It took an entire two hours before Zolovat found the underground base of The Hatter. Even then, he still wasn't sure if this was the right place.
With his status in the family lowered to nadir when he lost his candidateship, he didn't have the authority to take out any magical artifacts from the family anymore, and his affinity with the earth was the only way he could comb his immediate surroundings efficiently while keeping himself on the move.
Even then, the place he had found wasn't because of his own abilities. Instead, it was because of somebody else. Somebody he never expected to be here.
"You…" He searched his memories, momentarily stunned, and looked at the woman wearing a tight-fitting suit. "Aren't you Aries's attendant?"
The woman, with scarlet hair and calm hazel eyes, smiled politely. The corner of her brows twitched. She bowed.
"Greetings, Mr. Zolovat Mocny," Mysta greeted, keeping a professional air.
'This little…' Inside, she was boiling with anger. She controlled herself not to whistle in annoyance.
"And no, forgive me for saying… But I am not venerable Aries's attendant. I am Lady Alice's personal attendant, handpicked herself. Please, address me as such," she said tersely.
Turning to her side, she motioned to a young woman wearing long robes and round glasses. She had dark skin and had a scholarly air, with a sagely temperance.
Beside her was a tall man with darker skin. Muscles bulged under his skin, and his shirt looked to be on the verge of ripping apart. His body seemed as if it from a giant's.
And beside even more was a thin woman with closed eyes. Even still, she looked very calm and collected, and by the way she held herself, she didn't seem to lack the capacity to sense and operate even with her vision impaired. She wore a robe with a yellow sash tied around her waist, which mad her look thinner than usual.
Only these four were present in front of a neglected house, with crumbling walls and broken windows.
"These are venerable Aries's masters. They taught him the ways of combat very closely."
"Is that so…" Zolovat's voice immediately turned cold, and he looked away from the group and looked at the dilapidated house.
"Is this The Hatter's base?" he asked, curious.
'There's no point in hiding anything. At this point, everybody knows everything there is to know. We are all here for the same reason. Well, except one thing…'
"Aquarius is coming for Aries. On the way here, I encountered and fought him briefly, where I learned of his plans and how it fell apart.
"After I made a Vow with him, he quickly set off and left. He hasn't followed me, and my side of the Vow made it so he can't harm me directly.
"As long as I'm with you guys, then he shouldn't make any overt moves without a great reason," Zolovat recalled the situation concisely and narrated the facts in its entirety.
As soon as he finished, a deep baritone voice asked, "So you lost?"
It was the tall, dark-skinned giant, eyeing him warily as he sized him up.
Zolovat grimaced. "Yes, but not without a fight."
"Heh," turning way the man giant scoffed and looked away, looking back at the dilapidated house.
"So, this is the place…?" Zolovat asked after a long pause. He wanted to retort to the man, but he also knew deep down that he was right.
Lately, he hadn't done anything but lose.
Thinking that, he couldn't help but surrender.
With a polite nod, Mysta affirmed and urged him to go forward.
Taking steps into the dilapidated house, Zolovat couldn't help but feel his heart in his mouth.
◇◆◇◆◇
Narrowing his eyes, Harita busily tried to pierce through the surrounding darkness, finding the world brighter than it had been a few moments ago. In the span of two minutes him and his team found themselves inexplicably guided by the mysterious girl who seemed to match the minimum identification provided by the Han Li family.
Urged by this suggestion, which had been brought up by a Squire from the Order, he couldn't help but grimace as he went deeper into the dungeons. The team followed behind closely, with Bian at the very back serving as their main defense for any prowling enemies biding their time for an ambush.
When he thought of the lustrous woman, Harita couldn't help but think of the worse situation.
'The spell should be lifted any time now… In fact, judging by my unstable mental state and failing concentration, I'm baffled that she hadn't attacked me yet. All the people that I have used this spell on has tried to that much at least, once they wrested out of my control.'
Being a naturally born Creator, with a deep affinity for Materialization, metal, and non-living creations with a focus on tangible and long-lasting manifestations of magical weaponry, Harita's arsenal of weapons mainly consisted of a katana for combat, a dagger as spare, runic magic for support, concealment and his own two eyes. Not to mention his Oaths, as well.
This didn't take into account his various Augmentation abilities.
Besides those, as a result of a terrible sequence of bad decisions, he ended up delving into categories beyond his purview, and created a semi-functional Manipulation spell, one that can warp one's recollection of events to a certain extent.
Using this spell, dubbed as Puppet Curse, he was able to convince and even manipulate Bian's subconscious actions towards him to a certain extent, bidding her to grant him aid and information.
'It all started with that Vow at Marigold Inn…'
However, as a spell that was outside his own category, there were quite severe conditions. One was that he couldn't use it long, not over great distances, and that the target will gain full recollection of the warped events the moment they are freed. The last was that the target would gain animosity unlike any other, and that it required severe concentration and the creation and Manipulation of a Vow in order as a prerequisite.
And even then, the effects still outweighed the costs. However, in this situation, he needed all he can take.
…Glancing back, Harita couldn't help but freeze when he saw Bian's luminous black eyes. For a moment, he even felt like turning away and running.
If it wasn't for his Oath, he wouldn't even be here.
And that's exactly why he had to stay. He already forsaken one promise, another would only jeopardize his already failing mind. As well as his soul, which had already lost more than half its original power.
Grimacing at the truly exuberant amount of losses he had acquired during this foolish journey, Harita felt his scalp tingle, and he looked into the shadows with eyes that pierced through the dark veil.
Standing there, motionless, was a girl with raven-black hair and sunken black eyes. She looked at the group of ten mildly injured people with an indifferent gaze and said in a hollow voice:
"Just over there," she said, pointing at the only entrance. "There are people there."
'People…' The entire team locked onto a particular word, casting wary glances at the winding hallway the girl pointed to.
At the same time, they immediately equated the word "people" to "enemies." Beyond the winding hallway, a group that met or beat the ambush they had faced before would meet their group.
Nodding, Harita also looked at the winding hallway. He didn't expect the girl to stay long.
After all, she had not shown the desire to interact with people so far.
But she did. She stayed, and didn't sink back into the shadows.
"Huh…" Harita unconsciously muttered. "So you want to join us?"
Before the girl could respond, a loud resonance broke the eerie silence of the dungeon, and the group immediately drew their weapons with fervor.
In a matter of seconds, they had turned into their battle-ready selves and reinforced their formation. They did not want a repeat of the previous ambush, and thus, their vigilance had been tuned to the highest frequency.
"Look alive people!" Harita bellowed, then lead the group forward.
The black-haired girl strolled along, sticking close to the shadows, her eyes unnaturally empty. It was as if a void was inside of her, and there was well of nothing deep within that gaze.
Summoning Silent Reverie, Harita made one last check with Sekiro and his danger sense, and stopped when they saw a certain group rush forward. The team hid in a loud group of shadows.
There were twenty goons, each carrying a weapon or Invoker, rushing after a lanky boy with black hair and inquisitive blue eyes. They chased with fervor, but never quite caught the boy in time. Every now and then, the boy would look back, and a gaping wound suddenly appear in one of the pursuers, and they would rush to the back of the group.
Suddenly though, bright lights emitted from the back of the group, and split apart into three burning balls of fire. The next moment, it shot forth, aimed at the young boy, but the boy suddenly dashed away, and the three balls of fire exploded in the air behind him, destroying the metallic door with intricate and sinister engravings on its frame.
Without a second thought, the boy ran inside the crack in the door and didn't turn back.
'Bad move,' Harita thought. 'What does he think he's doing?'
He knew exactly who the boy was.
It was his master! The kid he made an Oath with!
And the reason why he is here.
As the lanky child ran to the door, Harita whispered behind him:
"Is it finished?"
Mage Bek nodded.
Taking a step back, he hid himself in the shadows, reducing his concealment so as not to panic the group, and held himself calmly beside the thin girl.
The black-haired girl didn't move, nor did she appear disturbed.
'Is she that confident of her concealment and anti-capture spells? Or is she just naïve? …Probably the former. Knowing her tendency to disappear, and the fact that I still haven't fully unearthed her spells means that she still has quite a lot of spells up her sleeves.'
Turning to the group, Harita urged Mage Bek to take a step forward. The robed mage had gray fog emanating from the sleeves of his clothes, and gradually, they enveloped his figure, clouding his person immediately.
Standing close but not far from the clouded mage, Harita felt his eyelids droop, as if an invisible weight was pulling down on it. Doing his best to remain lucid, he bit his lip, then wiped the blood that dripped from his mouth.
With a wave of prickling pain, he jolted awake and looked to his side. The shadowed girl remained lucid, as well. It was unknown how she stayed awake without the slightest signs of drowsiness.
Sighing, Bek took a step forward and into the group of goons following the kid. It had taken him awhile to conjure the sleeping fog, but it was still worth it. With a group of Order knights and Council mages behind him, there was nothing to fear. Including his intrepid leader, the Paladin, even if the worst were to happen, he would surely be able to escape.
And then, the goons turned to him. Some tilted their heads, some squinted their eyes, some raised their swords. But none stopped.
And instead, some rushed for his clouded figure.
But then, they immediately fell.
In fact, everybody did.
A satisfied grin slowly crept up the side of his mouth, and he sighed.
With a mental "push" the sleeping fog spread outward, covering the entire hallway and entered the lungs of those unaware. Luckily nobody seemed to have any winds spells, or they did, but was unable to cast it at the moment.
He did not need to know.
He did not want to know.
He only needed to do his job.
Approaching the door the kid had gone through, he mused as he saw the boy falling down, but remained semi-lucid. As if he was resisting the spell he had cast on the space.