Underground Prison (1)

'Are they gone now?'

After Acedia was thrown into prison, they tied her hands with mana-absorbing shackles.

As the hands were most often used as a conductor for manifesting magic into reality, tying away their hands with mana-absorbing shackles would be enough to stop them.

However, that didn't apply to Acedia.

The cultists only left behind a single guard when they left the prison.

As their hands were tied with mana-absorbing shackles and the prison was located at a place only known to the cultists, there was almost no chance that anyone could escape that prison.

Unfortunately, they messed with the wrong person.

Although she had to admit that using her hands was the easiest and most efficient way to cast spells, she could also do it with only her mind, even if that would take way longer than her usual casting time.

Instead of being able to instant cast low-tier spells, she had to actually chant to use them, if she doesn't use her hands.

Excluding the casting time, it still worked perfectly, and as such, she used small wind blades to cut her shackles.

Although wind certainly wasn't her mana attribute, her control over it was sufficient.

The generated wind blades levitated in the air, right behind her tied hands, and moved accordingly to cut the shackles.

Their sharp blades cut through them easily, freeing Acedia in a matter of seconds.

'They tied it way too tight.' Groaning, Acedia inspected the red marks that were left behind on her hand wrists.

Without making a single sound, she stood up, sneaking to the cell bars and peeking out of them.

Across the hallway, on the opposite wall, a guard was keeping watch over some other prisoners.

Well, it depended on how one defined keeping watch over prisoners.

As the guard was confident about the shackles that were used, he didn't bother to actually pay attention to the prisoners and thus decided to ignore his job and go to sleep.

Acedia's eyes sent out a mana wave into the atmosphere, using it to read the surrounding environment.

Sensory magic was undoubtedly not one of her strengths, but she was proficient enough to roughly understand the structure of the prison she was in.

She was underground, located under another large building. She couldn't exactly identify the shape, but according to her limited information, the shape of the building resembled a tower.

The prison had multiple floors, and she was on the last floor, the very bottom of the tower.

There were four floors, and each one of them was constructed in a labyrinthian structure, but her information was too limited to determine the escape way.

She looked at the sleeping guard again.

Fortunately, he was still sleeping, so he wouldn't get in her way.

Everything would be perfect if it wasn't for one thing...

..she and the guard certainly weren't the only ones on that floor.

Although she couldn't identify their exact locations, there were other entities here. Humanoid entities that somehow don't feel like anything she had ever witnessed before.

'It seems like this is the reason why they are so relaxed.'

Even if they were confident in their methods of restraining their prisoners, sleeping while on guard would be a dumb decision as, no matter how good the restraints were, the possibility of escaping always existed.

Casting the wind blades again, she quickly sliced the cell bars, forming a circle-shaped hole to escape out of the prison cell.

She then sneaked up to the guard and quickly finished him off with those same wind blades.

She had never used wind magic as extensively as she did at that moment before.

Although she still preferred water magic, she had to admit that wind magic had the advantage of being fast, quiet, and lethal.

'Water still packs more of a punch, though.' She refused to accept that any other elemental magic was superior to her most precious water in any shape or form.

Acedia removed the head of the guard ― pausing as she observed the bloody corpse.

She scrunched her nose as she recalled the memory of those kids, a faint feeling of guilt washing over her.

She sighed. "It can't be helped, I guess."

Even if she had to endure the guilt, she didn't regret her actions. It was all for a better cause, and she had things she wanted to protect, after all.

Namely, her sister or that idiotic mercenary that forgot about their promise. "So...where's the map?"

Acedia searched the corpse, looking for a map, as she was sure that it was unlikely for a guard who neglected his duties to have the fundamental intelligence to memorize the entire structure of the underground prison.

Fortunately, it didn't take her very long to find what she needed.

"Wow." Acedia rotated the map and tilted her head, furrowing her eyebrows as she read the map. "I don't know what any of this means."

The map was just filled with a bunch of paths and was written in cryptic language, which made it impossible for Acedia to actually comprehend anything, as that information just overwhelmed her.

"Well," she said as she threw the map away, already giving up reading it. "That's useless."

A dimensional storage opened itself, sucking the map in, before immediately disappearing right after.

"I'll just store it, in case it comes in clutch."

After she put the map away, she pulled out the other item that she found on the guard's body.

A key.

Acedia guessed that the key was a universal key for all the prison cells, as there was only a single golden key in the key bund.

What else would it be for?

Finding that key, Acedia was eager to try out her theory, quickly trying to open a prison cell.

According to her expectations, the cell opened.

"A universal key." She smiled. "How neat."

Tucking the keys into her dimensional storage, she set off to free all the other prisoners and leave the prison.

As she walked through the hallway of the prison, she quickly noticed the presence of those beings nearby.

Using 'Stealth', she peeked around the corner, watching those beings.

They were humanoid ― to be exact; they were essentially humans.

All of them were human form and voice. The only difference being the distinctive features.

Those humans had dark grey skin and pure black hair, similar to that of a dark elf. The difference between those three races, however, were the eyes.

While they had shining yellow eyes, their sclera was completely black, making them look like some kind of monster in human skin.

As those beings seemed to be similar to dark elves, Acedia guessed that they could probably use dark magic ― a forbidden form of magic.

Dark elves were essentially elves that vowed an oath to Umbral, gaining access to the power of dark magic and corrupting their body with darkness.

As dark magic was a form of magic that is strictly used for things such as curses or even necromancy, it was forbidden due to the sheer cruelty of that direction.

However, that rule essentially didn't change anything, as elves were the only race that could undergo such a change, because they were the humanoid race that is most closely related to nature and the world.

And elves who chose to sacrifice everything to obtain access to dark magic were gone beyond recovery anyway, essentially turning that rule useless.

Although it was a forbidden magic, more than enough people still use it.

'They didn't look like elves, though...'

Those beings that stood before her confused acedia.

They didn't look like elves ―no, rather― they looked like humans, but humans weren't able to undergo such a transformation..

Resting her chin on her hand, she thought of a name to call them, as 'dark humans' were out of the question.

'...Umbral humans!' Acedia's eyes sparkled as she got that idea, proud of herself for being such a genius in name gifting.

Wanting to avoid useless conflict, Acedia wanted to back up, as she didn't know the capabilities of these beings yet.

Slowly, she backed up, trying to not attract the attention of those Umbral humans.

Unfortunately, as she started to move, 'Stealth' seemed to go off, disappearing into a wave of mana.

That wave of mana of the spell disappearing notified those Umbral humans and both of them turned their head to Acedia at an inhuman speed, as they turned their neck just like an owl.

"Eeek!" Acedia shrieked back. "That's disgusting!"

She was found out anyway, so she had no reason to keep her mouth shout anymore.

To the delight of herself.

And to the suffering of everyone else.

***

***

After I left the house, I looked around and tried talking to other cult members to try to get the information about the location of the prison by myself.

Unfortunately, they didn't give me any useful hint about its location.

I couldn't just ask them directly about it either, as just going to them and saying 'Hey, guys! I forgot where the prison is. Could someone please tell me?' would be plain suspicious.

It took me another hour to find out that to access the prison; I had to go through a secret pathway, as that part of the area where the prison was located was filled with monsters, but no one specified what area it was or where the secret passage was.

I sighed, annoyed by the lack of usable information.

"Is something wrong, Connor? You can take a day off. You should be spending times with your kids at such a moment, after all." One of the men asked with genuine concern in his voice.

I froze up when I heard the word 'kids', recalling the memories that I rather wanted to forget.

"Yeah." was the only word that I was capable of forming.

Although I knew that it was something that couldn't be avoided, I couldn't help but feel bad.

However, I knew that this wasn't the first time that I killed and it certainly won't be my last.

Feeling bad just because I've come to realize what consequences my actions have. It sounds stupid, doesn't it?

It wasn't something I can change.

I just had to endure and accept.

And so, I decided to keep prying for information, enduring the guilt that I was feeling.

Right as I was about to give up on talking with the other cultists, as they didn't give me any useful information, I could faintly feel a familiar mana texture in the atmosphere.

It was Acedia's mana, and she seemed to be using quite a sizeable amount of mana, judging by the fact that it reached me from her current location.

Using that clue, it didn't take me long to find out where she was.

However, just going straight through that area would be inefficient, as I would have to face all the monsters by myself, which would take way too much time.

I looked back to the cultists, as a plan formed in my head.

Chuckling, I realized my contradictory thoughts.

Feeling guilty about killing, but still planning to keep on doing it.

No matter what. Some things will never change, huh?

No matter how human I get.

At the end of the day, I'm still the same person.

After all, I'm still Voidwalker.