The servant girl, who Emery saw usually accompany Gennette, was terrified.
Emery could clearly see how she was trying hard to stop her body from trembling. The girl was still shaking as she went to the door, bowed to Emery, and left quickly as if she couldn't stand being around him any longer.
From the start to the end, the servant girl didn't say a word. However, the gesture and demeanor she showed enough for Emery to guess Gennette was in some kind of trouble. With that in mind, Emery quickly remembered how he had asked the girl to help him get some information regarding the White Fang situation.
Getting information shouldn't be such a big deal, should it? But why did the servant girl earlier look so afraid?
Recalling how terrified the servant was, Emery couldn't help but have a very bad feeling about this. Now, he was ninety percent sure that something bad was happening to Gennette.
Putting the [Soul Contract] into his Spatial Space, Emery quickly came out of his room and found one of the guards, telling the latter he needed to speak with Silva urgently.
The guard immediately went off to do the task and it took him an hour, before returning with a reply, saying the girl was unavailable.
"What about Vizla? I need to talk with the Prince!"
The guard took off to complete his request. It was clear it would take some time before he got a result. However, Emery really couldn't wait anymore. So, as the veil of darkness arrived and shrouded everything, he decided to take matters into his own hands and go find the girl himself.
The guards might allow Emery to freely walk around the residence, but they definitely would not allow him to leave the place as per their superior's order. Unfortunately for the guards, they were not enough to stop Emery if he decided he wanted to leave.
The moment he returned to his bedroom, Emery took out the bronze bracelets that had been returned to him and wore them.
[Bracelets of Anu]
[Artifact tier 5]
With the extraordinary ability, Klea's bracelets had and the [Spatial Gate] spell, no one at the estate knew Emery had disappeared from his room and left the place.
For Emery, concealing himself so he wouldn't be caught was not a problem. What was tricky was to find where Gennette actually was, as he had no concrete information of her last whereabouts.
Not willing to give trouble to the servants again, Emery decided to find one of the low-level guards deployed in the area - someone with a cultivation level below saint level. In that way, it would be easy for him to subdue the other party.
The moment he found the perfect target, a serpent's bloodline guard, he quickly ambushed him from behind and used the bracelets' [Enhancement] ability to enchant the other party.
Emery then asked the man if he had seen Gennette, to which the man replied with a nod. With help of the bracelets, Emery's lower level enchantment ability was effective enough to obtain the information he needed from the guard. The girl really was taken earlier today for breaking a rule and brought in for questioning.
From the guard, he found where the girl was held and also the fact that such matters usually lead to the girl being severely punished, Emery immediately knocked the guard out just to buy him enough time to find Gennette.
A dozen spatial jumps later he arrived at one of the facilities, where they were supposedly holding human prisoners. The place was huge, but the level of security was less compared to other facilities.
Emery's figure was hidden among the dense treelines, just half a dozen miles from the facility he had his eyes upon.
With the [Concealment] effect of the bracelets, none of the guards knew he was nearby, let alone managed to spot him. On the other hand, Emery used his Spirit Reading to scan every person who fell under his reach.
There were thousands of human prisoners, with the strongest among them emanating energy signatures just as strong as rank 4, but mostly just normal mortal strength. The prowess of the guards on the other hand was a few dozen figures with rank 7 and rank 8 strength, plus a dozen saint-level guards. However, there wasn't any magus around.
From the distance he was currently at, Emery could only sense his targets' strength. In order to really pinpoint someone's energy signature - which in this case, Gennette's, he had to get closer, especially with her being just an ordinary human.
Before he made his move, Emery took a deep breath and once again thought this through. Sneaking into the facility might give some trouble to his relationship with the Ouroboros.
He was reluctant to enter and search for Gennette, but his gut feeling told him he needed to find the girl. If anything happened to the girl it will be on his conscience.
Then, he thought that, as long as he didn't get found or didn't really hurt anyone, there was nothing to be worried about. If such a thing was too much for Ouroboros, then Emery thought he might need to reconsider his decision to join.
[Hide in Shadow]
Augmented with the [Concealment] effect that the bracelets gave, Emery's figure quickly dissipated and blended with the darkness. Once again making sure he was concealed, he quickly cast [Blink] and made his way towards the facility.
Emery blinked around the facility, while his Spirit Reading went into drive searching for Gennette. However, he was still unable to find the girl. Eventually, he reached the point where he was close enough to see the entirety of the facility with his own eyes.
What lay before Emery's eyes was something completely different compared to the facility the Ouroboros put him and the White Fang in captivity.
Hundreds of people were imprisoned in a single room. Most of them were the definition of skin on bone, while some looked like they would die any moment. There were even some that were already lying on the ground, motionless.
The place reeked of death.
"What is this place?" Emery muttered under his breath.
At first, Emery thought that this place was where the Ouroboros had placed the most notorious people they ever captured. However, this guess was quickly thrown out the window when Emery saw that among these people were women, the elderly and a few young children.
"What is going on?" Disbelief was evident in Emery's voice, as he found a room full of corpses.
He then wandered around the place. As he saw the spectacle in this facility, a sense of sickness gradually welled up in him. Eventually, he was attracted by muffled noises originating from the back area of the facility.
Someone was screaming.
Emery quickened his movements - what he saw when he arrived shocked him greatly.
Several people, presumably prisoners, were tied to wooden poles as the guards whipped them so hard their flesh was cut open and the bones were visible.
Emery gave his all to suppress his urge to interfere and finally managed to turn his body around. when suddenly he heard something that stopped him in his tracks.
"I… we... only told about the… wolf people… please let us go…"
Emery immediately turned around, this time he was observing closely. And finally, he spotted who he came here for.
Among the ones strung on the poles was a young girl. She was barely recognizable with all the blood and wounds covering her entire body, but Emery knew she was that servant girl, Gennette.
All his previous tension seeing the cruelty of the place blew up, Emery charged toward the yard and stopped the man who has been torturing the captives.