Escape.

"Clarisse !?" Daniel whispered while looking at the bound and chained Maid, severely injured and her breathing rough and coarse.

"I- I'm sorry, young master, I failed to protect you when the bandits attacked, t-they took you hostage since you were unconscious, I couldn't do anything, I'm so sorry." Clarisse, the young maid apologized, it made Daniel a bit guilty since he wasn't unconscious, instead in deep meditation.

Looking around the cell, he noticed the air was very damp and hard to inhale, meaning he was underground, he noticed they didn't put any chains on him, were the bandits just imbecile's or did they think he was a disabled person, this was food for thought that needed to be chewed on later, looking at Clarisse, he quickly got up and sneaked his way towards her, seeing the chains were made of rusty iron and were loosely put into the wall he tried to break the chains off of the wall, unsuccessful, now his target changed from the chains to the iron fortified door that seemed a bit too wet, and when wood is wet it tends to rot.

Approaching the door, Daniel in a swift notion knocked on the wooden planks holding the hinges, after careful observation he noticed that the upper part of the plant had a more hollow response after he knocked on it, after carefully thinking about it he grabbed a few pieces of stone from the ground and the them at the door, the sound made by the collision would usually alert some guards, but after 5 minutes of waiting he heard nothing, now confident in his ability he close in on the door and remembered the teaching of his Mentor.

"Precision and speed, alright." Whispering to himself he didn't notice the glint of surprise and confusion in Clarisse's eyes as she saw that he took a strange and clumsy stance, with slow rhythmic breathing, he inhaled and gathered a substantial amount of stamina to use, in an instant he tensed every muscle in his body and with a turn of his core, released the built up tension in his muscles, and air in his lungs, which resulted in a devastating side kick towards the upper part of the door, when the sole of his feet touched the door frame it created a creaking sound and in the blink of an eye the hinges let go of the frame which crashed onto the ground.

Clarisse had her jaw open for a second before she saw Daniel holding onto his ankle and hissing, if she had her hands free she would have face palmed really hard.

"I'm alright, just a few minutes and I will be in tip top shape !" He replied seeing her deadpan at his silly reaction, and as he said, less than a minute and he could use his right leg once again, now ready to go outside and hopefully find the warden of this prison, he sneaked his way out and looked on the empty and eerily silent corridor, he was at the end of a corridor so the only way to go was to the right, giving Clarisse a thumbs up he smiled and left.

As he left the cell his anxiety skyrocketed as he started hearing voices, only to find out they were the voices of other captives or inmates, in a steady manner he managed to sneak past most of the ells and arrived at a crossroad in the hallway, taking a lucky guess he went forward, five more minutes of sneaking and passing more terrifying sounds he saw some candle light from the end of the hallway and decided to walk towards it.

"So as I said, we jumped on them and in an ambush managed to capture the sleeping little beauty in the carriage, even though the assassin killed more than half of us after she saw us take hostage of that useless child she stopped and gave herself up, she will be a good trade with the slave master." An unknown voice could be heard talking with another person Daniel peeked outside of the hallway to see 2 people at a table talk, observing a little bit he noticed the one with the bigger mouth who kept shouting had a bunch of keys attached to his trousers, thinking about it he tried thinking of a plan to ambush them but he wasn't much a strategist.

Trying to calm down and control his anxiety and surging adrenaline, Daniel decided to lure one of them here by creating a distracton, while taking care of the other when he's alone, taking a piece of stone from the floor he quickly threw it to the side which alerted both of the bandits outside.

"Hey, you should go check it out, we don't want a slave to escape now, do we ?" The one with the keys and funny pirate hat told the the bandit which kept shouting and had a big nose, snorting and then spitting on the floor the big nosed bandit grumbled and left the table, going towards Daniel who has sneaked back a few steps and was now a slight indentation of the hallway, the only way to spot him if the person going towards him was at the far right of the hallway, as the guard approached his heart raced, adrenaline started to be pumped and his breathing became as calm as a serene lake, finally deciding to look at the guard he saw him, and the perfect opportunity came by which he had no mind to miss.

The bandit arrived at the entrance of the hallway and scratched the back of his head, squinting he tried to see better but he was unable to since his eyes didn't adapt to the darkness yet, closing his eyes and rubbing them he was taken off guard by the sound of piercing wind, in an instant before he could even process what happened a fist flew and hit the side of his chin, instantly blacking out the bandit, unfortunately for Daniel the bandit fell down and made some noise alerting the other bandit.

Knowing he fucked up he quickly grabbed the knocked out bandit and as fast as he could bought him at a door leaving only the legs out for the warden to see he hid at the indentation of the opposite door frame, slowly he heard the steps of the warden approach closer, seeing the feet of his colleague he asked him if he was alright, getting no response he hurried up and forgot to even look around for a second, he was grabbed in a choke hold from behind, knowing he fucked up the warden tried to get off the intruder by banging his hand against the head but to no avail, in a last act of desperation the warden jumped backwards, knowing full well what was going to happen Danie let go of his neck and grabbed the shoulders of the warden.

With one swift notion he gave a swift and precise side punch to the temple of the guard, falling on his bare back and hitting his head on the rocky and uneven ground, the guard fell unconscious, panting heavily Daniel's wrists started to tremble and the adrenaline faded, he felt ecstatic, he managed to beat two people, he did it and the best part, he felt like he could do it, he felt confident in his abilities for the first time in a long time, shaking his head away from this train of thought Daniel quickly rummaged through the stuff on the guard and found a ring that was weirdly very similar to his.

"Wait, I almost forgot about the ring !" Daniel mumbled and wanted to die from embarrassment, forgetting a gift which wasn't only precious but really valuable, was quite dumb from his part, sighing he took his ring back and checked its contents, seeing that nothing was stolen, due to the stupidity of the bandits, he let out a sigh of relief and quickly ran back towards his cell, finding Clarisse still tied up and bound by chains, with a cheeky smile he showed the bundle of keys to her at which she only rolled her eyes.

After a while of finding the keys to her chains and unshackling her sounds could be heard coming from the hallway, peeking outside he saw a team of 5 bandits who were mostly clad in iron plate and chainmail, legs protected with plate and leather and chest with leather, chainmail and plate armor, their armor wasn't really polished and mostly rusty and damaged, their helmets were of different variety and types, few had leather side guards and one even had a chainmail as the side guards for the helmet.

Instantly recognizing they were a bigger threat than the two clumsy guards, Daniel saw they were looking through a few cells, grabbing Clarisse's wrist the both of them sneaked their way towards the crossroads and with luck decided to go the right this time, hoping for a better result, slowly they increased their pace and were running through the eerie and dark hallways of the underground prison, at another crossroad almost missing a small detail of light and sound of rushing water, he and Clarisse ran towards the source of their escape, arriving at it their expressions turned sour.

The end of the hallway was a giant hole at the side of a huge waterfall the height of 30 or 40 meters, his anxiety and nausea hit an all time high and he started to panic.

"Get a hold of yourself !" Clarisse Slapped him which managed to calm down his nerves.

"Okay, okay, okay, I get it, we have to jump." with trembling hands he grabbed Clarisse's wrist and counted down from three.

"Okay when it reaches one, we jump, got it !?" Clarisse nodded and he started.

"Three, tw- WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" Before he could finish he was interrupted by Clarisse jumping down and dragging him along.

Screaming like a little girl he let go of Clarisse's wrist and began to tense every muscle in his body subconsciously, within a few seconds his skin touched the surface of the small lake formed under the waterfall and his ears started ringing a lot.

The sound of surging water added together with a ringing sound deafened everything down and for a second he felt, peace, only for a wrist to grab his arm and bring him back up and with it the ringing sound intensified.

"Let's go !" Clarisse screamed as she was trying to swim at the shore of the lake, seeing her arrive he did the same, reaching the shore and crawling on all fours he coughed out a bunch of water which missed the entry point, in a tired manner he turned around and glanced up at the blue sky, and leaves brushing past each other.

"I- Cough, Can we take a res-" Daniel was quickly interrupted by Clarisse's finger pinching his lips.

"Shhhh, we have to go, we cant stay here any longer, were still inside the enemy territory." with a seriousness unlike her, Clarisse observed and came to the conclusion that they were still unsafe, seeing that she had a point he got up and tried opening the system, only to see the same annoying notification.

[Warning, this will take a while, the user cannot open the Menu.]

[---------------~________. 49%]

"Darn it." Cursing out loud he got up and followed Clarisse.