Chapter 13: Tough Break

I settled into a routine after rescuing my sixth and seventh slave. Go down a branch, take out the single supervising guard, before dealing with the terrified slaves and insufferable chain of keys, and getting everyone back to the open space.

Sometimes I found a Diamond Dog watching over a single slave worker, other times I watched them guarding a point in the branching paths that split up into two or three more sections; each section containing a different working slave. I found more Griffon slaves, Pegasus slaves, Unicorn slaves, and even regular Pony or Zebra (pony-sized) slaves.

I even found a Diamond Dog effectively working as a slave, but I had to Subdue it after reading its Observed descriptions and finding out it wasn’t really a slave, but rather a slaver that was being temporarily punished for doing something that upset the alpha of the pack.

Anyway, as I went through the rounds, time continued ticking down. I was working with a tight deadline but was confident in being able to get all 34 Slavers Subdued in time at the rate I was going at. Then, after clearing out all the branches on the ground level and heading to the first underground level, I measured that I started to take more than twice as much time on average there as I did on the upper floor.

By the fourth time going down a path that must have been around a kilometer long, I realized the truth for what it was and had to make a decision: Speed the hell up and risk getting noticed before I could Subdue guards with a 100% success rate or fail to Subdue who knows how many slavers in time which would lead me to have to face all of them at once after the shit hits the fan and they returned to see dozens of freed slaves in the open space.

I choose to speed up for one simple reason. I rationalized that it was better to be noticed by one guard which I could almost certainly take down quickly in a straight-up fight — None of the Diamond Dogs that I’d ran into yet had better Stats than me. True to Greta’s previous comments, aside from in the Barracks and the common area just before the mine proper, I had yet to run into any groups of Diamond Dogs.

Almost immediately, my decision to speed up blew up in my face.

I managed to subdue an additional two Diamond Dogs without alerting them and a third that I managed to choke out without it being able to fight back, similar to the straggler Greta and I had laid an ambush in the Barracks for. The very next Diamond Dog, however, managed to block and throw me off from my attempt to tackle it into a chokehold.

Grawh! Hwaug?!

I could not understand it nor prevent it from reaching into its jacket pocket — strange how all the Diamond Dogs only wore them for clothing, now that I think about it — and throw whatever it was that it had retrieved into the ground. Whatever it was, it exploded into a plume of blue smoke that washed over for dozens of meters including me and the Diamond Dog.

[Observe]
[Name: Simple Magic Encoder Residue]
[Description: The remnants of a used Magic Encoder. Its sole signal has already been broadcast. Its residual magic is all that remains and will be difficult to erase without specialty equipment or potions. The residue has a half-life of five hours.]

The blue smoke clung onto my armor and might have even made contact with me through its gaps, but it didn’t do any damage. I didn’t get any Debuff either, so I dismissed my Status, took my sword out of my inventory, and proceeded to smack the Diamond Dog with the pommel until I found a chance to successfully use Subdue on it.

Every time I used the Skill, my body would move automatically, but there was a chance it would fail the more capable the target was to resist it. Kind of like trying to capture a Pokemon, there was a higher chance of succeeding after wearing down the target’s Health and or capitalizing on a moment of their weakness.

“Uh oh,” Greta said after hurrying over to my side and touching me, “that was a Magic Encoder! All the remaining Diamond Dogs must have received the signal by now.” She lowered herself towards the Diamond Dog I had just knocked out and ran the primaries of her flight feathers into its jacket with prehensile tact and pulled out a strange device.

“Just as I thought, look,” she showed me as she manipulated the device, “Everyone with a transceiver that’s hooked up to receive the Magical Encounter’s signal will be able to find your position. They’ll be able to be able to track everyone and everything that was hit with the Magic Encoder’s Magic Signature.”

Welp, it had been a good run up until now. Damn near, perfect I would say. But, my luck was bound to run out eventually. And to be honest, it was already a miracle that I’d managed to get as much as I had done for someone whose closest experience with tactical stealth missions was guiding Venom Snake around in The Phantom Pain.

“Alright, here,” I gave the Griffon the keys, “I’m going to go focus on rushing the Diamond Dogs. Help out that poor… mare—” I had to use Observe to tell without bending down and checking “—and please head over to warn all the other freed slaves. Thanks for your help so far, but I can’t really ask you to stick around for what’ll happen next. I’m still pretty confident I’ll be able to take down all the remaining Diamond Dogs, but don’t feel obligated to stick around while I have a target painted on my back.”

Greta frowned but nodded. She took the keys and bade me farewell before I took off in a dead sprint back towards the center hall of the first underground level. By the time I reached the center hall, there weren’t any Diamond Dogs there yet, so I continued down the next branch and literally ran up on the Diamond Dog who looked to have been caught off guard until the very last moment, where I’d charged into it.

The only thing it managed to do before I smacked it a second time in the head and managed to knock it out, was to throw another Magic Encoder at me. As I went about restraining the unconscious Diamond Dog in magical suppressants I yelled out to the slave who was watching me in horror, “I am trying to liberate this camp. There are already many freed slaves on the upper floors. I can not understand you. Go to the other freed slaves and seek out a Griffon named Greta. She has the keys to unlock your restraints.”

The moment I was done securing the Diamond Dog, I took off towards the next branch and the next branch; each time managing to secure victory with the Diamond Dogs only managing to throw more Magic Encoders at me. And by the third branch, after my cover had been blown, the supervising slavers had started to anticipate my arrival. I found the third and fourth slaver waiting for me, prepared to fight back.

For some god-forsaken reason, they always chose to use their Magic Encoders as their first move despite the first one presumably being more than enough to track me. They also managed to get a few hits in, but… Well, at best they managed to graze me, when I had the overwhelming Agility advantage, and with my armor giving me an extra +2 Constitution that wasn’t taken into account by my Status, I was seeing Health losses in the 20s at the highest.

The sixth slaver I encountered after “going loud,” so to speak, did something that surprised me. Not only did they expect my arrival, but they met me with leverage. They took one of the slaves they were watching over as a hostage!

I uh… Kinda panicked.

I had a thousand different thoughts all running at a million miles an hour through my head. Like, ‘I’m boned if I stop now. What else can I do but continue? I can’t even understand these things unless I touch them. Maybe there’s still a chance I’ll be able to stun it into inaction and subdue it without the hostage getting hurt. What was that famous Reagan line again? “We don’t negotiate with terrorists?” Fuck!’

I was put into zugzwang. There was no move I could see that wouldn’t end terribly, so I went with fight over flight yet again.

[Bonus Objective Failed!]
[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 (21/34) | Free the slaves (36/63 → 62) | 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 (21/34) | Bonus 3: Kill all the slavers (0/34) | Bonus 4: Free the slaves without a single casualty]

Motherfucker!

I let my anger get the better of me and undid the reverse grip I had previously taken to use my sword pommel side up for blunt force damage. Feeling extremely vindictive for the life I had just watched get snuffed out in front of me, I did the same thing the Diamond Dog did to the poor pony it had been holding in its clutches; only I was more brutal.

[Critical Hit!]
[+9,999 Damage!]
[+7 Exp]

[Level Up!]
[Full Recovery!]
[+3 Stat Points!]
[+1 Skill Point!]

[Bonus Objective Failed!]
[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 (22/34) | Free the slaves (36/62) | 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 | Bonus 3: Kill all the slavers (0 → 1/34) | Bonus 4: Free the slaves without a single casualty]

Instead of merely slitting the Diamond Dog’s throat, I completely decapitated it with a single slash of my sword.

I felt the terrible sting of regret almost immediately afterward.

That was… incredibly dark. But, I didn’t have time to dwell on my feelings or mourn the losses. Shit just got real, real fucking quick and I needed to end things before they could spiral any more out of control than they already were.

Author's Note

So, I forgot to mention this in the previous chapter's Author's Notes, but "Greta" is actually the name of a cannon Griffon in the show. My immediate reaction to finding that out was to swap all instances of her name before it was introduced, but then I thought it'd be fine to keep it as I originally wrote it to make this character and backstory change part of the Alternate Universe this world is set in. If I manage to make the story continue past this first "Slave Camp Liberation" Arc (Final Name still pending), it'd be a small change in the grand scheme of things.