Chapter 60 - Breaking in

Chapter 60: Chapter 60 - Breaking in We are on the third round of going to the slavers’ den and back. We go invisible and check every abandoned-looking building along the way. When the spell starts to wear off, we hide in any spot we can find, and I cast the spell again. It’s easy enough with only the two of us, but for the girls we need to map bigger hiding places. The mana drain of maintaining this for so long, casting it again and again, is starting to strain even my immense MP capacity. To do it for so many people, I’ll have no margin for error. But at least now we have a working plan. First, I headbutt in. There’s no possible way to simply sneak in, from what I’ve seen of their security and what I remember of the internal layout of the place. So it will be a frontal assault, led by me and me alone. My lightning should be enough to wipe them out. Second, I get into the big room, make them all invisible, and run away as fast as possible. In this leg, swiftness is essential so we can flee to safety before anyone might come to see what’s going on. When we’re safe in the inn, we prepare for the third leg of the escape plan, which is going out of the city. But not tonight. I need to rest and recover. ::: The following day seems to pass very slowly, as I count the hours to meet my mother again. We get out of the room only once, to buy a couple of skewers from the same vendor. We have dried food in our backpacks, but it’s better to save them while in the city for when we traverse the Barrens with the escapees. "Is it just me seeing things, or are there more guards in the streets than yesterday?" Indeed, there are. I wasn’t paying attention to that, but Yaci is right on the money. I don’t know what prompted the city to increase security overnight; I can just hope that it has nothing to do with me. I won’t call off the plan after getting this far, just because of an increase in security. We hurry back to our room and wait for the night. ::: We go out through the window, invisible, and head straight to the den. We make two stops along the way to recast the aria and check on the houses we selected for the flight. On the last stop I also cast the strengthening aria and the gravity-tweaking aria before turning invisible. We arrive at the front of the building without problems. The guards all seem unaware of us. I cast a chain lightning aria I developed. It’s different from the normal lightning bolt in the way it scatters after hitting the first target, going for anyone near them. Every time it scatters again, it loses a bit of its strength. But if I make the first one strong enough, I can fell a lot of guards in one swoop. And that’s exactly what happens. More than a dozen of them fall to the ground as the invisibility on me and Yaci is dispelled. One of the few who managed to stay up after receiving the spell is that Wynn guy I appraised the other day. Nasty guy. I quickly follow up with a lightning bolt while he’s still stunned by the first hit. And he doesn’t survive the second one. My bad. The other two guards who are still on foot turn tail and flee in different directions. Yaci takes one down with a throw of her spear, while I finish the other with a lightning bolt. It looks that I killed some people, after all... And the weird thing is that I feel nothing about it. But there’s no time for introspection now. I kick the door open, and it flies from its handles. Gods, those body stats sure make a difference. I chuckle, imagining the eeriness of the scene when seen from another person’s PoV. A little girl kicks a door, and the door flies like cardboard. But before I can get in, I’m hit with a fireball and an icicle at the same time. One wonderful thing I’ve learned about the Adventuring System is that, when you’re connected to it, any attacks that originate from it just chip down your HP. So, an icicle that would have penetrated my torso before, causing a ghastly injury, now only reduces my HP bar instead. And my HP bar is so huge that it barely leaves a scratch. That’s why I don’t even try to defend against it, nor do I care about any kind of armor or similar. I simply follow their attack by another chain lightning aria, and the two of them fall to the ground. "I thought you said you didn’t want to kill anyone." "Those two are still alive. And, in any case, working directly as slavers is quite different from being the guards of a city." "If you say so..." I ignore the last comment and open the next door, which leads to a corridor. It’s different from the one I passed through twice. More luxurious, and the doors of the rooms are more ornate. Maybe this is where the clients wait, or something, so I ignore those and keep going straight forward. At the end of the corridor there is a bigger door, which I guess leads to where I want to go. The sounds that come from the other side of it confirm. There are some shouts and hurried steps of a group of people preparing for battle. Yaci is following right behind me. She doesn’t have the benefits of the System, so I’ll have to shield her if things go too badly. This time, I prepare the bolt aria before kicking the door, launching the spell before the door even hits them. This place is like a large hall. At the other end of it there’s a staircase going down, and there are doors to both sides, which I recognize. One of those goes to that room where I met the Duke. The hall has around twenty people in it, probably more. Of those, only five are standing after the bolt. They stand directly between me and the staircase, and they look like they’re used to working together as a group. All of them have a red neckerchief, and the smaller of them, a guy with a nerdy face, was holding a staff. Probably he’s the one who cast the glowing shield around them. It seems that the lightning bolt I cast just now wasn’t strong enough to pierce through their shield. "So the brat came, after all. It was good to agree to wait one more month, then."