“How… how did he lose?” Alex asked, surprised to see someone as great as an Extolite being dead.
“Extolite Fuxian fought until the end, even after the other Extolites ran away. He was overwhelmed from what I know,” the man said.
“I see.”
Alex walked over to the spear and pulled the decapitated head off it.
“Wh-what are you doing?” the man asked.
Alex didn’t answer and instead brought out a simple cloth to wrap the head in. He didn’t want a man like this to be disrespected in such a way even after his death.
A few people noticed what Alex was doing and approached him. But before they could speak a single word, Alex used his Heavenly Impact to knock them all out.
All of them fell to the ground one after another, listless.
The man who had been guiding Alex could not bring himself to speak at all. Even though he wanted to say a few things, he could not bring himself to.
“Move!”
The man nodded the moment Alex ordered him to and kept on walking, showing the way.
Alex walked through the city with little to no damage and saw just how cleanly these people had defeated the Sunwardens. The festive atmosphere here was a direct contrast to the doom and gloom of the other two sections of the cities he had passed.
The victory here was being celebrated with not little fanfare.
As he continued, he saw more.
Then, the man stopped in front of a large building that seemed to belong to the chiefs of the Grayhounds.
“There. Underneath the chief’s house is the dungeon. But you can’t go there. There are many people who will easily—”
Before the man could finish speaking, Alex disappeared from right before him, causing the man to nearly scream in fright. He looked around, trying to search for Alex, but no matter where he looked, he could not see him at all.
‘Where did he go?’ the man thought, fearing for what was going to happen next. Without wasting any time, he rushed into the house as well, rushing for where the Grayhounds’ chief and the others would be.
He was stopped halfway by the guards, but upon hearing that someone had broken into the dungeon, they allowed the man to go over to where the chief and the others were.
The chief of the Grayhounds sat in a room with 3 other men who had been the key to victory for them today.
“Thank you all for your assistance these past few weeks. Without you, I do not believe I could have succeeded this easily,” the chief said, raising his cup of wine to the men.
One of the men, an older man with graying hair, shrugged and raised his wine as well.
Another one of the men, a middle-aged man with a missing ear, grinned. “If I knew you were willing to give us Nightspines such a large cut of your yearly earnings, I would’ve joined from the start.”
The last man, one younger than either of the other two, spoke with a sigh. “I’m just glad I didn’t have to fight Fuxian all by myself again. He’s so difficult to deal with.”
As they laughed, there was a knock on the door, disturbing them.
The chief’s face fell. “Who dares disturb us?” he shouted.
“Chief! It’s an emergency. We have an intruder in the dungeon,” the voice spoke from outside.
“What?”
The chief immediately walked over to the door and opened it. Seeing the men outside with an urgent look on their faces, his eyes narrowed.
“Explain!”
* * * * *
While invisible, Alex had no issue walking past the many guards of the dungeon, descending deeper and deeper underground. He saw many people tied down there, in various rooms, but recognized none.
He continued on and finally saw someone he recognized.
‘Xichen?’ he thought, walking closer to the woman that was tied in there. However, taking a moment to look at her, Alex realized that it wasn’t Xichen, but rather Goyin.
She had grown into a proper adult in the past decade and a half since he had seen her. He quickly checked on her and saw that aside from some minor wounds, she was more or less alive.
He wanted to rescue her, but there was something else he had to do first.
He left her for the moment and walked on.
A few prison cells later, he found her mother.
Xichen had grown to become a woman seemingly in her early 30s. While still beautiful, the past 50 years had aged her quite a bit. She seemed far more injured than her daughter, her face black and blue from the fight.
Alex could at least see her breathe.
Then, he walked past that room as well, making his way further into the dungeon, going one step deeper.
There were no other individuals detained in this level of the dungeon, except for a single man.
Alex walked toward the man with a head full of white hair, a thin body, and a face wrinkled from all the strain he had to bear for the past 50 years.
He barely had his wits at this point, enough so that when he raised his head in the dark room with just a single lantern light, he could recognize the man who stood before him.
The chief’s eyes widened immediately, and he pulled on his chains to sit straighter.
“You… how…”
“The day I left my prison would be the day you die,” Alex said. “Wasn’t that what I promised you? I have come to fulfill that promise.”
The man had a look of pure fear in his eyes, but the fear slowly vanished, replaced by a look of acceptance.
“Fine,” the chief said. “Do it.”
Alex looked at the man who had accepted his fate. To him, death was a better outcome than whatever was going to happen to him.
Alex pulled out his sword.
“Kill me. But my daughter—”
Alex decapitated the man in a single stroke of his sword. “Whatever I do,” he said. “It won’t be because you tell me to.”
He placed the corpse back into his storage bag and walked away.
