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Radiant Shadow
Escape From Prison - Chapter 16

Escape From Prison - Chapter 16

With everything set up for avoiding magical detection, I quickly went into my bathroom and stored everything I could within my Internal World. I wouldn’t be finding any toilet paper or towels in the wilderness outside the prison, so I needed to take what I could.

With that now out of the way, I headed back and prepared to exit my room. I walked over to my stand in, and placed a note I had written in its hands and closed them around the note.

Satisfied, I walked over to the wall that separated my room from the hallway, and using my Cloud’s ability to connect to things and receive information from them, I knew that the hallway outside of my room was currently empty from the view of the cameras watching it.

I didn’t waste any time and focused on the space between the wall and the hallway. After so many years of using my [Fractured Space Channel], the space around my room was so fractured that it offered no resistance to my attempts to open a portal. Using about half of my mana I opened a portal to the other side of the wall into the hallway. I could’ve teleported, which would’ve used significantly less mana, but teleporting disrupted space too much and would’ve alerted the passive wards within the prison, so I could only use a portal instead. The portal was still very expensive, even though the fractured space I was opening made it as cheap as it could be, but portals were just naturally costly.

Stepping through the portal I quickly closed it behind me, I knew that there was no turning back. I immediately started to head down the hallway to the right, making my way towards my next destination, the laundry room. My plan involved first getting access to a guard uniform so I could disguise myself and make my way to the guards quarters in the East, which were right next to the wall that surrounded the prison and protected it from outside threats.

I didn’t have access to all of the cameras on the path to the laundry room, but from the ones I did I couldn’t see the presence of any guards along my route. It was strange, usually there would be at least one guard patrolling the hallways, but I wouldn’t say no to some good luck.

Walking quickly, but not rushing so as to not draw attention, I made it to the end of where my surveillance reached. There was only about 50 meters and a couple corners between me and the laundry room now.

I was nervously sweating because this first part of my escape plan required that nobody notice me on the cameras in the hallways. Once I got the guard uniform I wouldn’t have to worry as much about the cameras, but for now I was still on edge.

Advancing down the unknown hallway I made it to the end. Before I rounded the corner though, I heard a door open from the hallway I was about to turn into. I flattened myself against the wall and listened, ready to bolt back down the hallway I had just walked through.

“-ludicrous that such an important person came to visit the prison.” A voice came from around the corner after the door opened. “I mean they can’t be here just to sight see, they must’ve come here for a reason. Personally I think there’s some high level prisoner that’s going to be locked up, and they came here to make sure everything’s in top shape.”

“I have no idea why they’re here.” Another voice responded to the first as I heard the sound of the door close. “Doesn’t matter to me anyways. What I care about is that the main facility is basically on high alert, it must be stressful being over there right now. I’m glad I got lucky enough to be one of the few to stay behind in the juvenile facility. It’s basically a skeleton crew over here.”

“You said it.” The voices were getting quieter while walking away from me, but stopped and continued to talk to each other. “We might have to do more work because of it, but at least we aren’t stressed out.”

They continued to talk to each other, but they gave no indication that they would be leaving any time soon. This wasn’t good for my plans, if they didn’t leave then I wouldn’t be able to get into the laundry room. Beyond that, based on what those guards were saying, the guard facility was probably on high alert at the moment because of some important person visiting the facility.

My plans were shattered before I could even complete the first step. I started to mildly panic as I quickly ran through a multitude of solutions to this problem, but before I could think of any real solution, a bell rang through the hallways, signaling the start of recreation time.

Crap. I thought I had more time, but I must’ve been thinking for longer than I thought. Now that recreation has begun, there will definitely be more people watching the cameras and monitoring things in the hallways. I grit my teeth as I knew that I had to scrap my original plan of disguising myself as a guard and escaping through the Eastern wall.

I didn’t have any time to waste if I wanted to avoid getting caught outside of the area I should be, so I quietly ran down the hallway in the direction I had come from. I rounded a couple more corners and made my way down two more hallways.

I had made it to the area where people signed in at a desk before being let into the recreation area. There was already a line leading up to the desk, and peeking around the corner I could make out fewer guards in the area than usual.

I took advantage of a gap in surveillance in my direction and quickly cut my way into the line, behind a taller kid. The kid behind me gave me a look, but I lifted my finger to my mouth in a gesture to keep quiet, and he thankfully decided to ignore me.

When the guards' eyes came back to look in my direction, they passed over me like I had been there the entire time. I breathed a sigh of relief, thankfully my (Deceive) Skill made others dismiss minor things and inconsistencies like this, even with its currently low level.

As I slowly made my way forward in line, I used my accelerated mind to try and come up with another way to get to the outer walls. I had originally wanted to get to the Eastern side of the wall by going through the guards quarters, but the recreation area was nowhere near the Eastern side of the outer wall, it was near the Northern side of the wall.

There was no way I could make it to the Eastern side of the wall without being spotted now that I didn’t have a guard uniform. So now I had to give up on that and make my way out through the Northern wall instead. The Eastern wall was closer to my ultimate destination after I escaped from the prison, but if I couldn’t escape from the East then the North would be fine.

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The tall kid in front of me was stopped by the inspection guard, “What's that in your pocket?” The kid pulled out some paper and a pen. The guard looked at this and said, “You know you can’t take anything into the recreation yard. Go over there to get inspected.”

Seeing this I tried to act as inconspicuous as possible. The last thing I needed was to be inspected right now. I nervously checked in and quietly made my way through the gate into the recreation area without any problems. I breathed out a sigh of relief and took in my surroundings trying to determine how I should escape from here.

I walked into the middle of the open floor area and looked around. Off to the East, or to my left, was the weights room. I crossed off the idea, the weights room had way too much surveillance there was no way I could do anything in there.

Straight ahead, or to the North, was the library. There was less surveillance in there, but it would be way too eye-catching if I were to try and escape from there.

Last option was the indoor court area to the right. There, kids usually played a game similar to basketball from Earth. I had never played with them so I didn’t really know the rules, but it was similar enough that that’s what I thought of it as. Going through the area in my mind, there wasn’t that much surveillance, and in the South-East corner there was a blind spot where no guards watching into the area from a window on the South wall would be able to see.

The courtyard seemed perfect, but I still had to think of a way to escape. It was always an option to use teleportation, but that would be immediately detected, so that was a last resort option. I decided to head into the courtyard and see if I could come up with any other ideas before I resorted to teleportation.

Walking into the courtyard I looked around and noticed that around the perimeter of the yard there were openings about 4 meters up that led to the outside. If I could somehow get up to those windows then I would be able to get out of here without using teleportation. I went through everything I had in my Internal World that I had gathered over the years, seeing if there was anything I could use to get up to those openings.

I didn’t have much, after all I was in a prison, there wasn’t much to take, but I did have some scrap metal and I thought that maybe I could use the towels I had to make some kind of rope. If I bent the metal into the right shape then maybe I could make a makeshift grappling hook to get me up to the opening.

It was the best option I had at the moment, so I decided to go with it. I had to work quickly because the guards would be busiest during the first part of recreation time when they were still letting kids into the recreation area and doing paperwork.

I went into the corner and started working. It took a few minutes to tie the rope together and bend the metal into shape, which hurt my hands, but I made my makeshift grappling hook and was ready to try it out.

Before I did that though, I went around to the kids and told them what I was doing and not to snitch on me. At this point everyone already knew about ‘that Radiant guy that thought he could escape from prison’, so they didn’t really pay much attention to me, which I was glad about.

With that out of the way I headed back into the corner. There weren’t any openings near the corner, so I would have to try and throw the grappling hook diagonally to reach the nearest window. I held onto the end of the towel rope and made my first attempt. The metal hook flew towards the corner of the opening, but the rope was too short and the hook just barely couldn’t make it.

I clenched my teeth, I didn’t have any more towels to make the rope longer! There was no way for me to use the grappling hook from the corner where I couldn’t be seen. I gathered up my grappling hook and took another look around. The opening that I was aiming for wasn’t in view of the guard window, but it was within full view of one of the cameras watching the court.

A cold sweat ran down my forehead as I knew I would have to take the risk of being in view of the camera in order to use my grappling hook. I wiped the sweat away from my forehead and steeled myself, if I wanted to do this then now was the best time, while the guards were hopefully still distracted.

I walked until I was directly below the opening and made another attempt. The hook made it out this time, but when I pulled back on it the hook didn’t stick and came back to me. I breathed out and quickly tried again. And it failed again. I swallowed hard and tried again, this time the hook caught on something and I didn’t hesitate to try and climb up as quickly as I could.

I made it to the top, climbed onto the ledge and began to pull up the rope. Looking down the other side the drop went down 8 meters. There was no way I could make such a drop without seriously injuring myself. I looked at the makeshift grappling hook in my hands and decided that I would have to use it again to get down from here.

Manually hooking the metal part on the inside edge of where I was, I let the towel rope fall down the other side of the wall. Quickly, to get out of full view, I used the rope to make my way down the other side.

Reaching the bottom of the towels and hanging by my hands, there was still about a 3 meter drop from the bottom of my feet to the ground. I held onto the rope with one hand and leaned out before dropping to the ground and landing in a roll. I got up and looked back at the wall where the rope was still hanging there in the open like a white flag signaling my escape. There was nothing I could do about that though, so I left it hanging there and started to make my way towards the Northern wall.

I was stressed and jumpy the whole way to the wall, but I successfully made it without being caught or seen. Walking up to the wall, it was absolutely massive. It stretched for kilometers in either direction encircling the entire prison compound, it went up maybe 20 meters, and it was probably tens of meters thick as well. There was no way I was getting through this wall normally. To get through this final wall I would have to teleport.

Before I teleported, there were three things I needed to do. First I would have to get rid of the collar around my neck, if I didn’t get rid of it then it could be remotely triggered to encase me and stop me from moving. Second, I needed to get rid of the mental tracker curse embedded in my first virtual mind. Third I needed to use my [Fractured Space Channel] metaphysical organ to make it possible for me to teleport through the wall.

I wasted no time and sat down on the ground in a meditative position facing the wall. Using my multiple virtual minds I was able to focus on all three different things at the same time.

I absorbed the collar into my [Body of Artifacts] and nullified the collar’s effects, one of the functions of my metaphysical physique. Since some artifacts were cursed or had severe negative effects, and my metaphysical physique was meant to store all kinds of artifacts safely.

For the mental curse, the only way to get rid of it was to completely destroy the mind it was inhabiting. Using my willpower I took the virtual mind with the curse, and I used one of the functions of my Cloud to completely delete it. It was extremely painful, but it wasn’t debilitatingly so.

Lastly, I focused in front of me and used my metaphysical organ at max power, to fracture as much space in front of me as I could as deeply as I could. The space around the prison was reinforced by various wards and artifacts, so if I didn’t fracture the space I wouldn’t be able to teleport.

Everything happened almost simultaneously and I opened my eyes, squinting against my headache. I ignored my headache and focused on my mana. I had recovered to about 80% of my max mana which should be just enough. I used everything I could and felt space squeeze around me attempting to stop me from pushing through the fractured space. It was tight, but I succeeded, and with an audible sound I arrived about 50 meters away from the outside of the wall, inside a dense forest.

I looked around and oriented myself towards the East where my ultimate destination awaited me. I might’ve successfully escaped the prison compound, but I was nowhere near safe yet. Brushing myself off to symbolically rid myself of the prison, I then jumped up and down shaking out my nerves. Now I just had to navigate my way through the deadly wilderness and reach my destination. No big deal.