Chapter 260: Familiar Life Signs

From a bit of distance away, Aiden was leaning against the nearest wall and was watching the spectacle of his silver-haired friend lashing out against Roas, his first servant.

Watching as the battle rapidly unfolded in front of his eyes, he only smirked whilst shaking his head lightly. He was already aware that something like this might happen the moment he would leave the two. After all, Drake had just gone through probably a hellish, nightmarish torture, and currently, he had nowhere to vent his pent-up emotions, there was absolutely no target for his surging rage. 

Even though Aiden was aware, he did not warn his servant, he did not see the need to. There were a couple of reasons for this. For one, even without saying, he realized that his servant was capable of understanding his thoughts. There was some sort of connection between them, something unexplainable. He wanted to test it, so when Aiden left, he simply made a mental remark about Drake, warning about his possible outburst. 

Just as he expected, Roas was already ready to receive and block the sudden attack coming from the raging prince. His arms from above the elbow were already coated with a thin layer of dark energy. As the right-arcing swing came with rapid speeds, Roas simply raised his right arm blocking and absorbing the strike of the blade with his forearm. 

He did not counter, he only gazed at the prince's twisted expression coldly. 

This, however, only served as fuel for Drake's wrath. Pulling his blade back, he followed up with a rapid succession of wild, swaying strikes roughly aiming at the robust orc's torso.

"Die! Die! DIE!!" Drake roared. With each yell, the power behind his strikes gradually increased whilst the accuracy began to dwindle. Even then, Roas managed to block or deflect every blow with no difficulty. None of the incoming attacks were threatening for him. 

Aiden kept watching as the prince descended lower and lower of his own mental abyss of madness and despair. 

'This is pretty ugly…' Aiden could only frown at the prince's actions. He was calm, he knew that Roas would be completely fine, Drake wouldn't be capable of causing any real harm at his current state. 

As mentioned before, he had multiple reasons for not warning his servant. While his first reason was to confirm the existence of the connection they shared as master and servant. His second reason was that there was no real need to warn at all. With Drake's current mental state, he would at most, would be utilizing half of his latent talent and skillset.

It would be another matter if Drake were to be able to use his weapon to its full potential…

Seeing as Drake's gaze started to turn hazy with the madness clouding his mind more and more as the time went on, Aiden sighed and turned his gaze on his servant. Focusing his mind, he made another mental command.

'Roas, it's time to end this. Don't hurt him too much, just knock him out. By the time he wakes up, I will be back.' 

Receiving the order, Roas made a light nod, and whilst keeping his right arm in front of his body blocking every second or third hit that was aimed at him, he raised his left fist in the air. The thin layer of dark energy that surrounded it began to surge, increasing its intensity. 

With a bit more of his energy concentrated on his left fist, Roas struck down, hitting the back of Drake's head. The hit wasn't particularly powerful; it didn't even need to be. Still, as the orc's large fist made contact with the back of the prince's hair the rapidly swirling layer of dark energy could be flowing into Drake, invading his mind.

In the next second, the wild swings abruptly stopped, Drake took a step back. His body began to sway, falling on the floor with an audible thud a couple more seconds later.

With the situation resolved, Aiden nodded with a contented smile on his face towards his servant before turning around and resuming his steps to the far end of the hallway, where the three familiar blimps that appeared on his system's map.

'Could it be those three?! But… how?' He asked the question inwardly, confused about the whole ordeal. 'If so… how were they even contacted?' 

Thinking about this, Aiden's attention wandered to his inventory where two gnarled, wooden sticks rested with a similarly sized and shaped scarlet gemstone etched at their ends. 

They were twisted, dark, demonic objects that served as a sort of device that allowed the 'otherwordly lords' to monitor their enslaved servants' actions. While it could also be said that it gave magical powers to their users, Aiden had a different idea. From the moment he took Roas' scepter, he seemed to lose his strange powers. His talent remained but the skills the 'holy artifact' provided vanished with it. This made him think that in addition to being a monitoring and communication device, it was also capable of transferring some of the lords' power. 

However, this theory would need more investigation to confirm… Nevertheless, these items were dangerous.

Delved in his thoughts, it didn't take long for Aiden to arrive at the lavishly decorated, purple door. Behind this, stylish, golden threaded barrier made out of a strange, wood-like material were the three seemingly unaware life signs. Still puzzled by how and why were these three the first signs of life in this stupidly huge building, Aiden heaved a heavy sigh, and reached for the door.

Halfway through, however, his hands stopped. Reminded by the powerful warding that they were met with when they tried to gain entry, he stopped himself and refocused his mind, activating his [Dark Sense] to scan the door for any signs of the magic.

Although he was able to spot the three life signs before, he still wanted to double-check and make sure there were no nasty surprises awaiting the unaware. 

Not spotting anything in particular, he relaxed his tense muscles, and grabbed the door's lever, and pushed it down to open it…

...or he tried it. The door turned out to be closed! Strangely though, it seemed to be locked from the outside and not from the inside, as there were no keys, he could sense in the room at all. 

Finding the situation strange, Aiden activated his ability once again, this time focusing on the three life signs and their state of mind.

With the increased attention, Aiden could now feel the mix of emotions that were present in the 3 beings locked inside the room. He felt their fear, their apprehension, their uneasiness… He even felt their tinge of hatred, anger towards the leaders situated at the top of the building…

'They are mad… about being betrayed… and looked down? There are feelings of humiliation, guilt… and sorrow?!' 

Besides sensing their feelings, Aiden was now pretty much confirmed that the three inside were friendlies, or at the very least familiar to him. He recognized all of their life signs…

'Too bad I can't transform due to the system restriction… This can turn out to be really bad if I am not careful…' He lamented, not sure what to do. 

Obviously, he couldn't just leave them inside, but with his current appearance and with their agitated, confused, and frightened state he wasn't sure how they would react. Are they monitored? Will freeing them, alert the ones on the top?

'Argh… no matter… I can't just leave them here!' Even though he wasn't particularly close to either of them himself, he still couldn't just leave them be. 

Steeling his resolve, he pushed down on the lever once more, but this time, with a gradually increasing strength. Instead of kicking the door in, he slowly increased the power he exerted, listening to the lock as it was slowly broken apart as he pushed in the door.

With a drawn-out breaking sound, the lock crumbled to pieces giving way and slowly creaked open.

Both sides watched with apt attention as the other side gradually was being unveiled. While Aiden only smiled as the three life signs turned out to be just as he expected: The trio of goblins, the tattooed shaman and current leader of the goblin village, and the two younglings that were assigned for his care. 

However, the initial interest and surprise of the trio turned to shock then fright as the strange, tall but lean dark green humanoid figure appeared in front of them. After all, they had absolutely no idea what this creature was, but seeing how he simply destroyed the door in these sacred halls, they knew he had to be a powerful, influential figure in the horde.

Thinking that this 'thing' came to humiliate or maybe even torture them once again, the tattooed goblin shaman, steeled his resolve, and stepped forward, pushing the two younglings behind him.

Despite knowing the obvious difference in power, he clenched his fists and looked at the tall creature with determination shining in his eyes. 

While he began to concentrate his own inner energy the animal head marks on his body began to slowly light up one by one.

With a growl, he looked the tall creature in the eye, and spoke in their own language, not caring if these arrogant demons would even understand a word.

"[Goblin] I don't care anymore! Even if it costs me my life, you cannot humiliate us any longer!"

Before Aiden could even speak a word, the goblin shaman charged forward, ready to strike at him…

***

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