Kali focused all of her attention on the silent bubble that followed close behind the sadistic moron, she couldn't hear much but some nearly imperceptible sounds slipped through and Kali noted each and every one of them.

Whatever was keeping them silent and most likely invisible wasn't perfect. They walked around far too confidently to be visible and she didn't hear any of the 'elite' goons make a single comment about being followed.

From the few sounds that slipped through she already knew the person was good, their steps were light and barely made sounds only when he crushed the undergrowth beneath their feet. The steps were heavy, most likely not an elf then they were calculated and stalking.

She heard a deep but muffled grunt as the person pulled himself onto the roof of a log house, yes, that was a man for sure.

With the undergrowth she had a bit more trouble keeping track of him, the lack of the constant noise the leaves make in the wind was easy to follow but on the roofs, she couldn't follow that.

The wind makes noise as it touches normal wood too, it's a pain to detect that though.

That was more of a background noise that she instinctually disregarded than sounds she could detect so it took active effort on her part to also pay attention to that. By the time she got a handle on that, the man was already on the other side of the camp, on top of the building housing the other captured things and people.

She heard a weird gritting noise from him. Is he..gritting his teeth?

At least that's promising... if it's not because he doesn't like the state his soon-to-be 'merchandise' is. Let's hope he finds it as abhorrent as I do.

She was being far too optimistic she realized, let's plan for the worst and hope for the best. What would the worst possible scenario be though? Hmm, something like him coming here to assassinate the lead moron and silence everyone else.

Not that that's too likely, but she had to account for the chance that she would be among his targets to eliminate. Someone kidnapping her who actually knew how to subdue a mage would be even worse, she knew there were ways to drain someone's Core of mana forcefully.

That could kill people too, the Core is more than just a storage for mana.

Now back to how could she run away from or kill this person skulking around unseen in a camp of bandits that bested her, to say her chances were bad was an understatement. They only got me because I was distracted and there were hundreds of them, it was unfair.

She could cloak the whole cage with Spell from her Illusion ring but if he could do a similar spell but much better she couldn't count on him not seeing straight through it. Minor Illusion was far from the epitome of Illusion spells so she couldn't put too much faith into it.

Let's put fighting him as a last resort, running away in the middle of whatever chaos he will cause would be much better even if I can't make sure the head moron dies painfully.

Kali considered her options, it could be that the guy was only a scout and the spell was only an artifact, which would mean she had to escape before whoever was to raid this place with his information.

She gritted her teeth, she was spiraling down into endless 'what if's again which was useless. She couldn't do anything while locked inside a cage.

She still kept most of her attention on tracking the sneaky bubble of silence but she ran her fingers over the bars in the meantime, she searched for a place where it could open up and she found it on one of the small sides of the brick-shaped cage.

She twitched her ears but she couldn't feel any enchantment on the cage, nor any magical locking mechanism like her carriage had. Her fingers slid over the bars questing for the elusive lock and on the one at the far right she found it, her fingers stopped on it as she felt around the blocky thing.

Did these morons really lock up an elf in a simple iron cage?

She was befuddled but the realization that she actually didn't have any spell in her repertoire that could easily free her made her grimace. Maybe a Water blade could manage with enough overcharging and a few casts or she could try melting the lock with a Fireball.

No that'd just make it even harder to open it.

In the meantime, the intruder managed to sneak into the building and was walking around the many cages stacked atop each other reaching all the way to the low ceiling. Kali could clearly hear animals clawing at iron bars, birds poking them with their beaks and some animals just sleeping while the three elves were all sleeping deeply.

Are they drugged?

She wouldn't put it past these bandits but that begged the question, why wasn't she drugged up too? She was probably just left awake for entertainment, she assumed. To hundreds of horny humans a woman even if they couldn't touch her was a huge morale boost she thought, especially an elf.

The bubble stopped right before the three elves and Kali heard the man let out a feral growl. She wasn't sure what he did next as the silencing enchantment strengthened for a few moments but by the end of it the man was leaving the building and the three cages had their fronts ripped open.

Holy shit, he is strong...but he freed them...right?

Kali didn't dare to hope, sitting inside a cage should have snubbed out all of her overly optimistic thoughts but she was already thinking about the unseen man as a silent avenger coming to bring his wrath down on some slaving bandits.

She followed his movements and her eyes snapped open when she realized which house he was heading for, it was a bit larger than the rest and more well-built with logs making up most of it and even its roof being well made.

It was also the house she heard the bandit boss snoring, I don't need elven ears for that, even the deaf could hear him.

The sarcasm managed to retain her calm as she almost started to panic again, this guy was heading straight for the boss after freeing his priced merchandise. He was looking for trouble for sure and Kali's best idea so far was using a kinetic Hammer on the cage and sending herself flying outside of the camp along with it.

She wasn't sure if she could survive that but it was better than putting her fate into the hand of another.

How else could I get out of- .... oh, fuck where is my knife!?

She reached for her belt where she usually kept it but found nothing, her rough brown tunic that the bandits dressed her in only had a rope for a belt and the pants didn't even have pockets. They were coarse, made of some kind of plant fiber probably.

Shit, one of them pocketed my knife...and my clothes.

The clothes were nowhere as magically complex but they were still made by the Royal tailor that makes her father's clothes too, self-cleaning and regenerating enchantments weren't easy to weave into the cloth and it could even clean her in addition which made her desperately want to get it back before continuing her journey.

The knife would hurt even more if she lost it, it was elven Mythril, one of the best materials for enchanted weapons especially for elves. It was light with high mana capacity and it was also a good metal to make weapons from, especially for elves who favored sharp and light weapons over large and heavy ones.

Okay, so, goals:

1. Get out of the cage

2. Get out of the camp

3. Stay alive

4. Get the knife back (optional)

5. Get the clothes back (optional)

6. Run away from the sneaky guy (optional)

7. Make sure as many of these disgusting bandits die here as you can (optional)

Yeah, that looks good.

When her ears picked up the start of a fight inside the large log house she pulled at her wrists with all her power, making the rope snap. She massaged her tender wrists for a bit but she got to removing the disgusting gag from her mouth too.

It was nice of the moron trio to cover her for the night, this way nobody would see that she wasn't as tied up as they thought her to be. She silently crawled closer to the lock and now only paid attention to the steadily developing fight in the back of her mind.

With her focus shifting she started examining it in detail, the soft light seeping through and under the cloth was more than enough for her elven eyes to see it. Her fingers traced its edges and she pushed her mana sense into it but as it had no mana that didn't bear any result.

At this point the fight was still contained to the house and Kali felt a bit conflicted, either the boss moron was much stronger than she thought or the sneaky guy wasn't too good at actually fighting. To her that only mattered because sending Water Blades against the iron bars would surely alert the bunch of morons still ambling around the camp.

For now, let's try the silent options.

The first one was conjuring two needles of mana with a simple Mana Gathering + Separate + Needle + Hold combination, this was the most basic Spell structure for manifesting mana tools but with changing up the Shaping Rune which was Needle in this case.

The two softly glowing needles materialized and fell into her palm, the light was suboptimal but she hoped it didn't show through the cloth. She was far from the best but she got rather good at breaking locks while growing up, by her 20th birthday they had to put magical locks on doors to even slow her down.

Unfortunately the Castle Library's restricted section had mana signature identification, not a basic locking system so she couldn't break through that, poor her. Still, this talent of hers that she cultivated rigorously helped her sneak around wherever she wanted aside from a few locations in the castle.

I still don't know why Father let me though, I know now that he could feel me with his mana sense for sure.

Kali expected some challenge in breaking the lock, it was after all supposed to hold her in and even if they didn't know who she was they should know what she was or did the lead moron even fail to check her level? She was confused but she welcomed the foolishness of her enemy.

The lock clicked open and she was free...er, the bandits were still walking around and chattering while drowning themselves in alcohol and some sort of mushroom powder. Kali was familiar with the prior, she was only supposed to drink once she turned twenty but since it was forbidden she felt obliged to do it.

Poor 10 years old me, the maids thought I got sick.

She grimaced at the memory, who knew the 'grape wine' her brother hid in his room was actually death made into drinkable form. A few years later she tried it again with much the same results and she had to conclude that she didn't like alcohol.

She didn't have experience with mushrooms but she knew the ancestors used some for their rituals as hallucinogens, one needed a way to let loose when dragons regularly eclipsed the sun. Thank fuck they are gone.

Even their far-off descendants, the Feathered Serpents were a significant problem but the dragons were natural disasters. She didn't know how the world survived the Age of the Dragons but she sure was happy she wasn't born back then.

By now the two brought their fight outside of the house and chaos was spreading throughout the camp, the goons were shouting and searching frantically for their weapons. They converged on the duel's position but from what she sensed the two were leagues above the rest, the sneaky man that she could now sense more clearly at times was bisecting them with off-handed slashes.

With his ... claws? Or is that some sort of clawed gauntlet?

She could reconstruct his movements but it was far from perfect, nonetheless, he was a great distraction. She put an Illusion over the door of the cage to make it look like she wasn't crawling out of it just now. She slowly raised the cloth and stayed under the cloak of the illusion for a moment.

Now that she could actually see what was happening she was glad she put the illusion in place, the goons were rather distracted but they would have noticed her for sure. The fight was now getting closer to her as the boss' house was near the center just like the open place her cage was put in the middle of.

She couldn't see them at the moment as they were smashing through the shabby houses and demolishing them as they battled relentlessly, the 'elite' morons with their less shit weapons managed to annoy the intruder but they had to stay on the sidelines to sneak in a attack once in a while.

Everyone that could be a problem is distracted, let's get my stuff and ditch this place.

During her meditation, she remembered some of the morons talking about how the boss added her clothes to the storage just like anything else but the only thing she heard about her knife was that the boss might have pocketed it himself.

Annoying, but if they injure each other I might be able to off the bastard and get it back.

Her face was twitching as she remembered how thankful the bastards were to the boss for deciding to loot her clothes. Kali wasn't the shy type but she was an elf, pride, arrogance and narcissism were in her blood and disgusting lowlifes seeing her naked body was humiliating.

It's not narcissism and arrogance if it's true.

And more often than not it was, which tended to irritate other species even more not that elves cared what they thought most of the time.

She let the Illusion fall once there were only two of the goons remaining around her.

"Wh-" moron1 started, looking at her standing free and outside of her cage.

"Hi~," she said with a radiant smile as the Twin Kinetic Strikes slammed into him and his buddy. Such a shame she couldn't take it slower but her clothes were more important.

The two morons had their faces crashed in and mixed with their brains, they collapsed without any further sound and Kali grimace at the corpses. Technically that was her first kill and she was somewhat disturbed by the Spells she learned for fun ending their lives so easily.

She stepped over them and headed for the storage building, it was right next to the building with the cages holding the prisoners. She was close to it, the bandits dumped every important building into the middle of the camp so it was easy to reach.

She easily broke through the lock on the door and slipped into the darkness inside, the inside was as basic as it could get with wooden boxes stacked atop of one another.

It would have been a pain to find her clothes were it not for the bandits being lazy and leaving them in the box she first cracked open right next to the door. Another illusion was put over the door to make it appear closed as she quickly changed back into her enchanted outfit.

"Much better," she sighed in relief as she activated the cleaning enchantment and let it wash away any dirt that might have stuck to her before. The material might have looked like leather but it was as comfortable as silk and it was stretchy, allowing her a full range of motion.

Her ears twitched as she felt a spell activation going off in the duel, she frowned as she recognized the spell instantly. It was the same the bastard has used on her to make her writhe in agony, the sense of it was dampened but now that she was more used to her spatial hearing she noticed it.

It wasn't impossible to hide from an elf's spell sense as she called it, her Ring was entirely unnoticeable to her but from what she knew it required inhuman mana control so most of the things that slipped past this sense were master-crafted artifacts.

The artifact the asshole was using wasn't a master's work but it was good, and that made it harder to sense. So he isn't a mage, that's good but he might have other tricks up his sleeve.

The two were by now closing in on the palisades and she suspected they'd continue fighting out in the dark forest after they broke through it. Well, she still wanted her knife back and she suspected the boss to have it either on him or in his house.

House first, then I can decide whether I want to mess with their fight.

The storage might have something useful to her but she wasn't willing to dig through crates full of monster parts and minerals just to find something mildly useful when she knew where her knife was which was far more useful than what she suspected these humans to have.

She slipped out and dismissed the illusion, she covered herself in a Shadow Cloak, her increased mana capacity giving her enough leeway to spend it on that just to make stalking in the shadows that much easier.