The walls were thick and rugged, twenty meters tall, and several crossbows were installed on them. The walls also had stones with pointy ends…, so someone trying to climb that place would hurt their hands and feet quite a bit. Aleph had a lot of questions…

“You didn’t say that the client was a criminal.”

“I told you that I would only tell you when we arrived. Anyway, we are to escort two people here, and one of them is someone Lua captured in the previous battle. We will be moving them further into our country's territory since there are rumors that some of the enemies were planning to attack this place and free him.”

“I don’t think that they would be able to send a powerful force to invade this place without being noticed for two days at least… I guess they would need only one if they didn’t stop to rest, but that would put them in a bad spot for a battle. Unless…”

“Don’t say it out loud… but there are rumors that the enemies infiltrated the country and will use spies to free him. If I am not mistaken, he is the little brother of the second most powerful mercenary group of the country in the West. He should have a lot of information.”

Irlan and Kaitrine looked at each other and frowned… that was someone pretty important to escort for people of their age and experience. Still, they didn’t ask anything since they knew they would find the reason for that soon enough.

When they reached the prison, the guards at the entrance blocked their way. At least ten of them were armed with very nasty-looking spears. Heirina stopped and then jumped from the carriage and gave them a scroll. They read it for a few moments and then checked the emblem before they looked at each other and nodded.

The group began to move again when the gates were opened, and they didn’t find much space between the walls and the main building. Weirdly enough, Aleph could only see a building of five meters in height… it had a single floor. Still, after looking around, he assumed that most of the place should be underground.

As soon as they got close, the massive iron door of the building opened, and then they found a group of people wearing what seemed to be gray ceremonial clothes that covered their bodies completely. It made Aleph think of those guys who would behead criminals after they were judged and deemed guilty of heavy crimes. One of them moved the hood from their faces, and then the pale face of a blond woman who had long, straight hair and blue eyes was revealed. She looked exhausted for some reason. 

“Thank you for coming, Heirina. My name is Edea. It seems that you didn’t come alone… that is good?”

Aleph maintained his straight face when the woman said that while looking at him. For all intentions and purposes, he was a kid, even more than the other three, so there was no point in dwelling too much on that kind of reaction.

“We are here to do our job, but I want to ask why you called for me when I am pretty sure that we don’t know each other.”

“I will explain along the way. For now, let’s take the other person who will come along with us.”

The horses would be fine there, so everyone left the carriage and entered the building. The place looked like a jungle of stone. There wasn’t much room for people to walk around, and the doors and windows were all made of iron. When Aleph knocked on the walls a bit, he could feel that they also had been reinforced with iron bars inside them. They knew all of the tricks that the prisoners might try to use there.

Before long, they reached a staircase going downward and soon found some torches illuminating the path downward and beyond. As soon as they reached the first underground level, they found more of those cloaked guys sitting on chairs in front of stone cells. With their heads down, they sure looked tired. Still, the prisoners in the cells looked even more tired. They barely raised their heads to see the strangers passing by them.

They found stairs that went deeper underground repeatedly. Considering the number of cells and the fact that only one prisoner was inside each of them, Aleph assumed that there should be around two hundred of them there. At the same time, the number of guards was exactly the same. 

The fifth level only had one prisoner, so Aleph couldn’t help but think that they were scammed… the prisoner was a lot more dangerous and valuable than he had expected. At the same time, he found it hard to believe that there were other places harder for the prisoners to escape. Then again, people like Kaitrine existed, so perhaps there were more insane traits out there.

“It looks like you have brought some interesting friends, lady. Since you aren’t exactly talkative, this might be interesting.”

In the only cell on that floor, the group found a single man sitting on the ground while resting his right arm on his raised right knee. He had wavy red hair and green eyes, so he passed a feeling of vitality, but soon, his smile disappeared, and the look on his face worsened.

“His name is Elmer, the guy we want to be moved to a harder place to attack or escape. As you can see, I am his warder, so he won’t be able to use his trait while I am around.”

Aleph soon connected the dots… all the guards in the prison were of the same clan, and they all had the ability to cancel or weaken traits…

Edea unlocked the cell, and soon, Irlan and Heirina stepped in with their weapons in hand, grabbed the guy by his arms, and raised him. A few minutes in Edea's presence made him completely weakened as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks. He had enough energy to look around and pay attention to Aleph for a moment, but not for long.

“As long as I am around, he won’t be able to do anything, so you guys don’t have to worry about that. All you have to do is to make sure that we won’t be apart for too long and keep us close to each other.”

“I had heard of the power of warders… but it is a lot more impressive than I had envisioned.”

“There aren’t many of us out there, and it is a pain to improve this trait, so aside from my clan, you won’t see this trait being used often.”

It was a very handy trait, but since it had to be used constantly to keep the prisoners like that, it should take a toll on the user, too. At the same time, staying underground for who knows how long should make their minds take a toll as well. The only thing that they could hope for was that their prisoners wouldn’t last that long.

A couple of minutes later, they put Elmer in the carriage, and Edea followed him. This time, Heirina asked Irlan to drive while she would talk with Edea about the details of the job. Still, they stayed silent until they left the town and began to head east.

“My sincere apologies for waiting until now, you can understand why I had to stay quiet until now.”

“There is the possibility of spies inside the town, right? Even so, our arrival here and heading to the prison would make them consider the possibility that he is being moved. We took some measures on our end as well and left my hometown before sunrise, but…”

“That is fine. I couldn’t have asked for more… Regardless, let’s start by explaining while I called for you. You should know my town doesn’t have a leader like Hei. A group of rich merchants form a council and decide things for most. My clan works for them and has been doing that for twenty years. With that in mind, you can understand that some of them might act out of their own interest and cause some incidents that would benefit them. Letting him escape could start another conflict a lot sooner than we want, and merchants that produce weapons and armor would benefit from that.”

Things were pretty messed up if people in that town would go that far… then again, Aleph couldn’t deny that money moves a lot of the world and the people in it as well. In an age where people die by the thousands with each conflict, it would be easy to understand that stacking up money would be the same as stacking up power to do what one wants.

The author here, everyone. Thanks for reading the book. I hope that you have fun reading the book as much as I have writing it. If you want to join our discord, this is the link: https://discord.gg/AQsYm99A

I also set up a Patreon for those who want to read ahead. Don't worry; I will post a new chapter every day here, but I will be posting two on the Patreon. There are currently thirty chapters ahead there. Thank you for your patience, and have a nice day!