for breath.

Rianus froze at the sudden turn of events, unable to do anything. His mind had gone blank.

Now that he had lost his composure, he couldn’t even think of comforting the child. All he could do was panic over how he was supposed to resolve this situation.

He had only told the children about Sir Evan to reassure them. He never imagined it would lead to something like this.

For these children, escaping should have mattered more than catching the bad adults…

He hadn’t thought things through.

Rianus squeezed his eyes shut. Meanwhile, Evan, who had been watching the situation unfold, carefully rested his hand on his sword’s hilt and calculated the exits and the movement of the people inside.

Honestly, dealing with these people, who were soaked in alcohol and drugs, would be no trouble at all. But he couldn’t simply go around killing people while bearing the title of a Royal Knight.

On the other hand, there were too many people to subdue them all. At this rate, even if his identity remained hidden, some of the criminals would inevitably escape.

First, block the entrance and disable the aura users… No, the children might be taken hostage if I do that. It would be better to simply take the children and leave…

Then, in the suffocating silence, a bright, cheerful voice rang out.

“What’s wrong? What happened? Neil will help you! Neil’s really good at that!”