As Lucien heard the footsteps reach the door, he sneakily opened his eyes ever so slightly and took a peek at the figures.
A giant, buffed man with short, messy, dark brown hair and a black haired man with an average build and a police uniform.
'Roland.' Lucien realized why the voice was so familiar to him.
It belonged to the Police sergeant from this morning.
The picture seemed clearer to him now.
Roland must have recognized the not-so-public prince of the Cythos Kingdom somehow, and seeing him unguarded and vulnerable, he decided to try his luck.
And he actually succeeded.
He successfully kidnapped the second prince of the Kingdom of Cythos.
The door closed with a loud thud, and complete silence washed over the room.
Darkness returned to the room, and only the low buzzing from outside the room broke the stillness.
The air was heavy with dust, making him a tad bit uncomfortable.
Lucien slowly opened his eyes, his pupils adjusted to the darkness, as he analyzed his situation.
His hands bit into his wrists behind his back, too tight to slip out and too strong to simply snap open.
He exhaled slowly.
There was no panic in his eyes, only calculated yearning for freedom.
His eyes scanned the room and inspected his surroundings.
Crates, a rusted cabinet, and a mound of dirty laundry were tucked in the corner.
'Huh?' Suddenly, Lucien noticed something.
The chair he was tied to wasn't fixed to the ground, and it wasn't heavy either.
'I can simply carry this thing around.' Lucien mused, continuing to look around.
He noticed that his hands weren't tied to the chair either, meaning if push comes to shove, he could simply dislocate his shoulders and move them forward.
But he had better plans than that.
The first one was smashing the chair's legs by hitting it against the walls or the floor, so that he could rotate his arms from underneath and untie his ropes.
But that would create too much noise, so this idea was for later, in case the other one failed.
Another idea was to tear the rope apart, thread by thread, by simply rubbing it against a rough corner.
This was the most viable option he had, but it would be time-consuming.
Luckily for him, he had no constraints on time, so he could take his time.
Lucien tried standing up, when a sudden wave of weakness assaulted his entire body and mind, making him go numb for a split second, resulting in a fall back.
His entire head spun in dizziness, rendering him immobile for a few seconds.
'Yeah, right. Food.' He realized that he hadn't eaten anything since he woke up in this world, and being a mere mortal now, he couldn't survive without food for long.
But he had no choice.
Resting a few seconds, trying to relieve this dizziness, Lucien stood up once again and pushed through.
He started walking slowly towards the wooden crates, not being able to take long strides due to the leg constraints.
As he reached the crates, he sat down and started looking for any possible splinters, but they didn't have any major ones.
Which meant that he needed to make some himself.
He didn't want to do this degrading act himself, but he had no other choice.
He leaned forward and bit down on the corner of a crate, hard.
The wood fought back, and it even successfully tore through his cheek, making his mouth bleed, but he was adamant.
After a bit of fighting through, he finally ripped a piece apart with nothing but his teeth.
It hurt, but it was necessary.
After making a few more splinters of the corner, he turned around with his chair and started grinding it against the splinters, up and down, in a rhythmic motion.
And as he was doing this, he went against his own words and started leaning the chair on only one of the legs and jumping on it, creating all sorts of pressure on a singular leg of the chair to hopefully break it.
Crack!
And sure enough, the chair was easier to break than the rope, since the leg where he was putting all the pressure broke apart in mere minutes while the rope only had minimal damage.
There was some noise due to this, but Lucien did this intentionally because he wanted to test something.
Ever since he woke up here and saw his surroundings, he noticed some strange things that led him to draw some conclusions.
And to test those, he intentionally broke the chair, even though he had planned against this.
He waited for a few minutes, and when nothing happened, he was sure of it.
'They are watching me right now.'
A smirk adorned his face as he continued his task of leaning and putting pressure on a singular leg of the chair, hoping to break it.
If they weren't coming now, they weren't coming at all.
This was all planned, and Lucien realized it.
A few minutes later, another leg bent and broke apart, making him nearly fall on the crates.
By the time the third leg broke, a piece flew off and punctured his arm, making him flinch in pain.
The bleeding from such an old and dirty piece of wood might lead to an infection, but that wasn't something he was worried about right now.
He pushed through, and as the final leg broke, Lucien fell on the ground along with the limbless chair.
'Ow!' He didn't rejoice, since he knew that this was already planned by the kidnappers.
There was a reason why the preparation and the restraints were so sloppy.
'Tch!' Lucien clicked his tongue in annoyance as he tucked his arms and got them to his front from beneath the chair and quickly opened up the knot on his legs.
…
"What was that, Musa?" In a room full of screens all over the wall, Roland screamed at the man right next to him.
"Don't worry about it, bos-" But before Musa could even finish his words, Roland interrupted him again in a loud tone..
"I told you that we should strap him to a metal chair fixed to the ground, in a completely isolated room, but you didn't listen." Roland's fist was curled up, his eyes practically boring into the screen where Lucien was moving towards the door.
"Listen to me, this was all planned, boss!"