Chapter 260: Familiar Life Signs (1/2)

From a bit of distance away, Aiden was leaning against the nearest wall and was watching the spectacle of his silver-haired friend lashing out against Roas, his first servant.

Watching as the battle rapidly unfolded in front of his eyes, he only smirked whilst shaking his head lightly. He was already aware that something like this might happen the moment he would leave the two. After all, Drake had just gone through probably a hellish, nightmarish torture, and currently, he had nowhere to vent his pent-up emotions, there was absolutely no target for his surging rage.

Even though Aiden was aware, he did not warn his servant, he did not see the need to. There were a couple of reasons for this. For one, even without saying, he realized that his servant was capable of understanding his thoughts. There was some sort of connection between them, something unexplainable. He wanted to test it, so when Aiden left, he simply made a mental remark about Drake, warning about his possible outburst.

Just as he expected, Roas was already ready to receive and block the sudden attack coming from the raging prince. His arms from above the elbow were already coated with a thin layer of dark energy. As the right-arcing swing came with rapid speeds, Roas simply raised his right arm blocking and absorbing the strike of the blade with his forearm.

He did not counter, he only gazed at the prince's twisted expression coldly.

This, however, only served as fuel for Drake's wrath. Pulling his blade back, he followed up with a rapid succession of wild, swaying strikes roughly aiming at the robust orc's torso.

”Die! Die! DIE!!” Drake roared. With each yell, the power behind his strikes gradually increased whilst the accuracy began to dwindle. Even then, Roas managed to block or deflect every blow with no difficulty. None of the incoming attacks were threatening for him.

Aiden kept watching as the prince descended lower and lower of his own mental abyss of madness and despair.

'This is pretty ugly…' Aiden could only frown at the prince's actions. He was calm, he knew that Roas would be completely fine, Drake wouldn't be capable of causing any real harm at his current state.

As mentioned before, he had multiple reasons for not warning his servant. While his first reason was to confirm the existence of the connection they shared as master and servant. His second reason was that there was no real need to warn at all. With Drake's current mental state, he would at most, would be utilizing half of his latent talent and skillset.

It would be another matter if Drake were to be able to use his weapon to its full potential…

Seeing as Drake's gaze started to turn hazy with the madness clouding his mind more and more as the time went on, Aiden sighed and turned his gaze on his servant. Focusing his mind, he made another mental command.

'Roas, it's time to end this. Don't hurt him too much, just knock him out. By the time he wakes up, I will be back.'

Receiving the order, Roas made a light nod, and whilst keeping his right arm in front of his body blocking every second or third hit that was aimed at him, he raised his left fist in the air. The thin layer of dark energy that surrounded it began to surge, increasing its intensity.

With a bit more of his energy concentrated on his left fist, Roas struck down, hitting the back of Drake's head. The hit wasn't particularly powerful; it didn't even need to be. Still, as the orc's large fist made contact with the back of the prince's hair the rapidly swirling layer of dark energy could be flowing into Drake, invading his mind.

In the next second, the wild swings abruptly stopped, Drake took a step back. His body began to sway, falling on the floor with an audible thud a couple more seconds later.

With the situation resolved, Aiden nodded with a contented smile on his face towards his servant before turning around and resuming his steps to the far end of the hallway, where the three familiar blimps that appeared on his system's map.

'Could it be those three?! But… how?' He asked the question inwardly, confused about the whole ordeal. 'If so… how were they even contacted?'

Thinking about this, Aiden's attention wandered to his inventory where two gnarled, wooden sticks rested with a similarly sized and shaped scarlet gemstone etched at their ends.

They were twisted, dark, demonic objects that served as a sort of device that allowed the 'otherwordly lords' to monitor their enslaved servants' actions. While it could also be said that it gave magical powers to their users, Aiden had a different idea. From the moment he took Roas' scepter, he seemed to lose his strange powers. His talent remained but the skills the 'holy artifact' provided vanished with it. This made him think that in addition to being a monitoring and communication device, it was also capable of transferring some of the lords' power.

However, this theory would need more investigation to confirm… Nevertheless, these items were dangerous.

Delved in his thoughts, it didn't take long for Aiden to arrive at the lavishly decorated, purple door. Behind this, stylish, golden threaded barrier made out of a strange, wood-like material were the three seemingly unaware life signs. Still puzzled by how and why were these three the first signs of life in this stupidly huge building, Aiden heaved a heavy sigh, and reached for the door.

Halfway through, however, his hands stopped. Reminded by the powerful warding that they were met with when they tried to gain entry, he stopped himself and refocused his mind, activating his [Dark Sense] to scan the door for any signs of the magic.