Chapter 32.

Adrian

Adrian stood at the base of the wall carefully observing the guards who were on top of it. It was comforting to see just how careless they were. As far as he could tell there were no more than five guards at the gates and around fifteen or so all around the walls. Most of them were slacking off or chatting with their friends and others were meandering around.

It took him only a moment to use Dash to get over the wall and into the city. None of the guards had been looking at the point where he had crossed over and Adrian was quick to vanish into the maze of the poorly designed town that Idol Rabier ruled over. He didn't move to the rooftops, it was possible that one of the guards could see him, instead, he used Blindsight, Dash and his speed to navigate the dark, empty streets.

There were a few people around, homeless folk, some prostitutes in the red light area and a few drunken fools but most people were asleep. It was hard to believe that it was only ten at night. It highlighted just how important sunlight was to these people, they lacked the magical lights that the capital had in abundance so they had to stop all or most of their activities at sundown. Adrian used his Blindsight to carefully check for guards, adventurers and others who were armed. Taking note of all of them but he found almost no one in town who was awake or alert. There were almost no guards in town, save for a small group in a bar drinking and chatting about something. The adventurers were all clustered around a few spots around town but they were not active.

It seemed that none of the guards were worth being concerned about in town so he would only need to worry about the guards on the walls and at the gate. Adrian took a breath, glanced at his HUD for the time, noted that it had only been five minutes since he had entered the town and then focused his attention on the mansion that was present on a hill overlooking the town. Unlike the town which was quite a dump with nothing that marked it as even reasonably impressive, the mansion was quite ornate looking if his telescopic vision was considered accurate.

Adrian moved closer he didn't take the winding route up the hill. Instead, he used Dash to move along the steeper side that was covered in trees, making sure to use his sensory skills to ensure that there were no traps until the whole mansion was in the range of his Blindsight.

Back in the forest, the range of nearly a kilometre was impressive but often required a lot of movement from him to make optimal use of. Inside a city, a kilometre radius meant that he was aware of a fair fraction of the city at any given time. So he was barely halfway up the hill when the whole mansion and the surrounding areas came into clear view.

Instinctively he tracked down the basement and found what he had expected. Three Demi-human children, one of them lying on the ground, barely alive, while the other two were relatively intact with nothing more than a few bruises. He carefully noted their features so that he could show them to Raphtalia later and scanned the rest of the dungeon. Adrian's mood darkened when he saw the rotting corpse of a wolf demi-human. The body had belonged to a child no older than six or perhaps the child had been even younger with a higher level. The sight crystallized his intent and banished his doubts.

Idol Rabier would die. Raphtalia would have the right of first refusal but if she refused then he would kill the man, no matter how wrong it felt.

While Adrian and his party had been travelling to Rabier's domain he had been trying to figure out what the hell he had been thinking when he had decided to kill his stalkers. The only conclusion that Adrian had come to after meditating on it was that he hadn't considered it. The excuse was paper-thin but even after thinking about it he didn't see any obvious solutions. Speaking to them, trying to run or even leaving them be were not valid options. Sure it was possible that they wouldn't kill Adrian and his party but it certainly wasn't likely.

Still, his doubts had persisted and it had made him reconsider his judgement. His actions may have been pragmatic but they hadn't been well thought out or moral. In truth, he had even begun to wonder just how he should deal with Rabier. Adrian was pretty sure that they could rescue to children even without letting Rabier know about it.

Now he felt certain that he could not allow the man to live. Not when he would just buy some other children to torture. Plus, the man was a noble there was no one who would be willing and able to hold him accountable and he could be a valuable information source especially as the rosary and shrine indicated that he was a devout follower of the Three Heroes faith.

Adrian carefully studied the target's location, trying to objectively assess the situation and trying not to focus on the children and their wounds and scars. The guards were distributed around the mansion. The servants were asleep as was Rabier and there didn't appear to be any sign of a wife or children and as far as Adrian could tell with his Blindsight there didn't appear to be any physical traps or barriers.

Adrian used Dash to move upwards. A quick use of his mana sight to check for magical traps was enough for him to be blinded by the beacon of magic that was the obelisk. Adrian took a deep breath, trying to stay calm as he was suddenly reminded of theMagical T-rex that was sealed using that obelisk somehow. His fantasies of blowing up the place using a couple of explosions and Sword Beams died a quick death. He really didn't want to risk fighting that thing without Fitoria waiting in the wings.

He shook his head and got back to work, carefully using his Dash, Blindsight and Mana Sight to move out of sight of guards, check for magical traps around the basement, in the basement and in Rabier's room. Once he was certain that there was nothing worth noting Adrian used his Dash again. This time he moved vertically upward for nearly five seconds reaching a height of nearly two kilometres in that time. His ears popped as he stopped Dash but his stats blunted the negative effects from his rapid movement.

For a moment he used Glide to just slow his fall to a crawl and used his perception enhancement to study the town below him. It was out of range of his Blindsight but telescopic vision and his other skills to see in the dark and outside of the normal range of vision allowed him to study that town even if it was shrouded in darkness for most, while he waited for Dash's cooldown to end.

Adrian considered the size of the town, his skills and then felt a slight thrill of fear as he realized that he could casually raze the whole town to the ground. Thousand Swords twice, Dash to reposition and retreat, Sword Beam to deal with the hard targets and Sword Change to convert the two thousand swords into elemental explosives and the whole town would be levelled. As long as he had an SP potion he could do it in less than a minute and then leave with absolutely no long term drawbacks, even his SP would be fully restored by the potions.

A few powerful adventurers might survive but by the time they reacted Adrian would be long gone. He took a deep breath and used Dash again but the idea didn't leave his mind. Adrian wouldn't do something like destroying a town full of innocent people, he knew that...but just a few days ago he hadn't imagined that he would or even could kill three people out of fear for what they might do.

He shook off his thoughts, he would need to think about this later, as he approached the camp in the nearby forested region. His party were sitting around a small fire at the shore of the lake. Adrian had selected the site because it was easily visible from the air.

He landed a few meters away from them and then noted that it had taken him about fifteen minutes for the whole scouting trip. That fifteen minutes must have felt like an eternity to Raphtalia because the moment he appeared she had gotten up from where she had been leaning against Trystan, who was in his Filolial King form and approached him.

"Was Rifana there?" she asked without preamble, absently brushing off the black feathers from her clothes, Isis and Trystan who had been talking about something walked closer to him as well.

Adrian just activated his illusion sword and carefully thought back to the three children in the basement, the image of the three demi-humans formed in thin air, it didn't have much in the way of colour as Blindsight didn't give him that information but the way Raphtalia lit up when she saw the girl who had been lying down was enough to confirm things for him. Rifana was still alive and was apparently a weasel demi-human of some kind.

"That's her," she said, for a moment he thought that she would cry but her expression shifted to absolute determination in an instant, "let's go and get her!"

Adrian nodded, "Let's take a few minutes to plan this Raphtalia," he said, trying to calm the girl down a little, "we don't want to risk giving Rabier the chance to activate her Cursed Seal."

He didn't like saying the words but it cooled her enthusiasm. Cruel but effective. He quickly spoke up, not wanting her to dwell on the words, "Our main goal is to save those three demi-humans and for that, we absolutely need to break the seals. As we've tested I can break the seal from either end," he said, nodding at Isis and Trystan who both winced at the memory of him testing out the Seal Removal Sword and the Curse Seal Sword. It had taken him a bit of time but the results had been telling.

Adrian could remove a slave seal by either targeting the master or the slave. Using the Seal Removal Sword, he could also apply a seal and remove it with ease and removing the Seal from the master's end allowed him to remove the seal from all the slaves at once. There were however two large drawbacks. The first was time, both swords took nearly thirty seconds of direct contact to work and if he broke a slave seal it warned the master.

This was precisely why he absolutely needed to target Rabier first. If he didn't he could easily imagine the man activating the seals and killing the demi-humans that he didn't free first.

Adrian was quick to explain his plan. It was simple and had a fair number of contingencies. Drop-in using the Disc, he would capture and bind Rabier while his party would rescue the slaves and then they would leave. Should things go wrong...well he had a few things he would set up just in case but even if his entire plan and all the contingencies went awry Adrian was quite confident that he could just crush all his opposition without much effort.

Raphtalia was nervous and tense as he bought out his Disc and they moved into the air, the air growing colder as he quickly rose to nearly two kilometres in height. Once they were up in the air he looked at the three members of his team and pulled out a large bag and a few sets of medicine and some healing cream.

Raphtalia was the one he handed the bag full of healing items too. She looked at him questioningly and Adrian felt a bit happy that he had distracted her from her worries, even if it was for a moment.

"Heal them up once I give the signal," he stated, trying to keep his tone calm even as he felt his tension growing, "and be careful."

She nodded, "Yes, Mr Adrian. I will," she paused for a moment, "thank you for everything, I-I know that I can't ever repay you for any of this but I'll try. I promise."

Adrian wasn't surprised. Raphtalia was a good person all the way through but she was giving him too much credit.