Escape?
Too excited to even laugh maniacally, Haalfrin tries crawling out the boulder… but his muscles have atrophied so badly that he can hardly even twitch.
Knowing that all hope isn't lost, Haalfrin activates his Dra Name… It remains silent at first, but it stirs awake when Haalfrin gets angry and curses at his bad luck. Just as his Yiir Name comes out when he feels close to death, his Dra Name comes out when he's feeling stubborn.
Haalfrin feels Death Aura pulse in his veins, and unnatural strength surges in his bones.
There's a loud boom sound as Haalfrin kicks out with his leg and shoots out of the boulder. He leaps with so much force that he crashes straight through the door, then through the opposite wall.
Haalfrin picks himself up off the ground and ignores the pitiful-looking prisoner, whose cell he'd crashed into. "Pardon me."
"W-wait!" the man tries calling out weakly, but Haalfrin is already gone.
The escaped prisoner steps out of the hole in the wall, and he looks to the side and sees 4 guards rounding a corner and coming straight for him.
Haalfrin lowers his head and braces for impact before he lunges. In this single leap, Haalfrin clears the rest of the hallway in the blink of an eye, and when he breaks the sound barrier, there's a loud boom sound that shatters the guard's eardrums, as well as ripping the doors off all the cell doors.
When Haalfrin lands, he turns around and sees a blood stain on the ground where the guards used to be. "It's good to have some practical examples…," Haalfrin says aloud as he turns around to find the exit.
Indeed, Haalfrin only knew that his Dra Name makes his body stronger; until now he had no way of knowing HOW much stronger.
Haalfrin smiles thinking about it. The force he used killing those guards was with just his Dra Name; he had no body reinforcement spell on… And the amazing thing is that the kind of power he just displayed was reminiscent of his fight with Dakka so long ago.
'I'll just guess that I'm as strong as a 2 horned dragon now - maybe stronger. No human can beat me in one on one combat now…'
'... But I still remember how Dakka was beaten by Master's tower… So I should still be careful of advanced enchantments. I'm not invincible right now.'
Haalfrin arrives at another corner, and he scratches his head in confusion. 'Where do I go now?'
Just when he wonders this, he feels a tug on his soul, as a few Wills are asking to be released.
Haalfrin obliges them, and 3 little wisps come out. They fly in circles around Haalfrin, then dart to the hall on his left.
The escaped prisoner may not have known, but these are the Wills that had explored the hallways during his first breakout attempt. To an extent, they DO remember this floor.
Feeling these Wills may know something, Haalfrin chases after them as they lead him through the halls.
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The Prison Warden is watching from her enchanted mirror with her mouth hanging open. "How many Names did he get?" she wonders aloud as she's glancing between his profile on the table and his absurdly young appearance in the surveillance mirrors.
"Do you want me to answer that?" comes a brusque, masculine voice from behind her. She glances behind her and sees a buff old man sitting on a chair drinking tea.
"Father, you don't understand," the warden says as she points to the profile, "This man is only 321 years old, yet he looks even younger than when he came here."
The old man gets up from his chair and looks at the surveillance mirror. Reflected on its surface is a small child hurling himself through hallways at supersonic speeds – completely tearing the place apart as he passes by. Whenever a magical trap sets off and tries squishing him flat, the boy is either too fast to be caught, or his skin is so hard that he just shrugs off the attack and rips the enchanted section of the wall right out. The only reason the boy isn't ripping the ceiling out and going up is because there's a lot of space between the lower floors, to prevent people tunneling up.
(Plus, Haalfrin doesn't actually know he's underground, so he doesn't think to tunnel up through the ceiling.)
Furrowing his eyebrows, the warden's father puts on a concerned look and says, "Prella… My daughter… You know it's illegal to imprison dragons, as per our treaty with Lord Fheldin."
"He's not a dragon!" Warden Prella exclaims while continuing to slam her finger on the profile. "He's a human!"
The old man steps up behind her and looks at the report. "321 years old… I suspect he's a… 5th gate mage!? He's as strong as Commander Fisco!? No, with that strength he's using, he might be even stronger."
Prella shakes her head. "It doesn't make sense for him to be a 5th gate mage. He was a 3rd gate mage yesterday."
Patting his daughter on the back, the old man says, "Don't worry. I know I left this prison to you…, and that your mother says that I don't need to check on you so often… but I'm glad I came yesterday."
In reality, long-lived mages like them usually only celebrate birthdays every 10 years. Warden Prella's father had come here for her birthday, but that hardly feels relevant now.
Turning to the mirror and watching the carnage unfold and the screaming guards, he nods grimly and says, "I'll help figure something out."
Prella thinks for a moment and says, "He'll find the exit to floor 33 sooner or later…"
"But the connections between the maximum security floors are teleportation circles," her father adds. "With no stairs, you can just turn off the teleport circle. Hm… But with his strength, he'd be able to tear his way up to the next floor pretty quickly…"
"What are you thinking old man?"
"I'm thinking," he replies, "that you need to instruct the 2 guards at the teleport exit to tear down the signs on the small room the circle's in and don't let this escapee realize that there are no stairs. If we get him to run around a lot longer, we can figure something out."
"Good idea," the warden smiles, "Heh. We should just take off all the signs on all the floors. That's a good idea too."
Prilla frowns again and brings up something else. "What about the bodies?! The reports say that the crow goddess wants to help him escape. If she picks up the bodies and meets the man, she…"
Her father frowns and looks up. "There aren't enough guards down there to dispose of the bodies. Well, getting rid of the bodies won't help. We have to move them out of his vicinity somehow."
"That won't work this time," the current warden rebuts, "It's too dangerous to send people down there. It's suicide."
Realizing there's nothing they can do, the father and daughter pair stare grimly at the mirror and clench their fists.
---------------------
Haalfrin spends a few minutes running about through the hallways. Finally, he reaches the room where the 4 small Wills are leading him to. He follows them as they pass through the door unobstructed, and he sees… a bare room.
"What's this place supposed to be for?" Haalfrin puts his hands on his hips and asks under his breath. The wisps dance frantically in a circle on the floor, but Haalfrin has no idea what they're saying. He tries reaching out with his magical senses, but he finds nothing.
"Whatever," he turns around and says, "I'll look elsewhere."
The 4 Wills try stopping him since they know this is the teleportation exit room. Sadly, he's already left without them. They follow behind him in frustration.
Once Haalfrin leaves, he tries pulling guards aside several times and forcibly questioning them, but much to his annoyance, none of these guards speak his language.
Once he recognizes the language, Haalfrin sighs in frustration. 'Brancotte? I'm in the Empire?' Haalfrin nearly yelps. 'Why?'
---------------------
While Haalfrin is running around the 33rd floor, completely convinced he's in a maze, Warden Prella, the visiting ex-warden, as well as a company of other mages have already arrived on the 32nd basement floor. They're running about constantly laying down new spatial enchantments on the floor. Behind them is an entire line of carts carrying expensive, mana-conductive ores.
Mana conductive ore is the best material for holding strong enchantments without breaking… and this stuff is so expensive that Prilla's family, who built the Pit, can't afford to put this kind of protection on every floor.
What they're doing is putting spatial sealing magic and extending it all around the 33rd floor. This way, Haalfrin's floor will be cut off into another dimension. This way, no matter how physically strong he is, he won't be able to leave.
…Hopefully, the man runs around Floor 33 uselessly just long enough for them to finish the new enchantment.
---------------------
Another half hour passes, and Haalfrin hasn't seen any hallways he hasn't already torn up. He's tried smashing in every door and wall to see if there are any hidden stairways, but he finds nothing.
Eventually, he deduces that there must be a teleport circle somewhere… but the thing about magic circles is that they're completely invisible when they're not active.
He then thinks of the room those 4 Wills tried leading him to, and he curses. "Even if I know where the old magic circle was supposed to be, I won't be able to activate it from this side."
Haalfrin looks up and sighs, 'I'll just have to go through the ceiling, then. Arg! Has these long years in the dark addled my mind?! I should've just done that from the start.'
The escapee swings his hand, and an entire section of the ceiling is ripped off.
He looks up and sees the hard earth above the ceiling tiles. 'Underground, huh?'
He leaps up and tries using his magic to rip away at the ground above the stone-tiled floors… but he doesn't go far until he reaches granite.
'Tch! Why'd they have to pick such suitable soil for a prison? Whatever.' With Haalfrin's titanic strength, he can still dig his way through the granite, though his explosive force won't be quite so dramatic anymore, and the going will be comparatively slow.
And so, Haalfrin gets digging.
---------------------
Haalfrin digs so far up into the ceiling that he starts shrieking out curses. After his long imprisonment, he's long since lost his filter on his words. Sure, he might curse sometimes, but he used to never bang his fists and shriek out at the top of his lungs like a disgruntled toddler.
Grumbling and shouting, he looks down and sees that he's dug so high up in his narrow hole that he can't even see the floor anymore. 'How high up is the next floor?' he wonders.
…Eventually, Haalfrin punches out another fist, and he finds that he can't go any higher. A strange golden barrier is in his path.
Shouting out his frustration, Haalfrin punches as hard as he can on the golden barrier, but it merely ripples in place, but otherwise doesn't move at all. 'What is this thing?'
Haalfrin reaches out with his magical senses and tries analyzing the spell, the way his master taught him… 'Ugh. It's a spatial seal. There's no way I'm getting out on this side.'
Suddenly feeling exhausted, Haalfrin unclamps his legs from both sides of the vertical tunnel, and he lets himself drop back down the hole. He falls down and slams into the ground – cracking it.
'…Mind as well check the other directions.' And so, the enraged little "child" runs around on all the walls and tries burrowing through them as well… only to find that there's a golden barrier everywhere he goes, about 600 feet out.
Finally feeling defeated, Haalfrin goes back to the front of his cell, sits down on the ground, and rests his head on his hands with a horrible sense of despair in his heart.