A Friendly Visit

Haalfrin rallies all his magic and pushes up as hard as he could against the boulder pinning him down… but he can barely twitch his body and wiggle his feet and neck. Even with his immense strength, the boulder barely twitches in place.

Some of the weapon Wills turn around and see their master struggling to get out, so they break away from their defensive formation at the door to go help their master get up.

The 3 3rd Gate Wills – Kalkass, Kalastros, and the other fallen Brancotte Officer – all reach out with their magic in an attempt to lift the boulder up. At last, they're making progress! See? The boulder has lifted up an inch!

Sadly, with the 3 strongest Wills occupied, the formation of Wills no longer has its backbone, and it almost immediately collapses.

Smelling victory in the air, the battalion of mage guards pushes through and shouts a war cry. The strongest of them holds out his hands and yanks the enchanted weapons out of the air as they try regrouping.

Fortunately for the Pit guards, they broke through just in time to see some of the sword and shield Wills impale themselves into the boulder pinning the prisoner down; it's a good thing they caught the Wills before they could do irreversible damage, as only a few pieces of the rock have broken away and hit the ground.

Just as the prisoner is about to push up again against the breaking boulder, one of the mages punches out with his hand and slaps Haalfrin upside the head. If Haalfrin had been weaker, his skull would have been crushed; instead, he's merely knocked unconscious.

Moments later, all the weaker "enchanted" weapons are subdued. As for the 3 3rd gate Wills, they all back off and go back to Haalfrin's soul realm to rest.

Kalastros's Will doesn't have any motivation to continue acting out so long as his apprentice is alive. Kalkass and his Captain would have preferred to not fight their fellow Brancottes anyway, if not for Haalfrin's urgent order. The rest know they were about to lose, so they give up before they could suffer damage to their spiritual bodies.

Just when the very last sword Will is about to be broken, the squad captain grabs the man's wrist and holds him back. "Stop!" he raises his voice at the man, "We should take this one back. There's some strange magic in these weapons, so we might get a reward for turning it in. Let the researchers study it."

Right when he says that, the "enchanted" sword in his hand seems to hear what's in store for it, so it immediately falls limp in the guard's hands as its spirit leaves the blade in a desperate hurry.

"Sir," the guard remarks, "I think it's broken now."

---------------------

Immediately after the battle is over, the guards are instructed to bring all the dead bodies away as fast as possible.

The guards themselves are a little confused why their superior sounded urgent about the dead bodies. Shouldn't restoring the enchantments imprisoning Haalfrin be a higher priority – not moving the bodies to another room?

What they don't know is that the prison warden had quickly pulled up the reports on Haalfrin and learned all the relevant information on the man.

She's now well aware that Haalfrin can see and speak with the death reapers directly. She also knows now that the death reapers always collect souls from the dead bodies…

Frankly, there's a lot of valuable information Haalfrin could learn about the Pit if he has a chance to talk to the Reapers. Plus, she knows that one of the reapers (Freyya) certainly wants to break Haalfrin out of prison.

For these obvious reasons, the prison warden knows it would be extremely dangerous to let Haalfrin meet Freyya again.

To put it simply, this is why moving the dead bodies is more urgent than restoring Haalfrin's cell enchantments; an angry crow goddess is far scarier than a talented 3rd gate mage on the loose.

---------------------

After all the bodies are cleaned up and his cell restored, Haalfrin wakes up again in his cell – just as alone and forlorn as he was all these long decades past. It's like yesterday never even happened.

Well, the only thing that has changed is that after a few days, a mage comes into his cell and installs extra enchantments by the door… and it doesn't take Haalfrin long to figure out what they do.

Whenever a feeding servant would come into his cell, the door enchantments would put him to sleep. He'd wake up again later to find the feeding servant gone, and the hungry feeling in his stomach missing.

What he doesn't know is that while he's in magically induced slumber, the feeding servant sticks a tube down his throat and directly pumps the food into his stomach.

Other than the new sleep enchantment, Haalfrin sees some more enchanters come in later and install extra protections over the enchantments on the walls. He hears them tinkering around outside too, though he has no idea what kind of additional security measures they're putting in just outside his cell walls.

… And on top of that, all the mages and enchanters have no tools on them whatsoever, which makes killing them completely pointless; there's nothing for the Wills to inhabit except for some loose clothing - hardly a suitable weapon.

Knowing how hard it was to escape before, then seeing the security on his cell tighten even more, Haalfrin feels despair creep into his heart again. Escape seems to go further and further out of reach every passing day...

---------------------

A few feeding sessions after the security in his cell was updated, Haalfrin hears his cell door open… and this time, he's not put to sleep immediately.

He cranes his neck up to see a smartly dressed, middle-aged lady. She... she just has one of those faces that looks like a bitter old woman who bullies orphaned children and makes them spend all day doing chores. It's certainly wrong to judge people by their facial features, but she doesn't exactly look friendly either.

The woman sees him studying her, but she ignores him. Instead, she replies in his own tongue, "I want you awake for this little talk."

The lady leans down and grabs Haalfrin's long hair and yanks it up so that he'd have to look her in the eyes without her having to get on her knees. She pulled his head back so far that he feels his neck crack and strain in pain.

Haalfrin looks up and sees the naked fury in her eyes as she spits out, "You know, there hasn't been a disturbance in the lower levels in over 500 years now. Everybody knows to behave down here."

She narrows her eyes with menace dripping out her mouth like venom. "When I took over, I dispensed with the torturing policies; I thought everybody down here knew that escape was impossible."

Throwing Haalfrin's head down in frustration, she laughs out coldly, "You should feel flattered! I'm going to make an exception, just for you!"

She curls her fingers up, and every ounce of his body feels like nails are being dragged beneath his skin. The pain causes Haalfrin's killing intent to rise so sharply that his anger momentarily blots out the pain from his mind.

Laughing through the pain, Haalfrin gurgles out through the blood in his mouth, "That… tickles!"

As he glares at the warden, his Death Aura condenses into a long, invisible black hand, and it shoots out, gripping her heart.

The warden suddenly feels a spike of fear well up in her heart, and she screams in a panic as she falls on her butt and soils her pants.

Truth be told, the fact that she didn't drop dead from Haalfrin's Aura attack is a testament to her strong heart… but she doesn't see it that way! From her view, she felt a terror grip her heart – a primal sense of fear she'd long forgotten!

The warden instinctively crawls backward, and she's unable to take her eyes off Haalfrin - the same way a cornered rat backs into a corner, unable to take its eyes off the cat.

Seeing the middle-aged lady curled cowardly in a corner, having lost all reason, Haalfrin laughs out derisively, "You'd better hope I don't escape because when I do, you and everything your family has built up will be destroyed! Now get out of my cell!"

Realizing his visitor is at least strong enough to not get harmed directly, Haalfrin releases her from his grip and lets her scurry away - all while thinking that he could've done worse.

It's better to let her think he was being merciful than for her to realize that his attack failed, after all.