Chapter 137. Chaos

POV: Jack

I woke up feeling sore all over my body, even though the bed that I slept on was crafted with the help of the System the room that I was in made it feel very uncomfortable to be in.

Every wall was made with the same purple block, that was indestructible no matter how much we punched, believe me, we tried.

I was already missing my slime farm at the clan, but knew it was already gone, destroyed in flames.

Sometimes I think it was better to die together with my brother than live such a humiliating life.

Suddenly I heard some murmurs on the other side of the cell, that was my roommate, Shell, he wasn't like me and he'd been here far longer than me, he was a villager.

"Morning Shell."

The only response I got was grumbling, since he wasn't the talkative type.

A lot of prisoners here weren't the talkative type, especially now that they had new company.

They didn't like each other as well, and the only difference was that part of them were men while the others were women, imagine how big their displeasure got when the harmony was ruined by roughly 50 witches appearing out of nowhere.

In the beginning, they were connected and fused with who we were, then angry since they thought we were some kind of pillagers, even when we told them that we were completely different they still ostracised us, they tried to bully us into submission, but the fact that they couldn't work together and we were in the same numbers at them but stuck together made it difficult to active they're goal.

Not only that but we got 'special' treatments from our captures because when the villagers got along too well, the lifer would be dragged and killed outside the prison never to be beard again.

But since we were witches and so hard to get, they couldn't give us the same treatment, only to the most rebellious of us which resulted in two of us leaving.

As with the villagers, we never saw them again.

"Wake up you two, and get ready for work!"

The one who called was a guard in iron armor who kept hitting the iron bars to wake up the sleepy villager.

After some more grunting Shell finally got up and we left our cell.

Outside the depressing cell, was a bigger but equally depressing room

This prison was huge as it held around 100 prisoners, two in one room and two stories to hold us all.

The only variety in those rooms was the brick stones that the prisoners walked on to get down there and the lanterns that dangled from the high ceiling.

Slowly all the prisoners started to get out and gather in the center of the room when everyone was here there were three distinct groups overall, two of them were composed of the villagers boys and girls respectively, and the last one was the witches.

The fact that we have all been through the same traumatic events only brought us together and then ripped us apart.

All the guards wore iron armor and were half in number compared to us, but nobody dared to start a fight against them since we all knew the result and we couldn't attack them with anything we had.

Our inventories were empty and it was an amazing feat for that to happen since the only time that I was like that was when I was born.

Somehow on our way here, there was a man who could see what we had in our inventory and forced us to give away everything we had except our clothes.

So we were defenseless in front of the guards no matter what we did.

"OK everyone, since today is Friday you know what we'll do today, so finish your meal fast, your work even faster and you can enjoy the warmth of the sun for a few hours."

We all grumbled to ourselves but we were pretty happy about this.

Friday was the only day of the week when we were also to go outside and stretch our legs for a while, of course, we still had to finish work for the day so we could get that privilege, but we always managed to finish it faster than usual.

We all got in line to get our morning food, bread with water as usual.

Quickly we all ate what we had while talking with each other, even some of the villagers came here to talk, mostly women since they had a quicker time making friends here it seems.

While we were all persecuted, that didn't mean we didn't try to communicate with each other, especially with the villagers, since they were part of our lives that were forgotten.

Our break didn't last long as soon we had to get to work. We walked towards the second biggest room, which was filled with crafting tables and brewing stands.

Unfortunately, they only had 20 brewing stands and 60 crafting tables which meant that two witches would work at one brewing stand while the rest would join the villagers in crafting.

The guards were very strict about what they gave, each person had their recipe to craft and was given a certain amount of materials that would lead to an exact amount of items, most of the time those behind bread.

For us witches, we had it 'easier' since we either had to brew them some potions that they wanted or do some research that would lessen the aftereffects of man-made potions or get rid of them all if possible.

I was partnered up with Sandra, and we were working on the research team, more specifically we were trying to diminish the side effects of a potion that would absorb 90% of the damage received.

Unfortunately, the downside was that it would make you feel weakened and more than half of your health would drop without being able to regenerate for a few minutes.

While I hated the Piligers with my whole being, I had to respect their ingenuity in creating emotions even though they can kill you afterward.

The main ingredients for this potion are turtle shells, axolotl tail, and milk surprisingly.

My inner alchemist is on board with those items but I feel like it needs another ingredient to tie all of them together. It was a big project and I didn't have a lot of results in the past week, the fact that those materials were so hard to get as well didn't help.

Hours passed, and I constantly heard the sound of hammers until my ears went numb, but we were finally done for the day.

When the last loaf of bread was crafted, we all left the prison like there was no tomorrow, at least we tried until the guards intervened to make some order even at the price of violence.

But in the end, we arrived at the outside part of the prison where everyone's mood quickly improved. Here as long as we didn't try to escape or kill each other the guards wouldn't care what we did, and most of us didn't want to make trouble at this time of day otherwise we would be put back earlier resulting in the wrath of everyone in the prison.

This time was sacred, and not to be messed with.

Unfortunately, good times passed fast we had to get back underground in the depressing rooms.

We gathered in a straight line and got the last meal for today, before shoving back into our cells and closing the iron door behind us.

I sat on my white bed and tried to make it more comfortable before lying down.

"Goodnight Shell."

Nothing was returned, but I was already used to that so I went to sleep.

-----

I was sleeping peacefully having a sweet dream about my slime farm, but kept hearing some banging in the backroom that I couldn't put my hand on, it sounded so familiar so rithmatic but so annoying.

In the end, the sound managed to wake me up from my sweet dream.

"Shell, while you quiet down, I'm trying to sleep here!"

The annoyance was clearly present in my voice.

"Hmm? I'm not doing anything, I thought you were crying in the corner or something."

Wait, if he's not the one that's making the noise, then who is?

I got off the bed trying to see anything in the poorly lit cell but to no avail.

The noise was still going, somewhere close to my bed, so I walked toward it only to something truly shocking, the block on the floor was breaking.

"Can you stop the noise, is getting annoying."

"I don't know if I can stop it, but I can tell you that someone is breaking the floor of our cell."

"What?!"

The man quickly got off his bed and joined me looking with wonder at the unbelievably hard block getting broken.

After a few moments, the block disappeared revealing a poorly illuminated whole with a floating diamond armor on it.

"I-is that a g-ghost?"

She said with a trembling voice which took me by surprise.

Suddenly the floating armor started to talk.

"Is any of you a witch by any chance?"

"Yes, that would be me."

"Good, is it safe for you to talk?"

I looked at the bars and saw no activities since everyone was most likely sleeping and my cell was in the literal corner of the prison.

"Unless I start yelling we should be fine."

"Good, I'm Trader and together with Froggy I intend on helping you escape."

My mind suddenly froze, the talking armor was the stranger that recently come into our Clan.

And he wants to free us?

Am I still dreaming right now?

"What about me, will you get me out of here as well?!"

Shell asked a question before I could fully process what just happened.

"Yeah, we intend to let everyone out, but first I have to contact everyone in this prison."

"That's going to take too long, who cares about them, just let me use your tunes and I can get myself out!"

I've never seen Shell act so desperately, he tried to jump into the hole but a sharp sword was pointing at him making him freeze in place.

"We. Won't. Be. Going. Now. Capishe?"

Shell was unstable, but the sword seemed to be scary enough for him to stay in place.

"OK, how many prisoners are here, and how many guards usually patrol around here?"

"We're roughly 100 prisoners with 50 guards int the morning and 6 guards at night."

"That's... a lot more then I expected but still doable, ill dig a hole torwds the others cells as well, you can come down here if you want to, but stay silent and don't try to escape on your own. You won't get very far and endanger all of us."

While he was invisible I could feel his eyes looking especially at Shell which he only noded in understanding.

With that he disaperead in the unseen tunnel and Shell quickly took the opportunity to jump after him, and after some hesitation I did the same.

Once inside I relize that it was pretty cramped, but I didn't care since I was happy to finally see a different block then the purple one.

"Hy Jack, long time no see, I'm glad you manged to survive the attack."

I recognized that voice, it was Froggy, the newcomer that helped with my slime farm.

I turned around but only saw a floating enchanted iron armor.

"I'm glad to see you as well Froggy, what exactly is happening here?"

"Ohh, we have a lot to talk, but first, why don't you help me with digging a room here so we'll have enough space when the others would join us."

I poked around and it was true, plus I was to excited and wanted to use that energy somehow.

Slowly new people started to join us, some believing that this was a dream one they didn't want to wake up from.

After some hours the floating diamond armor came back.

"I think 26 people are enough to share the plan, I don't want to spend all night digging only half of you."

Some people growned in displeasure, but we're too happy that they were one of the lucky ones to get out so didn't voice out anything.

"Ok, here's the final plan."

And everyone gathered around him.