Before doing anything else Villin looked around the room carefully. He checked the cracks between the floorboards and scanned the walls for any holes. After looking around for five minutes he decided there shouldn’t be anyone peeking in at them.

Villin focused. The rope was thick, similar to those used in a boat, so even with his enhanced strength, there was no way he could break through those in a short amount of time.

And so, he focused, connecting to the web. With his glove on casting a spell wasn’t much of a challenge, it was just that he wasn’t sure which one to use. ‘Icy Pike’ doesn’t have a wandless version he knew off so that handy spell wasn’t one he could use at the moment.

Drowse wasn’t a spell that would do anything against things that weren’t alive and Vinea Tenura was used for entangling others, not getting out of being entangled.

This only left him with a few options. The first one was to use his strength to try and break the chair by bashing it against the metal pipe the rope was attached to. With the chair broken the rope would loosen up and breaking out wouldn’t be much of a problem anymore.

The problem was that this would be very loud, it would also take an unknown amount of time, he wasn’t sure how sturdy the chair was after all.

This made him decide to go with the other option. Cast fireball.

Now, he had used his saved spells earlier so Villin decided to save two new spells first. If something went wrong during the escape this would give him a few more options.

Now that Kayley and Rein also knew one of his gloves was a wand he decided to tell them of his plan. They nodded in agreement with his decision to save some spells first even if it may take a bit of time.

The first spell Villin saved was ‘Vinea Tenura’. He had only cast this spell once in his room thus far but it seemed to be a capable binding spell. He had no idea how good the gear of their enemies really was, there was a possibility his other spells would be completely ineffective so he wanted to make sure he would be able to do something for sure. If he could he would’ve saved this spell twice but sadly that just wasn’t possible.

As for the second spell, he hesitated a little between ‘Fireball’, ‘Healium Paulatim’, and ‘Chameleon’ but in the end, he decided to go for the healing spell. Fireball might not be able to do a lot of damage and well, Villin didn’t know enough about military equipment. It was possible the masks the soldiers wore that covered the top half of their face had heat sensors or things of the like and he doubted ‘Chameleon’ would be able to hide from those.

In short, he chose the two spells that would be effective with complete certainty.

When he was done with that nearly two more hours had passed, both of the spells he saved were quite hard, and he had only cast ‘Vinea Tenura’ once before.

But during these two hours, nobody came for them and things stayed quiet. Kayley and Rein didn’t do anything idiotic and simply pretended they were still asleep. The only thing Villin was currently worried about was Amelia, she was still nowhere to be seen.

Nonetheless, their own survival came first. If the three of them managed to escape maybe they could contact ‘The Academy’ somehow and receive reinforcements. And so, after these two hours, Villin finally cast ‘Fireball’.

Similar to previously a ball of fire formed within Villin’s right hand. Even though Villin couldn’t feel the heat coming from it, he knew it existed. He moved his hand up a bit so that the fireball reached the rope he was bound with and succeeded.

As he had hoped for the fireball set some of the rope aflame. Surprisingly though, as the fire spread wider across the rope the ball in his hand became smaller. It seemed that the amount of fire was stable and it was impossible for the fire to truly spread, an unexpected finding but not one that Villin disliked.

After less than a minute, the rope around his hands was thin enough for Villin to power through them. And as he did so, the iron chain between his handcuffs also broke releasing him.

From there getting out of the chair was easy. He grabbed one of the wands out of his interspacial pouch and pointed at the rope keeping his feet attached to the chair. A few casts of ‘Icy Pike’ later he was completely free from the chair.

He then got up and did the same to the two others, using a few casts of the spell to free them. Both of them actually tried to replicate his move of simply breaking through the handcuffs with pure strength but were somewhat surprised to find this action to be impossible.

Still, it is not like they suspected anything, after all, Villin was quite a bit fitter than both of them, so he went up and broke the chains of both of their handcuffs before handing them each a wand.

As for the ‘clasps’ of he handcuffs, they would have to walk with them. Villin had no way to break those and the others also didn’t seem to have a spell capable enough.

The three of them then came close to each other and began talking in whispers. Breaking out had still made a decent bit of noise even with this method so there shouldn’t be a problem with silently talking.

They eventually agreed Rein and Kayley would spend some time saving their own spells before attempting their escape. It wasn’t an easy decision to make but they all decided on this together, everyone would feel a lot better if they had some capable spells that could change the situation instantly.

While they were doing this Villin would keep guard, if anyone opened the door he would take them down, and then they could all make a break for it even if they weren’t fully prepared.

----------------------------

At the same time on the other side of the warehouse.

Amelia was also sitting on a chair, but she wasn’t bound up like the others. When she woke up she noticed she was sitting on a chair, the only odd thing was a metal device that encased both of her hands. As soon as she noticed her hands were stuck together in this full-metal device, she tried casting a spell, but as soon as she did, the magical energy she tried to control to enter into her web got sucked toward the machine making her completely incapable of casting anything.

Suddenly a happy voice spoke to her “So I see you’re awake. Since you broke the agreement don’t blame us for not being civil. We’ve long since run out of test material from the previous war, I’m happy I’ll be able to test some of the new theories I’ve come up with.”

Amelia looked up and saw a woman about a dozen meters away from her. She was wearing a lab coat and glasses, her hair was also very noticeable as it was a pure crimson color.

A few meters behind her were two of the armed soldiers she had met earlier standing on either side of the door.

But that wasn’t what Amelia really focused on. More important than all that was the plastic table next to the woman. On that table laid a multitude of different things. There were a number of different sorts of knives and also some weird materials that were enveloped in clear liquid in some glass jars. An eye and an ear were the only things Amelia recognized.

“Well then, let’s start our work now shall we, we have a busy day ahead of us!” The scientist woman said happily as she approached Amelia with a scalpel and some vials.