"Say, Mace, is that door booby-trapped?"

Cranberry asked while carefully examining the old, unassuming door supposedly leading to the basement.

"I... I don't think so...? I think it's only locked, my fathe... big sister, what are you...?!"

Mason tilted his head trying to remember if ever saw or heard something about that, but then he witnessed Cranberry raising her weapon and activate the skill that caused it to start glowing.

Her question was just a formality, even if the brown-haired young man would swear on his life that there was nothing wrong with the door, she wouldn't believe him anyway.

*SMASH*

...and she simply busted open the door while using the counter skill...

"Big sister! What are you doing?!"

Mason gasped in shock.

Cranberry just glanced at him and shrugged her shoulders.

"Now there will be trouble whether we go in there or not. So let's just go."

She smirked and pulled on Mason's wrist.

"...haa..."

Seeing no message popping up, she let out a small, annoyed noise, and confidently descended the well-lit spiral flight of stairs.

"The faster we will be done with this, the better. "

The red-haired girl declared furrowing her brows.

"Y-yeah! That's a great idea!"

Mason truly was an innocent guy...

He thought that her mentioning time had something to do with Cranberry not wanting to make things too troublesome for him, and not her getting annoyed at the lack of quest progression...

...

The two of them had to walk quite a lot of steps down, it seemed like the basement was less of a basement and more of an underground bunker with how far below the ground they had to descend.

Finally, they both arrived in front of the sturdy-looking black door with thick metal slabs barring further access.

"Big sister, after all, we should..."

*SMASH*

Mason tried to talk Cranberry out of her risky idea one last time, but the red-haired girl simply repeated the same action she did on the door upstairs.

She broke it while using the counter.

/Optional quest special timed quest unlocked

/Servant receives a special timed quest

Helping the master

Keep the Envys' clansmen away from the basement

(30:00)

/(29:59)

/(29:58)

The only difference this time was that the metal door did not turn into splinters as the wooden one has done before.

"...oh...?"

Cranberry raised her brows reading through the system message as the broken metal door tumbled across a long hallway and crashed down by the opposite wall at the other end.

The hallway itself was very wide and well lit, let's just like the staircase.

Thanks to that, all of the cells lined up alongside it were perfectly visible from the very start.

"Wh-what are those...?"

Mason noticed the sturdy metal bars blocking each and every cell, and trembled.

But whether he liked it or not, Cranberry was going in and pulling him along.

"...!"

It tuned out that none of the cells were vacant either...

Each had a tenant.

And each of them had some sort of trait or traits that would put them below the beauty standard of the world above.

Terrible skin condition, lazy eyes, buck-teeth so big they stuck out of their lips - those were the least problematic but most common issues, but the diversion didn't just end there.

Many of those prisoners had visible physical deformations, some more serious than others.

Cranberry was looking around with cold composure.

Some of the prisoners didn't even react at their arrival, while many tried to actively hide their appearances in shame.

All of them looked like ugly humans, but at the same time, each of them had long pointy ears.

/Quest progression

*find the missing elves

(60% completion - hidden affinity unlock)

/Tier 6th reward received

/Master's hidden affinity unlocked

Violence (level 1)

/Servant hidden affinity unlocked

/Error

/All of the servant's hidden affinities had been unlocked

/Calculating...

/Servant's 6th tier reward changed

/Servant's title upgrade

Venomancer (level 4)

All poison type skills level up

Base status points increased

But according to the system message that revealed itself to Cranberry, they weren't humans at all.

"..."

Mason raised his hand and touched his own ears.

They weren't as long as the people in cells, but they still liked extremely similar.

"Big sister... are... are those members of the Envy family who are just like me...?"

He asked, completely missing the correct answer.

"..."

Cranberry only glanced at him briefly and then rolled her eyes.

"Lairs, are you in here?"

Instead, she called loudly, observing the elves' reaction.

Every single one of them that was in Cranberry's sight, turned away from her and started staring at the stone floor.

That wasn't a reaction that the red-haired girl had hoped for.

"...fuck...!"

But then a small panicked voice and haphazard movement seemingly coming from the cell furthest away from the entry was perfectly clear in the dead silence that befell the hallway.

And it was a reasonably familiar voice that had cursed at Cranberry many times in the past.

"Haa..."

Cranberry breathed out, let go of Mason's wrist, and walked towards that cell.

"Big sister, what is going on...?!"

The brown-haired young man was spinning in circles, pale as a ghost, looking all the deformed prisoners with shock, fear, and confusion mixed together.

"Who are all these people? Are they patients? Are they criminals? Why are they here?"

He sounded as if he was on the verge of tears.

"You have a mouth, don't you? Ask them yourself, idiot."

The red-haired girl furrowed her brows while her mouth twisted with anger as she glared back at her supposed best friend.

"...!"

Mason flinched and took a step back as if he was considering running away from the basement.

His body trembled, but in the end, he stayed, covering in fear in the middle of the corridor.

Meanwhile, Cranberry was already by the bars of the very last cell looking inside with an expressionless face.

A bowl with food and another one with water left on the floor by the bars as if meant for some stray animal.

A small hole in the indented stone floor that could only possibly serve as a toilet.

And a shaking bundle of blankets huddled in the opposite corner.

"Ha. I know that it's you Lairs. Come on. I still have some more exploring to do, so we don't have time for playing hide and seek. We're leaving."

*SMASH*

Cranberry called out and destroyed the bars with a single swing of the baseball bat.

But even so, the bundle of blankets didn't react, it only continued to tremble.

"Haa...? Don't tell me they stole your hearing too or something?"

Cranberry scoffed and stepped inside the cell.

"FUCK NO!"

The person hiding under the blanket flinched and screamed in a pitiful high-pitched voice filled with despair.

It was definitely Lairs...