"DO NOT RUSH ME." An old man's yell echoed out from the deepest part of a heavy lead chamber.

"Pacharus... Sir, the enemy is advancing through the side streets as we speak, the longer we stay in seclusion the faster he discovers you." A heavily armed guard spoke as he reached his hand out to grab the frail old man's shoulder.

"I am almost done..." Despite being grabbed by the shoulder, Pacharus would not budge. He grabbed two vials, a green and blue concoction and slowly added them together into an empty vial.

The vial slowly filled with a grey liquid, and gave off a smell similar to formaldehyde.

"Sir, we must go now!" The guard cried out as he motioned for his men to leave the bunker and secure the surrounding area.

"It is completed..." Pacharus stared at the vial before corking it tightly, removing his gloves and starting a fire with the scattered paper on his desk. "No one can know what I accomplished this day."

The heavily armed guard lead the way as Pacharus placed the vial in the pocket close to his heart.

In the streets of Blood City.

Willem had already found Pacharus rather quickly thanks to his abilities and connection to the void, but the rising sense of fear within the old man kept Willem from attacking. Archus had tasked Willem with bringing back Pacharus' head, but that did not seem fitting enough for the coward.

First, Willem would toy with him, making sure he suffered first before his inevitable demise.

While Pacharus ran around covering himself in horse shit and stripping down to his loincloth in order to look like a commoner, Willem slowly walked through the slums of the Blood City.

The feelings he had been forced to deal with at the beginning of the fight was weighing heavily on his mind. He could easily form a mental connection with Sir Gehrig to see how the battle was progressing, but if he did it at a crucial moment and got Gehrig killed, that could turn the tide of battle. Instead, he mulled over the state of Blood City.

To not be discovered, Willem sent two shadows that looked identical to himself toward the main streets, gaining the attention of the scouts stationed within the City.

Willem could see a split vision of his own shadow's sight, allowing for both reconnaissance and a deeper understanding of the dark elf hierarchy.

The structures of the dark elf City were very similar to the depictions of elven cities in the books that Willem read. However instead of houses and buildings being woven in trees, they were woven around the body parts of the Stinging Blood Tortoise.

Spires of gold and silver twisted around the heart and lungs of the Stinging Blood Tortoise, visible by all within Blood City, a testament to good fortune and unscrupulous methods. The walls separating the inner parts of Blood City to the outer area were purely for decoration, but were created nonetheless for the high society dark elves to keep away from the beggars.

In the slums of Blood City, the buildings were damaged and falling apart, to the point that at any moment one would think they would crumble to dust. The dark elves that called these buildings home were caked in a layer of dirt, their hands bleeding from working too much just to survive.

Despite having a naturally strong magical body thanks to being born infused with mana, the malnutrition had taken a toll on the young, old and weak. These members of the Blood City were also the ones toiling in the fields for eighteen hours a day, working for enough food to take care of themselves and their siblings.

The scene was very similar to the outer ring of the Bastion of Hope in terms of quality of life. Willem could see the frustration, fear and anxiety of the common people. As Willem learned early on, the way the common folk were treated often told alot about the state of any Kingdom.

Willem used mind magic to alter his form to the dark elves in the slums, as he approached a house with a broken door he appeared to the occupant as a small human child.

"Please..." Willem cupped his hands as the small child form he had taken begged for food from the dark elf.

The dark elf looked at the young child for a moment.

"Here." The dark elf, with barely enough food to even feed himself, split the moldy bread he had in half and gave it to Willem.

"Thank you!" Willem showed a big toothy smile as he ate the moldy bread, sitting beside the dark elf on his front steps.

"What is a small child like you doing outside the fields? Brave little one aren't you..." The dark elf man laughed a bit as he waited for a response from Willem.

"I followed a small cat that wandered away from the fields!" Willem kept up the pretenses.

"Eat the bread and return quickly, you do not want to get whipped." The dark elf showed Willem an open wound that he nursed with his right hand, eating with his left.

"Did you steal the bread? Is that why you got whipped?" Willem looked around playfully for guards.

"You are a smart one, but not that smart. I get whipped once a day for not being able to pay my Mother's debt." The dark elf looked out at the street sadly.

Suddenly Willem could see the hundreds of previous scars on the Dark Elf's body, as if he could not see them before. Most had healed over, some showed signs of being infected, others were almost completely hidden due to the sheer amount.

"That is sad... How many days has it been." Willem looked down at the moldy bread.

"Too many to count." The dark elf finished his bread and wiped the crumbs off his torn hempen shorts.

The rats that were scurrying around the feet of the dark elf ate the crumbs quickly and ran away.

"Get to the fields quickly, before they find you." The dark elf ruffled Willem's hair and opened the broken door, closing it behind him.

The streets were filled with desperate people, men and women and children alike begging for food and scraps and anything to sell.

Dark elf children played a game of catching the many rats running around, skewering them with a stick and roasting them over small bonfires to share with their friends.

Willem got up and wandered toward the fields, following the direction where the scent of humans was the strongest. Eventually he reached the fields the dark elf man was talking about.

Rows upon rows of food crops appeared within Willem's sight, filled with various types of grains, vegetables and cotton. The humans working in the fields ranged anywhere from ten to fifty years in age. Unsurprisingly, there were no female workers.

"You, boy! Where were you?" One of the dark elf guards stationed at the wheat field saw Willem enter the premises from under a fence used to indicate the length of the fields.

"I followed a cat?" Willem tilted his head to the side as he said that, and pretended to shuffle over to the wheat field to work.

"Boy, take off your shirt, one whipping for leaving the field!" The guard yelled as he reached for his holstered whip.

"Please, sir, he looks to be no older than five or six, allow me to take his place." One of the elderly humans spoke up for Willem and begged on his knees to be whipped instead.

"Fine, you will take five whips for his one." The guard rolled out his whip and prepared to strike the old man.

Willem could tell that the dark elf guard was not holding back his strength despite the fact that the strike could very well kill the elderly man. The old man removed his shirt and dropped to his knees, closing his eyes and bracing himself for the pain. The guard gripped the end of the whip with brutal strength as he reeled back and snapped the entwined leather with force.

Willem had held back long enough.

Before the whip reached the body of the elderly man, Willem rushed to where the old man knelt and grabbed the whip in mid-air. The sound of the cracked whip hit Willem's palm with a painful thud.

The old man winced but quickly noticed that he did not feel any pain.

Willem removed his child form and showed his real face to the guard before dashing forward and severing his head from his body with the twisted dagger.

Another guard whom had been watching the entire scene raised an alarm before grabbing his sword from his waist. One guard called to another whom called to another, and suddenly a large iron bell was ringing in the distance.

The iron bell was situated on top of the bell tower overlooking the inner structures of the Blood City. In that regards, it would be unreachable to Willem whom was at one of the farthest points away from the bell.

The guard still rushed at Willem, despite seeing how quickly his fellow guardsman had been decapitated. Willem did not even look at the guard as he raised his voice to the humans working in the field.

"You are hear as slaves for the Dark Elf Clan, stolen from your true home. I am from the same place as you, the Bastion of Hope. I am here to set you free." Willem threw his twisted dagger blindly behind him, piercing the throat of the guard.

As the guard fell to his knees he grasped the dagger that pierced his throat, gurgling fresh blood. Willem quickly walked over to the guard and slowly pulled the dagger out. The blood began to gush from the open wound as the guard twitched in place, cupping his hands over his throat to stem the excessive flow of blood.

However, after a few seconds, the guard seemed to understand it was a mortal wound and instead chose to stare down Willem, as if engraving Willem's face into his mind.

Willem did not return the favor.

Instead, Willem protected the humans whom were running toward him from the rain of arrows that the guards were shooting. Willem intended to lead them to the slums where he knew he could guide them outside the Stinging Blood Tortoise. However he knew that he had to find the female humans as well, and inquired as to where they were.

As Willem asked the field workers, he was met with many faces of despair.

The rain of arrows ceased as Willem weaved darkness magic to pierce and kill the guards at range.

They all spoke of a single place, which the dark elves apparently affectionately referred to as "the breeding house".

Willem understood the somber looks of the workers, most likely many of them had sisters or lovers or wives taken away only to be used for breeding or pleasure.

Willem used his magic to hide the presence of the humans whom had gathered toward him. In order to get everyone out alive, first he would need to rescue the women.

The men nodded their heads and told the younger children whom did not understand what was happening to remain quiet. Willem casted the stealth magic in an area of effect covering a quarter of the field.

To anyone on the outside looking at the field, it looked just as if the fields were empty, but the crops and ground were not hidden. The stealth area also had the added benefit of mind magic that made anyone who got near it instead want to go in a different direction and look away.

Willem moved quickly in the direction that the men pointed, looking for the house that they had described. He knew he would find it quickly, as the sign was very distinct.

The signboard on the house was of a woman's legs spread open.