My Isekai Fantasy Is All Wrong!

Chapter 12: Time Crunch

As I approached the Mines, I couldn’t help but worry over how exactly it was that I was going to find all the other Diamond Dogs. The current situation was nothing like the hunt for Timberwolfs which could be sniffed out from miles away and danced around without any of the Betas being any wiser to it.

‘If only I had a Detection Skill or something,’ I daydreamed to myself before realizing that I could have something similar, not as a Skill but as an Ability. In fact, I should probably use up both of my Ability Points before I forget. Unlike Skill Points which weren’t necessarily required to gain and improve skills or Perks which had the full list of available to plan for, Ability Points were best spent immediately to unveil the next Tier of a Category.

The Gamer Category originally only had Observe as its sole Tier 1 Ability, but after I bought it, I got access to Tier 2 Abilities, and — wouldn’t you know it — one of the Tier 2 Gamer Abilities was just the kind of thing that would solve my current problem. Maybe. Hopefully.

[New Ability Unlocked!]
[Name: Quest Pathfinding]
[Description: Improves Quest Functions to more clearly define and point out objectives.]

I crossed my fingers and hoped that my line of thinking wasn’t too much of a leap in logic…

[World Quest]
[Name: Griffon Rescue Chain Quest 4]
…
[Progress (1): Ask the Griffon about the slave encampment ✔ | Establish a plan of attack ✔ | Clear out the encampment of slavers (10/34) | Free the slaves (1/63) | Bonus 1: Recruit the Griffon to help carry out the liberation of the camp ✔ | Bonus 2: Take out all the slavers without killing a single one (10/34) | Bonus 3: Kill all the slavers (0/34) | Bonus 4: Free the slaves without a single casualty (1/63)]

‘Close, oh so very close,’ I sighed, ‘But no cigar.’

I had hoped that as a function of helping me clear the Quest I would have all the slavers in the camp pointed out to me with the addition of a Minimap or a Compass Bar as was common for RPG games. Unfortunately, while I did get definitive numbers that would definitely help me clear the World Quest, I didn’t have the locations of all my objectives blatantly pointed out to me. In retrospect, it made sense when I considered that Observe also wasn’t as overpowered as it could have been.

Perhaps the limitations on both of my Abilities came as a result of my initial choice in difficulty. I had a feeling that had I chosen “Boring” over “Pussy,” my Abilities just might have been as crazy as I had hoped for. Still, what I got was good even if it had cost both Ability Points for being a Tier 2 Ability.

My mind snapped back into focus as the hall I was sneaking through straightened out to reveal that unlike the Detainment and Torture Room or the Barracks, the path to the Mines lacked a door. The hall simply opened up in width until it suddenly expanded into a massive open space that led deeper into the mountain.

As I continued my approach, my enhanced hearing began to pick up the sounds of rhythmic tapping. To someone like me who had grinded their Mining Skill to Level 5 it was unmistakable.

I stopped at the border of the hall and the open space to properly map out the room in my head. The area was a total mess. It was as unorganized if not even more so than the torturer’s “office” in the Detainment and Torture Room. There had been an effort made in zoning areas, but I still found it unsightly.

The open space was clearly divided in half between the slavers and the slaves. The slaver’s area had a cafeteria, benches, and tables, while the slaves had holes in the ground to hopefully sit or sleep in; I really hoped they were filled with waste from food or otherwise. The slavers also had a pile of raw gemstones while the slaves had a much larger pile of metallic or mineral ores take up more of their already tight space.

The whole place was incredibly large and yet felt utterly claustrophobic when I considered the number of slaves that had to be accommodated. It was also currently, almost completely empty except for two Diamond Dogs that I spotted. One was in the cafeteria and another one was…

‘Oh wow, they really put this guy here to guard the exit to the Mine all by himself,’ I could laugh as the poor sap had his back turned to me and kept his eyes locked between the branches splintering off the open area and the path leading down to the next level underground.

Instead of alerting the sole guard of the area, however, I kept up my stealthy approach. I took a couple seconds to confirm that the other Diamond Dog in the cafeteria was similarly zoned in on his task of butchering up a piece of pork before I used Subdue to knock out the guard and drag his limp back to the hall that I had come from. I put a set of Manacles on him before doing the exact same thing to the cook.

[+7 Exp]
[+6 Exp]

I turned once I heard the Griffon walk over to me. She reached out with a wing to touch me before saying, “Until it’s lights out for the slaves to sleep, the rest of the Diamond Dogs, except maybe the alpha, will probably be supervising one to three slaves each in the branches of the mine.”

“Lights out? Shit… Do you know what time that starts?” I asked, hoping I still had time to subdue all the Diamond Dogs. It’d be next to impossible if the times for the slaves to rest came before then and all the remaining slavers went to the open space at the same time.

“Well, supposedly, they claim that we get the six hours from midnight until sunrise, but I think they stop work at midnight and don’t count the time it takes us to haul our last loads of gemstone or ore for the day. Then we also have to separate the gems and ore from worthless rock and in the end, I’m pretty sure we get less than five whole hours of sleep,” the Griffon huffed.

“Midnight to sunrise… Six hours…” I muttered to myself as I checked my watch and frowned. It was currently 21:36 or a little less than two and a half hours to midnight, and I had absolutely no idea how long or deep the mining branches expanded out for.

Also, what a coincidence that time was segmented into twenty-four hours a day here as well. I needed to remember to ask about that when I wasn’t racing against the clock. So, I filed that thought away and explained to the Griffon why I would be picking up the pace.

She seemed intrigued by my watch when I showed it to her to explain how I knew what time it was but refrained from making further inquiries as we took off in a mild jog toward the rhythmic tapping that I’d detected before even entering the open space.

Counterintuitive to my expectations, it was actually coming from one of the branches towards the far end of the open space, opposite the hall I had entered from. However, after a little bit of thought, it made sense since it was likely one of the last branches assigned a slave to mine through with the ones closer to the hall being created and assigned first.

I slowed down the closer I got to the sounds of a pickaxe striking rock. Soon enough, I found the supervising slaver and wasted no time using Subdue on him from his blindside. Like all the other conscious Diamond Dogs I’d encountered, this last one had been completely focused on his task to the point where they might as well have been suffering from tunnel vision. It was somehow below the threshold for qualifying to have a Debuff included when I used Observe on them.

[+6 Exp]

As I went through the motions of locking the unconscious Diamond Dog in a set of Magic Suppressing Manacles, the Griffon began screeching something at the slave in the distance. She brought the— Is that a motherfucking Unicorn?!

It was too small to be a Horse Unicorn, but maybe a Horned Pony or Donkey, maybe?

I honestly had no idea why I was even surprised. I’d already encountered a Griffon and knew Magic was a thing in this world. For some reason though, Unicorns just had a bigger impact on me than all the other mythological, folklore nonsense things I’d seen. It must have been a thing of familiarity; Rapidash was among my favorite Gen 1 Pokemon, after all.

When I finished my business with the Diamond Dog, I got up and approached the Unicorn and Griffon after summoning the chain of keys from the Torture Room. There was a lot of screeching and neighing/whining being thrown back and forth, but the only thing I could pick up from their expressions was that the Unicorn was terrified of me and the Griffon not having much luck at calming him down.

“Look, we really don’t have time for you to calm down. Just let me get those chains off you and you can be free to run away or do whatever else you want. As long as, you know, it doesn’t jeopardize this operation I’ve got going on, you know,” I said as I approached the Unicorn who had been literally paralyzed with fear after I got within reaching distance.

With only the Griffon’s key stored separate from all the other ones in the chain of dozens, I spent another hot minute trying out different keys before I managed to get the Unicorn’s manacles off. As if a switch had been flipped, the moment they were off, the Unicorn’s unintelligible noises turned into English even after I had stopped making contact with him.

“Just a couple more moments and I’ll be free after five years. Five Years!” He had a British accent for some reason.

“Oh? I can understand you? Weird. Anyway, do you plan to run away, because I’d really appreciate it if you waited until you got past the common area before you started making any loud noises,” I said.

The Unicorn froze up for a split second before he looked at me and subsequently broke eye contact. Then, very quietly, he said, “As much as I’d like to, I can’t. I wouldn’t know how to survive on my own out in the wilderness without help, especially not after being in here for so long. I’ve thought about Greta’s words while you were busy getting the suppressants off of me and decided to only take that chance if your rescue plan looks like it’ll fail spectacularly.”

He looked at the Griffon — Greta? — and continued, “If her words are to be believed and you have already taken down more than a dozen of the Diamond Dogs, then I’ll set aside my worries and count on you for now.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, I guess,” I said.

We walked back to the open space where the Unicorn said he’d rest for the foreseeable future. I think he would bail if he heard a fight break out or enough slaves were rescued and agreed to leave with him.

Ignoring him and the fact that I could understand him for now, I got my head back in the game and headed for the nearest branch in the mine. I could not hear mining sounds from the open space after rescuing the Unicorn, so I’d be following this strategy until I cleared out this ground floor level.