"It's business. There are multiple secret passages all across the city and each passage can only be booked once in a day for the customer's privacy." Taliesin cleared their doubts and told them about things to do in different situations.
After 30 minutes filled with anxiety, the carriage finally made its way into the slums, where they saw both old and young malnourished people in tattered clothes standing in queues at the different factories.
'An up-close view of the slums.' Blake sighed when he saw how people were struggling for underpaid jobs.
The last and only time he had gotten to see the slums was when he was brought into the City by Prince Bryon's tamed beast, but now that he had a closer view he even felt worst.
Infinite realm wasn't like Earth where no matter how poor one was, they still had some basic rights. Here the poor didn't receive anything from the empire, meaning they had to work daily just to survive, and on top of all that they were still maltreated and oppressed by the nobles.
If they were to be maltreated and their daily wages were to be standardized, things would have been a bit bearable, but with everything going on the poor were in a vicious cycle that 3 of their generations wouldn't be able to break out off and that was if they a generation.
"Isn't that a kid?" Brian's question drew everyone's attention, as they all looked out the window, only to see a pale skinny kid in rags curled up.
It was after a few more seconds of further observation that they noticed the teenager was dead.
"From how pale his skin is, he had died during the night, either from the cold, hunger, or most likely both..." Taliesin said with an indifferent tone. " The only reason his corpse hasn't been removed or buried is that whoever tries wouldn't make it in time for the struggle for a chance to work in one of the factories. So, it would be in the evening when work was over."
The trio couldn't imagine the amount of pain the teenager would have gone through before he gave up the ghost.
"If I were you guys, I wouldn't care about a corpse, because the moment we move away from the busy parts of the slims, we would be heavily attacked, and for you not to become a corpse you have to be focused." Taliesin reminded them of the situation they were in.
Although the trio would love to be as professional as possible, they were still humans… Kids to be exact and since it was someone within their age group it was impossible for them to not react.
'I don't care much about someone dead, let's just hope this mission goes well." Blake thought. Sure he was kindhearted, but when morals were in the way of his goals, Blake was ready to be the bad guy.
Close to 10 minutes after they had seen the corpse, they were out of the busy paths of the slums and at this point, the 3 carriages tailing them weren't hiding anymore.
When they got into range, some of the attackers got on the roofs of their carriages and launched different spells aiming for the wheels, windows, and driver.
Volleys of spells rained down on their carriage, but with the carriage's barrier, all their spells proved to be ineffective.
"The barrier is sturdy, but if we keep receiving hits the energy core powering the barrier would run out fast..." Taliesin warned them.
"On it."
With the small hatch at the top of the carriage, Brian quickly got to the top. He first conjured rocks and strapped himself to the carriage, before casting one water barrier after another to defend the incoming attacks.
"If we don't do anything we will be sitting… Wtf is that?!" Blake was interrupted by what he saw from the images projected by the mirror spell.
"Shit!" Taliesin exclaimed when he saw a carriage hook which was in form of a rocket launcher with a hook in front, was about to be launched.
[The carriage hook has a high penetration power. It can tear through the barrier of medium rank carriages and below in one shot. So if I were you I wouldn't let that hit its target.] The system warned Blake of how lethal it was, forcing him to quickly move up to the top of the carriage.
"You already know the details, don't try to stop it, try deflecting it. You make the barrier I reinforce it." Having the system, Brian already knew about the carriage hook's strength and weakness, all that he needed was an extra hand.
He first conjured rocks to strap Blake's feet to the carriage to prevent accidents. When the hook was fired, within a split second it had covered half of the distance between them and was still raging on, but Brian and Blake were more than ready.
With the help of the system, Brian conjured 4 stronger water barriers at perfectly calculated intervals at an angle to the hook's trajectory and Blake used the cover of the water barriers to reinforce them with space freeze.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Boom!
Everyone including Taliesin had thought that the 2 kids on top of the carriage were wasting their time trying to defend against the carriage hook, but they were all shocked when they saw the hook crashing into a dilapidated building by the street side.
'Don't know how they managed to pull it off, but they have saved me a trump card.' Taliesin let out a sigh of relief. They were in a very difficult situation, the less the number of trump cards he used the greater their chances of survival.
'Do you think that anyone noticed the space element?' Blake asked the system.
[You don't have to worry, the biggest question on their mind right now would be how 2 of you perfectly calculated the angle the water barriers were meant to be at.]