Octavius stood against the stone wall of the main corridor. He was facing directly away from the direction they had come as he watched the stone hall for any sign of movement. Behind him, the sound of boots shuffling and whispered voices were clear as Finn began to lead the freed captives toward the hidden exit.

After a second, Eitan approached him with a younger woman in tow. "This is Rebecca," the younger man said, "She's been here since the first group that we know of was captured. If you want to know something about the thralls, she's your best bet."

Octavius turned slightly to face them but was careful to keep the empty section of the corridor within his peripheral vision. He studied the young woman curiously. She had caramel-colored skin and short black hair that barely reached her neck. Her eyes contained carefully concealed emotion. She set her jaw with determination and nodded to him.

Rebecca - Human (F) (Lvl 11)(Mage)

Octavius glanced at Eitan, who was standing awkwardly beside them, and delicately lifted a single eyebrow. "Go," he shooed the man, "You're the leader of your group; go help them."

Eitan nodded jerkily and turned to help facilitate the movements of the slaves. Turning back to the young woman in front of him, he considered what he needed to know most urgently.

"Do you know what the thralls' plan is?" he asked. She winced slightly and frowned.

"I mean, I know that they want to enslave humanity and start an empire," she said, "But beyond that? I could only guess."

"Then guess," he prompted. She paused for a moment and began to think.

"Wellllll," she drew out the word as her eyes flicked to the ceiling and back again, "I think that the main group of them is planning to attack some massive group of humans soon. They've been getting ready for a while, just simple things like stocking up on preserved food and health potions, you know?"

Octavius nodded; that fit with the assumption that they were planning to attack the Sanctuary soon. "And the not-main group?" he asked.

"The Nightstalkers," she said with an uncertain expression, "They're the high-level rogues with the black capes."

"What about them?" he inquired, and she took a deep breath before beginning her explanation.

"When I first was captured, the tutorial had only started a dozen days before. The thralls as a whole were a lot less cohesive," she explained tentatively, "There were two real leaders: Kzedr, the current leader, and Rojk. Rojk was a Nightstalker and was like level 32. He and Kzedr always fought about what to do until one-day Rojk just disappeared. None of them bothered to tell us what happened, but Kzedr started wearing one of the Nightstalker's chest armor. After that, the Nightstalkers started to keep to themselves."

Octavius frowned slightly at that. "So the Nightstalkers and the normal rogues had a dispute, and Kzedr came out on top," he summarized, "Does that mean that the Nightstalkers might be sympathetic to humanity?"

Before he had even finished talking, she was already shaking her head. "Definitely not," she exclaimed softly, "They might not be exactly cruel like the others, but they always just act indifferent to us at best. The others look at us like we're beasts of some sort, but the Nightstalkers just act like we aren't even there. It's as if we aren't even worth acknowledging."

Octavius worried at his lower lip as he tried to think. "Do the Nightstalkers want to recreate their empire like the others do?" he asked, only to grimace when she nodded, "Alright then. Are there more slaves here? And where are all of the thralls right now?"

"I think that there are one or two more groups of slaves of equal size to ours," she said uncertainly, "But they could've broken them up into smaller groups recently. As to where they are? I don't know. They gathered us up and locked us up yesterday. Since then, we've had no communication with them besides for when they come in every few hours and take one of us. I don't know where they take them, though."

Octavius knew exactly what happened to the slaves that were taken. He felt his face twitch slightly before he reined in the storm of emotions at that — rage at the thralls for doing something so evil, loathing toward himself for helping to set the fires that burned those innocent people alive, and most of all, an icy determination to do everything in his power to get these people out of the underground hell that they were confined within.

"When do you think that their next visit will be?" he asked, his voice not revealing any of the pleading tone that the words carried within his head. Rebecca's eyes flicked back and forth over something Octavius couldn't see, and he guessed that she was pulling up the tutorial timer.

"An hour?" she guessed, "Maybe an hour and a half if we're lucky?"

Octavius exhaled slowly in relief. An hour would almost certainly be enough time to do what they needed to do.

"Would the rest of the captive humans be down this corridor?" he asked and nodded toward the opposite direction that her fellow prisoners were being led away.

She nodded. "Unless they made some significant changes to how they organize us over the past day," she said, her voice hopeful, "Are you going to help them too?"

Octavius smiled confidently at her, "I'm sure as hell going to do my best to. Is there anything else important that I should know?"

She bit her lip uncertainly before shaking her head. "I don't think so..." she trailed off, "Maybe that they're up to something right now? But you probably know that already."

Octavius nodded and extended a hand to her, "Thank you for the help; you can go ahead and head out with the others."

She smiled and shook his hand. "Thank you for saving us," she said as she turned and followed the others down the corridor.

Octavius turned toward the direction that she was walking and noticed Marcus's team returning quickly. As soon as Marcus was close enough for him to hear a low speaking voice, he asked for a report.

"We didn't find any thralls," the marine informed him, "Only supplies and one room full of dried plants."

Octavius was tempted to look into that room. When he heard dry plants, his mind immediately went to creating potions. At that moment, however, they had far more pressing concerns.

"Alright," he said, addressing the team, "There are another forty or so captives here; the one I talked to guessed that they're down this corridor. We need to move quickly and quietly. I want to get them all moving out within half an hour. We don't think that more thralls will come by any time within the hour, but if they notice the two elites that we killed are missing, they might."

Marcus nodded. "Alright, captain, how'd you want to do this with only a handful of us," he said, gesturing at the other three members of his team.

Octavius peered down the empty corridor for a moment before responding. "The rooms are usually staggered, so we can move as one big group. The name of the game this time is speed and stealth. Don't worry about sabotage, I doubt we could damage their supplies enough for it to make a large enough difference compared to increasing our forces by sixty people with the mage class, even if they aren't combat trained."

He was slightly exaggerating with that figure, but not by much. Among the slaves that his team had freed so far, the majority of them were above level 10. The first eight or nine levels of that probably came from the bonus for surviving the Emergence, and he assumed that the thralls did something to get most of them to at least reach level 10 and get the mage class. He made a note to ask Rebecca about that later.

As Leo heard his last sentence, a shark-like smile spread across his face. "Oh, damn!" he said in an excited whisper, "I can't wait to see the expressions on the grey fucker's faces when they're taken down by a volley of mana bullets from their ex-slaves!"

Octavius nodded and returned the grin before hefting his spear. "Alright, let's go," he ordered, "I'll take point. Marcus, you're in the rear."

Hugging the inside wall of the gently curving corridor, the group moved with light movements as they checked room after room. The process of silently stacking on a door and breaching became subconscious for them as they cleared a dozen rooms filled with everything from what looked like a pool of stagnant water to solid wooden boxes that they didn't take the time to open.

Octavius moved silently across the large hallway and reached a simple wooden door. A few seconds later, the other members were in position, and he shoved the door open and dashed inside. He immediately stepped to the side to make room for the next member of his team as his spear scanned from side to side.

As soon as the group had piled into the room, they exited it again. There weren't any thralls inside. In fact, they had only encountered a single thrall so far, and it was caught so off guard by their entrance into where it had been firing mana bullets at a wooden target that it hadn't even been able to redirect its spell at them before Octavius had brained it.

It was only a half dozen rooms later that they found the next guarded door. This one was silent, and they all strained to pick up the sound of possible human habitation within the highly secured room. Alas, even their superhuman perceptions weren't high enough to pick up breathing through a door at such a distance.

Octavius licked his lips as he studied the two low-level mages and grimaced. The long corridor would give the thralls excellent lines of sight. While he alone could easily take them down, he couldn't do so before one of them had the chance to shout.

In the confined corridor, a shout would be audible to those with high perception for an incredible distance. While he doubted that it would reach even close to the main hall of the complex, it would summon every lone thrall mage and rogue from within the rooms that they inhabited. After that, it only took one to raise the alarm.

He looked the two of them over and noticed their relaxed postures and bored features. They clearly weren't paying much attention at all to the corridor, and that certainly helped Octavius. The largest thing that made this attack much more difficult than the last was the lack of constant noise from within the locked room that would cover up the sound of their footsteps while they charged. Without that, he needed to come up with a new plan.

The first thing that came to mind was using shadow magic. While he had little doubt that a single shadow grenade would kill the two of them, it would cost a great deal of mana to position it so far away from him. Putting the idea on hold, he tried to think of anything else that had a good chance of working.

Stepping back behind cover, he scanned the corridor for any hint that might spark an idea. His eyes fell on the plain wooden door to the room that they'd just finished clearing. As he scanned it, he frowned slightly at the plan that it brought to mind. It was far from foolproof, but it was probably their best option. Turning to the members of his group that were present, he gestured for them to huddle around him.

"Ok," he said in a barely audible whisper, "We're going to try to draw one of them over and hide in the room we just checked out. Once they're either separated or within striking distance, we'll take them down. If there's only one, I'll take it, and then I want Caster to get a wind blade ready to deal with the other one. If they both come, we'll all charge. Remember not to let them call for help."

Heads bobbed around him as the others agreed to his plan. Quietly, they snuck back inside of the room. It was on the larger side for the rooms that they'd checked out that day. Its only contents were piles of fabric. What stood out about them, however, was their quality. The cloth garments were from modern Earth.

Ignoring the articles of modern-day clothing, Octavius ducked into the corridor. Removing an empty glass vial from his belt, he tossed it down the wide hallway, where it shattered into hundreds of tiny shards against the stone wall.

As the sound of the shattered glass clinking onto the floor filled the corridor, he moved back into the room and closed the door. He laid his spear quietly against the stone ground and drew the long knife from its sheath on his waist.

Closing his eyes, he reached out toward the dim shadows of the poorly lit corridor. Sensing them in his mind, he waited. The shadows were thin and sparse enough that he couldn't get a detailed idea of details through his shadow sense. Doing so would require him deepening the shadows in the corridor at the cost of a great deal of mana and making it clear to the thrall that something was happening. For his use, just knowing the thrall's general location was good enough.

"~~at ~as th~~?" came the barely audible voice of one of the thrall mages from down the hall. Octavius pricked his ears as he focused on hearing the other thrall's response; what the thrall said would define the soldier's own next move.

"I'll go ch~~~ ~~t," said the other thrall, and Octavius grinned. It seemed that there was only one thrall coming to investigate. After a few seconds filled only with the sound of the humans' shallow breathing, the thrall's footsteps became clear as it approached them.

"... guarding the stupid humans," the thrall grumbled to itself under its breath, "They can't even survive in the wild! What are they going to do? Fucking escape?"

The thrall walked straight past the closed door as it moved toward the pile of glass shards against the far wall. Octavius sensed it as it crouched over the glass and gently pushed the door open. Any sound that he might have made was lost in the thrall's aggravated whispers.

Moving slowly, he snuck forward until he was within half a dozen feet of the thrall's back. Once he was in a favorable position, he sprung forward. His left hand immediately clamped down on the thrall's mouth, and its muttering turned into muffled shouts of surprise.

Octavius forced his body weight backward, pulling the physically smaller and weaker thrall with him. As the thrall was inevitably disoriented by the sudden shift in perspective, his right hand flashed forward with the long-bladed knife toward its head. The loudest sound of the entire scuffle was the sound of the thrall's feet as they thrashed against the stone floor. It entirely covered up the squelching sound of the cold metal blade slicing through the thrall's brain as it went limp.

Octavius immediately dismissed the notification that informed him of his experience gain without so much as glancing at it. Standing, he turned to see Caster behind him with a wind blade hovering leisurely between his open palms. Grabbing the thrall's body by the shoulders, Octavius easily dragged it back and into the room that they were hiding within.

It seemed as though the short battle made slightly too much noise, as the sound of clacking footsteps soon reached their ears.

"Zil, you ok?" came the deep voice of the thrall mage that had stayed behind. Octavius stood directly in the doorway so that he could allow the thrall to get as close as possible to him before he was spotted.

As soon as the thrall entered his line of sight, the thrall froze. The short knife that was already in its hand shot up as the thrall prepared to defend itself, only for it to be knocked aside by the powerful wind blade that slammed into its chest. It stumbled backward with a wheezing sound, and Octavius charged at it. Three seconds later, the thrall fell to the ground dead.

Crouching down, Octavius wiped the blood off of his reappropriated blade using the thrall's own sleeve. As he was finished, he sheathed the knife and dragged the thrall into the room. Even while he did so, his team was moving to open the door that the thralls had guarded.

Scooping up his spear, he jogged over to meet them. Inside the room, there were about thirty-three captured humans by his count. They stared at Marcus with wide eyes as the marine explained the situation with a soothing tone that contrasted sharply with his deadly appearance.

"Bill," Octavius said quietly, getting the attention of the older man, "Can you lead these people to join up with the others? We're going to go see if there are any more groups."

The old hunter nodded serenely as Marcus finished his short speech. Stepping forward, Octavius addressed the huddled crowd that appeared to be frozen in a shocked silence.

"Hello, my name's Octavius," he introduced himself, "And this is Bill. I'm going to need all of you to follow him. He'll lead you to the exit."

That seemed to spur the group into motion as they began to crowd their way through the narrow doorway. Many seemed as if they wanted to talk, but the hushed tones that Octavius and Marcus had addressed them with tempted them to remain silent. After all, none of them wanted to risk being recaptured.

As Bill began to lead the group of captives away, Octavius nodded to the three remaining members of the group. With that, he turned and continued down the unexplored section of the corridor.

With only the four of them, it only took them ten minutes to clear the length of the corridor. They failed to find any more humans and only found three individual thrall mages. Each of the mages were left where they were slain.

The corridor had ended abruptly with a stone wall. It was almost as if it wasn't finished yet. Oddly enough, the first thing that came to Octavius's mind was that stone shapers simply blocked the corridor. With a grimace, he dismissed the idea. Even if it was true, there was nothing he could do about it. Turning back to the others, he spoke softly even though he was quite sure that they were very far from the nearest thrall.

"Alright, let's head back quickly," he said, "I want to see if I can check out the tunnel they're building. Maybe I can figure out where it will open up at the bottom. Either way, we can't be wasting time."