Full-Time Wizard: Starting with Harvesting Wheat

"Damn it!" Roy grabbed the man by the collar, lifted him off the ground, and held him in the air.

With the added weight of the heavy armor, his 1.7-meter height exuded a mountain-like oppressive aura, forcing the man to kick wildly with his feet dangling in the air, suppressing sobs escaping his throat.

"What did you do to get her to use her abilities?!"

Even without seeing Roy's face, his fury was already evident in his actions and tone of voice, and the man immediately panicked.

"Abilities? I really don't know! In these eight years, all I've done is deliver meals once every three days. As for anything else... I haven't been involved in anything!"

"Wait, don't you know why this woman is being imprisoned?" Roy discovered the blind spot.

"N-I don't know," the other person said blankly, in a very low voice. "I'm not very close to Gray, and he never told me."

"Eight years! A full eight years!" Roy roared in exasperation, "You didn't even care why you were bringing me food! You idiot! You're a hopeless idiot!"

The other party managed a weak, mosquito-like rebuttal, which surprisingly carried a hint of anger:

"I've thought about finding the truth, but what's the point besides making me even less liked by Gray? What's the point besides getting fired?"

"Besides, I have a feeling this is something serious. If I find out, I don't think I'll have a good ending. I have a mother and a wife at home; how could I take that risk!"

After he finished speaking, his expression turned to terror, like a frightened fawn, and he dared not look at Roy again.

"Hoo—" Roy took a deep breath.

From the other party's perspective, turning a blind eye is indeed the best option. The people of Dragon Tooth Town haven't awakened to the point of selflessness; they still believe their work is more important than a woman who is imprisoned.

After all, it involves family members; how can it be compared to a stranger?

"In that case," Roy's voice gradually calmed down, "Give me the bucket, and teach me how to open that door. After you've done that, you can get out of here. Don't worry, what I'm about to do probably won't involve you."

He lied.

If Teresa is rescued, the first to suffer a major blow will be Grey's blacksmith shop.

"Um..." The man's face turned bright red, and he stammered, unable to answer. "I... I still need to take the empty buckets that were delivered last time back..."

"Then you wait here," Roy interrupted him. "I'll go in myself."

"this……"

Seeing that he still wanted to argue, Roy smiled and raised his sword above his head.

"I confess, I confess everything!" The man instinctively gave a French military salute.

A moment later, Roy stood in front of the huge stainless steel door and began to knock as the man had instructed.

That's right, the way to get into prison is to knock on the door. Knock in the right rhythm and the door will open.

It sounds simple, but in practice, you must first know the correct way to open a door is to knock. Without knowing the correct number of knocks, you will need to do billions of trial and error.

It's much more secure than simply entering a password.

First, there is a heavy, slow tap, followed by three quick, light taps, then alternating between heavy and light taps, repeated twice.

Roy stood still, waiting for the door to open.

The iron gates of the grotto suddenly swung open.

Beside the door, one can hear the powerful roar of machinery, like the waves of the sea.

"It's huge."

The structure of this prison is exactly the same as that of large prisons on Earth.

Although there are no numerous cameras or jarring electronic intercoms, and the facilities are not particularly sophisticated, they exude a sense of order and efficiency.

Hearing from the man that Teresa was locked in room 502, Roy didn't rush to the stairs, but instead went into the building on the first floor first.

The desks and chairs looked like those in an office, and Roy guessed that this might be the prison warden's workplace.

On the large wooden table, yellowed papyrus sheets were spread out, covered with dense writing. One could vaguely make out the prisoners' files, the prison's management regulations, and some accounts that recorded the details of income and expenditure.

It's easy to imagine that the prison used to operate in an orderly manner, but for some reason, it was suddenly abandoned.

After seeing the lavish praise of Phaethon on the door, Roy's purpose for coming here subtly changed. Well, it shouldn't be said to have changed, but rather that his main purpose shifted.

Instead of saving Teresa, the focus shifted to finding a highly compatible metal.

After searching through the documents on the table and in the cabinets without finding any visual records of metal equipment, Roy simply started looking at the documents that interested him.

List of prisoners.

Holt, the leader of the bandits in Water Mountain, has been robbing passing caravans for years, burning, killing, looting, and committing all sorts of atrocities, causing dozens of families to be destroyed and people to die.

Farion, the foreman of the Monroe Mine, embezzled thousands of kilograms of various rare minerals, selling them all to the Blackwater Territory's bandit organization, thus becoming their accomplice.

Surifa, a wandering bard in Blackwater Territory, uses the guise of singing ballads to fabricate scandals about nobles, smear the lord's achievements, and spread rumors.

After quickly scanning a few pages, Roy's brows furrowed even more deeply.

The prisoners on the list were either notorious bandit leaders, corrupt officials who lined their own pockets, treacherous ministers who incited unrest, or even the mayor who led the entire town to join the bandits.

This demonstrates the chaos and rampant banditry in the Blackwater Territory at that time.

Before Historia took office, these banditry problems were somewhat contained but never completely eradicated. It was only after he assumed power that the "bandit" cancer was truly eradicated from the Blackwater Territory.

On this point alone, Historia can indeed be considered a lord of great merit.

"But there is something strange," Roy frowned. "The crimes these people committed are enough to warrant death several times over, yet they were sent to this prison. Was there no death penalty in the first place?"

He quickly flipped through the papers and soon found the answer—the death penalty existed in those days. And this prison housed death row inmates, but not ordinary ones.

Those whose crimes are serious enough to warrant a death sentence will be executed immediately, while those whose crimes are even more serious will be brought to this prison and given a chance. If they successfully pass the test, they will be pardoned from the death penalty.

This is even worse than a suspended death sentence, since a suspended death sentence, after passing the probationary period, at most only reduces the punishment, but the rules of this prison directly exempt one from punishment.

"Letting these hardened criminals return to the world is like releasing tigers back into the mountains, letting them commit evil again." He always felt that the prison had not fulfilled its due obligations.

However, when Roy found the list of those who had passed the test and left prison, he couldn't help but let out a helpless smile.

There were hundreds of people on the prisoner list, but this list only had one name on it.

Roy was quite familiar with the name.

—Phaethon.

Roy found the name on the prison list and checked the crime. It turned out to be accidentally trampling on someone else's field, which was completely different from the other prisoners' heinous crimes.

It was clearly written randomly.

This led Roy to conclude that the released Phaethon was the wizard who built the prison.

Do you enjoy being a prisoner?

Roy strongly suspects that Phaethon built this prison so that he could experience life there as a prisoner.

If that's really the case, then I'm screwed.

Pure psychopathism.