A mindless descend

Jay leisurely walked down the slope that at first turned right in a wide arc, then it took another one to the left next.

He there found the origin of the digging sounds he had heard, and that was another group of miners.

Of course they were slaves how Jay learned after analyzing the first. He did that because the men ignored him for the most part and kept doing their work.

Passing them without other actions, Jay wanted to check on the following cave first. If he freed them directly he might unnecessarily endanger himself and possible other slaves to what ever he might find there.

Leaving the tunnel while watching out not to get surprised by any attackers, Jay found himself in the biggest cave of those mines so far.

Though there was a smaller plateau to his left from where two tunnels had gotten dug into the far wall, other than that there were mostly tools gathered in the middle.

The lore rails lead straight ahead and then down to the left into a relatively wide round pit.

Jay couldn't see its bottom from where he stood, so he decided to check the plateau first.

The main reason was the open space to the right of the path leading straight.

While supporting wooden stands were placed in short distances, the whole length was open and the adjoining cave visible. The risk of getting spotted there was too high for Jay, even more so as he heard mining sounds coming from below.

On the plateau he had arrived, Jay found nothing though.

The tow tunnels had been dead ends and the tools had been just that, equipment for mining. Jay snatched two pickaxes, lamps and a few ropes as his stock had lost some recently.

As he was closer to the round hole, Jay could see the lore rails leading along its outline on a path and leading to the visible cave.

Sneaking to the border and looking down, Jay saw a few mine workers there and an overseer in the middle.

Not taking any chances, Jay aimed the bow he had fetched out of his inventory at the overseers head. Without even noticing he got attacked, the poor middle aged man turned into Experience Points for Jay and the workers got startled.

With two of them ducking down and cowering in fear, the last one came running up the slope. The man didn't make it far though. Jay had fired two fast consecutive arrows that ended his life about halfway up.

As this was done, Jay went back to the tunnel and talked to the slaves.

The men didn't believe him at first, but after he explained where the old and the children were waiting, the five men promised to go there and keep to his order to stay there. They had been abducted from different farms where they had been working, how Jay learned.

He then turned around and walked back to the cave with the pit, following the rails while keeping hidden. Looking to the right, Jay saw the path he was on leading parallel to the one deeper down, but latter was way longer and was more of a slope down.

Though it was long, Jay couldn't see the end because of the ceiling. To that side he couldn't spot any miners at work, so he watched out further.

To the other side, the path down there led equally far, but pretty close there was a crossing with a really wide tunnel leading to the opposite side to where Jay stood.

On both sides of he way, mine workers and slaves kept digging the walls, though not in the adjoining tunnel to the left from what Jay saw.

The moment Jay had arrived at the slope he sped up and rushed down. The two miners that had started cowering were still doing just that.

The only difference was that they had crawled from the arc forming a natural bridge out of stone, were they had been mounting stands, to the space the slope went around.

As Jay arrived the looked up to him in fear.

Jay himself wasn't sure about what to do with them after he analyzed them. They were normal miners and not slaves, but as he had selected one of them, Jay's system displayed a small icon under the man's picture.

The head-up display was something he normally only used when in combat, but came in handy at that moment.

Concentrating on the icon, Jay learned it was something like a debuff called "broken mind". Talking to then proved unproductive as there simply was no response.

Without any other options, Jay released them from the pain of being nothing but an empty shell and granted them a swift death. He felt a little creeped out as the second one just kept cowering and watching when Jay killed the first by piercing his heart with a sword.

Jay then left the two dead men and walked through the arc into a the wide tunnel leading left and right. Just like from above, he couldn't see the end of the tunnel to his left.

The illumination continued only for another fifty or so yards along the rails, but then the path led into darkness.

Looking the other way Jay saw the rest of the mine workers. They all seemed to not even realize his presence and kept to their work like nothing had happened, even though they had to have heard fighting sounds.

They all kept digging at the walls while most of them seemed to dig at the end of the tunnel. It didn't even reach thirty yards of distance from where Jay stood and the rails for the lore ended even closer.

Deciding to check that direction first, Jay didn't hide himself and walked past the first miners. They still didn't react, neither greeting nor attacking, so he went on.

Only then did he notice that there was no lore to get rid of the rubble that kept piling up, yet none of the men went to get one.

The situation turned even more strange when Jay took a turn to the left and entered the wide tunnel with no miners inside diagonally opposite to the arc he came through.

It was illuminated even more sparsely and after taking a couple of steps, Jay saw the light of a torch coming from the opposite direction.

Two seconds later he could discern three small silhouettes which he instantly recognized as two dwarfs and one gnome. It still took him until the three got pretty close to make out their appearances, even though he had analyzed them beforehand.

The Dwarf in the middle was named Bram Thistlenettle and had quite some mining skill. To his left walked a male Gnome called Loram and to the other side Thark, an even more stubby Dwaft than they normally were. Jay had seen a small icon next to their pictures as he analyzed them that looked similar to the one on the mind broken miners.

It was called "mind controlled" though.

Then a dagger came flying without warning. Loram had been the first to attack while Jay had expected it.

After parrying the small weapon, he took two fast steps forward and kicked at the Gnome.

Even though the small man had barely managed to block the attack, their weight and power difference was to big and so he got launched to the cave wall.

The cracking of his bones resounded through the tunnel after his impact and the Gnome fell down knocked out.

The next one Jay took care of was Thark when the Dwarf pulled out his gun. Tempted to duck down, Jay kept himself from dodging as the bullet came flying so slow from the muzzle-loaded handgun he could easily see it, so he doubted it could do him much harm.

It still hurt as the bullet hit his shoulder, but not more than a hard punch and the measly 3 HP he lost nearly made Jay laugh.

Dodging the other shot from the double barrel gun either way, Jay unsheathed his sword and slashed at the burly Dwarf.

Not fearing any more attacks from him as he had cut off his weapon arm with that, Jay kicked back Thistlenettle who had tried to land a punch.

Firing a chain lightning onto the one armed Thark that came running to attack again, Jay killed both adds and severely reduced the last Dwarf's health.

But that didn't stop him from attacking in the slightest as well.

Bram Thistlenettle kept swinging his fists for Jay while latter only dodged and tried to find out more about the situation. He naturally had understood those men got controlled and had lost their human instincts completely, only attacking like they were ordered, but that was the catch.

If they got controlled, the one doing so had to be close.

As Jay had to get rid of the Dwarf either way, he parried one of his punches with his free hand and a single stab with riposte activating was enough to finish the fight.

Checking on the three dead men, he found nothing but a small badge on the two dwarfs.

He then followed the tunnel leading into darkness what didn't really hinder him due to his (Night Vision). After the path took a turn to the left he could switch the skill off again when sparse illumination reached him from behind the next turn to the right.

Activating his hiding skill, Jay silently closed in on the turn and peeked around the corner when he reached it.

What he found there was a man sitting on a small bench while holding a crystal orb that looked broken. Jay analyzed him as Beryl, a Human Level 25 Mesmer with [Mind Magic LVL1] what got him a little curious.

After the man looked around in the small cave, seemingly having noticed Jay's arrival, and finally spotted him, he jumped from his seat. Holding out the already cracked orb he began to chant while intensely looking at him.

As the orb began to glow, Jay's vision blurred for a second and suddenly he was looking at himself from a bit of a distance.

Trying to look around, Jay noticed he had the view from the priests position. Next he tried to move while looking at himself and suddenly his point of view moved instead of his own body. Looking down he found out it was Beryl that he was moving.

Looking up again he concentrated on his own body and suddenly managed to step it to the side, though very sloppy and with a numb feeling.

But that was still better than moving the Mesmers body as he had absolutely no feeling in that one. Suddenly he got an idea and went to test it out.

With full force, Jay kicked against the bench made of stone Beryl had sat on with latter's body of course. A loud cracking sound echoed through the cave following that.

It was not the bench that broke but the Mesmers shin.

But Jay didn't feel it.

Not in the slightest.

Looking at himself, he noticed a creepy wide grin had grown on his face. And then Jay took the small dagger on the girdle at the man's waist with his right hand.

Without thinking about it twice he rammed it into his right leg that just had broken.

Nothing. He felt absolutely nothing of that.

Thinking about whether killing Beryl instantly by stabbing his heart, Jay went with the more gory and brutal method. He told himself that it was for the sake of learning about that mind control and absolutely not for fun or because of that filth's breaking others minds…

The first thing the Mesmer lost was his left ear. It was pretty hard for Jay to grab it with the left hand without seeing or a real feel of touch.

Glad at least his systems information got still displayed in his field of vision, Jay saw that action took a bit of Beryl's HP.

Next he went for a more personal target the man would loose. He had him rip his exclusive looking robe and then went to work.

It was the Mesmer's small eleventh digit that once dangled between his legs that he seconds later held in his left hand.

As the last action sent even Jay shivers down his spine and it took way more health than he originally anticipated, Jay took care of the rest.

A deep cut along his left wrist followed by the throat had Beryl fall backwards after mere seconds. Moments later his view got blurred and Jay lost control over him.

Without warning his point of view had changed to his original and Jay instantly touched his body to see if all was well and he really got back without issue.

As everything got back to normal he glanced at his log and saw the Mesmer got killed by him.

This way he at least knew taking over and having the target go for suicide still did count as his kill.

That was something he wouldn't have the chance to do soon though as the skill or spell didn't get integrated even though his chances had been pretty high.

Other than that, there were some more notifications of ended mind controls and some illusion magic. Skipping through the lines and finding nothing of interest, Jay walked over to the dead Beryl and checked if he had something of worth on him.

Other than the broken orb and the bloody dagger there was only some silver coins and the torn robe.

Deciding to take the dropped orb with him, Jay didn't take the dagger as he knew what it touched and ignored the rest as well.

In fast strides he went back to the tunnel and left the small cave. His inner clock told him it should have gotten evening and he started to get a little bit hungry, something he hadn't even thought of beforehand.

Back at the long and straight passage illuminated by a few lamps, Jay got reminded of another thing he had paid no attention to. The workers that had kept on working and didn't even react to him, did so by then.

At least some, while the rest kept mindlessly doing their work.

The few that reacted did so very different. Two of the men came rushing for Jay with their pick-axes at the ready and tried to attack. Jay turned them to sieves with two simple stone shards spells and walked on towards where the other miners were.

While one of them kept running from man to man and shaking them in hopes for them to regain their minds and ignored Jay, the other one slowly walked over.

"D-Do you know what h-h-happened? I f-feel like I slept for a-a-a long w-while…" stuttered the thinned out miner.

To that Jay only shook his head and had the man sit down on a big stone. As he felt no hostility from him or any of the other miners, Jay decided to tell his guess.

"I'm not sure myself, but I would bet you got mind controlled because you didn't want to go with the bosses rules of conduct. Am I right on this?" J.

"I...I don't know. H-How long ha-have I been down h-here?" Was all he got from the man so Jay shook his head again signaling him he didn't know as well.

Then he left him for a moment to collect his thoughts and walked over to the other miner caring for the mind broken. Jay had checked most of the rest while he walked over to the miner called Matt, just to find the same de-buff on all of them.

"I'm sorry to tell you, but I fear they have lost their minds. You won't get any answer or reaction from them anymore…" J.

"Who are you and how do you know this?" M.

"Just an Adventurer trying to free the mines. I just defeated the man who controlled you all, but I have no further knowledge…" J.

"Then what should we do with them now?" M.

"Two options: either you stay with them until I can send someone to help them, or you leave the mines and I take care of them…" J.

"Take care? What do you…" M.

"I'll kill them. They'll starve in three days at most anyway if they keep on working." J.

"You can't! Okay, I'll stay here with them." M.

"Good, then if some overseer or bandits come here, try to hide, all right? Take this dried bread and look after your buddy over there as w… what the fuck is that over there?" J.

"I have honestly no idea man, sorry!" M.