Chapter 182: The Father’s liberation [1]

The chaos outside served as the ultimate cloaking shroud.

With smoke billowing into the sky, secondary fires tearing through the commercial quarter, and thousands of terrified citizens screaming in the streets, the city guard was in complete disarray.

Alisa and Eurenia slipped out of The Sleeping Boar Inn without drawing a single eye, blending seamlessly into the panicking crowds before vanishing into the shadowed alleys toward their rendezvous point.

While the surface world burned, deep beneath the administrative heart of Kaelos City, a vast iron gate ground open with a heavy, metallic groan.

A tall, middle-aged man stepped into the torchlit gloom of the underground prison complex.

His face was a scarred canvas of brutal, past battles, and he wore the silver-trimmed uniform of a high-ranking commander.

Behind him, more than a dozen heavily armed guards stood at attention along the stone parapets, their spears raised in immediate, crisp salutes.

"Warden Bass!" the guards barked in unison.

With the massive explosion rocking the upper district just minutes prior, the Mayor had issued an emergency directive ordering the underground facility onto absolute high alert.

Security was doubled, and every corridor was locked down tight.

Warden Bass—a formidable Martial Master whose raw aura usually made the surrounding guards tremble—did not offer a single glance toward his subordinates.

He walked past them in stony silence, his heavy boots echoing coldly against the damp stone floor.

None of the guards dared to question his silence, assuming his harsh mood was due to the crisis above.

They failed to notice the subtle, horrifying truth: the Warden Bass who walked among them today was no longer the cruel commander who had ruled this dungeon for years.

His eyes were devoid of light, cold, and entirely hollow.

He was a dead marionette.

Ambushed by Roy in a dark alleyway just an hour prior, his soul had been obliterated by the Divine Authority of Mindcraft, leaving only an empty husk following absolute, silent programming.

Warden Bass descended the winding stone stairs, arriving at the deepest, most heavily fortified layer of the subterranean complex.

Before him stretched a vast, cavernous hallway lined with dozens of heavy iron cells.

The air down here was thick with the suffocating stench of stale blood, rust, damp mold, and profound, hopeless misery.

Inside these dark, frigid cages were dozens of captured beastmen.

Among them were members of the Grey Falcon-Kin—a proud, B-class beastman species known for their swift aerial grace, now stripped of their dignity.

Their glorious feathers were matted with dirt, dried blood, and sweat, their wings bound tightly behind their backs with heavy, iron-spiked chains.

Beside them were the remnant survivors of the Crimson-Spotted Leopard-Kin, an elite A-class species scheduled to be shipped alongside the falcons to the Glorious Mythical Sect as high-tier cultivation livestock and manual slaves.

The scene inside the cells was agonizing.

Beatings, branding irons, and relentless starvation had broken their spirits.

Young children hugged their trembling mothers in the shadows of the stone corners, while battle-scarred warriors cowered on the cold floor, hiding their bloodied faces to avoid the gaze of their human tormentors.

Every time a heavy bootfall echoed down the corridor, a collective shudder ran through the prisoners, expecting another round of sadistic torture.

Suddenly, Warden Bass’s forward movement came to a complete halt in the center of the vast hallway.

Perched silently upon the Warden’s broad right shoulder was a tiny, unremarkable black beetle.

Roy had ridden into the deepest depths of the prison undetected, guiding his powerful human puppet straight into the heart of the facility.

Inside their iron cages, the chained beastmen backed further into the dark corners, hugging themselves tightly as the feared Warden stood before them.

They gritted their teeth in silent, helpless humiliation, waiting for the cruel man to draw his whip or call for the guards.

Instead, Warden Bass slowly reached down to his waist.

His numb fingers closed around the hilt of his heavy, silver-tipped trench dagger.

With a slow, mechanical motion, he unsheathed the cold steel.

The imprisoned beastmen watched in bewildered confusion.

Then, without a single microsecond of hesitation, without a twitch of fear or a sound of distress, Warden Bass brought the razor-sharp blade up to his neck—and violently dragged it across his own throat!

SCHLICK!

A massive geyser of dark crimson blood erupted from his severed carotid artery, splashing violently against the iron bars of the cells.

The Martial Master’s hollow eyes didn’t even blink as his knees buckled, and his heavy, lifeless body collapsed onto the wet cobblestones with a dull, wet thud.

The hallway fell into an absolute, deathly silence.

The chained beastmen stared in wide-eyed, paralyzing shock at the pool of blood spreading from their chief captor’s corpse.

A Martial Master... had just committed violent, silent suicide right before their eyes!

Before their stunned minds could process the impossible scene, the tiny beetle on the Warden’s shoulder began to glow with a brilliant, blinding crimson light.

The ambient spiritual energy in the dark corridor swirled violently.

The tiny insect dissolved, expanding into a towering surge of dense, blood-red mana that pushed back the shadows of the dungeon.

THOOM!

The oppressive aura of a human cultivator vanished, replaced instantaneously by an ancient, overwhelming, and divine beastial vitality that made the blood inside every beastman’s veins thrum with wild, instinctive resonance.

As the crimson light dissipated, a majestic figure stood in the center of the hallway.

He possessed a towering, powerful frame clad in striking crimson-and-gold battle robes, covered in thick, pristine crimson fur.

A majestic wolf’s head crowned his shoulders, and his dual golden-crimson eyes burned with divine, absolute majesty as his long tail swept calmly behind him.

Roy looked across the rows of iron cages, his gaze softening with profound warmth and authority as he looked upon his broken kin.

"Fear no more, children of Varanus," Roy’s deep, resonant voice echoed through the subterranean hall, shattering the heavy chains of their despair.

"I was sent by the Father to liberate his children." Roy declared.