Adam and all of the others left the long hallway where they had fought the penultimate enemy and kept walking down a more open, larger hallway in another direction.
Adam had to ask “Hammy, do you have any idea where we are? Where do you think we could find Tob again? We all come in together from the jail cell room, but we haven’t heard a peep since, we are getting quite worried.”
Hammy quickly responded, looking healthier and happier than he ever had at the farm. “Right now, I honestly have no clue where we are.” He stated. Brian groaned.
“But! It’s starting to feel vaguely familiar, I was moved around these hallways quite a few times after being captured, if I can get a good lead, I’ll know how to backtrack to the primary mess hall, which would be the best place to gather back up anyway.” Hammy explained as he carefully examined the walls and decorations around them, trying to get a clue.
They all followed behind Hammy as he tried to sniff out a clue on which way to go as they continued to meander down the hallway, they were not doing very well, any of them. Well, Hammy seemed okay Adam thought, but the rest of them were either injured, or just completely drained and tired.
Adam observed as they continued to walk, where suddenly Hammy stood up straight. “I know this corner, I remember that window. I’m fairly sure I know the way to the mess hall, let’s go!” Hammy pointed to a window high up on the wall to their right side, it had a unique design of Oak on it, the art style was different than the other art he had seen like the carvings in the guard headquarters building.
Adam asked as they rushed through the seemingly endless maze of hallways “So you never saw any sign of Vincent while you were here, any ideas or clues at all? What do we plan from the mess hall?”
“I didn’t, we will see if we can find the guards you said you brought with you first and go from there. I heard little whispers of secret passages in the church, but honestly have no idea about any of them.” Hammy responded.
They arrived to a pair of large wooden doors, Adam went to use his kinesis, almost out of habit at this point before feeling the utter exhaustion of his magic pool. He let Hammy open up the doors, they saw a large open hall, with fires roaring on either end, with many wooden tablets set up throughout the room.
Adam smiled and sighed in relief as he saw many guards sitting at the tables and chatting, he looked around and found Tob standing up and talking to a few men near the fires. They walked over and Tob threw Adam into a large, tight hug.
“It’s great to see you Tob.” Adam said awkwardly.
“It’s good to see you alive, we were getting worried, it was so quiet in here.” Tob laughed jovially.
“We thought the exact same, so it all went well on your end? We had issue after issue.” Adam was eager to tell him everything.
They continued talking, Adam listened as Tob explained they primarily found pretty easy to defeat priests in the church and had just taken them all as prisoner for now.
“We did unfortunately lose a few men, it was those damn viewers. They didn’t even stop to fight us, they just rolled over and crushed us. We were lucky not to lose more.” Tob looked very disappointment to deliver that news to Adam.
This led Adam to explaining how the viewers showed up and fought them and how they ended up getting out of there with their lives.
Adam brought Naomi over “This is Naomi, she is the reason we made it here alive, we were definitely going to lose to the viewers until she saved the day. She’s a captured hiker from another world, it’s a long story but she is here to help Oak, she is on our side.”
Tob nodded along.
Adam then explained their encounter with the Beastlord, describing it in vivid detail, Tob celebrated the victory and success in finding Hammy with all of them.
Tob explained their prisoner of war situation, he gestured around a blocked off corner in the room where multiple priests in white robes all sat together.
The idea came to Adam quickly “I can get information out of them Tob.”
Tob shook his head “We already have extensive clues, don’t be too eager to use that ability of yours, you might be the most dangerous person on this entire planet with that one. That’s what I wanted to discuss with you next anyway, we did get information about a possible new secret passage in the church some of them know about, when we asked them where Fargo was, where to find him, that was the only idea any of them had.”
Adam spotted Naomi standing by herself in the corner of the room, he didn’t think of it before but I guess she wouldn’t feel greatly comfortable around everyone who had given her such a bad time on this planet already, while the guards didn’t directly hurt her, they did back up the church in keeping her prisoner and stuck in servitude.
Adam, Brian, Matilda and Hammy sat down at a table with Tob to share ideas and thoughts before they set out to check this secret passage. He offered them all a drink from the church supply, Brian eagerly gulped down his hoppy beverage, Adam declined, he didn’t trust alcohol mixing with his particular brand of hiker abilities since last time inside the inn.
The lot of them discussed making their next move, but thought it wise to at least wait a short while to recover with the terrible condition most of them were in at the moment. The whole mission was still time sensitive but at the same time, it wasn’t worth confronting Fargo if none of them could fight.
“Well, fine, we can take a quick rest, but I’m serious, we should get going after no more than thirty minutes!” Adam tried to protest the idea of just sitting down and relaxing as much as he could but he knew that they all needed it. Knowing about how formidable Fargo was made it seem unlikely that he would just try and run and escape, he must have some plan, he wouldn’t abandon Oak just like that.
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Adam sat down with his back against the wall, getting off the seat he was at on the table, his eyes quickly started drooping.
Adam woke up to loud commotion, quickly feeling angry at knowing he slept for longer than he should have, or agreed to. He stood up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “How long was I asleep for, why are we waiting so long?” Adam asked.
Everyone else was already awake, he had no idea how long that had been and no one was currently answering him in all of the chaos in the hall. He found Tob, placing his hand on his shoulder.
Tob started explaining the situation to him. “We sent a small unit of men to check out a few possible leads, mostly to check out that one spot I mentioned before about a passageway. But I wanted to be thorough so also sent a few men to different parts of the building. This was two hours ago and not a single one has returned. These are all very valuable men and fighters. This is bad, we haven’t heard anything.”
“Two hours?” Adam exclaimed. “Let’s just get going to wherever this passage is supposed to be, who knows what Fargo is upto, we could be losing before we even know about it.” Adam knew he was clearly frustrated to anyone observing him.
“I’m sorting it out don’t you worry, did you at least get anything good out of your nap there? Can’t you check your magical wrist thing.” Tob asked.
“My hiker menu, yeah, good idea.” Adam replied, flicking his wrist yet again, he wondered if he could figure out a way to summon the hiker menu without the obnoxious wrist flick, what if his arm or wrist got injured? That would have to wait for another time.
He focused in on his status selection from the main menu.
Magic Pool - 41/100
“Well, I’m not exactly in tip top shape but it’s a lot better, yeah this will be good, if everyone else got similar rest, we can at least fight.” Adam was ready, Fargo would pay for what he has done and his team would not fail their first assignment from The Refined.
Adam waited around as Tob gathered twenty of his best men, Tob had explained that he had a route in mind to check on a few spots he had sent the missing men while they headed towards the rumoured secret passage.
The entire group, including Naomi and Hammy left the hall in a quick stride with Tob and his guards. They spent some time travelling through the hallways, checking some empty rooms that shot off from the main travelling hallways through the building. Tob frowned and shook his head at each location where he had previously sent men to follow up leads, they were all missing with no clues or hints at all.
They finally approached a large open room, it seemed like a library with the shelves of books filling some of the space. “This is where they spoke about the passage, let’s try to be observant. We had multiple independent reports of something happening in this library.”
They looked around, at first trying to be careful and quiet, but becoming more desperate and rough in their search for a clue or entrance as the minutes went on. Adam grew frustrated, they had powers, there had to be a way for them to see something. He realised that if he had saved his skill point this would have been a great use case for that Synaesthesia ability choice he had for level five, but it was too late now. He should try listening to Matilda more he thought.
After about ten minutes the team met back up in the open centre of the room, before anyone could say a word Hammy transformed into a cloud of shadow before their eyes, giving Adam quite the jolt awake. His new form dispersed like smoke throughout the room, creeping behind the shelves, into the side offices, up on the ceiling. Adam had no idea how it worked but he seemed everywhere at once, was he really able to sense everywhere the smoke was spreading Adam wondered?
Surely enough, after just a couple of minutes, all of the smoke started rushing to one point, Hammy reforming to his regular form in a new spot, in one of the side offices.
Adam gave him a rather nasty look “Why didn’t you do that in the first place, how long have you been hiding that one?”
He responded defensively “Hey, I only just got back my Shadow Barbarian ascendancy, I’m rusty okay, just be glad I’m here to help, that could have taken you guys hours to find, if you were lucky.”
Adam shrugged “True, good point.”
Hammy held his hands up to the wall in the small office, wisps of black smoke still trailing off from his fingertips.
“What’s wrong Hammy? You look so mad, we found it right?” Naomi asked from behind, Adam was glad to see her invested again, she had as much motivation as any of them to settle this whole Oak matter.
Hammy grunted, his arms shaking as he ripped an entire panel off of the wall, a large doorway behind it that led down, deeper into the ground. He threw the panel down on the ground next to him.
Matilda spoke up “Surely that wasn’t necessary, it seemed like a sliding door.”
Brian stepped into the newly found tunnel just behind Hammy. “Whatever, it worked right? This looks kinda funky, I hope this isn’t linked back to that other cave we explored.”
Adam thought about it as he followed “Whatever we find is likely to be worse than Grace.”
The team grew quiet, looking somewhat disheartened from what Adam could see, he couldn’t see Hammy as he marched them all forwards through the passage.
“But we are stronger than that time, have more numbers and frankly, Hammy is just insane.” Adam heard a chuckle from Hammy after he said that.
The passage was surprisingly long and taking them quite deep into the ground. Adam was just glad it didn’t have the same smell as the cave, that was truly rancid.
Adam started to hear a low humming noise in the background, contrasted with the occasional crackling sound. They were getting somewhere.
They began running as the noises became closer and closer. The passageway opened into a larger open area, a rocky cavern that somewhat resembled the cave they were in last time, however it was definitely a different look with fine granite stone and large stalactite structures. Looking around, what Adam saw terrified him.
Fargo stood there, facing away from them. He knew it was Fargo just from the silhouette, who else could it be? Brian nodded at Adam confirming it really was him. Fargo was facing a large opening in the rock, Adam realised that behind the large rock walls was Oak itself.
The tree was glowing with energy, still the same purple crystal effect they were used to, with tinges of a darker red energy swirling in and mixing with it. Looking at Oak closer, his view went higher up. “Oh god” he heard Matilda say as he spotted it at the same time. Vincent was there, high up on the body of Oak itself, pinned up and held there. Adam was not sure what was holding him up, magical force he supposed since there was no rope, or actual pins.
Fargo turned around, facing them, his cracked wrinkled skin deforming as he formed a wicked grin.
“I thought you might show up, you must have got past my Beastlord, very impressive. Not enough, but impressive.” Fargo said, his voice echoing throughout the large rocky chamber. The hum of Oak served as background noise.
“Well, even if you were able to fight me, which you obviously aren’t, you still made it too late. You are in way over your heads, your silly little machine telling you what to do, telling you right from wrong, it’s disgusting.” Fargo began convulsing as he spoke, his whole form crackling with dark red and black speckled energy.
“If you fought you could fight that little old man, think again. I’m sure you won’t even bother now.” Spoke Abbey. Fargo had transformed into the same woman they had fought outside the city gates with Vincent and Tob. A shapeshifter Adam thought?
Hammy spat on the ground “One and the same person huh? Explains why this nation has been in turmoil. What do you want with Oak?”
Abbey laughed maniacally, red and black energy forming in her hands before she motioned for it to shoot up at the tree where Vincent was suspended in space.