[Hehehehe, I’ve always wanted to do this with real swords.] Grinning ear to ear, Cynrik drew both blades simultaneously with one fluid motion. SunFlare glided across his body in a smooth arc while ISS slid smoothly out of its sheath and pointed up into the air before slashing down. At the same time, Cynrik cut through the air with his left hand, flipping the blade palm down before making his wrists meet at the same point in an X.

The fancy sword draw took less than a second to complete and even though Brance had seen these motions countless times in his past life, seeing them done with real weapons was quite impressive. [Alright, stop playing around, don’t you have a plan to enact;] with a grumble and frown, Cynrik still complied and resheathed his blades with expert movements. Seconds later, they both vanished off his body and went back into their Loadout slots.

[Sorry, forgot where we were for a minute;] scratching his head and looking around the hall of cells once again, Cynrik activated Mana Sight. Although it only had a range of a few meters, back in the HBTC, Cynrik and Brance had figured out that if they used their Mana Manipulation and will the Mana from their Codex to their eyes, they were able to extend their range. The only issue was; if they wanted to extend that range further, the more taxing it was on their Mana pool.

It didn’t take long for Cynrik to realize that even though the entire building was made of some strange metallic material, it didn’t block Mana signatures. ‘Small victories eventually become big ones,’ he thought to himself as he swung his head in every direction in rapid succession and began counting every signal he perceived.

Inhaling sharply, he reported to Brance [Shit; there’s a lot of them;] just counting the adult-sized mana bodies, Cynrik spotted at least a hundred different people. Mimicking his brother, Brance had a different response to what he saw. The first thing he noticed was the hundreds of child-sized mana signatures in the long hallway. His face contorted in both anger and disgust before finally being brought back to his senses by Cynrik gripping his shoulder. [Focus, we will save as many as we can; if they’ve lasted this long, they should be able to make it until we clean this pigpen up.]

Meeting his older brother’s eyes, which were glowing in an aqua radiance because of Mana Sight, all Brance could do was silently nod and clench his fists tightly, causing his knuckles to go white.

Remembering there was a baddie located somewhere in the building, Cynrik took it upon himself to try and find him but was quickly stumped. After searching around for several seconds, all he could see were clusters of only two or three people. So instead of looking directly at the groups of adults, Cynrik began searching for larger groups that included children.

‘He should have a couple of children in his room, and even if one of the children had died, there would still be residual Mana floating around from their corpses.’

But whenever Cynrik tried to find any trace of this mysterious boss, he came up empty-handed, and only two conclusions came to mind. ‘Either He isn’t here, which I find doubtful, or he has some way to keep himself hidden.’

Thinking on this point, he gave a series of instructions to his brother to look out for. [Since I can’t see anything that could be the boss, either he’s not here, or he has some way of hiding, keep a lookout for a space that’s completely void of Mana, as someone who has been doing this shit for so many years, he must have some kind of countermeasures to block outside eyes.]

With Mana Sight Active, both boys calmly sat down on the filthy floor of the hallway of the hell-like jail and focused on trying to locate an area with no mana signatures. This process went on for several minutes as the siblings wholly tuned out the misery surrounding them in the form of sobs and cries of pain.

As the two brothers continued their search for the boss room, things weren’t as calm upstairs. It had been nearly an hour since the group of men had taken the new arrivals to their cells, and it had been radio silence from them since they went downstairs. Even though all of the kidnappers involved were slaves of the mysterious boss, the outfit was highly organized, and if someone didn’t check in on time, the chain of command would notice. This is what was currently happening in an office several stories above the underground holding area.

The dimly lit office was so far the tidiest place in the whole facility, and a middle-aged man was sitting at a large mahogany desk wearing the same black robes the boys had seen earlier. This man was known as Myer; he was the slave in charge of moving the children from the cells to the Master’s bedroom, where he would torture, defile, and then either kill the children or send them back. It was his job to ensure that they stayed in one piece if the kids were in transit. What was supposed to happen is when Fang dropped off the kids, he was supposed to report back and inform him of the number of livestock procured.

Looking at his watch and then the ledger on his desk, he should have heard back 15 minutes ago. Since the scheduled check-in time had passed without any updates, Myer knew something was up. Although it wouldn’t be the first case he had seen of a slave taking liberty with the Master’s toys, it wasn’t Fang’s prerogative to do so; thus, he began organizing his thoughts and going through several options he could enact in such a case. Pulling out an ancient-looking Watcet, Myer notified a team of seven people to head down to the cells and find out what was going on.

Back in the cells, Cynrik was the first to notice the movement of seven Mana signatures. [It seems like we’ve got company. When they are in range, I’ll use ShadowVeil, and we can ambush them.]

Taking one last look around, Cynrik pointed to a spot near the stairs out of sight from where the enemies were coming.

Without saying another word, Brance swapped to T1 and knelt in the dark corner with his shield drawn and sword resting on top of it.

While Cyrnik positioned himself at the opposite side of the hall, he caught Brance giving him a strange look. [Why haven’t you taken out your swords yet?] It was unlike his older brother to be going into combat unarmed, even more so now that he had finally gotten his Dual Wielding skill.

Knowing he only had a few seconds, Cynrik stood with his back against the wall and pulled up his hood before starting his monologue,

[Where other men blindly follow the truth, remember, Nothing is true.]

Tap, Tap, Tap,

As the sounds of footsteps drew closer, Cynrik activated ShadowVeil causing both him and Brance to fade into the darkness.

[Where other men are limited by morality or law, remember, Everything is permitted;] continuing his speech to his brother, the voices of the enemies came into earshot.

“YO, FANG THE HELL IS TAKING YOU SO LONG.” The first hooded figure reached the bottom of the stairs only to be met by the wails and cries of the captive children. Moving forward, he clicked his tongue and surveyed the surrounding cells looking for the team whose job it was to deliver the livestock to their pens. He swiftly moved from cell to cell, looking in each one along the way and after a few, moved back to the stairs, where he regrouped with the other members of his team.

All seven of the hooded figures congregated together and moved as a group down the long hall, eventually passing the hidden Cynrik and Brance.

Cynirk was calmly watching the men as they went by without any expression, Brance; on the other hand, it was a different story. He was repeatedly clenching his right hand around the shield’s handle, trying to keep himself calm as he listened to the group of men disgustingly converse about the children. He could hear them saying the vile and inhumane things they wanted to do to both little boys and girls. Each word spoken spoke was like gasoline on his rage, even for someone like him who had seen unspeakable things in his past life. It was taking every bit of his willpower to keep from jumping at the group and tearing them to pieces. Still, he had to hold out until he got the signal from Cynrik.

When push came to shove, Cynrik was always able to keep level-headed. It was as if what was happening around had nothing to do with him, be it in events such as family funerals or bar fights; Cynrik had always been overly calculative and emotionless in these moments.

The situation they were in now wasn’t any different. Cynrik seemed utterly unaffected by the horror right in front of him and only saw the potential monetary gains. Sometimes he was even thankful for his brother’s heartless and carefree attitude.

As the two watched from their respective corners, Cynrik finished the monologue he had always wanted to say.

[We work in the dark to serve the light. We are Assassins;] as the final word hit the mind link, Cynrik swapped to his AC Loadout and dashed forward.