I! Cleaner!

“This… wouldn’t be very appropriate, would it?”

Faced with Leon's request to observe the punishment, the middle-aged prince's smile faltered slightly on his amiable face, revealing a hint of reluctance.

“His crime is much more serious than yours, and he'll probably be subjected to flogging. Watching the punishment might get you dirty or leave you with an unpleasant smell… Besides, you'll be meeting my father later, so it's best to avoid such filthy places.”

A filthy place, huh…

Glancing at the prison's gleaming floor and the stark white walls, Leon sighed inwardly, realizing he was probably right. He then refused Prince Vernon's dissuasion, shaking his head and insisting:

“I still want to see it.”

“Alright then…”

Seeing that Leon was still insisting, and knowing that further attempts to stop him would likely be futile, Prince Vernon's smile faded a little more. He then beckoned to the guard behind him and instructed:

“Go and inform them that I'll be bringing His Highness the Archduke to observe the punishment. Tell them to tidy up quickly and remove anything unsightly…”

“Your Highness.”

Interrupting Prince Vernon, Leon grabbed his raised arm, his eyes unwavering, and said:

“No need to notify them in advance. We'll go as we are.”

“……”

Faced with Leon's rather impolite behavior, Prince Vernon frowned, instinctively trying to shake off Leon's grip. However, Leon's hand was like a pair of pliers, firmly clamping onto his arm, even slowly tightening.

“Let’s go then!”

Knowing that he couldn't possibly overpower these freakish Cleaners with brute force, and having done his homework to learn about Leon's “Level Three Cleaner” status, Prince Vernon had no choice but to abandon his request to have the place “cleaned up” beforehand.

As Leon dragged Prince Vernon out of the bright and clean “prison” and towards another building two hundred meters away, a surge of agitated mental waves flooded into Leon's eyes through the dirty walls.

Indeed, the fairness of the Kingdom of Kalevan wasn't as fair as Prince Vernon claimed… The fairness that he, an Archduke, could enjoy, and the fairness that a Landing Tower security guard could enjoy, were no longer the same thing.

Following the stone path imprinted with hexagonal cudgels, amidst the bewildered gazes of passersby, they arrived at the entrance of another massive prison. Leon's eyes narrowed slightly as he surveyed the environment, which was exactly as he expected.

Unlike the so-called “prison” he had just been in, here, rows of damp, dark-green stone steps spiraled down into the earth. Water stains seeped from the cracks in the walls, reflecting a dim, rust-like red in the light of the bulkhead lamps.

Thin wisps of faint blood mingled with a trace of putrid odor, wafting up from the vertical ventilation shaft. Even though someone had carefully hung nets and incense lamps, swarms of flies still buzzed and circled outside…

Even a fool could tell that this was definitely not a good place!

Already having a good idea of what to expect, Leon pulled the reluctant Prince Vernon along, and stepped onto the descending stone steps with a blank expression. As they went deeper, the once relatively clean dungeon became increasingly dilapidated.

The beams of light filtering through the small, high-up portholes began to stir up clouds of mildew. Puddles of water mixed with questionable grime collected in the potholes on the ground. The muffled thuds of blunt instruments striking flesh mixed with the crack of whips and screams of agony, echoing out…

Relying on flashing Prince Vernon's face… or rather, the royal crest embroidered on the front of his clothes, they bypassed several guards who tried to stop them. With a tight frown, Leon followed the direction of the mental waves and found the Landing Tower security guard.

The good news was that, since he had only been detained for a few minutes before being released, and because he had sensed something was wrong and immediately came to rescue him, he hadn't suffered much.

But the bad news was that the criminals being punished in the same “punishment zone” as him were being mercilessly whipped with barbed wire, and were screaming in agony.

“What is this…”

“Your Highness, there's really nothing to see here.”

Recoiling slightly from the stench of the execution area, Prince Vernon glanced at the prisoners whose skin was slightly cracked from the whipping, especially the security guard who was tied to the stake waiting to be whipped, and said with displeasure:

“You took all the charges on yourself, so the judge's sentence wasn't too severe. The punishment for disobeying the royal decree, after paying the fine for commutation, is only thirty lashes.

He won't have any lasting aftereffects. Just give him a couple of supplements and let him rest for three to five weeks, and he'll be fine. You don't have to worry about me adding any more punishment. Once he's taken his lashes, that'll be the end of it.”

“……”

It's the truth.

Watching Prince Vernon's calm mental waves, Leon frowned, realizing that he couldn't really say anything at the moment.

Being reported for mentioning the Lumen Church to a “tourist” is enough to warrant being whipped thirty times with a barbed wire whip, which is certainly a harsh, even brutal punishment. However, as an outsider, he really had no right to criticize another country's laws, but…

Narrowing his eyes slightly, Prince Vernon lowered the hand he had been pinching his nose with, and warned with an unkind expression:

“You might not know, but obstructing justice is a serious crime here! Even more serious than disobeying the royal decree!

If you finish saying that 'possibly,' even if we consider that you're not familiar with the laws here, I'm afraid you'll have to go back to that prison for a while!”

“……”

“Your Highness, we should go!”

Glancing at Leon, who was rendered speechless by his rebuttal, Prince Vernon stretched his wrist, which had been pinched sore earlier, and urged with some displeasure:

“This place smells terrible. Changing clothes and using incense won't help; you'll need to take a bath to cover it up… Don't you have important business with my father? Please hurry up! Don't waste any more time here.”

“……”

Although he still felt that there was a problem with the punishment, Prince Vernon's explanation and request sounded reasonable, and Leon really couldn't forcibly “break the law.” He had no choice but to leave the execution area with the security guard's despairing gaze.

Shortly after Leon and his party left the prison, the Landing Tower security guard's back bulged slightly, and two obverse lanceolate light-green leaflets, mixed with a pile of small, bright-red berries, arched out from a very small blood vessel on his back.

After completely arching out from the security guard's back, the slightly larger red berry swayed slightly, tapping against the smaller berry, causing a series of almost imperceptible mental fluctuations.

‘Olivia.’

Looking at the red-haired Director frowning in the other berry through the shell of the [Parasitic Mistletoe] fruit, the middle-aged man sitting cross-legged in the berry sneered:

‘The person that you say has already changed the Cleaner Bureau, and may even change the entire current world in the future… is only this level?’