Sneaking into the castle

Using space magic, Sian led Illianna to the huge castle walls. Since they were in a blind spot, even though the walls were full of soldiers, they were not seen.

"There are some magical barriers around here to detect space portals," Sian whispered as he touched the wall. "To their misfortune, that's child's play compared to the queen ant barrier."

Using his magic to sweep every corner of the castle, Sian carefully chose the destination spot.

"Here we go again."

Dragging Illianna with him, Sian teleported to the largest room in the dungeon, which was also the only one with people in it.

"Ugh, the smell in here is horrible," Sian covered his nose.

"It's all black, I can't see anything."

From Sian and Illianna's complaints, a commotion started in the surrounding area. Apparently, the sudden appearance of the two startled those who were there.

"A dungeon is already dark by day, of course at night the visibility would be even worse," Sian said.

Creating a small ball of light, he threw it upwards, illuminating the room. The sudden appearance of light caused the slaves to involuntarily cringe as they covered their eyes.

There were both adults and children, and all were wearing old rags that offered no protection from the cold night. As they did not completely cover their bodies, their thin ribs were visible.

Some had worrying bruises like broken limbs or swollen faces and all, without exception, were showing signs of dehydration and hunger.

"I didn't expect them to be treated well, but that's already too much," Illianna looked shocked at the scene before her eyes.

"Currently, they are just useless prisoners of war." Sian's gaze wandered around the place as he continued. "I wouldn't have been surprised if they were all already dead. But well, I guess we got lucky. Considering they're all wearing magic inhibitor necklaces, some of them should probably be mages."

Taking the initiative, a tall, thin, redheaded young woman approached them.

"You two don't look like you're from the federation, who are you?" she asked.

Despite her deplorable state due to starvation and mistreatment, she still maintained an air of elegance. This was probably due to the fact that she was from a high-class family.

*Bang Bang*

After two loud knocks on the metal dungeon door, a man's voice sounded, "What's that noise there?"

Probably due to the buzz of the slaves, one of the guards came to look.

"Light? Why is there light in there?"

Without receiving an answer, the guard seemed to have grown impatient and started to unlock the door. Noticing this, the red-haired woman seemed nervous as she looked at Sian and Illianna, but she remained silent.

After entering, the guard looked at the ball of light in the center of the room.

"Where did tha-"

*Swwosh*

Before he finished speaking, Sian took out his black spear from his magic pouch and pierced his heart.

The redheaded woman, who had previously maintained a certain composure, was startled and she wasn't the only one, everyone in the room was the same way.

"If anyone screams, I'll rip their tongue out," Sian warned them.

"Can't you do this more peacefully?" Illianna scolded him. "You should also keep your voice down, otherwise someone else might come again."

"We are stealing the property of a kingdom, I see no need to be peaceful."

"But if we're not careful, we'll be looking to pick a fight with a kingdom."

"It won't be the first time," Sian said.

"A bad reputation is not good for business."

"Fine, you win," Sian said as he gave up arguing.

Looking briefly at the frightened faces in the room, Sian put away his spear and said, "No matter who you are, if you are willing to come with me, you will live."

"What he means is that we are here to save you." Taking Sian's lead, Illianna continued, "But for that we have some conditions that we can talk about later."

"Now stand still and avoid moving unnecessarily," Sian instructed them.

Raising both hands, Sian quickly used light magic and conjured a healing spell that fell on everyone in the room.

While the spell didn't take away their hunger, it healed all their injuries and bruises, including broken bones.

Even if Sian didn't care for adults, children were different. He still felt a little sympathy for them.

"I'm going to get you out of here, so don't cause a fuss," he said.

With a wave of his hands, Sian made them all disappear. He had sent them to the vicinity of the hotel.

"Shouldn't you have undone the master-slave contract they have before transporting them?" Illianna asked.

"There's no need for that."

"How do you intend to make sure they don't find out where the slaves are?"

"It's simple, everyone in the castle will die, then everything will end well."

"What?!" Illianna's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. "What do you plan to do?!"

"Leave a large-scale magic here and when we leave, everything will blow up," Sian said casually. "That way, we'll kill their owner and cover up the slaves' disappearance. Since they're at war against said rebels, they won't suspect me."

"No, you can't do that!" she warned. "If you do, many innocents will die and it will throw the kingdom into even greater chaos. It will generate even more deaths than it already has."

"I don't see how that affects me."

"It doesn't matter if it affects you or not, you have to do it in a way that doesn't cause unnecessary deaths and that nobody suspects you."

"... ..."

Realizing that her words to Sian seemed to have gone in one ear and out the other, Illianna tried to convince him using her infallible weapon.

"Ophilia is sure to question the amount of people that have suddenly appeared, if you do as I say, I will tell her they are slaves I have bought."

"Fair enough, you've convinced me," Sian nodded. "I'll take care of everything without them realizing it was me."

Not having thought about how Ophi would react when they returned with several slaves, having Illianna take responsibility was convenient, so Sian was happy to accept her offer.

"Remember," attracting his attention, she emphasized the following words, "Without! Unnecessary! Deaths! Understood?"

"Okay, no innocents," Sian nodded. "Now go ahead and take care of things at the hotel, I'll take care of things here."

***

Having sent Illianna back to the hotel, Sian cremated the guard's body that lay on the ground until everything turned to ashes.

"Right, now it's time to kill the master of those slaves."

When the slaves were still in the dungeon, Sian had tracked down their master by following the trail the contract left. Since the slaves' master might discover that they were missing if he looked for them, Sian decided to kill him quickly.

One way to prevent them from being discovered was to cut the tie between the master and the slaves. However, undoing everyone's contract would be laborious, so he opted for the easiest choice, to kill the master of the slaves, since he was only one man.

After sending the slaves to his hotel, there wasn't another living soul left in the dungeon, so he didn't have to worry about silencing anyone.

Despite knowing the location of the slave master, Sian didn't go directly at him using his space magic, he preferred to do it the traditional way.

Leaving the dungeon, Sian sealed the door so that no one could enter and climbed the stairs. A few meters after leaving the dungeon, he ran into a guard, but before he could be noticed, he knocked him out and threw him into the bushes of the castle garden.

Quietly crossing the garden, he quickly came to a tower, which he climbed and opened the window without making a single noise.

The room he had arrived at was a huge room filled with extravagant furniture. Due to the dim lighting and being busy in bed practicing nocturnal activities with two women, the man he was looking for had not noticed him.

After a quick search of the surroundings with his magic power, Sian found no guards nearby.

Ignoring the moans coming from the women, Sian approached from behind the gray-haired man standing over them.

Since he wasn't trying to hide, the woman underneath the man noticed his presence and her eyes widened. Realizing the woman's reaction, the man turned around, but before he could complete his move, Sian grabbed him by his neck and lifted him off the bed.

Without giving him a chance to react, Sian cremated him alive and like the guard's body, turned him into ashes before he could even scream.

"I thought it would be more work, but there aren't even any guards at the door to the room," Sian muttered.

Looking at the women who were frightened, he lightly threatened them, "If you scream, you will meet the same fate."

Containing their fear, the girls stood trembling as they looked down. Like the others in the dungeon, the two showed signs of malnutrition and mistreatment. Since they were also under a slavery contract and magic inhibiting necklaces, they were probably former nobles from the royal family as well.

Without giving any explanation, Sian sent them where he sent the others, and let Illianna take care of them.

"Okay, with that task done, it's time to explore the castle."

Leaving the room, Sian snuck through the corridors of the castle and headed towards the vault. He had discovered its location when he had scanned the castle earlier with his magic.

The vault was in a secret chamber behind the king's throne. Although it had a thick door made of solid iron and was protected by a magical formation, Sian had no trouble using his space magic and usurping everything inside.

Since it was a merchant kingdom, he expected to find things like precious metals, but he was disappointed. All that was inside were some magic tools, jewelry, accessories, magic stones and gold. These things are not valuable in Sian's eyes.

Normally, when a kingdom has something of extreme value, they keep them in magical bags. Because they are small, they are easy to hide from the eyes of criminals. On the other hand, they have limited space, so things considered less valuable go into the vault.

Although it took a bit of time, if Sian looked for space anomalies, he would be able to find them.

"Unfortunately, I still have things to do," Sian lamented. "To make up for my bad luck, maybe I'll come back here another day."

Since Sian had already taken care of the slave master, all that remained was to cover up the disappearance of a hundred of them.

At that moment, a reddish orange bird the size of a crow with a long tail appeared out of nowhere on Sian's shoulder. This was none other than Teshar.

Taking her in his hands, he said, "It's been a while since we've trained together, what do you think about we get some exercise?"

***

After a quick training with Teshar, Sian was flying while looking at the huge hole in the ground right next to the castle.

To cover up the slaves' disappearance, he staged a fight with Teshar. Starting from a nearby forest, they dragged the fight into the city and finished it over the castle.

With an attack that put an end to the fight, Sian hit the dungeon where the slaves were. Due to the power of the spell cast, the dungeon was completely destroyed and by 'luck', it was the only place affected.

With his goal long, Sian was about to leave before a commotion started, but then he felt glances coming from the city wall.

Although Sian didn't know why, they were following him from the forest.

Despite the distance, they also noticed Sian looking at them and in the same instant, one of them who had greenish skin exploded with intense magical power. Her body was enveloped by a powerful scarlet aura.

Sian clearly felt the urge to fight coming from that person.

Strangely, he felt a familiar sensation from that green-skinned person. But before he could go to meet her, Illianna's voice resounded in his mind.

"That's bad! Very bad!"

His usually calm voice was abnormally nervous.

"I think some catastrophe is going to happen here! Come back quickly!"

Without delaying another second, Sian turned back to Solaris.