Chp.25: Scammed
While his sisters fought, Haku continued through the long tunnel. He discovered that the soldiers who were in the structure were many more than he had assumed: every few meters he saw at least a couple running towards the entrance. Luckily, they still seemed to be a manageable number; but if he continued to let them go towards the entrance, they would have had a chance to break through his sisters' defense thanks to the numerical majority. Haku had to prevent it, and the best way to do it was to kill them when they were still far from their comrades and in groups of just two or three. But to do that, he needed a bigger avatar.
After he'd made sure he'd traveled far enough from the entrance, he decided it was time for action. He stopped and unstrapped the dimensional pouch from his back, and from it he extracted the avatar he had used to meet the king. As soon as the avatar was out of the bag, Haku abandoned the mouse's body and entered the man's, which was much better for hand-to-hand combat.
While he was still doing this, someone tried to hit him from behind. Since the guards kept running towards the exit, it was inevitable that some of them would arrive there just as he was 'changing his clothes', and of course they wouldn't have asked him for his identity; they were still trained soldiers and as such they knew that when faced with a stranger in such a situation, the best thing to do was not to yell at him: 'Who are you? How did you get in?', but stab him with a sword while his back was turned.
Haku, however, was certainly not a fool; with a single punch he hit the man who was attacking him in the face, splitting half of his skull and making him pass out. He wasn't dead, but the brain hemorrhage the dragon had just caused would surely kill him in no time. Haku had inserted great basilisk plates into his avatar's hands to reinforce them, but not only; he had made sure that under them there were cushions of air that expanded or contracted according to the action of the muscles. Each time he threw a punch, these pads pushed the great basilisk's bony plates forward; this, combined with the already enormous punch force due to a level adamantium mana core, meant that being hit by it was like being hit by a rock fired from a catapult. Even with the strongest mana protection, it was impossible to escape unscathed.
There was another soldier with the one who had just attacked him, who now seemed uncertain whether to face such a dangerous individual. However, Haku didn't give him time to think: he threw himself against him and punched him, as he had done with his colleague. The man defended himself with his sword, but instead of punching it, Haku grabbed it directly and snatched it away from his hands; after all, he wasn't afraid of cutting his fingers, since they were protected by the bony plates of a great basilisk. Before the soldier could realize what had just happened, Haku kneed him in the middle of the stomach, making him fall to his knees gasping; whereupon he swung the sword he had just obtained and cut off his head cleanly.
Having done that, Haku tied the dimensional bag back to the rat's body and hid it inside a crack in the wall; he could have taken it with him, but preferred to leave it away from his avatar instead. That way if he encountered enemies like Black Vulture and his avatar was destroyed, he could simply reactivate the rat avatar and pop a new body out of the dimensional bag, and then come back with it to face a now tired foe. After making sure the mouse was well hidden, Haku activated the invisibility rune and disappeared from sight, and resumed running through the tunnel.
He had brought with him the sword he had stolen from his opponent, and it proved useful. As he descended he periodically encountered groups of guards running towards the entrance; they obviously couldn't see him and he took advantage of this to swing his sword in the air and cut off other heads cleanly. In case there were too many soldiers to kill them all in less than a second, Haku engaged in hand-to-hand combat with them where he exploited the numerous potentials of his avatar to emerge victorious and exterminate everyone. Sometimes he even encountered opponents tough enough to force him to use a couple of runes to eliminate them. But in any case, Haku continued to advance downwards, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
Eventually he reached the end of the tunnel, at the end of which was a door that closely resembled the one Rhaegal described to him; beyond it certainly stood his brother. The door was defended by an extremely tall and massive man, with shaggy red hair and beard, who wielded a huge hammer and seemed almost to be waiting for an opponent. His body was completely covered in armor made of a black metal that felt very solid. As he had done up to that moment, Haku took advantage of his invisibility and sneaked up to him, then hit him in the neck; but this time, instead of cutting off the head cleanly, the attack left only a light mark on the armor, and the sword snapped in the night. However, the man roared in anger and pain and tried to grab him, but Haku had already moved to a safe distance. Furious that he couldn't see him, the man started swinging his hammer in an attempt to hit him.
An honorable fighter at that point would have revealed himself and chosen to face his opponent in a fair duel, but Haku was not an honorable fighter. For him the word 'honor' made no sense: in a fight there were only the living and the dead, no one else. So he kept his invisibility active and attacked the man again, this time with his fists, aiming at the hand that held the hammer. It took him about five blows to break his hand; the armor the man wore was extremely hard, and was probably made of some special metal like mithril or adamantium, but still Haku could still break through it. The man took the hammer with his other hand and tried to listen to the environment around her, trying to catch the slightest movement, but he had no chance of hearing a dragon approaching that even in his real body would have been the pinnacle of silent; Haku studied the angle well and then attacked quickly, repeatedly hitting the man's helmet, until it bent inwards and broke the skull of that person, who collapsed to the ground.
For greater safety, Haku hit the man's head again with his foot until he broke it completely; the brain pulverized and spread on the ground surrounded by a cascade of blood. And so that was how died the opponent whose name Haku hadn't even known, and who honestly he was never interested in knowing.
Haku looked at the door. He knew that on the other side of those doors he would probably find not only Rhaegal, but Black Vulture as well. In that case, it was highly likely that she would try to use his brother as a hostage, or at least try to use him to hinder him. It would be a tough challenge, perhaps one of the toughest he'd ever faced, not so much for his opponent but for the risk Rhaegal might take. But unfortunately he had no choice but to face Black Vulture head-on: he had no way to open the door without the people on the other side noticing him, and even if he did, the invisibility rune was useless against Black Vulture. He could nullify the power of her mask simply by ripping out his heart and thus his mana core from his body, but that would also rob him of his strength and without it he would never be able to kill an opponent like her even by sneak attacking her. He had no choice but to face her in a head-on fight.
With this knowledge he prepared to enter. As expected, the door was protected by the magic, but one use of the nullification rune was enough to nullify it. Once that was done he kicked at the door and broke it down, ready to take on whatever was in the room.
But to his surprise, he found nothing.
Black Vulture wasn't there… but neither was his brother. The room was completely empty. There was no sign of anyone inside.
Haku was dumbfounded. What did this mean? Why were there so many people defending an empty room? Or maybe there was a secret passage? But he hadn't heard anything using sound… but it seemed to him the only plausible explanation. He used the nullification rune again and blasted the entire room, and to his surprise the floor buckled and a trapdoor appeared in the center of it. Haku immediately entered it, but found that the tunnel was completely blocked: there were only rocks in front of him. And it didn't look like they were put there at the last minute, but like they had been there for days.
Haku wasn't understanding anything anymore, but then he noticed something. In the midst of the rocks that blocked the passage there was a parchment which, although a little dusty, was extremely refined and held together by the seal of the royal family of the Jurao Kingdom. Haku took it and opened it, and the first words he read were: Dear Haku, it's me, King Marcus, writing to you. Did you like the surprise?
Haku almost tore up the letter in anger when he realized that he had been cheated. The king had foreseen everything! But how had he done? Eager to find out, he continued reading the letter: I guess you're quite confused at the moment, so I'll give you an explanation. You must know that my choice of place for our meeting was not accidental; now, I don't know when you will find this letter, and therefore I don't know if we will have already met and I will have told you the plurality of factors that led me to choose the temple of the God of Knowledge... but now, however, I will tell you one that, if we have already met, I will surely have kept silent about you. In the past millennia, in fact, a particular people of beastmen lived in this land, the molemen, who then migrated elsewhere when the temple of the God of Knowledge was erected. These people had created an extremely efficient defense system, based on numerous tunnels that formed a labyrinth within which it was easy to force enemies to face them in small groups. Today these tunnels are abandoned, and many have forgotten them... but one of the perks of being king is that you get to know things that most people don't. I was sure you would try to free your brother before concluding our deal, so I opted to play a little joke on you
Haku's eyes narrowed like two slits and even though he was no longer in his true dragon body he felt the urge to growl. He didn't know why, but he could imagine the king's teasing tone as he read those words. Even if Black Vulture took all possible precautions while transporting your brother, I'm sure he will have found a way to figure out where he was headed; indeed, if he has even half of your brain, he will surely have succeeded. And since I know that you can remotely command dead bodies, as you yourself have shown me, it is quite obvious that he will use this method to communicate with you. And even if he won't be able to tell you his location, I'm sure you'll be able to guess it from how he describes the place where he's being held. Therefore, I played smart. Originally, Black Vulture had brought your brother to this very room... but after just one day, he drugged him without him noticing and carried him through this tunnel, which he then proceeded to collapse, into another labyrinth room. The big advantage of this series of underground tunnels is that all the rooms are identical to each other, as the molemen used this method to confuse their enemies, so your brother will never realize that he has been moved and will continue to think that he is exactly here. To further delude you I did not leave this place empty, but filled it with soldiers I needed to get rid of; thanks to some information gleaned from Gerard, I know that these soldiers you've probably already eliminated by now were supporters of Carrion, so thanks for getting them out of my way. And with that, I think I'm done. Now, how about we focus on our negotiation instead of continuing to try and get your brother back with such little tricks? You may be the smartest person I've ever met, but you too surely took some time to find this place; you could try to find the real place where your brother is hidden... but you don't have all this time anymore, right? I'll wait for you at the tower, and don't worry: since you technically did me a favor by killing the troublesome elements of my army, I won't use this incident as an excuse to raise the ransom price. You can keep the bodies of your victims if you want: after all, they officially already died in the epidemic, even if they still don't know. Consider it a gift from me. Goodbye and see you soon!
As soon as he finished reading, Haku snatched the letter violently and threw a fist against the rock in front of him, and then another, and then another; he continued until the stone cracked, but as he had guessed there were other stones behind it. At least that excess of anger had served him to get rid of some of his adrenaline, but it was still not enough: he needed to let off steam again. He climbed up the trapdoor and ran towards the entrance like a fury. When he arrived his sisters had already eliminated almost all the soldiers and the ones left were trying to escape towards the inside of the tunnel, but Haku didn't allow them to go any further; with quick moves, he smashed the heads off all of them until they were all dead on the ground.
His sisters looked at him worried. It wasn't like Haku to get angry like that, and the fact that Rhaegal wasn't present wasn't a good sign. "Haku... where is our brother?" Kotaru asked in a voice so small it sounded like a whisper.
Haku didn't even have the courage to look her in the face. "We were scammed. Rhaegal isn't here. It was all in vain"