I have tried multiple times to transform back to my male version but have been on a failing streak almost the whole day. I was pretty exhausted. Gregory and I decided to try and store as much energy as possible since retrieving Raishin will be rough. At the end of the 5th day after Raishin’s capture, I finally managed to get back to normal. Wow, that was rough, I can’t see myself doing this again. Can you at least change your voice back to normal? It’s unsettling. I fixed my voice back to normal. Weirdly enough nobody seemed to be looking for us after what happened in the palace, then again it seemed that even though the king is in power, it seemed the queen actually has the pants on in their relationship, she might have overruled the king’s order. I made some clones to spar with myself to get used to my own body again.

After a short spar, I got used to it and brushed my fluffy tails. Only after losing them did, I appreciate their fluffiness. Ted arrived the next morning and we pooled our information. Now that we more or less exactly know where Raishin is we can head out but Ted needed some rest. Gregory handed me some poisons and potions he crafted.

So, I was thinking, you’re more or less the assassin of our group but you don’t use any poison, so I made 5 types of poison for you to use, these 2 are slow-acting poisons and these 3 work fast. Their effects, expiration dates and instructions are on the labels I’ve added to the bottles. You really are going all out, eh?

Be careful with this one. I put a red label on it because this one will turn into a gas and spread out when you open the bottle, use a syringe to get some out. And where am I supposed to get syringes from?

Make some with your ice magic? Ah right haha, I knew that!

I would give you a gas mask but I only have 1 and I’m planning to use poison myself so I need it. I will find a way to not get screwed over by my own poison. Gregory looks at me skeptically.

What! I will do my best ok! You better! I wish I could find out more about how that place works but unfortunately, I only got his location, it was quite risky for me, and I don’t have any stealth skills.

But at least you made them think there is a toilet ghost. Right, let's go over the plan. It takes about a day to get from the Aurelia mountains to the prison. Agnis will teleport us to the edge of the mountain and we will walk from there. We don’t know what kind of magic detection skills they have there but it’s best we carefully approach it under Agnis’ illusions. We will hide somewhere close and let Agnis and his clones scout the exterior out and when he identifies how and what Gregory will shadowmeld us inside. From there on we will have to navigate toward the cell where Raishin is locked up. I’m sorry Agnis but you will have a lot of responsibility.

That’s fine. I was thinking that maybe we should let Agnis wreak havoc in case things go wrong. I prefer to stick together but the reality is, at some point, things will go wrong and if there is one thing Agnis is good at, it’s throwing the enemies off, so, if possible, I want you to paralyze the system and either make them unable to react or spread misinformation. Meanwhile, Ted and I will do the rescuing. Is it really a good idea to leave him alone?

In situations like this, it’s best to move in the smallest groups possible. I will be fine, I’m more concerned about you 2. I hope there are enough dark nooks I can shadow meld us in.

When we’re inside I could try and find the layout of the place which could make it easier for you guys to move around. Just make sure you don't get caught!

So overprotective! I’ll be fine! Yeah, you should probably worry more about those that cross his path.

Yeah, don’t stop me, Ted! Whoever I encounter is going to meet their maker. Ugh, just make sure you don’t get into trouble by doing that. Also don’t forget to find out more information about the prison while you are at it.

Putting all the hard work on me eh, but that’s fine, I’ll be ready to teleport us in a bit. It is okay to teleport us to a mountain on the edge of the mountain range, we will have to spend the night there, I don't feel comfortable camping out on a plain. I teleported us to the side of a random mountain and found a cave to spend the night in. Tomorrow would be a week ago that Raishin got caught… I hope he is ok and that we’re not too late. Speed is important but being too hasty will get us all in deep trouble. I hope we struck the right balance here…

We woke up and cleaned up the cave. We descended the mountain and headed toward the plain. I realized I picked out a suboptimal spot for us to rest last night because while descending we saw a glimpse of our destination.

Whoa, look at that. Hmm, I guess its name makes a lot of sense now… Whoa, that’s fascinating! Even though our destination was still far away we could see it all the way from there because it was massive. I only know about this from stories and games I’ve played but I assume this is a black hole, it felt like going blind when looking ati it, the word ‘Black’ was a huge understatement here. There was a large structure that had a glass dome over an massive black hole that seemed completely out of place. The black hole was floating well it looked like it was floating.

I activated my Elgards eyes. Yup it’s just a hole in spacetime which makes it look like it is floating but it just has a fixed position. I couldn't inspect much because this large structure blocked most of my filters. But from what I could see is that this black hole was well-contained with no risk of causing any issues. It was extremely heavy but I don’t have a reference to how heavy it is, throw enough digits at someone, and the context is lost, the radius, however… 4.4 km that's impressive. I could detect some ancient technology, actually most of this place seemed to be ancient technology.

Can you link us up? I want to see it too! I linked Ted and Gregory up.

This is truly impressive… this is ancient technology, right? I don't think anything could make something similar to this not even the Yttroz industries… This just shows that they were way more advanced than we are, I would have never dreamed of actually seeing this structure in person. You know about this?

Well yes and no, you've seen it before, remember that book we found in the underground library? We found pictures of large structures from ancient times, I recognize this one as one of the images, although it obviously looks slightly different, there is some modern technology and buildings there, see? Oh, right yeah, I remember now, but that is cool and all and this looks impressive but isn't this very bad news for us? How so?

Firstly, we can’t nuke this place when shit goes down because else this black hole will go rogue, and that is assuming we can destroy ancient technology coz to me it looks way sturdier than anything I've ever seen, secondly, the insides would probably be like a dungeon and dungeons from ancient times don't mess around, if it was just modern stuff that would be no problem but ancient technology simply terrifies me and lastly… look how frigging huge that prison is! It’s good that we know exactly where Raishin is coz this place is bigger than Ainahs! The radius of this black hole is 4.4 km and the radius of the prison they built around it is 15 km. Yeah, this looks rough. I thought we were well prepared… guess we were naive… Hmm, we have another problem on top of that Agnis, we might have to deal with gravity and time dilation issues.

Fortunately, we have someone whose racial specialty falls into that category. Well, I could fix the time dilation for us, I haven't touched gravity related magic though so you would have to do that though Gregory. Is it even going to work though? My gravity isn’t real gravity, just weight manipulation and pulling objects and people to the ground. It’s just called gravity magic for convenience.

That should be enough, they probably have some way to deal with it in there else that whole building would get broken down and collapse into the black hole but if that isn’t the case, we need you to fix our weight. So, what you two are saying is that being in there is just going to be a constant drain on you 2? It seems so yes; it is not as if we were planning to stay there long but without Agnis keeping the flow of time constant and me making sure we can actually move a seemingly fast in-and-out trip could take up days or even weeks. This brings me to something I just realized and am worried about.

And that is?

If Raishin is in there that means he is probably under the influence of time dilation, for us he might be gone for a week but to him, depending on when he arrived there it might feel like weeks or maybe even months. What a pain in the ass prison, I can see why it is so secure. Besides having the security of a normal prison, they also have that black hole helping them… Is there any chance you can shut that black hole down?

Nope zero, maybe in 50 years or so but not now. It is a formidable force of nature; we should proceed with caution.

Yeah… I need to do some simulations before we come near that thing. We were at the foot of the mountains by now and put up another camp to do some emergency simulations. I can control the flow of time but that's mainly in the pocket dimensions I make, I have never attempted this outside those. I also want to just place this on my allies and not a wide area because I will be separating from Ted and Greg, this also means that it has to dynamically adapt, what a pain in the ass. I guess Gregory has to do something similar. After half a day Gregory seemed done. He didn't seem super happy with the results but had something that passed his requirements. I took up almost the whole day to get something that got the requirements. I swear my tails are getting lazy.

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So, we might have a problem, I can put a modified shadow cloak on your ankles, I’ll call it [Shadow Anklets] and they will correct for the ‘gravity’ but… it only works when I’m close… so unfortunately it won’t work that well on you Agnis… Hmm, I have the feeling that will be fine, gravity never seemed to really work on me. I jumped up and my jumps seemed floaty as if gravity has no idea what to do with me.

Hmm, yeah, you always seemed to be somewhat resistant to gravity, you always fall slower than us, and stuff. Let’s hope that is strong enough to not hinder you. How did your simulations go? Hmm well I had to make something from scratch, I also made it small and compact, like a [time ring], I calibrated it to the current time flow, it does work it’s just a bit slow in applying its effects, so don't go towards the center of the black hole too fast because it might take a good 1 to 2 minutes to correct it.

Well, I would say those are pretty good results for just a day of simulating, I don’t think we can take too much extra time, we don’t know at what rate time is flowing differently for Raishin, this one day could have been one week for him. I really hope this all goes well… I created the [Time rings] on all of us and Gregory used his [Shadow Anklets].

Hey, Greg a question, the gravity thing is earth magic right? Yeh

So why are you using a shadow skill? I store the gravity energy in my shadow and send it to the anklets close by to exert its effect and cancel out the increased gravity, so I will have to keep checking and sending the energy out. Nice loophole, sounds like a pain though…

Yeah, it is… but as long as I have the energy this shouldn't be too big of an issue. You want me to blast into your shadows?

Nah it’s fine, I might not have done many quests but I have a large amount of energy stored so I should be fine, moreover, any flashy move you make could probably be seen from quite a distance… Yeah. I cast strong illusions on us, grabbed Ted and Gregory with my tails, and dashed toward our destination. I kept checking if there was any sign of something that might have detected us but so far nothing seemed to indicate such. After running for about 5 minutes we got within walking distance and I stopped.

Ted went to barf again and Gregory and I looked at the prison. It seemed to have a small village near its entrance. I guess since it's so far out it makes sense. It probably houses the families of the people working in the prison. It was getting dark. I decided to keep the illusion up because in a village this small there is a high likelihood that everyone knows each other here. I don’t know if tourism is a thing here but I did not see any sign that could cater to tourists.

Right, I’m going to find out how to get inside, give me a minute. I headed over toward the prison and discovered that there is a public area in the prison. It seemed to act like a mall in the public area so getting inside was easy but getting into the part we’re interested in would probably be more problematic. This area reminds me a bit of the inside of the adventurer’s Association. This is still the area that looks modern. I identified the areas that connected to the prison and went back and got Ted and Gregory inside. I put a mild illusion on us so that we could walk around without issues.

Hmm, I didn’t expect this. We can look around to possibly locate anything we can use to break Raishin out. We looked around but there was nothing useful. It was nearing 20:00 and it seemed they were closing. I hid Ted and Gregory and the place closed to the public. Gregory and I checked if there was anything trying to monitor this place but it was surprisingly lax. We got to the door that would lead to the ‘Unauthorized’ section. The door seemed sturdy and it seemed to have some magic lock.

Well because of all the stuff that went on in Boshi town, it will need to be quite intricate to stop us. Gregory picked the magic lock with ease and opened the door.

At least we don't have to worry about getting through doors even after splitting up since both Greg and I can pick these locks with ease. I guess our past experiences will come in quite handy. We got through the door and we got into a corridor that had some changing rooms to the side. I hid us with illusions again and we got into a big hall. There was a large pillar that had 10 rows of digital clocks. It seemed to have the time and days passed on different layers, the last row read: Time until reset. I don’t know what this means but reset seemed in 3 hours and 47 minutes. I looked at layer 2 and it said that almost 21 days have passed, Meanwhile, day 4 was coming to an end.

What are those clocks? They seem to give off different times and days per layer, maybe the time dilation is different per layer.

Is that even possible? Normally no but if it's ancient technology, who knows, it seems that layer 2, where Raishin is locked up has had almost 21 days pass since what I assume was the last reset, look! the layer 9 clock runs normally but the other ones run way faster.

Interesting. Hmm, it seems time on layer 2 runs about 4.2 times faster than over here, we just wasted almost 40 minutes of time from Raishin’s perspective. Well, this makes things easier for me, I will be able to fix those rings in a bit if this is accurate. We kept to the walls because there were people walking around. Gregory tried to find out what the deal was with the possible increase of gravity but we couldn't find anything. We didn't seem to be in the area yet that held any cells. That pillar with clocks made us realize that every second was valuable but on the other hand, we couldn't rush.

Ted, you heard that Raishin got sent to this place on day 2 after he got caught right? Did you know how long it would take for them to arrive here? Hmm, the document I found gave an arrival date of 2 September at 08:00. So, nearing 4 days that he has been there so for him about 17 days have passed, oof.

I have a question for you Agnis, if we step into layer 2 for example and your ring works how would it affect the interactions there? Oh, that is easy, everything around you would move 4.2 times slower than you guys.

Oh, that is quite cool. Hmm well, the more I think about it the more whatever security they have in place will work at the same speed as you guys will. Hmm yeah, I guess that makes sense.

But how does that make sense? Nobody would want to break in or can break out. I know you mean well Ted but that is naïve. If this place fails because of lax security the worst criminals in history will escape, better safe than sorry so we should expect the worst. I agree.

Right, guys I think this is where we need to split up, I sensed some anti-shadow magic guards. I need to make sure Greg and I can move around with shadow magic so I’m going to deal with them. I handed an extra [time ring] over to Ted.

This is for Raishin when you rescue him. Do you guys need a [frost cloak]? I don’t think so, be careful. Yeah, don’t die or get caught.

You too. Gregory and Ted disappeared into a corridor and I headed over toward the anti-shadow magic guards. I'm lucky that shadow users that can use illusions are so rare. Maybe that’s why Ella could escape and stay escaped for so long. Shadow magic and illusions are a nasty combo to deal with.

I disabled all the anti-shadow magic guards in the vicinity. It gave me room to create some shadow clones and slowly wipe out all anti-shadow magic guards. I left illusions of these guards behind. Nobody seemed to be adept at illusions here so this would cause no issues. I reduced the number of clones to 2 and started looking for a floor plan. I couldn't find anything. I looked long enough through the area that didn't contain any cells. I don't know what this is called officially. I went to the area that was holding the cells. It was quite easy to find, every place we were at before was the modern part but the area that was holding the cells was the ancient part. I couldn't look through the walls that were made out of ancient technology. I looked up and saw a large part of the black hole and the glass dome. It was quite dark outside but contrasted with the black hole… It looked like there was a hole in the night that was even darker, no matter how many times I look at it its intimidating. I could see layer 8 from here but it was quite the distance from here.

I didn't see any bridges or anything. It seemed that layer 9 was the only layer that was on the ground. Layer 8 and I assume deeper layers used the black hole as its center of gravity and not our planet. I guess that’s why this layer looks like it's out in the open, it’s the largest layer and least protected by ancient technology. The deeper layers seemed to just look like a huge shell covering the lower half of the black hole. I tried to archive the places where I and my clones have been. I saw a normal guard approaching and ignored him because I was in stealth. I pickpocketed him to check what useful things he has. Nothing interesting, just keys, some candy a map of layer 9… wait this map is useful. I looked at the map. It seems this layer has 4 wings each for the cardinal direction which makes sense, and every wing has at least 300 sections.

Yikes that’s a lot. I guess the inner layers have less since they are smaller. I followed the guard while studying the map. I tried to identify where I was. Why are these guys using maps made out of old-school paper and not magical maps? It seems I'm at the northern wing sector 174, looking around me I saw cell numbers 146 and 148. These cells looked like small houses. Is it because they have enough space here or are all cells like this? This whole layer just looked like a city with neat residential city blocks, it surely was monotonous the other sectors seemed to have cells of a slightly different color. So, it was easy to see which cells belonged to which sectors.

I archived it and updated the map and made one that would look like a magical map. Because of my eyes, I could easily follow this. I saw various weird markings on the map. I had no idea what these were but I had an idea. I reverse-pickpocketed the guard but kept the candy. Hmm, peppermints. I decided to look around how this layer worked to get a good idea of what to expect from the other layers. Suddenly I felt that my energy started to drain a bit. I assume this is because Ted and Gregory stepped into the layer that experiences time dilation. I spent an hour looking for any useful information but this layer seemed quite simple. Not much special. I headed over to the location of where the weird marking was on the map. It was some sort of device.

Is this a teleporter? Talking about teleports is it possible to teleport around in here? I sent pings and they got distorted a lot but it is possible. I didn't accept the returning pings. I tried to send pings outside, they were distorted also but they also returned. Hmm this is rough. I put my tails to work to make sure that after saving Raishin we can teleport out and that I don't have to worry about distorted pings. Now another problem. They could shut down these teleporters and nobody could get from layer 8 to here.

As far as I can see and know there is no physical means of getting back here, so I will have to hack some of these devices to make sure they can’t be shut down. I have no idea how any of these work. I made a clone and sent him through the teleporter and checked what it did. I made the clone pass back and forth a couple of times to make sure the device did the same when something returned. I had the 3 clones I had active spread out and find devices similar to these. I inspected it closely and found its magic circuit. I’m no electromagical engineer but I do know a thing or 2 about magic runes. I sent weak lightning pulses through the system to see how the device reacted and started to adjust the runes. I managed to figure out what sequence would shut the device down.

This took me a good 45 minutes. I had to interrupt this several times because a guard was passing by. I should be fine but I don't want to take unnecessary risks. It was 23: 09 and I was still messing with this device. I could only figure out one sequence that could shut it down. They can’t be this stupid to only have one sequence to shut this down, they should have more. I’m a complete noob and I found it relatively fast, there must be more. At midnight I found 4 more and decided that I wasted enough time. Me and my clones started to move the magic runes around and mess with them so that the devices I messed with couldn't be shut down by the sequences that I discovered. I’m hoping that I found all of them… I tested them out and they stayed active.

I added small lightning orbs in the electromagic circuit to allow these to keep running even when their mana supply was cut off from the outside. I thought of anything else the guards can do to disable these devices. I laid frost traps that would go off when someone would attempt to destroy these, I made sure that these won’t drain the mana from these devices. Do I have everything now? I think so. My clones and I stepped into the teleport devices.