Netheril’s Glory - Chapter 80: The Desperate fugitive.
Until he ran to the bottom of the hill, Hult couldn’t believe that he actually escaped. He didn’t want to think about how terrifying his days in the basement were. He completely drowned in despair after hearing those endless bloodcurdling screams from above and realizing his future fate.
Before he was captured and turned into a slave, Hult was a thief in the slum of Dolez City. His daily life consisted of searching for prey, then escaping from patrolling guards, and finally, avoid the exploitation of local gangs as much as possible.
He didn’t have the talents that many of his colleagues had, but he always managed to avoid the city guards with his clever little tricks and fairly decent skills. In his professional career, his most brilliant achievement was that he successfully stole the wallet of an apprentice-level soldier without getting caught. Although he had to give those lovely gold coins in that wallet to the gang, his deed still made him famous among thieves in the slums.
But no matter how famous he was, he was only an ordinary thief and not a professional. And as an ordinary person, although his theft had been successful thousands of times from small to large, but in the end, because of one single mistake, everything came crashing down on him.
He got caught by the city guards and thrown into prison. There was no such thing as human rights in the prisons of Dolez City. Criminals with light crimes would be thrown into prison for a few days, prisoners with serious crimes would be executed on the spot, and those with not serious but also not lite crimes either had to pay a large amount of gold coin as “atonement,” or they would be sold as slaves.
Unfortunately, Hult was such a criminal, and he didn’t have the money, so he became a slave, but what was even more unfortunate was that his buyer was an evil mage.
In the gloomy weather at night, Hult took a deep breath. Although the air around him was polluted as he was still in the range of the area that was eroded by the abyssal aura, Hult still felt that the air here was very fresh and wonderful, at least much more wonderful than the bloody smell of the basement.
Five or six skinny fugitive slaves holding a little girl followed in Hult’s footsteps. Under the support of the pure desire for survival, all of them followed Hult’s advice and kidnapped this weak-looking little girl mage for their escape plan.
Their whole plan surprisingly went very smoothly. The little mage who used spells to dig a tunnel did not yell or struggled as they expected. She didn’t even put up a meaningful resistance, but for some reason, it didn’t make Hult feel that happy.
When he ran to the foot of the mountain, Hult found that his so-called plan was not clever at all. Originally, according to his idea, as long as he ran to the small town of Niailan and entered into the alleys, he would have some chance of escape. In addition, he would have used this hostage girl to distract the mage for some time, then finally relying on his years of familiarity with the streets and alleys, maybe he could have really escaped.
But now, he discovered that the houses in the circle at the foot of the mountain were completely empty. He didn’t know that the residents near the hill have already moved out in a hurry as they, as ordinary people, could not endure this atmosphere mixed with the faint abyss aura.
But what was even more concerning was that these five or six fugitive slaves, including Hult himself, soon discovered a terrible fact, they were failing to maintain the pace of their escape journey.
They were imprisoned in the basement for more than three days without eating or drinking, and now they started to feel dizzy and weak, And after their long run from the top to the bottom of the hill, they couldn’t run anymore.
Even the agile thief Hult himself felt that his limbs were becoming cold and his vision blurry. He knew that if they still ran this desperately, they would die from exhaustion befour they could reach the town.
After much thinking, Hult decided to go to one of those broken houses to rest for few minutes and then find at least a little water to drink, so as to at least avoide the sorrowful death, like death from exhaustion.
—————-
Sitting on a vine seat in the center of the White Tower Hall, Punk was watching this show with his prophecy spells.
“How dare these little mice to stop to rest? Do they really think they have escaped death?”
While shaking his head, Punk mocked these people’s ignorance about magic from the bottom of his heart and then gave an order to the flesh golem…………
In the dark night, as the white pagoda’s door slowly opened, a tall humanoid creature in a gray robe walked out of the door. Its steps were so heavy that it left cracks on the dry ground. Accompanied by the howling cold wind, the flesh golem slowly stretched out its blood-red claws from the tattered robe, and its seven red eyes tore up the night like the gaze of some evil spirits.
Accompanied by a sudden blast, the Flesh Golem, No. 1, rushed down the mountain. Under the sudden highspeed acceleration, No. 1’s huge body easily tore through the thin air, leaving only a gray shadow mixed with red afterimages behind it.
No. 1 was a killing machine built for combat. It would simply receive commands from Punk and take action. So Punk just wanted to test its ability to receive commands and execute them. The target of the first test was obviously the group of unsuspecting ignorant mice.
—————-
Bilan sat blankly on the icy floor. The rotting wooden door was making a creaking sound from the cold wind outside. Two skinny skeletons-like slaves were sitting next to her, almost paralyzed from tiredness. If they didn’t have a weak breath, they were no different from a corpse that had been air-dried for few days after their death.
Until Bilan went to the basement to get materials because of Punk’s order and saw this group of poor slaves, she didn’t realize what the materials actually were, and then remembering the corpses piled up in the corner; she knew what kind of tragic end these slaves would have. And even after such miserable death, their souls would be drawn out for further experimentation, which made Bilan, who has always believed that she was kind and righteous, feel very unwilling to let it happen.
But in the end, she was just an apprentice-level mage, so Bilan could only persuade herself, knowing that she didn’t have the means to save these people. But then she heard these people’s plan of kidnapping her, and without thinking much, she continued to pretend to be ignorant and did nothing to prevent it from happening.
As a result, Bilan, who was overwhelmed with a sense of justice for a moment, made this stupid act that seemed extremely irrational now that she thought about it.
Those ordinary people didn’t know the power of the official mage, but how could Bilan forget about it.
With the use of official-level prophecy spells, the so-called escape from the very beginning was just a joke. At this moment, the impulse for justice in her heart subsided, and Bilan began to feel a kind of invisible suffocating pressure that was slowly enveloping her entire body.
“Oh God! How could I go against an official mage? Everything is now over!”
Just like many contradictory teenagers, with a sudden rush of hot blood, they might be fearless, but once the blood in the head subsided and reason returned to the brain, they start to regret their stupid, impulsive actions.
Bilan now only felt that Punk’s cold eyes were looking at her heart. Now just imagining that her soul might be pulled out next, just like those miserable experimental subjects, she became completely terrified.
But just as an apprentice-level mage, she couldn’t do anything other than hiding in this wooden house and shivering uncontrollably. Now, she really regretted it.
Amidst the howling wind that was like a wailing ghost, an immature young boy’s face slowly appeared in Bilan’s mind.
“Dickie…”
Bilan’s lips squirmed slightly, but except for herself, nobody heard what she said…