Chapter 44

Chapter 44 - Change

The spell that Wendy had casted was made from using some of the knowledge within the magic grimoire that she had chosen from within the Demon King Castle. After so much time to research, she was finally able to release a new spell of her own that was partly based on what she had learned within that textbook. 

With this spell, she had bunched up all of the remaining guards into one big pile which gave Luke the perfect opportunity to release his spell. 

"HAAH!" 

With a loud announcement, he swung down the large blade of light as all of the guards attempted to scramble away from the range of the blast. Unfortunately for them, the powerful suction of the vortex had securely locked them in place and left them unable to even form a functioning defense before they were then struck by that blinding light. 

*flash*

As our eyes slowly began to adapt to the sudden stinging flash of light, Luke and I both took it upon ourselves to deal with the stragglers and defend the two mages who had been struck right in the eye with that blinding light. 

"Gaggh. Remind me when you would bombard the field with your light next time, dude." Wendy had said while calmly rubbing her eyes. Although Mellie did not say anything, I could sense her agreement with Wendy. 

In contrast, Vanessa and I were both doing relatively fine since I could sense the area with my spatial perception while Vanessa had blocked her eyes with her shield at the final moment when she felt that she should do so. 

"Everyone, hold steady! The fight is not over!" Hearing Vanessa's words, Wendy and Mellie both focused on regaining their vision. Changing their positions with absolutely certainty, the four of them shifted positions so that Vanessa and Luke were both on either side of Wendy and Mellie. 

Seeing this, I hurried to have my void hands block the two more vulnerable directions while entering the formation. 

"Thanks." Luke had whispered to me quietly under his breath as I passed in. Pausing for a moment, I simply nodded my head and focused on defending. 

After a few seconds when the two finally returned to being able to see, Luke motioned towards the inside of the prison which the others nodded along. 

Luke lead the front and Vanessa took care of the back as we marched in formation to our destination. Since we have made our presence known, we should do our best to create as much chaos as possible so we were planning to find and open up all of the wrongfully locked prisoners who were taken in. 

And even if we did not know who was trustworthy, we knew someone who most certainly knew the answer that we soon would be able to find and save. 

Walking ahead a bit, we finally found the one we were looking for. The poor scapegoat of our plan who had fought back and injured that fox man was now seen ahead of us collapsed in the ground with wide eyes. Although we could not be 100% sure that he was the best shot that we did have.

"Let's save the bull." 

We knew that without even needing to be said. Going over top the bull, Vanessa went and helped to hold him in place while Mellie went and casted her own magic to heal the bull. Quickly casting an antidote type of magic and healing the wounds that he had, the bull was finally able to stretch and move around. 

"Oogh, that feels good! Oh, thanks for that little friends."

Sitting against the wall and laughing happily, we then waited for him to get relaxed before asking him for help. 

"Do you know the prisoners here who were on the original leader's side? We wanted to break out, but we did not want to let out anyone truly heinous."

Although she tried to stop me, Vanessa ultimately pursed her lips and watched for the bull man's reaction. Contrary to her expectations, the man seemed quite pleased with the honesty and agreed to help us out, most certainly partly due to the fact that he wanted to rescue them himself as well. 

"Well of course! I was going to do so and ask of your assistance anyways. I can tell you who in there is being wrongfully accused and we can free them together."

Standing up, he definitely seemed a lot larger than I expected as he towered over me and the others at a monstrous 10 feet tall. 12 if you were to count his horns. 

Thankfully, the doors and entryways were made with beast folk like them in mind as we followed his lead towards the prison. 

On the way there, we noticed some needles on the ground and some distant sound of clashing metal which put us all on alert. We turned to look any our guide who then told us who it likely was based on the sound of the clash. 

"It seems there is a fight between two of the Stealth Force? Oh, you humans might not know about them. They are-" But before he could finish, he was rather rudely interrupted.

"They are the elite infiltration unit of the beast folk that usually consists of color changing operatives or other fairly stealthy characters and are experts in stealth, poison and tracking." Vanessa finished his words quite rudely, but the bull man seemed to not mind.

"Exactly!"

"So should we check out the situation?" Luke had the asked. After a moment of consternation, the bull eventually decided that freeing his companions should come first as with more people they can deal with a bigger variety of problems. 

This time, no one disagreed with him so we bypassed the hallway that the two assassins were fighting in and headed towards another section of the prison. 

In the prison, the place was in total mayhem as the guards were now away. Because of this, the prisoners had a chance to escape and many had used their own methods to sneak out and were already freeing some of the imprisoned on their own.

Unfortunately, it seemed that the villains got out first as the Bull ran in eyes red and bull rushed towards them without even informing us. Because of this, we had to rush in and join the melee prematurely as his presence had led to some of them catching sight of us. 

"How dare you try to escape while his majesty has gone!"

Charging in to the first escaped prisoner, he was surprisingly able to pierce right through the first target. Although it was partly due to the attack being a surprise attack while they were unaware and unarmed, it still showed his prowess when the other prisoners swarmed up and he was still able to hold his ground with a body stuck on his horns. 

On our side, the fight was a lot more colorful, but a lot less intense. This was due to a majority of the prisoners targeting the bull while we were not giving it our all as we had to keep an eye on the bull as they were the only somewhat credible source in the area that could point out who could join our side of the fight. 

Still, that did not mean that we were facing few opponents either. 

Due to the natural traits of some beast folk, we were not having that easy of a time as they used all kinds of claw and kicking and biting strikes that gave us a little trouble when fighting. 

Skillfully shifting my void hands for offense and defense, I was able to block most of the sneakier foes around the two mages which helped to drop some of the burden that the two melee fighters would have to handle. With them putting their full attention on the fight, they were able to deal with the unorthodox methods that those beast folk used like crotch or eye attacks. 

But all of this fighting was ultimately using up a lot of my mental energy and magic so when I was running low I quietly mentioned it to Mellie and Wendy who had just finished their spells to deal with these foes. 

Since I warned them ahead of time, Mellie was able to split her attention to cast a barrier while aiming her newly recasted golden bow and arrow once more. With Wendy's help grouping the targets together and an advance warning to the two melee fighters, they were able to trap these prisoners inlace for Mellie to take out with a charged arrow shot.

With our side done, we headed over to tree bull who was still struggling with cuts all over his body. Several other prisoners had been knocked down and a few were escaping which we could not mind at the moment so we simply hurried to help the guy finish his battle. 

"Phew, thanks for the back up. Doing clerical work has gotten my skills quite rusty." He said as he was then being healed by Mellie. 

"Umm, so you... What's your name?" I wanted to ask him about something, but I realized that I did not know his name and so I asked him first since it would likely be helpful.

"The name's Abel."

"Abel, can you tell us who is on our side? With potentially more enemies to come, we should have all the manpower we can get." I originally wanted to also ask why he was doing clerical work instead of on the frontlines, but after thinking in my head I realized that it was because he was strong that he was stationed there. After all, the leadership was not his source of loyalty. So they certainly could not trust him with anything too important.

"Oh, right. Let's go and save everyone!"

Following his orders, we opened quite a few prison cells where most of the members had been standing at the ready to also help us open the rest. Soon our group swelled to the large number of 50 members including the original 6 of us. 

Since there were so many people and that commanding so many would prove to be a problem, they all divided themselves based on familiarity and they all split up with some who could not fight as well went to the storage room where they kept their detained weapons. Then the able bodied fighters went ahead and charged the other corridor in order to check out and save the others on their side. 

As for us, the six of us actually had one other mission to partake in before leaving. 

"You humans, the rest of the way I will go alone. It is more dangerous, and your goal has already been done. Quickly leave and do what you need to do." The bull said as he then yanked a giant axe decorative axe that had been bolted to the wall. "It's just handy for the job."

As the only one who has been communicating our desires to him, I was told to ask him something.

"What will you be doing?"

"The situation is quite dire. I never expected that the Great Horn Abel would need to do this, but I need to break out the secret trump card that the prince had left."

Secret trump card? We all turned to look at each other but none of us could recall ever being told about such a thing. Since we had just worked together, I decided to simply ask him directly about it.

"Look, the thing is a secret for his closest confidantes. I need to secure it in order to completely break away from those foxes control. You aren't a member of his group so you should just forget I said this."

Although I wanted to ask further, I was eventually pulled away by Vanessa as Luke then agreed to have us leave. He watched as we left the prison and when we came out of view he finally breathed a sigh of relief. 

"Those infiltrators. If the prince was still here I would have staked my life to keep them here instead of letting them run free like this. But with the situation going on like this, this is already the best that I can do. Sorry, Eric."

Turning into the dark corridors, his face was covered in shadows as he eventually met a dead end that would normally signify that he made a wrong turn, but his expression started to shift slightly.

"This... the barrier. Is it broken? No, it can't be..." 

With a fearful expression, he quickly ran to the wall. Instead of face planting into it, he seemed to melt into the wall and afterwards the room was filled with silence as he walked through the illusory wall.