Zelos maintained his straight face when the woman said that while looking at him. For all intents and purposes, he was a kid, even more than the other three, so there was no point in dwelling too much on that kind of reaction.

“We are here to do our job, but I want to ask why you called for me when I am pretty sure that we don’t know each other.”

“I will explain along the way. For now, let’s take the other person who will come along with us.”

The horses would be fine there, so everyone left the carriage, and then they entered the building. The place looked like a jungle of stone… There wasn’t much room for people to walk around, and the doors and windows were all made of iron. When Zelos knocked on the walls a bit, he could feel that they also had been reinforced with iron bars inside them… they knew all the tricks that the prisoners might try to use there.

Before long, they reached a staircase going downward and soon found some torches illuminating the path downward and beyond. As soon as they reached the first underground level, they found more of those cloaked guys sitting on chairs in front of stone cells. With their heads down, they sure looked tired. Still, the prisoners in the cells looked even more tired. They barely raised their heads to see the strangers passing by them.

They found stairs that went deeper underground repeatedly. Considering the number of cells and the fact that only one prisoner was inside each of them, Zelos assumed that there should be around two hundred of them there. At the same time, the number of guards was exactly the same.

The fifth level only had one prisoner, so Zelos couldn’t help but think that they were scammed… the prisoner was a lot more dangerous and valuable than he had expected. At the same time, he found it hard to believe that there were other places harder for the prisoners to escape. Then again, people like Kaitrine existed, so perhaps there were more insane traits out there.

“It looks like you have brought some interesting friends, lady. Since you aren’t exactly talkative, this might be interesting.”

In the only cell on that floor, the group found a single man sitting on the ground while resting his right arm on his raised right knee. He had wavy red hair and green eyes, so he passed a feeling of vitality, but soon, his smile disappeared, and the look on his face worsened.

“His name is Elmer, the guy that we want to be moved to another harder place to attack or escape. As you can see, I am his warder, so he won’t be able to use his trait while I am around.”

Zelos soon connected the dots… all the guards in the prison were of the same clan, and they all had the ability to cancel or weaken traits…

Edea unlocked the cell, and soon, Irlan and Heirina stepped in with their weapons in hand, grabbed the guy by his arms, and raised him. A few minutes in Edea’s presence made him completely weakened, like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. He had enough energy to look around and pay attention to Zelos for a moment, but not for long.

“As long as I am around, he won’t be able to do anything, so you guys don’t have to worry about that. All you have to do is to make sure that we won’t be apart for too long and keep us close to each other.”

“I had heard of the power of warders… but it is a lot more impressive than I had envisioned.”

“There aren’t many of us out there, and it is a pain to improve this trait, so aside from my clan, you won’t see this trait being used often.”

It was a very handy trait, but since it had to be used all the time to keep the prisoners like that, it should take a toll on the user, too. At the same time, staying underground for who knows how long should make their minds take a toll as well… the only thing that they could hope for was that their prisoners wouldn’t last that long.

A couple of minutes later, they put Elmer in the carriage, and Edea followed him. This time, Heirina asked Irlan to drive while she would talk with Edea about the details of the job. Still, they stayed silent until they left the town and began to head east.

“My sincere apologies for waiting until now, you can understand why I had to stay quiet until now.”

“There is the possibility of spies inside the town, right? Even so, our arrival here and heading to the prison would make them consider the possibility that he is being moved. We took some measures on our end as well and left my hometown before sunrise, but…”

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“That is fine. I couldn’t have asked for more… Regardless, let’s start by explaining while I called for you. You should know my town doesn’t have a leader like Hei. A group of rich merchants form a council and decide things for most. My clan works for them and has been doing that for twenty years. With that in mind, you can understand that some of them might act out of their own interest and cause some incidents that would benefit them. Letting him escape could start another conflict a lot sooner than we want, and merchants that produce weapons and armor would benefit from that.”

Things were pretty messed up if people in that town would go that far… then again, Zelos couldn’t deny that money moves a lot of the world and the people in it as well. In an age where people die by the thousands with each conflict, it would be easy to understand that stacking up money would be the same as stacking up power to do what one wants.

“If a council of merchants decides most of the things in your town, doesn’t that mean that they know that he is being moved?”

“They know,”

“... Since that is the case, you should just have hired more capable people for this kind of job.”

“That was my intention, but we can’t trust the people of the town. They don’t like my clan and our abilities. As for hiring someone from outside, that would be difficult since in the last conflict. We lost a lot of people… those who could accept the job could be bought. I knew that Hei wouldn’t be bought, but asking him would be difficult since it would leave his territory unsafe. With that in mind, I decided to choose you since you should be capable enough for the job.”

“Well, thanks for the vote of confidence…”

Heirina acted as if the job would be easy, but now she was deep in thought. She knew some information about the job, but a few things had changed. Considering the prisoner’s state, the job was supposed to be fine, but she wasn’t confident now.

“We will do our best so you can rest easy.”

“Thank you. If you don’t mind, I will sleep for a bit since the last few days have been pretty tough.”

“All right, Zelos, watch the back of the carriage. From now on, we need to be a bit more cautious.”

“Understood.”

There was a compartment on the back of the carriage that was almost like a balcony, so Zelos could stay there and watch the back with enough room. He wanted to climb on the roof and sit there while he exercised, but he wasn’t sure if it would endure that much weight. It was better to be cautious.

Zelos also wanted to ask some questions, but he decided to wait until later, when Edea was resting and when Elmer was unconscious, too. Despite his condition, he was trying to endure everything in order to learn more about the people around him and his surroundings.

Zelos realized that with a prisoner like that, they probably wouldn’t have the chance to sleep in any town or village. It was better to keep the carriage completely closed and away from everyone. That way, Elmer wouldn’t know when he would have the chance to move or not.

At the end of the afternoon, they made a brief stop at a village to buy a lot of food. The number of people traveling with them increased, so that was necessary. At the same time, they couldn’t keep Elmer without eating… as far as Zelos could tell, he hadn’t been tortured that much; the marks on his body of wounds were faint, but he could have been tortured and healed at the same time.

“Zelos, try to keep your distance from him and don’t look him in the eye. It is hard to tell what he is thinking, and we don’t know his traits either. He might try to do something to us and he might think that you would be the best person to attack in order to escape.”

“I will keep that in mind.”

Despite Irlan’s warning, Zelos wasn’t worried; he didn’t look at that guy at all, and he had no reason to get too close to him. With that in mind, they kept working since they had just stopped to camp. While the women of the group kept an eye on the prisoner, Zelos looked after the horses, and Irlan took care of the dinner.

As soon as Zelos finished the job, he prepared to do some light training since he couldn’t go all out and lose sight of the prisoner. Soon, he heard Kaitrine groaning, and when he looked at Heirina, he saw her familiar annoyed expression.

“What is wrong?”

“... He has been bothering us for a while to go to the bathroom.”

“This was bound to happen, so why are you so exasperated?”

“Edea’s trait loses power when she is more than five meters away from the target and she has to use more energy to weaken him again. I guess I shouldn’t ask how he solves that kind of problem by himself in the prison.”

“The cells have toilets for the prisoners to use. I just move away from him a bit at the appointed time, and he solves that by himself.”

After Edea’s explanation, Zelos realized the problem: The target couldn’t escape there, but he could escape now, even with a bit of energy or weakened. As long as he has access to his trait, he should be able to cause problems or alert anyone nearby.

“Let him do what he needs to do, and it is better to let him piss or shit himself here. You will keep the usual distance. If he tries anything funny, then I will smash his stomach with my club. That will speed up the process of him going to the toilet even more.”

“... He will need to clean himself so that he might move more than a little suspiciously, and you probably wouldn’t want to see that.”

“I have seen worse. Besides, I can’t let the so-called ladies see such a scene, right? We need to preserve the prisoner’s honor.”

“All right, since you are going to say this much, then I won’t feel bad for letting you take care of that job.”