Under the cover of night, the three made their way from the guild to a hotel room near the palace. Isabelle and Gray formed their scheme to break in and rescue Aria, all while Boris sat in a corner, watching a little bowl of water where Troy’s slime pearl sat. It was like a little goldfish, swimming around in its tank, unaware of the world.

Two beady black eyes looked back at Boris who peeked back, poking at the glass, watching as the little baby slime swam around in circles. Boris couldn’t help but chuckle to himself, only for him to peek over to the two who sat opposite of one another by a table with a map at hand.

“First,” Gray said, “we infiltrate the outer walls. I know my way around the palace. I know the patrols of the guards there. It’s a tightly surveilled area, but there’s still blind spots.”

“Blind spots? You know there are blind spots and yet they’ve done nothing to cover them?”

“I didn’t say that. They’ve covered them with all sorts of traps. Bear traps, land mines, alarms, explosive wisps — etc. You don’t want to go in unprepared, unless you’re willing to lose a few limbs, that is.”

“So what do you suggest?”

Gray put a hand to his chin, then sucked in a breath.

“We’re not getting past the guards with stealth alone. The only way through them is with a distraction. Something that’ll agitate the guards, and in the confusion of that conflict, we can go through a secret entrance.”

“Secret entrance?” Boris asked, and he came over to find Gray’s Pen Pen flying around the map before sticking itself into the very back. There sat the navy port where imperial battleships were built.

“We’re breaking into the shipyard?” Boris asked, turning pale as snow.

Gray, in response, simply smirked.

“We’re not breaking in,” he answered. “We’re simply… paying them a visit.”

“You said something about a distraction. How are you planning on doing that?”

Isabelle was the one to answer, and with the snap of her fingers, she summoned a salamander that rested itself on the map.

The plan was roughly set. All they had on them were the weapons they had, a bit of money from Gray’s pocket and three brains rubbed against one another like static from socks on a carpet.

It was rough as could be, and under the cover of night, they went ahead and looped around the city, renting a motorboat they used to home in on the navy port. There, a few soldiers stood guard while a fleet of boats were suspended with chains. The boats were in the middle of being built with iron whose source was suspiciously unknown. All the city knew was that it came, domestically, from an area that was closer than they have ever guessed.

The three rode on their motorboat before pausing on the edge where they wouldn’t be seen or heard. From then on, Gray handed the two their diving suits and quote-unquote oxygen tanks. The suits were regular clothing bought during the day with air crystal crudely rubbed into the fabric, preventing the users from getting wet. The tanks, on the other hand, were air crystals small enough to fit in a person’s mouth.

“The quote-unquote diving suits will keep you dry for only forty minutes or so. The air crystals will last you twenty minutes at best. The waters are cold tonight, so try not to panic too much.”

Isabelle was quick to bite down on the crystal like a rebreather, causing it to react with her saliva and release oxygen, and wore the clothing. Boris, on the other hand, seemed a bit nervous — as nervous as the boat was swaying on the black waters that night.

“Wait, are we really infiltrating a military base?” he asked. “I mean, there’s rescuing children who were captured by demons and there’s betraying your country.”

“We’re not here to infiltrate the military. Rather, that’s the price it costs to reach the kid,” Gray answered. “I’ve got a lot riding on her so don’t mess this up, alright? If you’re caught, I’m leaving you for dead. You ought to learn how to bite your tongue off if you’re planning on going through with this.”

“Just who is this girl anyways? Why is she so important to you?”

“It’s not that she’s important to me,” Gray answered, “but rather, it’s the fact that she’s important enough to be captured that I’m worried. If we don’t rescue her quickly, the consequences will be felt by quite literally the entire world.”

“Don’t tell me the Empire’s gonna destroy the world using her… are they?”

Gray’s only response was to bite down on his crystal and dive into the water. Seeing that, Boris turned to Isabelle who wore a similar look of worry.

“Let’s go be heroes, just this one time,” Isabelle said, and with that, she followed Gray.

Boris sucked in a breath and took the plunge.

Like Gray said, the waters were bloody freezing, but other than that, things were fine. The clothes Boris wore were warm on the inside, with the outer layer being subject to heat transfer and the laws of thermodynamics. Thankfully, the air crystals worked, both keeping him dry and alive.

Fish swam past him, poking around at his limbs, looking for whatever food they could pick off of him. The waters around the military docks were full of life, seeing as it was a spot where regular fishermen couldn’t fish. The metal shards and rusted parts that lined the sea floor was an artificial coral reel filled with gray camouflage fish and predatory sharks.

The sharks, seeing the three people, all fled. They seemed to be afraid of them, as if they recognized people as nothing more than the extensions of their harpoon guns.

It was a strange sight to see, and Boris followed Gray all the way under the port. The three poked their heads out from under the wooden planks of the port. He could hear the footsteps of the patrolling soldiers and their nighttime mumblings to one another. It was boring, standing around for hours, and their only real remedy were the occasional conversations with other soldiers.

In the silence of the night, their whispering conversations became ten times louder. Listening in made Boris only more nervous.

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“Did you know? The SDS, they brought back another prisoner,” one said, a soldier who stood squarely above the floating Boris.

“What? Did those demons capture another kid? They brought them through the tunnel, didn’t they? It’s like they don’t want anyone to see that they’re kidnapping children. I wonder why,” the other said, sarcastically.

“Just what do you think goes on in there?”

“Don’t ask stupid questions like that. You know that you’ll never get an answer — and if you did learn the truth, it’s probably so bad that you’d want to forget everything.”

“If we learned the truth, maybe we’ll get demoned away by the SDS too. There’s probably a secret lab where they torture and open up their victims, using them as test subjects, turning them into mindless super soldiers.”

The thought of that was more chilling than the water he was submerged in. Boris sat and listened, all while Gray took action. He unsheathed his sword, handed it to Isabelle for a moment, and reached up to grasp the two soldiers by the ankles. The two fell into the water, but before they could panic and alert the others, he took the sword and pressed it against their bodies.

With a single infusion of mana, the blade turned absolute zero — encasing the two in a block of ice that was so dense that it sank down to the sea floor.

“They’re sleeping with the fishies now,” Gray said, turning to Boris who was frankly horrified by the power of a seasoned mage knight.

“A - Are they dead!?”

“No. Just frozen. When they thaw, in about four or so hours, they’ll be able to swim back up to safety. I was a former Imperial soldier — I have sympathy for these people.”

Knowing that Gray was thinking of the soldiers’ safety made Boris feel a little better. Just a little, though. With the soldiers taken care of, Gray pushed deeper into the compound. They dove underneath a ship that was nearly completed and they climbed up a ladder into the shipyard.

Chains hung from above and tools were laid about, scattered between raw sheets of metal and other materials. Isabelle summoned a tiny flame wisp to light up the room.

“Well, here’s where we get off,” Gray said, and he tore off his diving suit and spat out the wind crystal.

“Boris,” he ordered, who did the same. “You and I are going to go in. Isabelle, you’re going to cause a great panic, one so big that no soldier could ignore it. When I fire off a flare into the sky, you are to detonate.”

“And after that?” Isabelle asked.

“You are to dive back into the water, return to the boat and sail away. Escape — anywhere outside of the Imperial city.”

“Aren’t I coming with you? Shouldn’t a servant fight by her master’s side?”

“A servant does as his master orders,” Gray answered, his expression cold and unbreakable. “You are to do as I say. When it’s all over, we shall meet again in East Tide. Whatever you do, you are not to enter the dungeon. There’s no saying that the SDS haven’t already infiltrated it.”

“But Gray!”

“You do as I say. Now — get to summoning.”

Isabelle stood still, grit her teeth, and opened her palms — summoning a torrent of both wisps and salamanders. Tens of lizards spilled out of her hand before scurrying along the floor. They leapt off the edge of the port and onto the suspended ships. A single salamander crawled onto the chains keeping them afloat and more attached themselves to the bottom.

The explosive wisps flew in deltas like geese, hiding under the boards of the boat, lying in wait of her orders.

One ship wasn’t enough, however. Isabelle made her way through the shipyard, doing the same for every single ship that was there. She drank mana potions to continue summoning, but after a point, sheer burnout dragged her to her knees.

“Stupid, damn Imperials,” she whispered to herself, sitting by an open window, allowing moonlight to pour over her.

It was only a matter of time, now. She was to wait for the flair, detonate, and escape into the waters. All she could do now was wait with a certain slime kept in a jar. Staring into the jar, she peeked into the little slime’s beady black eyes.

“Troy?” she asked, peeking in. “Are you there? Can you hear me?”

The slime sat still, staring back at her. As expected, it couldn’t talk.

“Gray and that adventurer are going in to save Aria. It looks like your sacrifice wasn’t in vain,” she said. “When we break in, rescue Aria, kill those SDS freaks and avenge you.”

The little slime swam around in its jar, unaware of the wider world around it. It looked like it was having fun in there. There was no hint of Troy in the creature. Maybe it’d be better if she took the easy route, like Gray told her, and went back to the fish tank of the East Tide village. There, she wouldn’t have to worry about the wider world. She could enjoy a quiet life in a village full of normal people.

Wrath was an infiltrator — an uninvited guest into her life — and he took what he wanted, pursuing mysterious goals with equally dangerous allies.

Looking into the slime’s eyes was like looking into a mirror with no one on the other end. The slime truly was empty, nothing more than an amalgamation of mana forming droplets that gathered around a core.

The dead don’t come back. It was a fact instilled into all people. To take a life was to kill not only the person on the receiving end, but also the act of killing a piece of their loved ones. Staring into the slime only reminded her that a piece of her was killed by Wrath.

If only he was human. Then he wouldn’t have left a slime crystal behind. If only he was human, she could properly mourn his death and avenge him. The slime crystal that grew into a new slime was a piece of him that hung on. Troy’s death was in a state of limbo. Whether or not he’d return, she couldn’t know.

Gray and Boris worked together, sneaking across the shipyard under the cover of night. No one noticed that two of the guards were missing, continuing their patrols like normal. Gray took advantage of that and hid around corners, knowing full well when and where guards were through the memorization of their patrols.

Gray was merciless. He was bold enough to grab guards from the front when they turned corners, silencing them with choke holds before freezing them solid with ice magic. He’d dump them into the waters below, hiding their frozen bodies before moving on.

Boris could do nothing but watch as he expertly dispatched them, wondering to himself just who this old man was. Gray used simple methods, distracting guards with slowly moving will o’ wisps, guiding their attention away from the two infiltrators who moved through the compound.

Finally, the two made their way towards the palace which was connected to the port. There, four soldiers stood guard at an entrance. The two watched from above, and seeing the guards, Gray conjured up a flame wisp of his own, one he placed in a hidden spot like a firework.

“When I fire the flare, all Hell is going to break loose,” Gray warned. “I’m giving you the opportunity now to walk away.”

“Walk away? I’m already this deep into this so-called quest. At least let me see this through to the end.”

Hearing that, Gray let out a huff.

“Don’t come crying to me if things go wrong for you.” and with that, he fired off the wisp who flew up into the air, leaving a trail of embers behind before bursting a bright red like a flare gun.

Panic filled the compound and soldiers poured out of every corner of the city. Voices on megaphones shouted out, alerting the men before being drowned out by the sound of a chain reaction followed by the splashing of water. All of the half-built boats in the shipyard fell into the water below. Some sank while others floated out of their docks.

It was like the navy was mobilizing with no soldiers on deck, and all the soldiers spilled out to try and regain control of the unmoored boats.

“Come on,” Gray said, and the two took advantage of the panic, breaking through the four men who stood guard, freezing them into icicles before hiding them away.

Instead of going through the entrance into the palace, however, Gray took a detour. He took a moment to leave a mark on the ground, an X, and moved into the flower garden that surrounded the palace. There, in a field of thorny roses, he stepped in the center and stamped his blade down into the ground.

It opened up a secret entrance. The ground split open and revealed an elevator.