Chapter 108 - Grass Palace Knights?!
Elliot shivered as he felt all the hair on his body rise. It was as if he was being in a spotlight.
"What?!" Elliot yelled. "You must be kidding, dude. Please stop joking around."
"Do I look like I'm kidding?" Lord Caezar smirked. "I always see through men like you. There's one in a guild back in Alorde too. A very beautiful woman, gorgeous with a sexy body, black hair with eyes blue as the ocean. I saw through his skirt. Oh, it wasn't a thing I expected."
"You can look through clothes?!" Elliot scoffed, realizing what this man meant was Midnight. "Okay, dude."
He pulled Lord Caezar's hands down and backed off. "Lance. I'm here."
"I'm coming," Lance said.
"Oh, so you're not over your ex," Lord Caezar said. "You still call his name. Let me change that."
Elliot scoffed again and leaped, trying to kick the man in the face but failed when he tripped on his gown. "I'm never wearing this again."
He fell to the bed on his stomach, his hands stretched. A pair of hairy calloused hands pinned him on the bed, a hot mouth was fanning his nape with hot air.
"Oh, no," Elliot grunted and tried his best to kick Lord Caezar's leg. When he succeeded, he spun and ripped the gown off with his Hasty Aspire. "Damn. Midnight will kill me."
Seeing his dagger that was tied to his thigh, he took it and pointed it at Lord Caezar's neck. The man raised his hands in surrender, eyes widening as he gulped. He started sweating after Elliot's wig started to come off, realizing that this man was not someone he could handle.
"Tell me where you keep your Seductors–" Elliot stopped. "Let me clarify. Tell me where yoi keep the prisoners you took from the North, you perverted swine!"
"S-Seductors? Prisoners? What do you mean?" Lord Caezar stuttered. "I don't know what you mean."
"Don't try to lie," Elliot grit his teeth. "I can see through you and your lies. I can see through people like you. Filled with lies."
'Have you seen the mirror?'
Elliot was about to argue with the Manual who ocassionally snickers at him when he heard his friend's voice from his head.
"Elliot, I'm here," Lance said from the call. "I'll go inside."
A shadowy figure broke the window, with a black sphere landing on the ground, forming a large circle made of shadow. Lance stepped out of the shadow.
"Bind him. Don't let him–"
"Lance," Lord Caezar chuckled. "The royal family seems to have invaded me right on my birthday. What a shame."
"Shut up, bastard," Elliot said. Lance handed him the rope where they tied the lord with. They also stuffed his mouth with a cloth from the ripped gown.
"What now?" Elliot asked, looking at Lance for confirmation.
The latter took a flask in his pocket and forced his uncle's mouth open. The lord tried to wriggle out, failing every time as the two let him gulp all the contents of the small flask.
"This is a truth serum I got from a local brewery," Lance informed his friend. "We have three questions that he will tell us honestly."
"Okay, that's good enough," Elliot replied.
It took a moment before the potion settled in the lord's mind. Lord Caezar suddenly felt dizzy, as if the world was spinning right in front of him. He felt his mind becoming hazy, slowly falling asleep as the potion sets.
"Lord Caezar, where do you hide the Seductors?" Elliot asked.
The lord blinked slowly, looking drunk and sleepy as he struggled to sit. "They're on the dungeon."
"Are they guarded?" Lance followed.
"Heavily," Lord Caezar replied.
Elliot gulped, looking at Lance as he asked the dreaded question they fear but want to ask, "Did you touch any of the Seductors inappropriately?"
Lord Caezar shook his head that made a sigh of relief escape from the boys' lips.
"They look ugly and dirty," Lord Caezar grunted. "Horns, wings, tanned skin. Who would want that?"
"Jerk," Elliot muttered.
The lord fell asleep not long after. It was the side effect of the potion that the user would fall into a day's sleep after the truth was extracted from them.
The boys flew through the window since the door was guarded. They will take the prisoners secretly from the dungeons and they planned to take down the lord the day after.
It was hard for them to suddenly demand for the lord to show his dungeon and ask if he was keeping any slave without any proof. When they would take the prisoners away first, they'd gain an advantage since they had the proof.
"He said dungeon but he didn't specify," Elliot said. "I'll call the others."
He went to his Console and called Connor who was waiting by the back gate. He told them where they would meet up and gather the prisoners.
"He said the dungeons was heavily guarded," Elliot reminded. "We don't even know where it is, how should we locate it?"
"His castle is a typical Alordean castle," Lance said. "They will keep their dungeons by the servants' keep, just so that the dungeon entrance would be guarded."
They walked over to the back gate where the guards were already knocked out. The others stepped inside the castle, hiding with Lance's veiled around them in case someone walks by.
"Weird," Connor commented. "Why do you have dungeons anyway?"
"It's a keep used as a safe room if an attack ever comes," Lance answered. "That was what I thought it does until I knew that they kept slaves in there before."
Lance led the group to the inside corridors. He seemed to know where everything was, including where they were going.
"It was your grandfather that created the law that prevents anyone from owning a slave, right?" Ed asked.
"Yeah," Lance nodded. "He was the one who stopped the slavery, but it wasn't enough for others. Even his own child was one of those who defied his law."
"This Caezar guy is sick," Hope sighed. "I hope he rots in jail after this."
Elliot turned to him and nodded vigorously, "He is sick. His mind is twisted like a pretzel, no, a twirl bread."
"I miss twirl breads," Hope pouted. "Let's visit a bakery after this."
Lance chuckled and disheveled the younger boy's hair. "Yeah. Let's do that."
As they walked through the narrow walls of the dungeon's entrance, they stumbled across a man who wore a dark blue cloak.
They were in the hall, just in front of what seemed to be the entrance where the man stood in front of a large door. His hood was covering his head, making it hard for the others to see his face.
"Hello?" Lance called out. "This is the entrance to the dungeons, right?"
The man did not move or talk. Ed was the one who tried to approach him but was instantly grabbed back by Lance.
"Hey, stop," Lance said. He brandished his white sword and conjured a rope, shooting it to the cloaked man. The roap barely touched him when his body collapsed on the ground, they were made of skulss.
Thorns instantly shot up from the ground when the body fell. When it reached the tall ceilings, flaming harpoons shot to the ground.
"See?" Lance quirked his brow knowingly. "They'd set up a trap in the dungeon's fake entrance. What no one knows is that to the left is the way to it."
He walked over to the left side and pushed a brick. Something clicked inside that made the adjacent wall form a circle and sink through, showing a small hall inside.
"Why didn't you told us about this sooner then?" Ed asked.
Lance only shrugged before saying, "Just wanted to prove a point."
They got inside the hall and it seemed silent. There were doors on the side but Lance said that they were traps. The door they needed to find was the third to the last door of the corridor.
"Here it is," Lance said. "By 'heavily guarded', he meant that there were a lot of traps, not actual guards."
He twisted the knob and was about to open the door when a spear was thrown into them. Ed was quick on his foot to block the spear with his sword, looking up to a sight that made his eyes widen in shock.
Elliot cupped his hands on his mouth and gasped, "Grass Palace Knights?!"