“You’re not half-bad.” Commented Aerin as he witnessed his newest companion take down a golden machine known as ‘Defense Golem’.

With his guidance and, supposedly unique senses, they had reached the ancient dwarven ruins.

“...”

While thrusting the blade into the disproportionately big and rectangular-shaped head of the golem to ensure it didn’t rise up again, Evelyn let out a cold snort.

As instructed by the poet, she pulled the core from the golem’s body, but when she showed it to him, he shook his head.

“We need one with a better quality.”

“You’ve said that for the last four days.”

He shrugged his shoulders and explained, “Just like the Nether Grass and the Manticore’s Heart, the Ancient Dwarven Core needed for the summoning isn’t that common. If we use a normal core, the summoning won’t go well and you’d be calling one of the sinister creatures inhabiting the Harrowing. Strong as you might be, my fair lady, those entities are beyond you. Speaking of which, I did venture into Harrowing twice, let me tell you how terrifying it was…”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“Oh?” As if realised something, he stomped the ground, seemingly angry, “I get it now! You think I’m spouting lies and nonsense? Hah, you’re like everyone else. Judging a book based on its cover.”

She rolled her eyes at his remark and walked to one of the corners of the room to rest. She retrieved and started munching while totally ignoring him or his intense glare.

“I admit that I’m a bit eccentric, but that doesn’t mean I’m a liar. I have lived a thousand… thousand of your life!”

“Just shut up. I’ve grown tired of your rambling. I couldn’t care less if you’ve travelled to another world or befriended gods and devils.”

“I’m offering you wisdom and revelations that people-nay… Gods would beg to know! You don’t know what you’re missing, my fair lady!”

She ate her food and turned a deaf ear to his incessant talking, but Aerin was insufferably persistent and seemed to hate silence.

“Your lack of appreciation might make me leave, you know. You’ll never be able to call the Undead Jester without my expertise.”

“...”

“Let’s suppose you succeed in the summoning, do you even know what making a deal with it would entail? A Death Covenant is nothing to scoff at.” The man sighed and shook his head.

Upon seeing that she wasn’t paying his warnings any heed, the minstrel inwardly cursed her rudeness and started walking around the room.

He examined the walls, which were filled with intertwining golden pipes and innumerable symbols.

“The Red Dwarves were really exceptional. I’m still amazed by their creations. Then again, the Armans had exceeded them later on… but that wouldn’t have been possible if they didn’t use the dwarves’ technology as a foundation. I would have liked to see how far the Arman Empire could have expanded. To think a single person obliterated everything they had built.” Feeling a chill down his spines, Aerin shuddered as he remembered a distant acquaintance, someone he wouldn’t willingly meet again.

“When the time comes, my fair lady, I hope I will have the opportunity to meet this person you’re so desperately trying to find.”

“F-for me?”

Gastin, who was minding his own business in his cell, was surprised to see the new inmates, Kezar, throw him all the food he had gotten.

Despite his momentary shock, he jumped on the meat pieces and gobbled them as if he had been starving for days. Only when he was done swallowing everything did he look at the eerie and secretive prisoner.

“But why? I thought you…” He wanted to say something but stopped himself at the last second and sighed. “Nevermind. Thank you for the food.”

Arthur examined the downtrodden Gastin, who no longer seemed interested in begging for food and simply returned to his boring and monotonous life in this penitentiary.

As a prisoner of the 2nd floor, he had the chance to go outside and bathe in the sunlight somewhat infrequently. It was a literal breath of fresh air and something all the relatively ‘harmless’ prisoners were expectant of.

“Do you want to get out of here?”

Upon hearing this question, Gastin was, for a moment, confused before he jumped to his feet and repeatedly nodded his head.

“Yes! Please! I’ll do anything!”

He quickly realized that he had raised his voice a tad too much, which made one of the guards at the end of the corridor shout atop his lungs, warning the noisy Gastin to keep quiet.

When the cold silence returned, Gastin, looking a bit hopeful than ever before, intensely stared at the parasite.

“Do not be mistaken. I’m not just going to whisk you away. I’m willing to give you a chance for freedom. Whether you succeed depends on you.”

Maybe the mere thought of returning home had clouded Gastin’s perception, or maybe he just didn’t care if Kezar had any ulterior motive. In the end, he just wanted something beneficial to happen.

“So it shall be, then.” Added Arthur as he laid on the bed and closed his eyes, soon falling asleep.

Of course, he neither felt pity or sympathy for Gastin or any of the other inmates. Even if they were actually innocent, Arthur couldn’t care less about their fate. Gastin would serve as an additional distraction, and albeit slim, he might make it out alive. It all depended on two things: luck and the hope that nothing wrong would occur during the breakout.

Before the break of dawn, Arthur rose up from his short nap and possessed another body while making the lifeless body of Kezar look as if it was asleep. It was finally time to check what laid beneath the trap door located in the torture room.

Strangely enough, no one seemed to mention it or pay it any heed. The majority of the prisoners- naturally- wouldn’t know about it as they would have other worries once they get dragged into that room. Plus, the trap door was inconspicuous and covered by a bit of flora, coupling that with the dim illumination in the room and that would make it difficult to notice it during the first couple visits.

The guards, on the other hand, would surely know of it, but it was never discussed. Arthur had eavesdropped on the guards’ idle chatter on several occasions, but never once did they talk about somesort of ‘secret’ tied to that specific trap door.

Either it was actually unimportant and probably led to a dead end, or it was some kind of taboo never to be mentioned anywhere. Arthur suspected that it was most likely the former, as that would be more reasonable.

Then again, if it led to nowhere, why would it even exist in the first place? If it was meant for storing things, then surely the other room, which housed the weapon, was a more practical option.

‘I’m no architect, but the direction of the room is the same as the Shadow Pit, but to conclude that they are somehow connected underground would be far-fetched and lacking any conclusive proof. There were no trap doors on the 1st floor, but there was one on the 4th floor, though its location differed. Moving on to the cells and the elevator, they are in poor condition but the walls seem older. Much older. It’s as if this entire underground place wasn’t designed to be a prison, but was made one later on. Ah! I’m just taking guesses based on observation now and I don’t like that.’

Arthur used [Mist of Decay] to stealthily move around. He could control the density of the mist, and since the place wasn’t particularly luminous to begin with, it wasn’t that hard to bypass the guards’ notice and slip into the torture room.

Once he was standing next to the trap door, Arthur examined the locks on top of it. [Mist of Decay] allowed him to become somewhat intangible, thus allowing him to evade some weak physical attacks, but he couldn’t use it to squeeze a hole that could only feet an ant.

It wasn’t a limitation of the ability itself, but its Level, as Arthur came to learn on his own. By training in the unique skills such as Leonis’ Barrier Magic and the Bloated Murderer’s Mist of Decay, Arthur discovered that the higher the skill’s level, the more ‘traits’ it would acquire. The traits weren’t explicitly mentioned by the System, so it was left to the users to figure them out on their own. It was kind of a dumb functionality as that defied the very purpose of the System.

After a bit of tinkering, which involved a bit of brute force, Arthur pulled the lock and jumped down, soon finding himself in a dusty and dark room. While waving the dust off his face, he looked around and quickly got accustomed to gloominess.

Besides a couple of very old boxes, all of which were empty, the room was unremarkable and didn’t have any doors.

‘The walls are the same, but they have cracks?’

He ran his hand across the cracks and carefully examined them, soon concluding that they were made by magic, most likely.

After a couple of minutes of fruitless observation, the parasite decided to rely on force once more. As he had expected, this basement of sorts didn’t have any exits besides the trapdoor. It seemed to be an abandoned place that had nothing of interest, but the inspection wasn’t over yet. He wanted what laid behind the walls and the only way to do it was break them.

A shiny yellow barrier appeared in front of Arthur, and when he slowly pushed his hand forward, it pressed against the thick stone wall and slowly made it crack and crumble. He had to be subtle and avoid making any loud sounds, so the process took some time.

Eventually, part of the wall fell down, revealing a spacious man-made room.

The ceiling was low and the actual size of the room was surprisingly big. There were dusty and broken tables and chairs, and some torches or shredded papers lying all around.

Arthur carefully stepped inside the room and kept his barrier active as his eyes jumped from one place to the other.

‘Just what was this place?’

Soon enough, he found something more intriguing than the debris and whatnot. The thing was buried under a massive boulder, but it was definitely eye-catching and slightly out of place.

It seemed to be at least twice the size of a human being; Made from gold-like material and many metallic pipes and black wires.

“A robot?”

It looked like a humanoid machine, but its head was crushed and missing. Its remaining body was in a miserable state.

As he continued meticulously searching the room, Arthur found two more similarly-looking machines. One had only had half of its body intact and one was unscathed and resting on the ground with its legs spread apart and its arms holding its head.

‘This is… dwarven-made? It appears to be, at the very least. However, there was no mention of Dwarves inhabiting this part of the world. It bears a striking resemblance to the illustrations of Arman golems I had seen, but these ones look a bit inferior.’

While musing with himself, Arthur kept looking around and inspecting some of the papers, but the language used was foreign and unrecognizable. It wasn’t like anything he had seen, which made him all the more curious.

After spending a full hour in that room, the parasite headed toward a massive hole, which seemed to be where the door was.

Lo and behold, the ‘exit’ led to a gargantuan dark abyss, and when he looked upwards, Arthur saw the star-filled night sky, though it was a great distance away.

It was the Shadow Pit, which meant that the entire underground structure was proven to be connected.

It wasn’t possible to access the room via the Shadow Pit or the trapdoor using conventional means, but it was still odd that there was little effort in hiding it.

After storing some of the intact papers into his artifact, Arthur used [Mist of Decay] and glided down the Shadow Pit at a very slow speed.

He kept using [Magick Sense] and [Keen Eyes] to look around, soon finding another hole that led to a room, but this one was in a worse condition and was buried under a lot of rubble and stones.

As he tried going further down, Arthur saw a semi-translucent wall made of Magic. He stopped his gliding and stared at the barrier while inwardly cursing.

The Anti-Magic formations on the 5th floor and 6th floor seemed to expand to the Shadow Pit as well, so he couldn’t continue his stealthy exploration. He wanted to try [Wither Touch] or [Wither Blast], just to see if they would be able to overpower the formations, but that could lead to disastrous consequences in case of failure.

Judging from how another Parasite was trapped inside the 6th floor and couldn’t get out, it was safe to assume that the formation was strong enough to defend against even the strongest of spells.

The only way was as Arthur had surmised; Deactivating the formations. That was the most important step and something that had to be done in order to get to Christopher and breakout of the penitentiary.

‘I’ll get Chris and head to the 6th floor, that’s safer and less likely to get us surrounded by Special Guards. The formations would be deactivated at that time, so I’ll be able to use Magic to break through any normal obstacles and reach the base of the Shadow Pit. The rest should be relatively easy. Whether it’s Gastin or the Blood Crystals I’m going to use… they both should serve as a big distraction. Alternatively, I could free the 6th floor inmates and let them cause more chaos.’

It was undoubtedly going to take a lot of effort, which was why Arthur wanted to be prepared. The entire 1st Sky Battalion would be waiting for him if he ascended to the surface with Chris, that and the Special Guards which would be dispatched to block all exit routes.

It was soon going to get very bloody, and ready as he might be when the time came, Arthur still felt a bit of trepidation. He knew something would eventually go wrong, which was why he was always ready to make use of ‘Last Possession’. The Cydian Knight Ant was his trump card, a last resort meant to get him out of extremely dire situations.