Hakurai
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Chapter 170: Prison Break Pt.2
🕑 Added 2023-04-29 10:00:03 +0000 UTCLina shadowstepped through the iron bars in front of her and appeared on the other side of them, in the hallway outside of the washing room. From here, she was able to more clearly look up and down the dimly lit hallway and see no immediate guards in her vicinity. She oriented herself as best she could and picked a direction, walking slowly and quietly.
It wasn’t long before she came up to the corridor that she recalled turned off into the multiple hallways with the prisoner's cells lining it. The corridor had two guards standing watch, which she managed to spot out well before they had spotted her.
Holding closely to the shadows, she inched her way forward until she felt it was no longer safe to move further, then took a deep breath to psych herself up and knelt down, preparing herself for her next actions.
“Shadow dance.” She whispered, suddenly bursting into a puff of smoke, multiple times. She wasn’t in range to simply shadowstep behind the guards around the corridor, so instead she utilized her skill to repeatedly jump.
Shadow dance allowed her to teleport, strike, and teleport - each jump costing mana and and stamina with the initial jump costing the most. There wasn’t a limit to how long she maintained the process, but it was difficult for her to control for long periods of time due to the need to constantly, every half second, select a location in shadows within range to jump to. Failure to select a location would end the spell and put it on its long 5 minute cooldown.
She had a general idea of the layout of the corridors up ahead, though. She placed a jump a few meters away from the guards, and once there, her shadow skills detected teleportable shadows around the corner of the corrider which she quickly selected to jump to as her next target, making it possible for her to bypass the corridor and the guards.
They undoubtedly saw traces of her bursts of shadow, but she had to count on the non-elite NPCs being too simple-minded to react to it.
Once she’d made it into the hallway with the prison cells, she jumped a few more times down the straight path to get as far from the guarded corridor as possible, and began seeing the prisoners in their cells. They were humans - she was in the wrong section of the prison.
Immediately, she began shadow dancing back from whence she came. She utilized the same method to go around the guarded corridor again, but continued beyond it past the washing room that she’d entered from, until she came into view of the large room that was set at the base of the stairwell.
Here, she knew were many guards and barred walls leading into each hallway with the different types of prisoners. As she neared it, she hoped that the hallways were close enough together that she could shadowstep between them without a need to directly teleport into the room where the guards were.
With this in mind, she edged as close to the backside of the iron barred doors separating her hallway from the stairwell room. Sure enough, as she teleported just a meter behind it, she sensed shadows in the neighboring hallway and was able to jump to it, arriving at the section of the prison she knew to contain the Dark Elf prisoners.
From there, it was a simple matter of repeating the process, jumping down the hallway beyond the Dark Elf’s washing room to reach the guarded corridor in this section of the prison, then selecting the hallway she knew Mayiera to be at the end of. It took several long range jumps, but eventually she reached the end of the corridor and stopped, cancelling her spell just as her mana and stamina closed in on half empty.
She stood in the hall for a moment in front of the cell trying to catch her breath while Mayiera slowly lifted her head up from its downward facing position as Mayeria sat on the edge of a plain, uncomfortable looking prison bed.
“Mayiera?” Lina asked to get her attention. She could hardly make out Mayiera's dark eyes staring back at her through her long dark hair that hung over her face. “I’m here to get you out.” Lina explained. No response, she just continued to stare back at Lina. “Kagil’aktos sent me.” She added after a pause.
This, finally, stirred a reaction from Mayiera, and she stood up and walked towards the bars of her cell, motioning down to the locked door with a head nod.
“Right.” Lina nodded back as she opened up her inventory and took out of it her lockpicking tools, then got to work on the lock. She started off confidently with her lockpicking, but the longer it took, the more frustrated she became.
Just as she finally made progress and got a sense for the lock mechanism that his particular door used, she heard a familiar bursting puff sound approaching from the hall nearby. It took a brief second for her to process what the sound was, but reacted quick enough to avoid being slashed out at by a pair of daggers through shadowstepping a few meters away just in time - another shadow dancer had appeared and struck out at Lina where she’d been standing.
Seeing she’d missed, the attacker stopped in front of Mayiera’s cell while Lina had jumped back a few meters to the very back wall of the hallway.
[Warden Viella(Elite) - Level 152] stood above the female Dark Elf. She had short black hair and dark eyes with pale purple skin, wearing thick leather armor that bore the symbol of the City of the White Tree on the front.
“I’m a little insulted that you would try to break into here as a shadow dancer. It feels like a direct challenge to me. Did you think I wouldn’t notice you jumping around in my shadows?” Viella said while glaring at Lina, daggers at the ready. Lina quickly drew her daggers too and took a fighting stance as her adrenaline began to pump up.
“I kinda hoped you wouldn’t. Maybe you would be sleeping, or something.” Lina replied.
“Dark Elves don’t sleep. You must not be one of us. Nice cloak…” Mayiera eyed the hood that Lina had up. Then, after a tense pause, she looked at Lina’s lockpicking tools hanging out of the lock on Mayiera’s prison door. “So you’re here to break her out? Do you have any idea what you’re doing? How dangerous it is for both you, and this city, to break her out?” Viella raised an eyebrow at Lina.
Lina knew better than to respond and accidentally give this elite NPC any more information than she already had.
“Release me.” Mayiera growled, now staring at Lina with an angry expression barely visible under her long hair.
“I’ll try.” Lina sighed as she shadowstepped forward towards Viella with her feet in the lead, appearing in front of Viella and jump kicking her in the stomach to push her backwards away from the front of the door, then spun around and fumbled with the lock once more. She barely had time to make much progress before Viella stood back up and recomposed herself, shadow stepping into Lina’s space and swinging her daggers out at Lina’s neck - Viella was not holding back her punches and was going for the kill, and it made the situation that much more intimidating when Lina saw the look of determination briefly in her attackers eyes, before she shadowstepped away to avoid the strike.
She then shadowstepped back into Viella and elbow checked her from behind to push her away once more, giving Lina another moment with the lockpick. Still, not enough time to focus and make any progress before Viella retaliated.
Forced to jump back and dodge again, Lina realized this method wasn’t going to be a realistic way of unlocking the cell. Luckily, she eyed a keyring on Viella’s belt with four different types of keys hanging off of it, and a new idea popped into her mind. Lina jumped forward and engaged Viella, using her daggers to parry Viella’s strikes as she swung them predictably at Lina’s head, then rather than retaliating against her in the time window that her arms were thrown off from the parries, she reached down at the keyring and yanked it off her belt before shadow stepping away once more.
Viella paused infront of Mayiera’s cell, glancing briefly between her belt where the ring was missing, and back to Lina who was now holding it.
“You’ve got serious skills as a shadow dancer. If you had come to me as a level 150, wanting to learn something new, we’d be having a very different conversation.” Viella glared.
“Aww.” Lina let out a frustrated sigh. “Don’t tell me you’re the advanced shadow dancer class trainer…” She mumbled to herself quietly as she shook her head. Viella simply smirked back in response.
“Unfortunately, I cannot allow you to release this prisoner. I must stop you at all costs. So I will not be holding back.” Viella positioned herself firmly in front of the door to Mayiera’s cell, giving off to Lina the impression that from henceforth, she had no intention of moving an inch by her own free will.
“My boyfriend is depending on me, so I’m going to get her out of here no matter what.” Lina glared back at her before shadow stepping forward into a jump kick once more. It was successful again, pushing Viella back away from the door, and Lina used the time to land on her feet gracefully and swing the keyring up to the lock. Having seen the guards use these doors through Pyri’s scrying, she was able to identify the correct key on the first try and popped it into the lock. Before she could turn it, though, Viella stood back up and waved her hands towards Lina.
“Shadow Trap!” Viella shouted. A shadow dancer spell, or possibly an advanced shadow dancer class spell that Lina had never heard of or seen before. Suddenly, from the shadows on the walls cast by the nearest dimly lit torch, black tendrils made of shadowy mist shot out like spears towards Lina. She managed to dodge a couple by spinning around, but one tendril hit Lina’s ankle and wrapped itself around it. The moment it had, it acted as a grappling effect and prevented Lina from shadow stepping.
“Gotcha.” Viella smiled proudly, before waving her hands to recast the spell and hit Lina with more the second time, binding her wrists and other ankle with shadow tendrils shot out of the ceiling, then pulling her arms up so that she could no longer move and had all of her limbs stretched out in different directions.
Lina struggled against the tendrils, but once they went taut they were immovable and she couldn’t budge them.
“Unfortunate, but now you must pay for your crimes. Breaking into our prison is a serious offense.” Viella began walking forward with a big smile growing on her face. “On the bright side, we’ll have plenty of time to get to know each oth-
“KARAK’SHATARA!” Mayiera screeched in a sudden deep low growl. Lina and Viella both glanced to see that Mayiera had reached through the bars and finished turning the key that Lina had inserted into the lock, opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.
No longer inside her cell, the anti-magic runes were not affecting Mayiera any longer. As a result, immediately upon stepping out of her cell her hair began to levitate and float around her body oddly, by itself. In addition, black glowing strips and symbols etched into Mayiera’s skin on her forehead, arms, and other parts of her body were now glowing, and her eyes were giving off a dark purple light as well.
Most importantly, though, was that Mayiera’s strange words had resulted in a spell being cast that blasted out a dark ball of energy at Viella, sending her flying off of her feet and dealing a whopping 43,053 damage, visible to Lina through the red number that had appeared above Viella’s head when she was hit by it and sent flying into the bound Lina.
The impact had caused Viella to lose control of her shadow trap spell, so that as she crashed into Lina, both of them fell backwards onto the stone floor of the prison hallway and slid a few meters from the force.
“Shit.” Viella sighed as she struggled to stand back up in front of Lina, daggers drawn. “I warned you.” She said in annoyance to Lina. Lina was prepared to continue fighting with Viella, but instead Viella for some reason seemed to position herself to stand in front of Lina, as if she was trying to protect her from Mayiera.
“Shal’hazak!” Mayiera shouted.
“Shadowstep!” Viella replied. A purple wave of energy released from Mayiera’s hands, which Viella shadowstepped over to get behind Mayiera and avoid it, then swung her daggers out at Mayiera from behind. But, Mayiera seemed to have been anticipating this and waved her hand backwards, redirecting the trajectory of the purple wave to shoot behind her and impacting Viella just a second before Viella’s daggers had pierced into Mayiera’s head.
The moment the purple wave hit Viella, her entire body froze up and began to give off sparks of purple energy.
“Warlock…” Lina mumbled to herself as she watched it happen, but then saw that Mayiera wasn’t done with just using paralysis on Viella, she began charging up a large black ball of energy in her palms and was preparing to shoot it out at the warden. Paralyzed, and now low health from the first attack - Viella was helpless and Mayiera was about to mercilessly kill her.
“Wait, stop!” Lina shouted, but Mayiera ignored her and continued to charge up the spell. “Stop!” Lina insisted, still got ignored, and Mayiera prepared to fire the spell directly at the paralyzed Viella’s head. Lina was forced to jump in. She shadowstepped behind Mayiera at the last second and pulled Mayiera’s arm away, causing Mayiera to shoot her spell at the wall and miss at the last second.
Mayiera turned to glare at Lina as a result with a scary, intimidating stare that was complemented by her dark glowing eyes and the glowing runes etched into her face, as well as the long strands of hair still hanging down and obscuring her expression somewhat.
“She will pursue us endlessly if we do not kill her here.” Mayiera insisted.
“If we kill her, everyone in the city will pursue us. We’ve got to go, or we won’t make it out. Come on.” Lina shouted back, motioning Mayiera to follow her away from the paralyzed Viella.
She could see Mayiera hesitating, glancing between Lina and Viella, but Lina insistently tugged her along by the arm, determined to not let this advanced shadow dancer trainer die.
“There’s no time!” Lina persisted, and finally Mayiera let up with a frustrated sigh, allowing Lina to tug her along. From there, Mayiera and Lina broke into a sprint down the hall away from the paralyzed Viella, as multiple prisoners in the cells lining the hall stood up and started cheering, or begging them to be let out. Lina ignored them and instead went up into her party interface.
“Uh, okay, I got Mayiera, but the warden is on us. She’s paralyzed right now but it won't last long. We need a distraction right now.” Lina quickly spoke to her party.
“Right now? But there’s no one approaching the gates outside.” Pyri replied.
“Can you get it open somehow anyway?” Lina asked.
“Uh… I’ll try. I’ll figure it out. Just get up those stairs, okay?” Pyri replied.
“We’re coming loud and fast.”
“You guys need some help?” Aegis asked.
“No, no, we’ve got it.” Pyri sighed back.
Pyri, who'd been standing up on top of the three-story tall building stack just outside the clearing around the prison, looked out over the prison in front of her as well as the sealed gate that seperated Pyri from the interior of the prison where Lina was.
"At least, I think we've got it." Pyri mumbled to herself nervously.
