“That went quite well considering.”

Ryku gave Dalric a mean side-eye that he could only chuckle at, “Think of what your reputation will look like after you’re done here. I’m doing you a favor by letting you take all the credit.”

“Ah. In that case, I’m obliged to shower you with my deepest appreciation.”

Dalric lightly slapped his back, “That’s the spirit. Also. You might want to put this back on her.” He handed Ryku the white mask he took earlier, “The fewer people know about that before you report it, the better.”

“Right.” He sluggishly placed the mask back on her face and threw her over his shoulder.

It was a bit of a shame to let her go without questioning her about the blade, but Elders knew he would get nothing from her without some sort of trade that he would definitely not make. Though, as he watched Ryku walk back to his side he wondered if all was actually lost.

“By the way.” He pulled the blade out of the scabbard he appropriated and showed it to Ryku, “Do you know what this is? Who made it?”

Ryku’s eyes briefly teemed with desire, but he hid it well, “It's an uchigatana. I don’t know who specifically made that one but it's one of the Twelve Arms of the Swordsaint.”

An uchigatana? Never heard of that.

“I think you mentioned Swordsaints before, they’re the...hm. The leading Surunese duelists?”

“More or less, though they don’t always deserve the title.”

“So what’s the story behind this being one of their arms?”

They talked as they walked up to the stairs, “I don’t know the full story, but one of the Swordsaints some time ago held a competition to make him an incredible weapon. Smiths and artisans submitted their stuff and he picked the best twelve. At some point, I think after he died but I don’t know, people started calling them the Twelve Arms of the Swordsaint.”

Well, there goes that I guess. I’ll have to look for a smith the old fashion way.

He admired the blade.

Now, what do I do with you?

“Are they supposed to be passed down?”

“Oh not at all. A Swordsaint can only become one if they defeat the previous one. No way would previous Swordsaints pass anything down. I’d guess that most of the Arms are held by different houses and factions in Taiyo, I know the Taiyos themselves have four of them.”

Interesting. So it's possible to keep it… but then again if those at the top know it was in her possession I’d look very bad... Ah well, that’s a future cliff to climb.

Once they reached the top of the stairs and escaped the bare hall of the bottom floor, Dalric remarked on the few examples of new technology he could spot. Instead of the torches they used below, they had some sort of ahjer powered light fixtures for the storage rooms.

They were much, much brighter than torches. They were more reminiscent of light spells, but apparently they accomplished this effect without needing any spells beyond an initial jolt of ahjer. That was an impressive feat. Seeing them actually made him a bit excited to see the other advancements that had been made. He’d been a bit blase when Ryku told him about the ships that raced across the sea at incredible speeds, but now he was interested in seeing them and figuring out how they functioned.

His brain was clearly grasping for positives, but it was working.

He continued looking around as everyone rushed between different doors. The third layer was somewhere around triple the size of the fourth and far more segmented. There were a few large openings, but most of the stores were quartered off in different rooms. It seemed the salvers spread the weapons around different locations. No rifles though.

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That was unfortunate, but expected. From what he was told, the weapons here were for ‘training’.

Dalric pulled his eyes away from the ‘thermostat’ on the wall to watch as one of the riftans practice a few forms with dual sabers. They were flashy, but also quick and sharp. That such young humans could be show fighters seemed strange to him. Fifteen years wasn’t enough time to mature into your natural skills, forget developing trained ones. He was the last person who could comment, though.

Others soon followed the riftans lead, practicing with their own chosen weapons. Most of them seemed to have also gone with swords, but Dalric was glad to see some were reasonable enough to pick a spear or halberd. Longer weapons were just better. Of course, different circumstances could call for different things, but he’d never back down from that stance overall. The only people who preferred swords were the people who preferred vanity over efficiency.

There were only two of the thirty-six who came to him to tell him they couldn’t find a weapon to their taste and Dalric smirked at who those two were. They were a pair of drakens. Drakens, like the atkas, were another new race to Dalric. While atkas were formerly a species of black and white bears, drakens were originally a subrace of ihotus, or dragonewts.

He knew of the ihotus. As their other progenitor was a dragon, they were the only valinbarns that matched giants for height. He didn’t know they had a subrace small enough to be relatively human-sized, but the two drakens matched his height again.

The female was almost a foot shorter, but the male looked him straight in the eye. From what he gathered, he was more than just a bit tall for a human. He was a giant to them. Humorous phrasing aside, all the equipment here was meant for the standard human. The duo were too large to use anything.

The female wanted a long sword, which they apparently didn’t have any at all, and the man wanted a battle axe, which they did have but obviously not in the size he needed. They both offered to make do with what they could find, but Dalric custom conjured them what they asked for anyway.

He went as far as making sure they perfectly matched the weight, size, and design they wanted. He burned the bit of ahjer he’d left aside in doing so, but he didn’t mind. More than everyone else he’d seen, even Ryku, the two draken seemed like warriors. Their demeanor, mannerisms, and the way they moved on their feet told him they weren’t just fighters, they’d seen war. They also had a very particular kind of rage in their eyes. A type Dalric understood well.

Soon everyone was fully geared and prepped to move on. Unlike the fourth layer, there were multiple exit points from the third layer to the second. Dalric separated the group into squads of roughly twelve to go up all three of them at once. His ahjer sense barely penetrated through the floor, so even though it seemed to him that there were no slavers, he didn’t take that as a fact. The stairways to the next level were only so big. Trying to get thirty-eight people through one would be ridiculous and, if there was an ambush waiting, deadly.

He was completely spent on ahjer now, but thankfully there were other conjurers. One could make a host of miscellaneous items and she managed to create six whistles, two for each of the squads.

If anything happened to one of the squads, at least one of the two they set aside to hold a whistle should survive long enough to blow it and alert the others. Dalric wanted to give up his squad’s whistles, but he realized that would appear needlessly arrogant. In fact, it could just be needlessly arrogant. As his fight with Sunset White should have shown him, he wasn’t as powerful as he believed himself. He couldn’t walk around with the same confidence he was accustomed to, he needed to practice a bit more caution. Like maybe getting a helmet.

His group had a few conjurers among them, but unfortunately none could conjure armor. Making one himself wouldn’t cost much ahjer, but he didn’t want to wait for it. Everyone was raring to go, some desperate even. He’d just have to situate himself in the middle of the pack before they rushed through the hatch.

“Commence!”

~I invoke: Raging Tempest~

Winds rushed past his body and smashed into the metal trapdoor at the top of the stairs.

~I conjure: Vulcan's Flame~

The moment the spell left their lips the winds caught the seemingly solid flame and the door exploded off its hinges.

“Go!”

Dalric gave the signal and the atka and two larger humans quickly burst through after it. A scream reverberated as they did, or maybe just before, but it didn’t sound like an attack. It sounded like the shriek of a little child. He decided to forgo his plan of going with the third wave and dashed through with the second instead.

Past the doorless opening, the next layer came into view, as well as what caused the shrill. The atka was attempting to console a crying child.

Dalric still scanned the surroundings for threats, but he found nothing of that sort. Instead, he found what he expected to find, slaves. Hundreds of slaves. Men, women, children, they all featured.

He had known what the second floor held. Even with the interference and the limited visibility, he had sensed it. Sight, sound, and smell were wholly different senses. Wholly more visceral in their experience.

He changed plans, “Forget what I said earlier, we’re freeing them now.”