I Became the Simp Character I Roasted Online

Chapter 69: Familiar Names in Unfamiliar Places

’Cassian? Please tell me I misheard that.’

Revan’s mind immediately shifted into reverse, forcing his brain to rewind through every detail of their escort mission and when exactly they had been separated.

"Considering he was part of this escort mission, it makes sense that he’d be involved," he whispered.

His pupils shrank to pinpoints.

’Wait... If Cassian really is here, that means Sylvia, Dain, and Mirael are most likely already in this place too.’

Revan didn’t swallow that conclusion raw. He shook his head slowly.

"No. That phrasing was way too vague," he muttered.

The fact that they had to ’make sure’ of something immediately spawned two scenarios in his head.

’Either Cassian isn’t here yet but is planning to come or is already on his way to this facility. Or the opposite — he’s already been here.’

Neither option was pleasant, because both pointed to the same ugly truth: Cassian was guaranteed to be in this facility.

The echo of the metal boots gradually faded, leaving the archive room in silence.

"Hahhh... I’ve got nothing," he let out a jagged groan.

Revan immediately discarded the possibilities rattling around in his skull. No amount of guessing would give him better answers than those guards already had.

He crawled out from under the desk, folded the Verdanthia document one more time, then grabbed the coat that had been lying there and stuffed it into his back waistband.

He carefully peered through the door, checked left and right, then slipped out. Without a sound, he slid from the threshold and began tailing the two guards at a safe distance.

As he followed, Revan worked on deciphering their language.

"...how much longer are we going to be stuck in a place like this? The food here tastes like boiled moss," the hoarse-voiced guard complained, loosening his neck guard.

Revan, who overheard this, immediately pulled a face. As someone whose hobby was eating and who had, unfortunately, actually tasted moss before, he could practically feel their suffering on his tongue.

"Deal with it," his companion replied coldly. "Our long wait is almost over. Don’t let your complaints hold back what we’ve all been working toward."

Hearing that, Revan’s eyes narrowed sharply.

’Almost over? Working toward? The Reformation? Damn it, how much Crimson Tears and how many soldiers have they already stockpiled?’

But as soon as the question flashed through his mind, he scoffed at his own stupidity.

’You’re really getting dumber by the minute, aren’t you, Revan? Seriously? Are you really asking that right now?’ he cursed at himself.

’You literally just saw the insane production quotas in the Verdanthia document a few seconds ago. You already know exactly how massive this operation is. The question you should be asking is... what? "Almost over"?!’

’How long have they been running a scheme this enormous underground without a single leak? And why have I never heard even a whisper about any of this, only to get dragged into this mess right when their plan is about to go live?!’ he fumed internally.

The damn document he’d tucked away did list staggering production numbers, but there wasn’t a single date written anywhere on it.

Revan let out a slow breath.

He’d lost count of how many exhausted sighs he’d released today. If this world had some kind of official record-keeping organization, he was a hundred percent certain he’d have shattered the all-time record for most sighs in a single day.

Pressing a hand against his chest, he tried to straighten out his thoughts.

’Now I think I actually understand the original purpose of this cargo shipment,’ he reasoned.

’If my guess is right, Sylvia intended to deliver that monster here all along. But she rerouted through another station first so the shipment would be logged as legitimate under the kingdom’s records. Then, most likely, once we arrived at that relay station, I would’ve been ordered to stay behind while Sylvia continued the journey in secret using teleportation to reach this place.’

Revan kept deconstructing the logic as he crept through the shadows.

’But then... why did they attack us? Does The Garden have nothing to do with Sylvia? Are they a completely separate organization? And logically, they wouldn’t attack the right-hand servant of their own ally. Hmm... actually, forget it — knowing Sylvia and the Vespera family, anything is possible. But still—’

His brain slammed to a halt.

’Huh?...’

A memory he’d deliberately shoved aside earlier came screaming back, hitting his consciousness like a freight train.

In the middle of all those back-to-back bloody battles, the constantly exploding adrenaline, and the Dead Zone’s pressure that had nearly crushed his sanity, Revan only now realized he’d buried one critically important detail.

’Come to think of it... that mysterious woman... she said The Garden was coming for ME specifically, didn’t she?’

Revan instinctively grabbed his own head.

’Holy shit... is all of this because of me?’

His stomach churned with a nauseating cocktail of emotions.

He remembered the moment he’d gotten angry at Sylvia and demanded answers about what was happening.

Now, his face burned with shame.

Because the answer hadn’t been hiding with Sylvia at all. It had been sitting right inside his own skull this entire time. He’d just been too stupid to think it through. Or more accurately, too busy ignoring everything that woman had told him — because all he’d cared about back then was figuring out her identity.

That chain of reasoning immediately cracked open a new understanding that slapped his logic across the face.

If The Garden attacked the train purely to hunt him down, then this underground facility conspiracy most likely had absolutely nothing to do with The Garden.

They were two separate entities. Two different nightmares that just happened to collide at the same time and place.

And that conclusion dragged him to one reality that successfully froze his blood solid.

’Wait... does that mean I just pulled a fake negotiation and lied to that monster woman’s face?!’

Revan let out a silent scream. The color drained from his skin until he looked like a sheet of parchment.

’I am so dead. A hundred percent dead this time. There won’t even be ashes left of me!’ he wailed in despair.

But before that terror could swallow him whole, the analytical side of his brain forcibly seized the wheel.

It triggered a denial phase. He rubbed his temples, plastering a weak, twitchy smile on his face.

’Heummm... no, no. Don’t be so skeptical and pessimistic, Revan,’ he told himself, attempting to calm down in a tone so pitiful it sounded ridiculous even in his own head.

’Remember, those are all just hypotheses, right? A wild guess! For all I know, Cassian is a member of The Garden. Yeah, that makes way more sense!’

Still creeping forward, Revan bit his lower lip and nodded to himself repeatedly, desperately validating his own paper-thin theory.

’The guy’s a psycho noble. He fits the profile perfectly. Yeah, that’s it. I’m probably not wrong!’

Unfortunately, the bowels of an enemy underground facility were not a friendly venue for a pathetic internal debate.

Too deep in his own panic, shame, and denial phase, Revan made one fatal mistake.

His focus split.

His legs, which had been moving on pure autopilot instinct without full control from his brain, had carried him far too close to his targets.

Less than five meters.

Worse, Revan only now realized he’d stepped into the middle of a brightly lit metal corridor. Not a single crate, not a single pillar, not a single piece of cover anywhere in sight.

His position was completely exposed.

At the corridor junction ahead, two figures in gray robes appeared from the opposite direction. The four guards exchanged brief nods, then merged into a single group, continuing their walk together down the corridor.

And Revan was standing right behind them. Less than five meters away.

In the middle of a metal hallway bathed in light, with absolutely nothing to hide behind.

One of the newly arrived gray-robed figures stopped abruptly and turned his head.

Time froze.

’Shit!’

Panic flared. No time to turn, no time to think. The guard’s eyes were a heartbeat away from locking onto him. But in that split second, Revan spotted a maintenance shaft at the base of the wall, its grate hanging half-open.

Without wasting a single heartbeat, his body threw itself down. Revan poured himself onto the floor like liquid shadow and crammed his body into the narrow opening, perfectly timed with the guard fully turning around.

"What is it?" the hoarse-voiced guard asked.

"Nothing... Just my imagination," the grey robe replied before their footsteps resumed and faded.

Revan held his breath inside the cramped shaft, ready to exhale in relief. But it seemed that after the lucky break he’d gotten earlier, the gods had decided his fortune quota was officially depleted.

Now it was time to collect on that debt — with interest rates that defied all reason.

CRACK!

The rusted metal plate under his knees buckled and snapped. The shaft wasn’t level. It plunged sharply downward.

’Oh, you gotta be kidding me—’

Before he could grab anything, Revan plummeted. He slid at full speed through a pitch-black steel tunnel, his body bouncing off the narrow walls over and over. A burst of sharp pain exploded from his left shoulder — the one still carrying the wound from his last battle.

THUD!

Revan slammed into a grated iron floor, rolling hard to bleed off the momentum

Hissing through clenched teeth, he slowly pushed himself up. His head spun violently, fireflies dancing across his vision for several agonizing seconds.

When his eyes finally cleared, the first thing he saw wasn’t a wall. It was a face.

A pale, cadaverous face riddled with crude stitches running across its surface, one eyeball bulging grotesquely from its socket, less than a hand’s width from Revan’s nose.

"GAAAH— FUCK!"

The shout ripped out of him before his brain could register the danger. He slammed his hands over his mouth instantly.

But it was too late. The high-pitched yelp echoed through the dimly lit corridor, bouncing off the walls and racing away into the dark like it had a life of its own.

’Oh shit... that was bad,’ he thought, swallowing hard.

Fighting to regain control of himself, he began scanning his surroundings while his heart hammered like it was trying to break out of his chest.

The place was an absolute wreck. The incandescent lights on the ceiling flickered on the edge of death, fighting desperately to stay alive, casting a weak, erratic glow that strained his eyes.

All around him, visible only as rough silhouettes under the dim light, Revan could confirm one thing.

The mounds scattered everywhere were piles of corpses.

The overwhelming stench of old blood and rotting flesh hit his nostrils like a wall. Revan understood immediately — this was most likely the source of every foul smell that permeated the entire facility. This room was a mass grave.

Forcing himself to ignore the nausea, Revan’s gaze locked onto the far end of the corridor. Under the remnants of the flickering light, a hunched silhouette in a tattered coat stood with its back to him, looming over an iron bed frame where a body lay motionless.

In response to Revan’s scream, the figure groaned.

"Heeeummm... Huaaaa..."

The voice sounded wet and gurgling, as though it were being dragged by force from a throat drowning in thick fluid and vocal cords that had long since rotted away.

Crek... crek... crek...

Accompanied by the sharp creak of grinding joints, the figure turned with a stiff, broken posture. Its head slowly rotated backward, searching for the source of the sound.

’Please don’t tell me my life is about to become a B-grade Hollywood zombie flick,’ Revan lamented in resigned despair.