We didn’t waste any time getting into Bo’guth’s and Igladith’s car. It was a large car that I wasn’t sure if it would be considered a bus or not, but when I saw Bo’guth filling most of the space in the artifact, I knew that it was just the perfect size for him.
I was currently riding in the back with Igladith, who had been tapping her foot nonstop ever since we left their house. Thankfully, at this time of the night, there were hardly any other cars on the road, so we didn’t stop for anything; not even the red lights that I thought were there to force these artifacts to stop.
If we weren’t moving this easily, then I was sure Igladith would’ve ditched the artifact and simply run or fly all over the city.
After a few minutes, we were already approaching the place that Brian pointed out to us.
“Do you sense anything?” Igladith anxiously asked, her face turned to look outside the car and her eyes quickly shifting.
“Not yet,” I plainly replied, keeping my senses as sharp as I could while also looking at everything that could be suspicious.
“We’re still a couple of minutes away,” Bo’guth said, his grip over the wheel as if he wanted to break it to pieces.
However, even when he said that, it took less than that to reach the place. He abruptly stopped the car and we looked around. There were normal houses around with dark windows, and nobody walking around. It was obvious among the many houses which place could be the base, however, as there was only one place with a gated door that led to a large empty lot where a large warehouse-like building stood.
I was also able to get a small hint of magic from that place.
“Is this it? Do you sense our Miri?” Bo’guth asked, half-turned from the driver’s seat while carrying an anxious expression.
“I’m not sure… but I do sense magic coming from that place. I should get closer,” I replied and opened the door of the car. Igladith and Bo’guth moved with me but I raised a hand to stop them.
“What?” Igladith asked with a frown. “Planning on acting as the hero?”
I shook my head and turned to look at the building at the back of the empty lot. “I want to make sure about it before making a mess out of it. Also,”—I pointed at a couple of yawning men, dressed in white at the front of the building—“I don’t want them to sound the alarm.”
Both of them settled down in the car while looking at the men.
“Okay. Please hurry,” Bo’guth said and kept his eyes on the building.
With a sharp nod, I closed the door and turned to look at them. I wasn’t sure that my current gear wouldn’t give away that I wasn’t their ally, especially with the large sword on my back, so to ensure that they wouldn’t cause any issues, I grabbed the sword and tossed it in the air, high above the empty lot. I used a variation of the magic from that Recall spell and kept it in the air. Luckily, the sword was just as dark as the dark sky, so the men by the building didn’t react to it.
With a quick hop, I jumped over the gate and made my way right in the open to the men, who quickly noticed me coming as their expressions changed to suspicion. But I wasn’t going to let them get the first move.
“Yahoo!” I exclaimed with a cute tone, a bright smile, and both my hands on my back so they wouldn’t see the claw-like gloves. “I’m finally back!”
As a woman, I knew there were other ways to enchant a man, especially so with the kind of looks that I had. If these men were nothing more than grunts, then they would at least lower their guards to someone like me coming over with a flirty tone.
They still took some caution, but they didn’t raise any defenses. “Who are you?”
“Awh, don’t be like that,” I said with a pout and a subtle tilt of my head. “And here I was thinking about giving you a little reward for the hard work you both are doing.”
I stopped a few steps away from them and tilted my torso downwards. Both men blushed slightly and looked between my smiling face and my chest. They were now completely distracted, and being this close to the building, I could finally sense magic being used somewhere underground.
“W-well, the teachings do say that if we work hard, the Holy Gods shall blissfully reward us,” one of them said with a smile.
I softly giggled and traced one hand over my chest. The both of them blushed heavily and I took the opportunity to walk over to them and stand closer to the door. While they were busy looking at me, I glanced at the black car before giving a subtle nod.
The car’s doors opened and both demons quickly moved, with Igladith being the faster of the two. She turned into a dark mist that moved as swiftly as the wind to stand right behind the two men, who didn’t notice her at all.
Without saying anything, Igladith placed her hands on top of both men. Before they could react to it, their eyes went completely dark, and their bodies dropped to the floor like a couple of puppets that had their strings cut.
I looked down at their bodies, and saw that they were steadily breathing. “I see you didn’t kill them.”
Bo’guth quickly joined us as Igladith shook her head. “Killing people in this world is not as easy as it was in ours. There would be no point in rescuing our daughter if afterwards I have to spend years in prison.” She turned her eyes to a corner of the building’s entrance. “By the way, I took the opportunity while you were getting closer to the gates to darken the cameras.”
I looked over to the place she was looking at; a small square thing. “So that would explain why I felt a sudden rise in dark magic.”
“Do you sense our daughter?” Bo’guth asked with the same anxious expression from before.
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I nodded and looked to the ground. They followed my eyesight. “Yes, I sense a consistent use of dark magic from below. However, they seem to be using other kinds of magic as well, so I suggest we make haste.”
“Why don’t you just break the floor and we go directly to it?” Bo’guth asked and I took the opportunity to recall the weapon. It landed on my hand before I placed it on my back.
“We don’t know what kind of place that is. Carelessness on our part could prove fatal for Mirlaneth,” I said and stood in front of the door. “Let's take the normal route.”
I pushed the door, but it wouldn’t budge. I tried doing it again with more strength, but the door still wouldn’t move.
“Try pulling it,” Bo’guth suggested.
I did as he said and the doors easily opened. I found it strange that the doors to a place like this would open out, but that didn’t matter, as when I looked inside, the place was brightly lit, but lacking anyone in sight.
We all quickly moved in, and looked around. The space was open, large, full of chairs, and with a stage at the back that had the symbols of both the Leyfallan empire and the Holy Gods.
The empire’s banner was a golden sword pointing down with a glowing halo on top of the grip, all on a red background. While the symbol for the Holy Gods was supposed to be a similar halo from which the symbols of each God were connected, but here, the symbols had been replaced by simple golden dots.
“Where shall we go?” Bo’guth asked as he looked around the large hall, bringing me back from the distraction that the banners caused.
“We should be looking for a passage that might lead us underground,” I replied and did the same as him and Igladith were doing and looked around the hall.
I went over to where the stage was, since it was likely the place where leaders would stand to address their followers, but there was hardly anything around it. Just some music instruments, and different kinds of magicless artifacts that I had no idea how to use.
Bo’guth and Igladith were exploring the sides of this large place, each one on a different side. I stood for a moment on the stage as I looked over the chairs and the two of them, trying to find anything that could give away the place where we could go under.
Without notice, Bo’guth went into a door, but he quickly came back out. I wondered what it was that was there, but the engravings on the door showed that it was just a restroom.
Igladith didn’t find anything special besides just a room full of other unknown artifacts and a couple of offices with nothing more than furniture and completely unrelated documents.
By now, I was getting worried that we might have to dig into the ground and try our luck to get to the place where magic was being used. However, as I looked down, I noticed a strange crevice on the ground. I dropped down from the stage and carefully inspected it.
“Here,” I called out to both of them, who appeared nearly instantaneously next to me. “This seems to be the entrance.”
I tried to lift it with rock magic, but the plaque refused to move. So I tapped it a couple of times and realized that it was made out of metal. As I was thinking of a way to lift it up, Igladith suddenly struck her hand into the plaque, piercing it with a loud crash that made me fear that we might’ve given away our intrusion.
She didn’t wait for me to give a warning before she lifted the thick metal piece up from the ground, revealing a set of illuminated stairs that led down. With an effortless toss, she threw the piece to the side, turning afterwards to look at me.
“Seems like a small space,” she said, her eyes turned to the large sword on my back. “Would that be an issue?”
“No. Even mountains move aside with a strong enough swing,” I said with a shake of my head.
“Right… you once went toe to toe with our Dark Lord…” Bo’guth said with an awkward expression that was quickly replaced with a serious one. “Let us hurry.”
I jumped into the stairs right after and inspected the area. It was brightly illuminated with white lights on the ceiling. The walls were made out of a strangely flat light gray stone, and the hallway led to another wall at the end that split in two way. Luckily, it was large enough for me to swing the weapon, and for the couple of demons to fight properly.
We carefully made our way to the end of the hallway, and looked at both roads. It was the same as the one we came through, which made me think that perhaps this place was an underground labyrinth.
“Which way is our daughter?” Igladith asked as she looked between both paths.
I focused on the dark magic I could sense, but it was leading forward and down still. “She’s up ahead… which means that neither of those paths lead to her—or rather, I don’t know which one does.”
“Hmm… then let us split and see what we find,” Bo’guth suggested as he looked to the right path. “I’ll go this way and then come back if I find something interesting.”
“Then I shall go down the other path,” I said and walked in the opposite direction, Igladith right behind me.
Once we reached the end of this path, we found that the same thing repeated, in that it split in two ways. However, in this case, the path to the left was a dead-end where several metal doors could be seen at the sides, while the path to the right ended with a turn to the right at the end.
I turned to look back at Bo’guth who was currently looking both ways on the path that he took before turning to do the same as he looked at me. I saw him move his mouth, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying, nor read the movements of his demonic mouth.
“I see. It’s like a mirror of this side,” Igladith replied, turning after to look down at me. “Then I take it we should go right.”
There was still some curiosity about the doors that were on the left side, but she was right, and this wasn’t the moment to be exploring an enemy base. I nodded and walked down the right path. Igladith lingered a while longer to say the same thing to Bo’guth on the other side before following me.
This path was longer than the one we didn’t take, and like that one, this one also had metal doors, though, only on our right hand. On the left side, I quickly noticed that there was a long window that stretched almost the complete hall.
I stopped a step away from the window and peeked from the side, trying as much as I could to ensure that nobody could see me, Igladith waiting right behind me.
“Training?” I whispered.
On the other side of the window I saw several people using magic, from normal elements like fire, or earth, to others even trying to reproduce Holy Power with the aid of artifacts. The place was as large as the hall that was on top of this place, and the people were training in a lower floor from the one I was watching from.
None of them seem to be paying attention to this window, so we should be able to move to the other side, but just to make sure we weren’t noticed, I crouched, signaled Igladith to lower as well, and moved under the window. I stopped only for a moment to ensure that she did the same, since she was much taller than me.
I was momentarily stunned when I saw the way she was moving. She had completely dropped to the ground and was moving with her hands and feet. It gave me a feeling as if I was watching a spider or some beast like that, but I decided to ignore it, for as long as she wasn’t noticed, it didn’t matter how she moved.
We quickly made it to the end of the hall, where the window ended in a metal double door that likely led to that training hall. Once we were there, we finally stood straight to take notice of the next hallway.
This one also split in two paths, the only difference being that one path was in the middle of the hallway, going to the left, while the other one was at the end, leading right. I waited for a moment to see if Bo’guth popped out of that one, and the demon indeed appeared while crawling on the ground, but he did so more as a soldier would and not like a beast as Igladith did.
We moved to the middle of the hallway where the only other path remained.
“There was a training hall on that side,” Bo’guth said while pointing with his claw-like thumb to his back.
“Yes, it was the same on that side,” I replied, turning my head to look down the next path.
This one was a set of stairs that led even further down. It was also wider and at the end of it, from what I could see, it appeared to be a large open hall. I couldn’t sense the dark magic coming from that place, but we couldn’t see much further in from here.
”Only one way to go then,” I said, and we carefully made our way down.