With the rest? More people are being held in this building? Maybe Charlie is there. Why would he make a deal with such shady people? They underestimate me since I’m unarmed and at a lower level. I put my hands up in surrender. Duchess speaks to me mentally.

[Are you actually surrendering to them?]

I don’t speak and just shake my head no. The men put a bag over my head and drag me away. With my perception and the help of Duchess, I still know my surroundings. They escort me down a private elevator that leads to a basement floor.

They push me along until I get locked into a room. I wait for a while, then I pull the bag off my head and look around. I’m in a cell in the middle of the room with iron bars for walls. There are more than one of these cells filled with people. No windows make up the walls of the basement.

I'm not alone in the cage, a greasy fat man in a suit is sitting next to me in shock. I don't know if he noticed that I came in. I can smell the suffocating stench of fear wafting off this man thanks to [Prey on the Weak] title. All the people in this room seem to be afraid except for me and an armed guard is sitting twenty feet away. I don't see Charlie in the room, which I don't know if it's a good or bad thing. It's good that he's not in this terrible scenario, but it's bad that I got myself into this for nothing.

I squat down next to the fat man and whispered to him.

“Do you know what’s going on? Why are all these people in here?”

He doesn't answer, he is just sitting in that spot, muttering to himself incoherently. I can't understand what he is saying.

“Dutchess talk to him, telepathically say something that makes him snap out of it.”

[All right Ellis, I'll get him to snap out of it. >:)]

She moves her head towards the man. I didn't like the way she conveyed that message. My suspicions were correct when the fat man started screaming. He stands up and backs away from the snake as fast as he can.

When he hits the cage wall the guard shouts, “Shut the fuck up Winkleton, no amount of crying is going to get you out of this.”

I whisper, “What did you say to him, Duchess?”

[You don't want to know.]

I crouch near Winkleton again, this time he recoils from me. I put aside my thoughts of what must have been said to get such a visceral reaction.

“Hey Winkleton, want to let me know why you’re in here? Why anyone is in here?”

He looks at me and wipes his brow. “Promise me that you won't say that again!

“Say what again?”

“Just promise me!”

“Alright, alright, I won’t say that again. Calm down before that guy over there shoots you in the back of the head.”

Winkleton quickly turns around and see’s the guard staring daggers at him.

“What did I say! If I hear another peep out of any of you, an example will be made.” He holds his gun threateningly. I use [Scientific Insight+] on him.

[??? Human lv25]

He seems pretty cocky for just a level 25 human, it must be the gun. The room goes dead quiet.

I have a plan to get rid of him, but I need to make sure that I time this right. I whisper my plan to Duchess.

~

Duchess is too fat to fit in between the bars so we settle for the next best thing. I whisper over to Winkleton.

“Don’t ask any questions, I can get us out of here. Just make some noise to get the guard closer to us.”

“Why wou-”

I cut him off, “Just do it.”

“If you can truly get me out of here I’ll reward you handsomely.”

WInkleton then starts to take a deep breath, he drops to the ground holding his stomach and groaning in pain. He starts rolling around crying like a dying animal. The guard yells out.

“What with all that noise?” the noise doesn’t stop, it gets louder. “Alright, that's it.”

The armed guard clicks his safety off and walks towards the cage. Winkleton pleads to me with his eyes to do something. When the guard gets within ten feet, Duchess finally moves. She sticks her face right between the bars, staring straight at the guard. She uses her [Hypnotic Gaze] to lull the guard into a dream-like state.

At the same time, I use [Master’s Whistle] to summon Rob five feet in front of me, outside the cell. He apparates wearing my [Skeleton Gloves] and holding Flash Gordon with both hands.

[Ellis, his spirit is stronger than it looks, he will have to be dealt with soon.]

“Rob, fucking kill that guy!” When in doubt, make someone else do all the work for you. Rob immediately springs into action. Jumping, so his 3-foot frame matches perfectly with this entranced guard. He slams Flash Gordon in his face, significantly caving in his nose. The man immediately snaps out of the trance and falls backward.

Before he can pull the trigger on his gun, Rob uses his own. I hear the familiar sounds of ten snapping bones, as Rob decimates this fucker with all ten shots from [Bone Shot]. The bloody corpse lays there with streams of blood pooling around the body.

Rob looks at me, waiting for praise. His face is splattered with blood.

“Good job little buddy, how are your fingers?”

He pulls one glove off and shows a pristine hand. The broken fingers reassembled themselves inside the glove. We can abuse this, but just in case the gloves break past the point of fixing them, we should only spam [Bone Shot] if it’s necessary.

“Good, you can keep the gloves for now Rob, just look for some keys.” Rob salutes and starts rummaging around the corpse, he straps the machine gun to his back.

Mister Winkleton, now that we are safe for the time being, can you answer some questions?

“Yes! Whatever you want great and powerful necromancer!”

He has the wrong idea but I don't correct him, the commotion has attracted the others to look this way.

“Why is everyone in cages here, this doesn’t seem legal.”

“Everyone is here, thanks to some sort of money problem,” says Winkleton, “I’m here because I have falsified debts I didn't pay off.”

“Elaborate.”

“Well, the casino traditionally uses tokens. When I went to the token counter to exchange my money with some tokens, they instead offered me ‘credit.’ This isn't a new thing for casinos so I thought nothing of it. What I didn't realize was that they changed the contract so that the payback rate was heavy, and since I signed it with my mana it was unbreakable. When I ran out of tokens, I went to pay off my credit, but to my surprise, it was ludicrously more than what I spent. I might have created an uproar, and I was taken down here. They took all my money, they beat me, and they threatened to take legal actions to get all my properties, just thinking of my children living in the streets was enough to put me into catatonic shock.”

Someone else speaks up from the cages, “I had something similar going on, but the casino instead tricked me into taking more money than needed. When I tried to return the extra cash, they said interest rates already applied. I couldn't afford them.”

Another person speaks up. “I'm here because I got a random call saying that I no longer owned my house, that my husband placed it as collateral for a loan that he never paid off. My husband's been dead for years, turns out that he borrowed money a long time ago from some lone sharks and died before he could pay him back. The loan office is owned by the guy who owns this casino. I went down to see and talk to him about what I can be done. He just locked me down here.”

Many people start to cry while venting their stories to one another. Rob managed to find the keys and open my cell door. I walk out and turn to the rest of the prisoners in the room.

“Have any of you guys seen a man named Charlie,” I start to describe him in detail, even including his signature smile.”

The old lady who spoke about her late husband pipes up, “Oh yes, Charlie was a wonderful young man who was in the cell with me. He was taken away quite some time ago, a bit before you came down here.”

Her cell was the first one I opened. Mister Winkleton speaks to me as I start opening the rest.

“Young necromancer, could you please do an old man a favor.”

“You’re not that old, for all things considered.”

“Can you please get revenge on our behalf?” I don’t like the glint in his eyes when he said ‘revenge.’

I stop for a second, then I go back to opening doors.

“Sure Winkleton, then what.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I go and kill them all for the injustice they cause, then what? If I go after them legally, they have legal paperwork showing all the contracts. They can be held accountable for abduction charges and whatever else you can throw on, but killing them will just get me into bigger trouble.”

“I can pay you a large sum of money.”

His words don’t faze me. Money isn’t worth much if I rot in a prison for the rest of my life.

He continues trying to persuade me, “I know for a fact that they don’t pay their taxes and they hired wanted murderers as guards. If you can get that proof from them, then they can go away for good.”

I stop and look at him.

“I have really good lawyers, self defense charges can get you out of anything?”

His final words convinced me.