Captured

"Huff!"

Sebastian let out a breath as he leaped away from his previous spot. Soon after, an explosion occurred.

Several spears made their way to the spot he landed but he deflected them using his sword.

This exchange had been repeated several times before. Explosions would occur on random intervals and while Sebastian could detect them, the knights could also somehow predict his movements and follow up.

The knights he had first encountered were skilled but they weren't at the level of these knights that had replaced them along the way.

'It's a premeditated attack.'

Someone was targeting him, and these people were working for that person.

'I want to capture one of them, but Serena…'

His opponent was at least at the peak of Adept, while he couldn't tell if the knights were Inheritors, their level of skill was comparable to the best mercenaries money can buy.

Serena could handle an Adept if she used her ability correctly, but if two or three of them appeared, she would undoubtedly lose. Her ability was still weak, as it stood, it was a one-off ability that allowed her to turn the tables in a gamble.

Sebastian clicked his tongue and held his sword with both hands, then with one hand, he grasped the sword and pulled. In one hand was the original sword and in the other was a copy.

The knights put up their guard and the Inheritor on the roof frowned.

Sebastian's nose twitched and he did several flips to dodge a series of explosions, the knights, like before, charged in at just the right time. However, before they could kill Sebastian, swords moved to block them.

"What the-?!"

It wasn't just the two swords that were in his hands, there were several copies of the same sword blocking each of the knights.

The eyes of the Inheritor on the roof contracted and he dodged to the side. One of the swords brushed past him.

Sebastian landed, and then struck down one of the knights before moving onto another. Because they were all individually occupied, he had the leeway to attack.

Though the knights were strong as a group, individually, they weren't Sebastian's match. He quickly defeated the entire group of knights by stalling the Inheritor with a barrage of swords.

"Fuu… You're as fearsome as they told me. Hey, haven't I stalled for enough time? It'd be difficult to go any longer."

Sebastian heard his words clearly. He quickly looked to the side and saw the figure of a woman on the roof, she wore a mask that covered the top half of her face.

'Since when…?'

This entire time, Sebastian was cautious of any of the man's allies coming to assist so he kept up his surveillance this entire time. Even Wisteria and Hound weren't able to hide from his senses anymore.

The woman raised her hand slightly and Sebastian ran. It wasn't a run to try and escape, it was a run to keep his life. If the opponent could hide from his senses, then that could only mean they were at least on the level of a Caster.

There was a mysterious force heading straight towards him so with all the power he could muster on the spot, he turned around and swung his sword but it didn't last for more than a second before breaking.

Suddenly, Sebastian felt it. The entire area around him was filled with energy for an instant then in the next second, his body was being buried in the ground.

"Ahak…"

Sebastian spat out the saliva and air he had been holding all at once. He tried to rouse more energy from the stigma but the pressure just increased whenever he was about to escape.

Just as Sebastian was about to sink into his shadows, the pressure disappeared for an instant then was replaced by an upward force. Then, it grabbed him like a hand was holding something.

He could finally get a good look at the woman earlier. She was posing as if she was holding Sebastian within her hands.

"Leave."

"Right right."

The Inheritor from earlier scratched his head then jumped off the roof to the other side. With that, the only people conscious in the area were Sebastian and the woman.

"Sebastian Sol."

Sebastian twitched and frowned.

"You don't have to remove your disguise, I know it's you."

"...Should I know you?"

The woman—Deimos took off her mask and then stepped into the air. Her body floated as she slowly walked towards Sebastian.

"My name is Deimos Luna, Lady Amy's right hand, and Lord Markus' aide."

"..."

Should he say as expected of Amy? She managed to figure out where he was while he was none the wiser. The surveillance on Amy revealed that she was currently in Aurora, and he had let down his guard because of that.

"...Mistress isn't well."

Sebastian frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"Sooner or later, she's going to explode. I don't want to see that. I'll do anything to prevent it at all costs."

It was what Nightingale had told him before. Her mental state was horrible and that she needed an outlet or else it was going to end very badly.

"...I want to kill you. Not just for the Mistress, but also for the late Master. He was like a father to me, he took me in when my own parents abandoned me. He gave me a purpose to fulfill by the Mistress' side."

The grip around Sebastian's body tightened and he let out a groan.

"In the end, you killed one and scarred the other. What more do you have to do until you're satisfied?"

Sebastian could hear the pain in her voice and kept silent. The worries that had been plaguing his heart were all gushing out at once and he released his energy unconsciously.

"AAAGH!"

Deimos quickly lowered the power holding Sebastian to prevent him from getting crushed completely and looked at him with anger.

"However, the moment I kill you is the moment the Mistress will truly break. Her love for you could outweigh the world but because of your actions and the accumulated doubts in her heart, it became anger that could split apart the skies. But the moment you die is the moment those emotions do as well. And…"

She will also give up her life.

Deimos bit her lower lip until it bled. She couldn't bring herself to say those words but Sebastian understood her through his flickering consciousness.

"I'm telling you this now, stay away from the Mistress. I will send you somewhere far away that not even the Mistress can go to. And… in the slightest chance that you ever get out of there, leave the country, leave the continent, change your name, do everything you can to avoid her. Though, I really do hope you just stay in there for your entire life. Because, the moment I see you walk out of there is the moment I will trade my very life to kill you."

All Sebastian could see before everything faded into black was Deimos' hate-filled expression.

…

It was a week later when Sebastian regained his consciousness. He had been drugged so that he wouldn't be able to wake up and when he opened his eyes, he was chained along with several other people.

As Sebastian stepped through the large steel gates, he tried to rouse his stigma but it didn't even let out a wisp of energy.

"Damn it…"

Mile and Balanos were right, he should have prepared himself more. He had blindly believed that his abilities wouldn't be sealed as even the best prisons in Aurora with sealing abilities wouldn't work on him.

And, his preparations to enter the prison along with supplies were for naught. In the end, he was really imprisoned with his real identity out in the open. The stigma on his arm was also revealed.

The clothes on his body were better fit to be called rags and there wasn't even any underwear to accompany it. There was no place to hold a weapon or even a small lockpick.

Eventually, he was led to a small cell and left there. There was a bundle of hay on the ground and a bucket in the corner, but that was it. The other people that had come with him had definitely received similar cells. Though, he couldn't confirm it because even the doors were made of steel. There were no bars and the walls were tougher than stone.

Even with a tool, it would be difficult to break the walls. If he had his ability, it wouldn't have been any trouble.

"They've really prepared everything well."

Sebastian clicked his tongue and continued to search for a way out but the more he looked, the more he lost hope.

In the end, he could only follow the schedule given to him. Waking up, doing work, eating breakfast… and until the night, there wasn't much different from some prisons. But, the level of surveillance was different. They watched so closely that they'd be able to see someone wiggling their fingers in a line.

The work they had to do was heavy as well. It wasn't minor tasks like cleaning or helping around, it was manual labor. Lifting building materials with their bare bodies, mining, lifting heavy rocks around.

The prison was a lot larger than Sebastian had initially thought. It was as large as a small town, there were even trees, though they didn't look like the ones on the surface.

'If it weren't for the whole criminals and guards business, people could live here properly…'

The weird part was the building materials they constantly carried. What could they be building that requires so much?

Though Sebastian wanted to take some stuff to use as tools, there were full-body checks done before and after work. And, another thing he noticed was that men and women weren't separated.

A normal prison would worry about the women being used as outlets for the mens' displeasure but…

As Sebastian looked around, he shivered. Rather than the women being in danger, he felt the opposite. They looked like predators eyeing their prey.

The people sent here are the worst of the worst—they've committed crimes so heinous that there's no chance of being pardoned from death. Gender didn't matter if they were all equally horrible.

None of them would be willing to be taken advantage of and would constantly try to gain the upper hand. In fact, as far as he could tell, there was already a hierarchy among the prisoners.

"Hey, you!"

Sebastian turned and saw a man with one eye covered with a scar running through it. He was big, to say the least. He was at least thrice as large as Sebastian and nearly twice as tall.

"You're the one that killed the house head, weren't ya?"