We walked down the hallway nonchalantly passing by multiple guards and servants alike; Verial had called out to the head butler that we would be heading towards the front gate to ask the commander about something. Verial also told him to inform the mistress that I would be there immediately afterward. Once we reached the array and teleported to the main floor, Verial quickly used a hand gesture for me to follow. I stayed close right behind him as we traveled throughout the hallways until we reached the exit of the castle. Verial walked outside and walked us further along until we reached what appeared to be a marketplace. "Verial, why are we here and not heading towards the gate?" I asked. Verial looked at me and said with a grimace on his face, "The chances are that the succubus isn't going to be fooled by your trick and will probably hunt you down. This means we need to get masks to cover our faces." "Oh." I felt pretty stupid for not realizing that, but I thought worst-case scenario we could just book it for the gates. With a sigh, I resumed following Verial to a shop that sold masks.
In a dark chamber of the castle: A butler had just informed the mistress of Dagon heading towards the front gate first, and would shortly be here afterward. The mistress almost ignored the information when her mind suddenly went blank for a moment. After thinking a bit, she realized what Dagon was trying to do. "A nice trick Dagon, but you're going up against a being who has faced countless men unwilling to have sex with me." The succubus laughed, however, after a few seconds her expression turned dark. "Inform the Royal Guard that I want the entire castle on lockdown and that Dagon is to be captured and brought back to me!" The butler slightly flinched at the seethingly aggressiveness that came from the mistress. But, he quickly recovered with a bow and ran to the Royal Guard's office. After the butler left, the mistress settled down and waited for Dagon to be brought back to her. She had the utmost confidence in her Royal Guards to bring Dagon back.
Marketplace: I almost lost Verial a couple of times, but thankfully due to his persuasion, we decided to hands so that way we wouldn't get separated. After what seemed hours of doing twists and turns we reached a stall where a reptilian person had all sorts of masks hanging on the ceiling or on wooden sticks. Instead of calmly speaking to the person, Verial pounded on the table and proceeded to yell at the reptilian to give us their best masks. With a high eyebrow, I looked at Verial who grinned back at me. Unexpectedly, the reptilian bowed and, with a raspy voice, said, "yes sir." He then traveled to the back of the stall where I presumed he was looking for some masks. I looked at Verial, where a clear visible puzzled expression was being worn across my face.
"Sire the lizard race requires strength when interacting with them; otherwise, they believe you are weak and will refuse to give service to you." I got slightly taken aback, but I put that in my bank of future information to remember. The lizard man came back holding two identical masks that looked similar to Hei's mask from Darker than Black except instead of having a thin lip in its place was a wide U shaped smile. "How many more masks of these do you have?" I asked out of the blue. "I have 22 more." The lizard man confidently replied. "I would like to buy all of them." The lizard man raised his brows in surprise and looked at me with a questioning gaze, "Well, that would cost a total of 100 gold coins are you sure you would agree to that amount?" Verial appeared to be still in shock by my sudden request but quickly whispered in my ear that we had 1,500,000 gold coins. A brief surprised expression appeared on my face for a split second before I promptly hid it, least the man would try and raise the price on us. I was thinking of trying to do some haggling but with that amount of money it would just be a drop in the bucket for me. "Yes that is a fine price, I'll give you the amount requested in return with the 22 masks." The lizard man quickly flashed a smile and hurried to the back to get the masks. Verial was still looking at me weirdly and asked me, "Sire, why are you purchasing all those masks?" I quickly explained to Verial how I would pay people to wear masks and head towards the gate. I had a hunch that the succubus probably was already searching for me, so my hope was that they would be thrown off by the same masks.
Verial nodded and said, "A good plan. I recommend giving it to the fallen." "Fallen?" I asked quizzically. "Fallen are those who souls haven't passed on and get trapped in the Underworld. They used to be few in number because they tended to be humans who turned to necromancy and the such. However, humans souls have been trapped here recently, nobody knows except for the most powerful ones. Anyways, they'll do any dirty job, and look similar to your appearance sire." I once again stored that information for future reference and waited for the lizard man to return.
He came back, holding two bags that looked to be made out of leather. "Here ya go, now where's my money?" He demanded with a grin. I nodded to Verial and he brought over his hand with ring and out of nowhere 100 gold coins fells down onto the stall counter. The lizard man's eyes greedily swept over the money and quickly stored them into a medium-sized pouch. "Pleasure doing business with yous kind sirs." I could still hear the raspiness of his voice, In my world we would consider him as a heavy smoker. I nodded towards him and quickly left with Verial in search of Fallen. We were fortunately able to find 19 people, and although they had their doubts, our generous offer quickly made them change their minds. "Money sure works wonders doesn't Verial?" Verial smiled, "It sure does sire indeed." We did have three masks left over, so we stored them inside the spatial ring for safekeeping.
Looking at a big clock in the middle of the castle, we could see that it reads 7:20, "Verial I think it's about time we head towards the front gate, what do you think?" "Agreed sire, we wouldn't get trapped here, would we?" I nodded, and we began heading towards the gate.
Unfortunately, at the end of the market place, Royal guardsmen could be seen in the distance wading through people, and just as they found their target, they ripped off the mask to find a Fallen one instead. All I could see was above their shoulders, but judging from the Fallen's surprised expression and falling below my line of sight, I assumed they killed him. I didn't pity him, though, since he knew what he was doing once he got involved with us. Verial and I quickly lowered our heads and continued towards the gate.
Mistress! Mistress! A maid could be seen sprinting to the succubus's throne. "What is it, Lilly?" The succubus asked yawning. "Lord Dagon had been spotted putting on a mask, with his servant, but when the guards went to obtain them later, they were Fallen! The commander believes that they've equipped some Fallen with identical masks. Normally we'd be able to capture them all, but when it's at the peak of the day, we can't find them all in a sea of people." The mistress frowned, she was used to getting everything she wanted and everything going the way she wanted. This issue angered her and caused her to get more serious. "Inform the entire city that Demon Lord Dagon is to be captured and brought to me." "Yes, mistress, I'll do that right away." The maid squeaked. The succubus initially intended for the issue to be quietly solved; however, Dagon had forced her hand, and she had to make it a whole city problem.
"Mistress Saroria has pronounced that Lord Dagon is to be captured and brought to her, he is in the market place, and we will be searching for everyone exiting. We are sorry for the delay. The crowd all groaned, including Verial and I. "Shit, they have every exit blocked, including the back alleyways, what do we do?" I asked Verial. "I know a way into the sewers that leads towards the front gate. However, a barrier is located at the end, preventing us from getting out through the city." "Why didn't you suggest that before Verial? That would have saved us a lot of hassles." "Well, Sire, I didn't want you to suffer from such an awful place." Verial sounded like he was serious and was giving me a worried expression along with it." "Thanks, Verial, for your care, but it's alright to go through it when my lives at stake." "I will keep that in my sire, but quickly we must go before we run out of people, follow me." I once again followed behind Verial, and the panicked crowd certainly helped us easily escape from view.
As we traveled further, we reached an area of the marketplace that wasn't exactly the best place and looked more run-down. The area looked similar in comparison to Earth's black market. Though that didn't change people from purchasing goods back here since there was still a decent sum of people. I also assumed that these areas probably don't look so bad to the Underworld, they probably just treat this as just different shopping section. Verial pointed towards what appeared to be an abandoned building. "This building was originally home to a jewel maker, but they closed down after the mother murdered the father and daughter. The building was supposed to become a woodshop, but it never happened. And it's just been sitting here for years." On that sad note, Verial led us inside the abandoned building, and brought us to a hole that had a piece of wood covering the hatch. I helped Verial push the wood to the side and Verial opened the hatch.
I immediately caught a whiff of a putrid smell and almost vomited. I looked to my side to see Verial having the same dilemma as me. "Sire, I'm sorry that you must experience this, but it's the only way." "We will make it through this together." I promised Verial as we hugged. Were we treating the sewer as if it leads to our death, yes, but I mean you have to admit that a sewer's smell is quite horrible. We both headed down the ladder, and thanks to Verial miraculously being able to navigate the drain, we quickly made our way towards the front gate.
Thankfully, we didn't beat some cliche sewer monster; just the awful muckiness followed us the entire time. We made our way up a hatch and ended up in some alleyway close to the front gate. There were guards patrolling all around so Verial said we should probably ditch the masks and try to blend in as the people exiting the gate. But, suddenly, a voice came from behind us, "Hey, aren't you the wanted guys?"