“What the hell?”

“An attack?”

“Damn Aberis!”

While we hid in the shadows, the Osteria women in the guard tower burst out of the door and ran down the hallway. Thankfully, they ignored this murder hole and went to a wider window to look and see what happened, and after seeing, they cursed and continued on.

I let out a breath of relief. I had recognized several of the women from Titan’s Fall. Worst of all was Alysia, the leader. It turned out she was a general in this fort. Her group were S-class. Although I had never fought them personally, they were supposedly very strong. I didn’t really know how our team compared, because we never went the official Adventurer Guild route, but even with hopeful thinking, we were probably only equal to Titan’s Fall in ability. That was only my pride speaking. There was a good chance we were actually weaker.

Thankfully, the group didn’t figure out our goal, and Terra and Celeste’s distraction worked to bring them out of the room.

“I’ll get the alarm going soon…” I heard Shao’s voice.

“It’s a bit late for that!” I cursed.

“Ah… I don’t need to anymore?”

“No! Didn’t you hear that explosion!”

“Oh! Then I’ll just keep killing guards.”

“Is that what you’re doing!”

“Aren’t you busy?”

“Geh…” I was wasting time while talking to Shao about her extracurricular activities.

I gesture for Miki and Otto to follow me. His movements are less shaky now that the alarm had been set. I wouldn’t necessarily call it bravery, but it was resignation that he was too far in to quit now.

The three of us enter the guard room, heading down into the cell block under the fort. You’d technically call that a dungeon too, but perhaps in this world, it takes on a different meaning and the word doesn’t fit as well.

The keys were thankfully left on a hook near the door. We were able to unlock it and then venture underground. There was a long hallway of cells. It was dark, dank, and smelled like human beings living in close proximity for a long time. The smell wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t horrific either. The cells under the castle weren’t that bad either, now that I thought about it. When you imagine some underground prison, you imagine it being filled with rats and smelling of death and rot.

I guess, in reality, people had to work in these jails, so they at least did the base level of cleaning up and maintenance. Well, technically, there was cleanup magic that could manage all this. I still wanted to learn it from Faeyna one of these days. It must have made it easy to keep these kinds of environments from being too gross.

“Brother?” Otto called out.

Now that he was so close to his brother, he actually took the initiative and ran ahead, running from cell to cell. I thought about releasing everyone, but some of these people might not be war criminals. They might be murderers or something. Plus, we didn’t have a lot of time. I’d be guilty if I released people who shouldn’t be released and then brought them back to Aberis.

“Otto?” A hoarse voice came out from a hallway at the end of the cell.

“Lord Deekson! He’s here!” Otto declared excitedly.

I ran up and unlocked a cell, stepping into the cage of Octius Tibult, one of Otto’s big brothers.