236 The Fear Trapped in Cages
(Not edited yet)
When Vinigo was arrested, he was taken to the underground of the Upper City Guild building, this being the only place where the remaining Adventurers in Oukiwa continued to frequent every day. Therefore, this was also one of the best guarded places in the entire city.
At Namor’s own request, Luke personally assisted in escorting the carriage before he could return to the Strogueher estate and tell everything to his friends and his mistresses.
Before leaving the Academy, Vinigo’s hands were locked with restraining gauntlets, and his mouth was also encased with a special device. These two restraints prevented him from using any Gene Skills or Magic.
Vinigo would also never taste food again, as it would be dangerous to release the restraint from his mouth, so the death row guards would just inject the necessary nutrients every day into his veins.
From the day the ally of the demons was judged, he was also condemned to live forever in a dark and fetid environment, locked inside his own mind with another version of himself that he may not have known existed. Vinigo was certainly no longer human when Luke defeated him, but by the end of his fifteen years of imprisonment he would surely have become something as bad as a monster.
After Luke helped with Vinigo’s escort, he returned to the Academy with Namor. Together they went down to the Alchemy Professor’s office, which was being protected by some of Namor’s trusted guards.
The vice-principal asked the half-wolf to help in a detailed search of the former Alchemy Professor’s office, after all, it was Luke who had found out about Vinigo.
Luke agreed, but said he preferred to go in alone first to investigate. Since Meredith, John and Nathalia had already been released to leave the boarding school, they had already gone to the Strogueher estate, so Luke would rather do this alone than with strangers.
Namor accepted, after all Luke Lange had become a man he trusted.
At the top of the office, Luke found no new information, only studies in Alchemy. So before he went down to the basement, he allowed Namor and the other guards to enter, so they could do their research.
As Luke descended the winding staircase, he found the three doors that had made him curious last time. As Luke opened each of them, he found empty and destroyed cages, vials with formaldehyde, a cadaveric conversation substance. However, most of the jars were empty, and those that were not, carried pieces of animals.
After leaving the last room, Luke finally descended to the main floor of the basement.
Taking a closer look at this moment, the half-wolf noticed how large the space was. Right at the entrance he found Vinigo’s hand, which was cut off by the Behemoth Axe, and a little further on Luke found exactly his axe, which he missed so much in this last battle.
In addition, Luke could still hear the breathing further down the chamber, and realizing that there wasn’t much else to investigate he followed the sound of it.
Then, with a lamplight in his right hand, Luke lit up the space where the breaths were coming from. When the cages were lit, the creatures trapped in it became very agitated and noisy. The warm light of a lamplight was never a good sign for them, so they began to grunt and groan in fear, but not scream, as if they had been taught not to scream.
However, when they realized that it was not Vinigo, a point of hope appeared deep in their hearts, so they calmed down a bit.
The half-wolf found an environment with dozens of cages, which contained mainly small animals such as rats, skunks and raccoons, as well as some medium-sized animals such as dogs, cats and other beasts. However, deeper into the maze of cages, Luke also encountered humans, who were plucky and afraid.
Luke approached the humans’ cages carefully so as not to frighten them. They were wearing only old rags and stank badly.
It was easy for Luke to count the number of people there, which were nine in total. There were women and men, old people and teenagers, all very thin and full of scars all over their bodies.
“Calm down, I’m not going to hurt any of you.” Luke spoke to them, as they were coerced in the back of their cages.
Even though Luke tried to reassure them, they did not change the way they reacted and continued to be pressed in their cages. The half-wolf considered cutting the bars to release them, but he soon dismissed this idea, because he didn’t know them well enough yet. They seemed to have gone through hell in Vinigo’s hand, something the journal itself reported, but Luke still couldn’t dare to release any of them without gaining their trust as well, as the released person might try to attack him.
Luckily for the half-wolf, a slave of the Alchemist stepped forward in his solitary cage and approached the warm light of the lamplight. Luke illuminated him better with the lantern, and his eyes reacted sensitively to the glow of the flames, indicating that they were always in complete darkness.
The half-wolf saw the face of a balding old man, whose thin arms were riddled with spots from working in the sun. ‘He probably used to be a farmer before he became a slave, or maybe he worked in the sun in a forced way.’ Luke deduced.
“You have the same voice as the man who told the Doctor to shut up… Are you a good man? Will you really help us?” The old man asked.
Luke looked him in the eye and saw hope in the experienced eyes of that old man who never saw anything life, and that pure feeling coming from someone so much older touched Luke’s soul.
“Of course, I will go. Do any of you have Family in Oukiwa?”
“Oukiwa? What is Oukiwa?” Looking confused, the elderly man questioned in his mild voice and with his mouth almost toothless.
Hearing the doubt, Luke arched his eyebrows, surprised. “What do you mean? You don’t know what Oukiwa is? Wait a second, can you at least tell me where you guys came from?”
“We are from the Flak Kingdom.” A middle-aged man replied, sitting on the floor of a cage behind the half-wolf. “If you said we are in Oukiwa, we must be in Broteforge right? That nation to the far west.”
Luke turned to talk to the man better, and saw that he lacked both arms, but the half-wolf just disregarded that and focused on the conversation, also to not shake the man’s self-esteem.
“Flak Kingdom? Damn… How did you guys end up so far away? Yes, we are in the Broteforge Empire.”
The man reluctantly denied. “Well, that’s a long story. To be weak, it’s such a long and unpleasant story that it should be forgotten.”
The old man in the cage denied with his head, at the same time making quick clicks with his tongue. “But I think he needs to know some things. Kaizer, he can’t let us go without knowing us, we could be criminals and he still wouldn’t know. Just because he has the will to set us free, we should be honest with him.”
Of course, Luke was glad that the old man thought this way, after all this was an honest way of thinking. They had no way of knowing that Luke could tell when they were lying or not thanks to his enhanced hearing.
“You are wrong, sir. I don’t care if you used to be criminals or not.” Luke said, surprising Kaizer, who was a deserter from the Flak Kingdom, meaning a man who fled the war on the Hati continent, a crime without forgiveness. “I just need to know a little about you guys to find out if there is anything you can help me with or not. Your account may help me to connect this occurrence to possible partners of the one you called as the Doctor, partners who are very rich and dangerous in this Empire.”