Rescue mission (3)

"The door can only be opened if the two of us are together, but you just killed him," the skinny man said with a solemn tone.

Anna looked at the corpse of the fat man, then at the door, before her gaze returned to the skinny man, a cold sneer appearing on her face.

"Didn't I warn you not to lie?"

"What do- AAAAAHHHH-"

The skinny man screamed at the top of his lungs when he felt something pierce his right thigh. Looking down, he saw a delicate hand firmly holding a dagger that was embedded in his thigh. He cried out in horror, but there was no one to hear him because the instant Anna touched him, she expanded her invisibility to cover the man.

"The next time you try to lie, it will be your eye that I'll be piercing," Anna said as she twisted the dagger in the man's thigh, causing even more blood to flow out of the wound.

"Y-Yes...." The man said, tears and snot streaking down his face.

"I will ask again, can you open this door?"

The man nodded his head in earnest.

"What is behind the door?" Anna questioned.

The skinny man hesitated before replying, "captives?"

"Why does it sound like you are unsure? You're not hiding anything, right?" Anna twisted the dagger again.

The man groaned in pain and shook his head, "N-No, it's just that sometimes we hear screams coming out of there, but I don't know what causes them. I swear I'm not lying."

"You mentioned the Virax earlier, is she in there?" Anna asked the most important question, although she already knew the answer.

"Yes."

"Good," she nodded in satisfaction.

Just as she was about to ask the man to open the door, she remembered something she was curious about, "don't you have safety measures in case someone invades the forest?"

She wasn't sure if the skinny man would know, judging that he was at the bottom of the hierarchy and seemed to not have a lot of information, but surprisingly, he nodded his head.

"There is a safety measure."

"Is it about monsters attacking the invaders?"

"How do you—"

"Just answer the questions."

"Yes, the monsters in the forest have been ordered to attack anyone who enters the forest if they don't have this." The man pointed to a round pendant hanging on his neck.

Ripping the pendant from the man's neck, Anna scrutinized it, yet she didn't notice any distinctive features that would imply its uniqueness. It appeared to be an ordinary, unremarkable pendant.

'The fact that the monsters don't attack anyone who wears this implies they are controlled, and whoever made these is the one controlling them,' Anna concluded after pondering the skinny man's words. Turning to him, she inquired:

"Who made these?"

"I don't know; they were gifted to us the moment we joined the group," the man responded honestly.

"Is this the only safety measure?" Anna inquired.

"No, there is also a team supposed to be dispatched to deal with invaders."

"Then why was there no team dispatched this time around?"

"It surely has to do with the fact that the majority of the group members went to deal with an emergency."

"What emergency?"

"I don't know."

"Last question, is there something like a monitoring room?"

"Yes, but the guys charged to monitor everything happening accompanied the ones sent to deal with the emergency."

'What kind of emergency would force them to the point that most of their men would be sent out?' Anna wondered but quickly dismissed that thought.

'Doesn't matter what they had to deal with, the important thing is that there are probably not many people present, which is perfect for us.'

Taking her dagger out of the man's thigh, she ordered, "open the door."

The man groaned in pain as he stood up from his chair, blood coming out of his wound and soaking his pants as he did so, but he persevered, limping toward the door. Meanwhile, Anna walked just behind him, making sure to keep him close in case he tried something at the last minute.

Standing in front of the door, he took some of the blood running down his leg and used it to write characters on the door.

'What are these?' Anna wondered, not recognizing the characters, yet she made an effort to memorize them anyway.

Just as he finished writing the characters, they glowed with an intense dark red color before the door slowly opened.

"Are those characters the same as the ones that open the door from the other side?" Anna asked before the door could fully open.

"Yes. Now that I have fulfilled your-"

Just as he was speaking, the skinny man suddenly felt his vision tilting to the side. Soon, he caught sight of his body falling to the ground.

'Why-'

Thud

The skinny man's head fell to the ground.

Taking hold of the decapitated head, she collected some of the man's blood in a vial from her space ring, just in case it was needed to open the door, then she observed the expression of confusion on the face of the severed head before discarding the head as if it were trash.

She wasn't naive enough to let a potential danger survive just because he complied with her demands. Besides, he was a bandit who killed and kidnapped people, so she had done a favor to society by killing him.

As the door was about to fully open, she stood to the side, waiting to see if someone would step out. After what felt like a minute with no one emerging, she decided to enter.

As soon as she entered the room and the door closed behind her, Anna's face mirrored the same stunned expression as everyone when they first entered this chamber, witnessing the sheer vastness of it.

Then, like the others, her gaze landed on the hundreds of captives, and her eyes widened in disbelief.

'How are there so many of them? Didn't the Night's group kidnap only nobles?' she wondered.

She glanced at the faces of the captives and noticed that they all kept their eyes on the ground. Even when the door opened, none of them dared to glance towards it. Some looked down with a sense of resignation, while the majority displayed faces filled with fear.

'Why do they look so scared?' Anna wondered, but she quickly got the answer when--

AAAAAAHHHHH

A blood-curdling scream, so harrowing that its piercing echoes sent shivers down the spine of anyone who heard it, momentarily paralyzing them with dread.

The captives shivered, and small gasps of fear left their lips. Even Anna, who could be said to have better mental fortitude, was frozen for a moment hearing the scream.

Slowly, she turned her head to her right, the side from which the scream came, and witnessed another door situated there. Contrary to the last door, there were no guards for this door.

Just as she wondered what was going on, the scream suddenly stopped, and then came a creepy and wild growling sound instead.

'Just what kind of things are going on here?' Anna thought with cold sweat.

Her curiosity piqued, Anna wondered if she should go check out what was happening inside that room. Perhaps the characters she had memorized could open that--

'Nope, bad idea. Let's just do what I came here for and get out of here,' thought Anna. Then she began observing the faces of the captives, searching for Cedrix's daughter.

'Blue hair so pale that they appear white and blue eyes,' remembering the characteristics of Cedrix's daughter, Anna looked for her among the hundreds of captives.

Fortunately, it didn't take her much time to find her, mostly because she was the only person sitting alone. All the other captives formed small groups, perhaps to comfort themselves or for other reasons. Either way, Anna didn't care enough to think about it. The moment she spotted the one she had come searching for, she approached her.

As she drew near the woman and fully made out the features of her face, Anna pace slowed.

'Those two didn't lie; she is indeed very beautiful,' Anna thought, feeling a bit jealous.

Even with her disheveled hair, distressed expression, and modest clothes that were shredded in some parts, Anna had to admit, her beauty might even be comparable to Lady Lilia and this was considered high praise coming from Anna, given how beautiful she thought Lilia was.

'I wonder how Master would feel when he sees her,' Anna thought with a small smile as she crouched next to her.

Expanding the area of invisibility of her ability to cover both herself and Anita, Anna gently touched her shoulder to get her attention.

The moment she felt someone touch her, Anita was startled and let out a surprised yelp.

"Who the hell are you?"