When Nick entered his own room, Elsa was idling by the window.
"Lord, what happened? I think I heard … ahh!" She almost screamed when she saw the little demon lord she had to guard. He still had some bloodstains on his face and hands, for some reason his robes looked weird and he was heavily panting.
"Don't worry, just an alchemy accident. I blew something up again. Quickly, prepare me a bath! Don't just stand there!" Nick quickly made something up.
While Elsa was preparing the water, Nick went over to the closet, took out another robe and a small bottle that was hidden in the corner between a stack of clothing.
"Come here." He smiled and waved at his 'guardian'.
And, after she came closer and bent towards him, Nick pinched her nose and proceeded to wash himself while Elsa's large body dropped on the floor.
While washing, he looked at the unconscious young woman, 'What to do with her?'
Nick really didn't want to go on a killing spree. He still had the modern mindset that the government forces should deal with the criminals. Getting rid of the grand elder was simply inevitable and he did not feel bad. But this one on the floor, although she definitely was a murderer similar to everyone else in the sect, he did not want to kill. Maybe later he will lead the local law enforcers here and arrest all of them according to his original idea. Also, he knew he was not out of the woods yet – he still needed to free the eagle!
Nick glanced at the table, or rather the hourglass that was put there. Looked like he was out only for a short moment. It meant he still had some time today that could be used effectively.
After cleaning up everything and putting some healing paste on the wounds on his back, he tried to pull Elsa towards the bed. Turns out he made a mistake – he should've knocked her out in a way that she fell into the bed. It might take a few years until Nick was strong enough to carry her weight and now it was barely possible for him to move her.
He thought for a bit and made a simple plan – few hours later he will forcefully wake her up as if she passed out of her own. It was highly unlikely she would tell anyone of her own 'mistake', so it should be fine.
An unpleasant stench filled the grand elder's bedroom and Nick felt like he had entered a butcher's shop. He smirked at the irony of this situation – the old freak was definitely a butcher.
Trying to not soil his clean clothing, he went over to the arch and glanced behind it. He saw a small room that was something between a storage and an office. A table with few scrolls and writings was on one side and beside it was a bookshelf. On it were stacks of papers, similar to the reports as well as old thick books which Nick saw for the first time. The rest of this small room was filled with boxes, some chests and sacks.
'Unfortunately this is not the sect's treasury. Doesn't matter, I need to find the key to the bird's cage first.'
Nick searched the table for something that could be used to unlock the cage. He inspected it for a few days and knew it had to be some kind of a stone in a size of adults fist with a small rune formation on it. The metal that was used to build that cage was not ordinary at all, so the locking mechanism couldn't be far behind it. And there was no way he could simply blow the cage up with beast cores without anyone noticing.
There was nothing on the table that caught the eye though. Nick went over to the bed, picked up the grand elder's robe and checked the pockets.
'How stupid am I?' He laughed at himself, then reached after the grand elder's hand and began to take off the wristband.
It took him around twenty minutes to do that. The knot was nothing special, just the laces were from the same material as the wristband and it was a Qi master who had tied them up.
Tired and sweaty Nick was standing in the middle of the bloody bedroom with the wristband in hand.
'Obviously I can't let anyone see me with this. I can't stay away from my room during the night either. How do I inspect the contents then? The space in there is quite large.'
In the end he got an idea. He wrapped the wristband around his right thigh and then tore the right pocket of his robe. After putting the hand in the pocket he could touch the wristband and 'see' the inside storage.
'Why can't I 'open' it just by wearing and touching it with the other parts of my body like the thigh itself?'
Since Nick couldn't find the answer, he just went back to see how Elsa was doing. Then sat near her in case someone came in and started to inspect the items inside the wristband one by one. Thankfully he didn't need to take anything out and put back in. His Qi was still low after detonating the bombs and he didn't have time to replenish in any way.
Nick searched for a long time into the night and still got no results. Looking at Elsa he suddenly thought on how to deal with her.
'At least I can solve this problem today.'
Nick threw all the bloodied towels and the robe in the wristband, once again checked if he hadn't left any clues, took of his clothing and snuggled himself under Elsa's arm.
Early next morning Nick woke up to a scream of surprise.
"What are you yelling for? Last night not only you threw me out of the bed and dropped on me, now you are even screaming!" Nick angrily berated the 'guilty' looking Elsa.
Elsa, with a red face stuttered, "S...sorry, Lord!"
"Sigh, What can I do with you? Go freshen up, you look like a mess. I will take care of myself today."
After the 'misunderstanding' was cleared up, Nick bolted towards the library. He was planning to sit somewhere in the corner with a book on his lap and search for the key.
When he entered the library, he found out that he had made another mistake and this time it was a big one. There was a faint stench of blood in the air!
'F*ck! Why didn't I think of it yesterday? The door to the bedroom is right there!'
He ran towards the workshop table, burned few random herbs and tried to remember the recipes of any stinky paste he made when took lessons from the grand elder. Then he picked the easiest and fastest one he could make and quickly refined a stinky substance, poured it in a flask and threw on the floor in the middle of the library.
Then started to 'cook' something random. Soon one of the elders, this time elder Jan, came in and saw the mess on the floor. He looked at the nonchalant Nick at the workshop table, snorted and called for apprentice to clean everything up. At the same time elder Dinnar came in and both of them proceeded to the balcony.
After messing around for a bit, Nick also followed. While both men were inspecting and analyzing the weakened bird, Nick did some exercises, practiced Qi techniques and then joined them with a straight face.
"I don't know what are you guys thinking, but I know you are doing everything wrong!" Was the first thing Nick said. Then with a smile looked at them and kicked the cage.
Both elders had ugly looks on their faces. They have been keeping up with the insults for a long time and soon there will be an opportunity to pay back, but for now they still had to endure.
"Why would you think so, Lord Baal?" Elder Dinnar asked through clenched teeth.
"Isn't it obvious? I offered your gang leader a demonic formation that would allow the bird to heal and at the same time it would work as a trapping formation. You wouldn't need to bother with healing him at all and there wouldn't be any risks of this chicken fleeing! But putting aside the healing part, this lock formation on the door is so primitive! How can you keep a rank six chicken here if the cage door can be opened with piece of obsidian that has some random rune on it?"
"Lord Baal, I'm sorry but I designed this lock myself. It can't be opened any other way than by the scroll grand elder has." elder Dinnar proudly stated.
"That's the same thing I'm talking about! It's just a piece of paper. If someone tears it up by a chance, the chicken will fly away. And that's the best case scenario. The worst is - he will just run amok here and kill the rest of the sect." Nick laughed.
Both elders were already in a bad mood. Now when they were repeatedly insulted, their hands itched to simply throw this hellspawn off the balcony.
"Lord Baal, the scroll can't be just torn apart like that, because it is in grand elder's hands and protected by a small runic formation that does not allow an accidental damage. Only when the grand elder decides to open the cage, he will rip the scroll in two. We may not be as experienced as you, but we have not been born yesterday either! You don't have to insult us with every sentence!" Elder Dinnar nearly blew up.
"Sheesh, don't be such a baby. I don't care about your mediocre lock. I am more interested in that toy with the small runic formation. It should look something like this, am I right?" Nick drew on the ground some random words in Arabic and then connected them with lines.
"Lord Baal, we are very busy and don't have time for you, please let us do our job." Elder Dinnar tried to get rid of him.
"Come on, I'll let you ask me a question. Let's make a small deal!"
At the word 'deal' both elders jolted. It seemed that Nick really had installed a serious paranoia towards anything related to contracts.
"No need, Lord Baal, I'll just quickly show you. Please leave after that." Elder Dinnar took a paper out of his storage ring and drew few beautiful runes on it. "You see, this simple concept is enough to prevent the scroll from being damaged on accident."
"Hmm, I see. You are not half bad." Nick seriously nodded as tried his best to remember the drawing, "Then you put it on the empty space that was not used by main rune formation, correct?"
"Yes, this time it was on bottom left corner. Is that all Lord Baal? Could you please let us work?"
"Hmph!" Nick snorted, "You are no fun at all. I'll go find that little lover of your boss." Nick said as he kicked the cage once again and dashed away.
All this time the eagle was just lying there with 'lifeless', half opened eyes. If he had a human face, one could see a wide grin on it.
Nick went back to the library, to be closer to his crime scene just in case. It took him few hours to go through the scrolls in the wristband when he found the right one that was at the very front all this time. While cursing he went to his own room, ate and replenished his Qi while holding a small beast core in each hand. He will need a lot of strength tonight.
Just before midnight, after knocking out Elsa again, probably for the last time, Nick put the wristband on his hand for the easier use. Then entered the grand elder's bedroom, and put everything he could lift in the storage, except for the useless and bloodied stuff, obviously. The chests and boxes, that were behind the arch, seemed to contain some expensive and good items he was reluctant to leave behind.
Afterwards Nick proceeded to the library. First he took everything on and around the workshop table, including two boxes of beast cores. Then he swept all the bookshelves in the library clean.
'You can't really read anymore, so I'll just take these books so they don't go to waste.' He grinned towards the grand elder's bedroom.
Then he checked once again if he had forgotten something, took a big empty basket that was used for alchemy ingredients and went out to the balcony. Nick's suspicion was correct – the shadow eagle was pitch black at night. It was waiting for him already, maybe even it was waiting since the day one, but Nick had no way to know.
"Ok, here is the scroll. I'll give it to you so you can tear it up while I get into the basket. I understand that you probably have some kind of eagle-pride and don't want me to ride you." Nick whispered, "After you tear the scroll there might be some lightning-like discharges on the cage walls. In that case just burst the cage open, grab the basket and fly away. If there are no visual effects, maybe it's possible to open the door silently. Remember our deal – we go to Aurora first. All clear?"
Eagle raised his head and nodded to what Nick smiled and threw the scroll inside the cage. Then crawled in the basked and looked over the side to see how the eagle was doing.
Eagle seemed to be inspecting the scroll, then pressed it to the ground with the claw and with the beak slowly tore it in half. Nothing happened, no sound, no sparks – nothing. Eagle tilted its head, then slowly pressed body towards the cage door. There was barely audible creek and it opened.
Eagles eyes visibly lit up as it silently got out of the cage and, to Nick's big surprise, carefully closed the door using the beak.
Then looked over at Nick, tilted the head sideways, snorted and … flew away.
'Motherf*cker!!!' Nick had his eyes full of tears. He was about to continue to swear when he felt someone lifting the basket and at a high speed moving away.
Looking up Nick saw the black belly of the giant eagle and finally, after all this time, laughed out loud from the bottom of his heart. They were already far away from the sect's territory and eagle made a soft cry in reply and accelerated even further.