Chapter 173 Unpleasant Surprise

Just as they had thought before, they entered the city while flying. They landed on a dark alley, and they proceeded to head to the location of the informant, but on that location, they only found a destroyed medicine shop. Sauros and Seris opened their eyes widely and froze in shock.

"Keep moving. People will feel suspicious of us if we stop here," Aion said.

They obeyed and began to walk, but they didn't know what to do. It seemed that at least one of their friends was captured, and considering that people in the city were still being investigated, the hunt wasn't over yet.

"Do you have other allies here?" Aion asked. "Unless you have absolute faith in them, we should leave."

"They are all from our base. Their families have been doing this job for generations. Of course, we can trust them," Seris replied.

"What about the first question?" Aion asked.

"We put only one family per city in order to avoid them getting in contact too often and make everyone find out about them when this kind of thing happens…" Seris replied.

"We need to head to another city…" Sauros said. "Leaving now without knowing what happened might cause problems. I don't want to abandon our friends without knowing if they are alive or not."

That was all well and good. Still, it seems that things will end up in a fight… Right in the first place that Aion visited after the start of the mission…

Those three left again by flying and then headed southeast, that was the location of the nearest city, and according to Sauros, it was only thirty kilometers away.

"I assume we can only act until sunrise. After that, the people here will know that we don't have many people on our side," Aion said. "We should use the darkness of the night to confuse everyone."

"I guess it isn't surprising that you can think straight in a situation like this when you are one of the sons of the Kresnik family," Seris said. "We only know how to act on the shadows and we don't start with the upper hand…"

"The shop had been destroyed, but I saw some medicine still intact… The whole place hadn't been cleaned by the population yet, so it must have happened recently," Sauros said. "We have three families working here. It will take some time before they find any connections between them. We can use that in our favor.".

"The hard part will be to find where the prisoners are… The enemies probably know that they can't be working alone, so they won't execute anyone until they find all of them," Aion said.

"Aside from the next city, the other family is in the capital. At your speed, we should arrive there in three hours," Sauros said.

That wasn't so bad, but it would leave them with only a few hours on the field to act. In any case, they reached the second city, and they found another tight guarded place. They landed near their destination and walked without wasting time toward it… However, they found a tailor shop destroyed as well. Things were starting to get complicated.

"Shit…" Sauros said while clenching his teeth.

"If they all have been captured, where would they be executed?" Aion asked.

"In the capital, they definitely will make that a big event and carry it out in broad daylight," Sauros replied.

The group began to fly again since time was of the essence… It will be hard to fight on a place with so many people, but Aion had an idea of what he could do without revealing his identity or without using questionable skills.

While focusing on his senses, Aion used Meditation while flying. That will make them fly for a while longer, and without dealing with obstacles, they truly would cover a lot of ground. Aion didn't like to use that when he was close to strangers since his focus on the surroundings weakened, but he could tell that those two only wanted to save their friends.

Aion worked a bit harder, and thanks to that, after two and half hours and around midnight, they reached the capital of that country. It was quite the fortified city since the walls looked thick and tall enough to block the attacks of giants. The location was also pretty good, there were several mountains around, and the path to approach the city was limited. Thus, no army would approach unnoticed, nor would they be able to keep their formation while approaching. Still, that wasn't a problem for Aion and the others. The real problem would be to find the prisoners.

While Aion was supposed to be getting used to that, thanks to his training, he felt a bit weird about landing on dark alleys all the time. It was like he was feeling that he had made a wrong job choice somewhere along the way… anyway, it felt like he was feeling guilty about many things, and he had to hide.

Sauros led everyone to where the house of the spies was supposed to be, and in the end, they found a tavern still standing but completely empty. It was midnight, but on some days, they would close earlier. Still, with his magic, Aion could tell that no one was there.

"No one is here," Aion declared

"We need to look for the prison," Sauros said. "It must be underground, but the above is probably being guarded by many guards."

Aion was out of mana, so they couldn't travel around while flying. Without much of a choice, they had to run over many buildings while looking around. They found several guards around the high-class district, but none of them were guarding a single particular place. Since the buildings were made of brick and they were all as tall as each other, it felt like they were in a maze… searching from above would be difficult, and on the ground, it would be even worse…