Chapter 171: Prison Break Pt.3
A loud, deep bell rang out through the prison halls. It hadn’t been more than a few seconds since Mayiera and Lina had begun sprinting away from the paralyzed Viella before the ringing had begun.
As they made their way down the hallway back towards the corridor with two guards standing watch beyond a barred door, stealth was no longer an option. Lina knew she could shadowstep through the bars, but Mayiera would have to get outside the good ol’ fashioned way.
The moment Lina reached the barred wall at the end of the hall, the guards had their weapons already drawn and were glaring at her in the dim light of the nearby torches. Luckily, the entire prison was designed to be easily utilized by the shadow dancer warden, and made it easy for Lina to shadow step through the bars to where the guards were.
They reacted slow, and her first course of action was to utilize the thief's stealing skill to disarm them. It required an attribute check, but all of her training the previous months with Aegis and the others resulted in not only Lina’s agility stat to be extremely high, but her strength as well, She was able to, with two shadowsteps and some fancy footwork, avoid their initial retaliatory strikes and pull their spears out of their inventories, disarming them and forcing them to resort to using their fists.
From here, Lina was beginning to pull out a rope to somehow subdue them by shadowstepping around them, just like she’d done to the Seekers back in Belmiure, but she didn’t get beyond taking out the rope before Mayiera shot a wave of purple energy through the bars, paralyzing them both.
“You said there is no time, no?” Mayiera looked at Lina expectantly, and Lina nodded back before pulling the keyring front and center and quickly slid it into the lock, making a clinking noise and opening the door. Mayiera and Lina quickly ran through the barred door and were now in the final hallway leading to the spiral staircase.
They took off in a sprint down this final hallway, passing by the barred washroom.
“Are you not focusing on the paralyzing spell on Viella? Or are you able to maintain more than one channeled spell?” Lina asked her as they ran.
“My magic is very powerful. I have a strong connection to my lord.” Mayiera spoke pridefully. Still, Lina knew the game in and out - a warlock shouldn’t be able to do something like that normally. Something was off about this NPC. Lina didn’t have much time to think about it though as they encountered a group of armed guards rushing towards them. The one in the lead was carrying a shield with the anti-magic runes etched on the front of it.
The moment both Lina and Mayiera saw the shield, they stopped running forward.
“That is a problem.” Mayiera looked at it nervously.
“I’ll handle it. Thief skills aren’t magic.” Lina took a deep breath and rushed head on while Mayiera stood back, preparing her next spells from a distance but not firing them off yet, which caused her hands to give off a strange, light-absorbing deep purple glow.
Lina ran head first into the guard with the shield while two guards standing behind him in the hallway held their spears out and prepared to strike from behind the shield. Lina’s target was the shield itself, though. She parried the spear strikes, knowing she wouldn’t be able to shadowstep once she got near the shield itself, and jump kicked into it, her staple non-magic attack.
The force from her kick threw the shield bearer off balance slightly, but only slightly. He held his ground and only stumbled somewhat, surprising Lina. Only then did she look up to notice that the one holding the shield wasn’t just a standard guard, but had [White Tree Prison Guardian(Elite) - 122] floating above his head. Lina had managed to just barely landed on her feet after the jump kick, but knew she’d need to act fast and get out of this fight quickly or it’d get bad. She ran in and used the small window she had given herself from the kick and spear parries and grabbed the shield with both hands, yanking it with all her might as she dug her feet down onto the stony floor.
“Ughhhrrraa!” She shouted involuntarily as she was forced to push her strength stat to the limit to contest the elite, who glared back at her and held on as best he could. He was holding his own for a moment, much to Lina’s dismay, as she saw the guards behind him getting ready to strike their spears around him at Lina.
Luckily, there was a sudden loud, booming explosion from somewhere in the distance that reverberated the very walls of the prison around them, sending a loud echoing sound through the halls around them and causing their ears to ring. That sound was enough to throw the elite out of focus as he was confused what the sound could’ve been. Lina, on the other hand, had a feeling she knew what it had come from - Pyri.
Lina overpowered the elite in this small timeframe and was able to yank the shield off of his arm, activating her thief skill which ignored the physical properties of materials while they were being stolen which allowed the straps of the shield to pass through the NPC’s arm.
“Got it!” Lina shouted as she stumbled backwards with the shield in her hand and saw that the moment she had, the glowing rune on the front of it deactivated. She could immediately feel that her ability to utilize shadowstep had come back to her, she sensed the shadows all around her once more, and used this fact to shadowstep behind the five guards now bearing their spears in her direction, jumping behind them.
The moment she had, Mayeria released a shockwave of dark purple energy which immediately paralyzed the guards.
“You can still keep casting it?” Lina paused as she’d appeared behind them, looking over the shoulders of the paralyzed dark elves.
“As many as I’d like.” Mayiera smirked. “Nice moves. You are like her, the warden.” Mayiera added as she casually strutted through the hall, walking around the paralyzed guards as if they were inconveniently placed pieces of furniture.
“Thanks…” Lina replied hesitantly. “Almost there. My party member is making a distraction on the top to get us out, so let’s not waste it.” Lina explained, causing Mayiera to nod and break into another sprint.
It wasn’t long before the two had reached the final barred gate, separating their hallway from the room at the base of the spiral stairs. This room was filled with guards, and had two elites with their shields held up on the opposite side of the bars.
“Uh oh.” Lina paused as she saw it. “I can’t get on the other side of the bars with shadowstep because of the shield.” Lina explained as Mayiera and Lina stopped several meters from the bars. It wasn’t just the anti-magic shield bearers, but there were dozens of spear wielders glaring at them from behind the shields, weapons at the ready.
“I figured, as the one breaking me out of this prison, that you’d have a plan for this.” Mayiera replied with a hint of frustration.
“Well, heheh…” Lina laughed nervously as she was forced to think on the spot, opening up her party interface.
> “We’ve got a problem. There’s like 25 guards waiting for us at the base of the stairs, and they’ve got anti-magic shields. I can’t even shadow step to get behind them.” Lina messaged through the party interface.
>
> “I’ve got my hands full up here… you’ve gotta figure something out on your own.” Pyri answered her anxiously.
“I will clear the path.” Mayiera suddenly spoke coldly as she stepped forward in front of Lina. Lina closed out of her party communications quickly and looked in complete confusion at the elite NPC, knowing her spells wouldn’t be able to bypass the shields. Regardless, Mayiera began casting several spells using the glowing runes on her body.
At first, despite the spells clearly being cast, nothing seemed to be happening. Soon, though, the ground began to rumble violently, quaking all around them as a low deep grinding sound came from beyond the walls and floor of the prison around them. Lina saw the guards begin glancing around at each other, their angry confident stares were traded in for confused, worried glances at one another.
They, too, had no idea what Mayiera was casting or what the source of the rumbling was. They discovered it too late, around the same time Lina had. Suddenly, the very ground of the chamber they stood in cracked apart, breaking into pieces and falling downward, causing all of the guards standing in the room to fall along with it.
“What the hell?” Lina’s eyes went wide in disbelief as she watched the small army of guards suddenly fall down, out of her line of sight. She ran forward to the bars to get a better view and saw that indeed, somehow, Mayiera had used her warlock magic to dig out the floor of the prison all the way to the bottom of Kalmoore. She watched as several of the dimly lit torches fell down into the black mist of the abyss below alongside the guards, through the open hole that Mayiera had created.
“They build their prison too deep into this island, with no fear of the abyss.” Mayiera smirked. “They will certainly learn to fear it, though.”
“That’s basically killing them, isn’t it?” Lina looked at Mayiera with a shocked expression.
“Were you expecting to break me out without killing any guards?” Mayiera raised an eyebrow back at Lina, and Lina saw a chilling, cold and heartless look in her eyes. It sent a shiver down her spine. “Open the door, we’ll need to jump to the stairs now.” Mayiera motioned Lina forward. Lina was hesitating, but was knocked out of thought by another loud booming sound coming from above the prison where Pyri was doing her part.
“Right.” Lina turned with the key and quickly unlocked the last barred door separating the two of them from the now bottomless room with the base of the spiral staircase, partially crumbling, still in the center of the room.
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Lina easily shadowstepped onto the stairs, then turned and held her hand out to Mayiera to help her jump, but was surprised to see her easily hover over the gap and arrive on the stairs by herself.
“How’d they even arrest you?” Lina asked worriedly.
“The Warlord is cunning and strong.” Mayiera grumbled back at her.
“Right.” Lina nodded. “Come on, we’re almost home free.” She said before she began her long ascent up the winding staircase, Mayiera following behind her.
As they made their way up the stairs, there were multiple loud crashing sounds that came above, each one louder than the last as they got closer and closer to the top.
By the time they reached the top of the stairs, Pyri’s distraction was in full swing and there were no guards present despite there being another barred gate before they’d be able to leave the building. Lina unlocked the door and the two sprinted beyond it, rushing out of the front doors of the main prison building to find themselves in the small space that stood between the building and the outer walls.
It was filled with guards wielding longbows, firing them up at Pyri who stood atop the wall beside the gate mechanism. Lina didn’t have time to grasp the situation, but in a general sense it appeared to her that Pyri had overtaken the top of the wall where the Mechanism to open the gate was, opened it, and was simply holding her position by using her cinderbolts as shields to deflect any arrows or charging attackers.
The booming sounds had come from supply barrels and crates that lined the outer walls of the prison building, that had all been ignited and some had exploded due to their contents being set ablaze. Lina glimpsed at portions of broken carts, barrels and crates scattered about between the longbow wielding guards - with small embers and flames still burning across the broken wood.
“I’m running low on mana, hustle!” Pyri shouted down to them the moment she saw Lina and Mayiera step outside. Her words, however, had drawn the eyes of the guards standing around. They turned from shooting at Pyri to pointing their bows at Mayiera and Lina.
“My magic needs time to recharge still, I used too much on that last spell.” Mayiera explained with a nervous glance around at the arrows now being pointed at her.
“Just run through the gate, I’ll make sure no arrows hit you.” Lina replied confidently. Mayiera nodded and listened without hesitation, sprinting forward as a barrage of arrows were fired at the two of them.
Lina jumped into action quickly, but so did Pyri. Pyri utilized cinderbolt shards to deflect a bunch of the arrows downwards into the ground, preventing them from hitting Mayiera, while Lina cast shadowdance and rapidly teleported around Mayiera to deflect the shots. Due to their efforts, not a single arrow made it through during Mayiera’s final sprint to the gate of the prison’s outer walls, and the moment Mayiera passed beyond its threshold, Pyri hit the gate mechanism and caused it to quickly begin to seal shut behind her.
Lina shadowstepped through the gate behind Mayiera while Pyri hopped down off the wall, casting fly on herself at the last second to prevent taking fall damage as she landed beside Lina and Mayiera.
“Cool tattoos.” Pyri commented as she eyed the markings on Mayiera up and down.
“Thanks.” Mayiera grinned back at her. They didn’t have much more time to chat, though, as they watched from one of the nearby streets an army of White Tree guards marching forward - at least 20 and all heavily armed, with anti-magic shields and elite staff wielders mixed in.
“Do you know how to get back to Kagil’aktos?” Pyri asked her.
“Yes.” Mayiera replied.
“Okay. Just steer clear of those shields and you’ll be fine. We’ll lead them away and lose their trail.” Pyri looked at Lina and Lina nodded back at her. “Greater invisibility.” Pyri tapped Mayiera’s shoulder, causing her to vanish from sight. “You go left, I go right?” Pyri then asked Lina, and Lina shrugged back.
From there, Pyri took off into the air utilizing her fly spell, while Lina shadowstepped to the right, away from the clearing.
The guards initially looked disoriented on which of them to pursue, but eventually a captain barked orders and the guards split off, chasing after both Lina and Pyri, and rushing forward to the spot where Mayiera had been made invisible in an attempt to dispel the magic with the antimagic shields.
Unfortunately for them, by the time they reached that spot, Mayiera was long gone, leaving the guards to fan out aimlessly in search for her and trying to spot any traces of her footprints, but found none as she had utilized her hovering to float slowly and soundlessly away from the prison.
It was easy for Lina to lose the tail of guards, she simply had to keep shadow stepping through the streets of the city until she was so far away that it would be impossible for anything but another shadow dancer to be following her. She kept in mind Mayiera’s words, though, that Viella was relentless, and made sure to double check that she wasn’t being followed before making her way back to the party hideout.
Pyri had a bit of a harder time losing them, being forced to fly up into the branches and then back down between the buildings multiple times, repeatedly breaking line of sight with the elite staff-wielding guards that were pursuing her with their own fly and short-range teleport spells, but eventually she managed to shake them off, and arrived back at the hideout roughly 30 minutes later.
When she stepped inside, she saw Aegis, Lina, Rakkan, Darkshot, and Snowflake with Darkwing on his back all waiting for her.
“Ah, you made it back first. Good.” Pyri smiled at Lina as she entered the building, slightly out of breath.
“Amazing job guys, you pulled it off. We already got the quest completed message.” Aegis cheered at her and Lina.
“Yup. That means Mayiera made it back to Kagil’aktos by herself.”
“Good, I can drop my multicast focus on her invisibility.” Pyri sighed with relief as she waved her hand in front of herself to cancel the spell. “What about the other quest?” Pyri asked.
“I’m working on it.” Aegis replied as he walked over to the table in the center of the room. There, Pyri saw that one side of the table was being used by Rakkan for deciphering of the strange runed book, and the other side of the table was taken up by Aegis’ alchemy tools as he was in the process of working on concocting something.
“This…” Aegis motioned to two vials of clear liquid. “Is the poison that Kagil’aktos wanted made by the apothecary. I couldn’t get it directly from the apothecary, but I watched him brew it and copied the recipe perfectly. It’s incredibly deadly, check it out.” Aegis held it out for Pyri to inspect.
Name: Death Poison
Type: Poison Elixir
Quality: 71%
Effect: Deals 16,312 poison damage a second after being ingested. Lasts one hour.
Option 1: Resistant to Cleansing Effects
Description: A mixture of essence of death, val’dir scorpion poison, shadow spider poison, and yix’lir extract. Created by Aegis.
“Wow.” Pyri’s eyes went wide as she eyed it. “That’s pretty insane damage.”
“Yep. Has to be ingested though. I looked it up, it’s hard to get NPCs to drink things, the game rules prevent you from forcing players or NPCs to eat or drink things against their will.” Aegis explained.
“Makes sense.” Pyri nodded back.
“That just means you’ve got to trick your enemy into drinking it then, right?” Darkshot confirmed.
“Yep.” Aegis nodded back.
“Remind me not to drink or eat anything from strangers anymore in this game.” Darkshot groaned.
“You shouldn’t do that anyway.” Rakkan mumbled under his breath while shaking his head, not looking up from the old text in front of him.
“But,” Lina looked at Aegis as he was moving back into his chair in front of his alchemy tools. “It’s really impressive you could craft it. Are you working on making more?” Lina asked him.
“No, not more… I made one for Kagil’aktos, and one for myself. I had enough ingredients leftover to make a third, though, so I’m using that to develop an antidote. It’s proving difficult.” Aegis explained as he focused back on his ingredients set before him. “It’s likely that Kagil’aktos plans to poison his brother with this, and if he does it won’t be something I can just heal through if we change our minds and want Kur’aktos alive. So this’ll be our back up plan.”
“I thought the quest was to remove Kur’aktos from power?” Darkshot replied confused. “Why would we ever want to cure him of this poison? It sounds like Kagil’aktos is handling the hardest part of the quest for us.”
“Yeah, in a way, that’s right…” Aegis replied as he paused, looking over at his companions. “But something has felt off about these quests. Luryala’s quest, and the Seekers quest, they’re the same, but different for some reason. It feels like Luryala’s request is for the sake of saving her people from Kur’aktos’ rule. But this one…”
“Something was really weird about that lady we just broke out of prison. I think she’s bad news…” Lina commented with a worried expression.
“Hm… you think, we’re accidentally being the bad guys?” Pyri said what they were all thinking, causing them all to pause and ponder.
“I’m hoping, maybe, that the answer lies in those runes. But either way, we won’t know for sure until we meet with Kur’aktos and talk with him about his ruling tyrant ways directly. I have a feeling that only then will what’s actually going on be revealed. Don’t forget, this is an Extreme III quest.”
“That means it’s harder than your Hrath’mir quest.” Darkshot replied.
“Exactly. And while it hasn’t been easy, nothing has seemed impossibly hard yet. Which means…”
“The hard part has yet to come.” Pyri replied and they all went quiet once more, glancing between one another.
“Well…” Rakkan lifted his head up from his book. “I’ve got good news, and bad news.” He drew attention onto himself from the others as he carefully closed the old tome as to not damage its decrepit, crumbling pages. “The good news is, I think I understand the dialect of this ancient language now. I know what those runes were back in Kagil’aktos’ office.”
“Really? What were they?” Aegis asked excitedly as everyone looked at Rakkan with eagerness.
“They’re a type of protection rune. Even though I understand it, I can’t learn it, it’s not meant for my class at an intermediate level. I think it’s for advanced rune knights only.” Rakkan explained as he began tapping his fingers on the desk, pondering. “The way the runes are set up, it seems like they only work if you have a set of four of them nearby. The range wouldn’t reach Belmiure from here, it’s not that big, but it's pretty big.”
“What kind of protection are we talking about?” Darkshot asked.
“Not sure… I can’t say without seeing it in action. But it's definitely defensive in nature.”
“Okay, so nothing bad. He could just be using that old ancient rune language as a precaution to protect himself and the seekers, right?” Pyri replied.
“That’s the good news. What was the bad news?” Lina asked.
“Well, the dialect, according to this tome…” Rakkan lightly tapped the cover of the book. “Is used solely by those who worship something called the Lord of the Void. One who wants to bring destruction to everything in this realm, including the gods of dark and light.”