Chapter 704: Shackled
“…”
Michael was speechless. He felt like he was dealing with another Grieve! She should be the one named Grieve 2.0 instead of that stone Knight.
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
The blonde girl tried scratching her head, but the shackles prevented her from reaching far enough. “I don’t… remember anything.”
“Then how did you transport me here?”
“I… I just had a feeling… I knew you were going to save me…,” she said, looking up at him expectantly.
“So, you have no memory about how to get out of these shackles. Do you even know how you got here, who imprisoned you, who you are?!”
The blonde girl shook her head. “No… I don’t remember anything.”
Michael was exasperated. He was suddenly thrust upon with the responsibility to free her, with no idea how to do it. He didn’t even know if he should. What if by freeing her, he would unleash upon a great evil in the world that would kill everyone and himself?
Though, after looking at that airheaded expression on her face, he seriously doubted that.
Just then, Fudge jumped out of his shadow and landed in front of the blonde girl. He looked at her curiously tilting his blobby violet head, and the blonde girl mirrored his movements.
There was a certain invisible connection that happened between the two, one that Michael wasn’t entirely comfortable with. Nothing was ever as simple as it seemed if Fudge was interested in it.
“Master… I like her!” Fudge declared.
“Hehehe I like you too, slime. I feel like… you and I are going to get along, hehe.”
Michael was now more sure than ever that freeing this girl may be a bad idea. If she got along well with Fudge, then that meant that she was probably as mischievous as he was. After all, birds of a feather flock together.
“Master, quick! How do we free her?” asked Fudge, already gnawing at the shackles.
He put his hands on his waist. “Just a second ago, you were so scared that your whole body was shivering in fear. What changed?”
Fudge flashed a cheeky smile. “Hehe, it’s because I saw that she’s not a bad guy after all!”
He sighed. Fudge was usually a good indicator for whether a person had good intentions or not, so he was more inclined to believe the little slime on this matter.
“Alright. Do your shackles have any locks?” he asked, glancing at the chains restricting her movement.
“No,” she replied. “You have to break it.”
He touched the chains on the shackles, trying to determine its origin.
As far as he could tell, the shackles weren’t made out of any normal metal or material.
ChatJK5, any ideas on what this could be?
[….]
It took ChatJK5 a few seconds as she tried to analyze the material, which was quite weird since ChatJK5 never took more than a second to identify something. She had gone through five updates at this point, and each one only made her processing power a lot stronger.
Yet, it took her more than ten seconds to try and identify these shackles.
[The material used to create these shackles is not in my database. However, by looking at its molecular structure and cross examining it with all other structures that have been stored in my memory, I am 99% sure that these shackles are made out of blood.]
Blood?! How’s that even possible?
He quick-cast a solid 6-star Earth ball spell and flung it towards the chains bolted on the wall.
Aside from a few dust on the wall, the chains remained in pristine condition, with no scratches whatsoever.
[These chains seem to be as durable as that of Mithril] ChatJK5 deduced.
It was hard to believe that such a strong material could be made out of blood.
[It has Aubility Power. Lots of it] said Harbinger. [It’s not being reinforced by it, but it is Aubility Power in and of itself.]
After realizing the durability of these shackles, he was starting to wonder about the blonde girl’s true identity.
Who was she, and why was she imprisoned with shackles that only someone beyond the Nascent Spirit realm could destroy?
Or more importantly, who could imprison her here?
“Is it just you here?” he asked her, cautiously looking around the room. Whoever imprisoned her here wouldn’t be so happy to find someone trying to break her out of her shackles.
“I think so… when I woke up, I hadn’t seen anybody else,” she said.
“When you woke up? And when was that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t… know. I think it’s been a long time.”
A normal human being wouldn’t be able to survive for more than five days without food or water. But judging from the cracks and the wear and tear of the walls from the girl trying to free herself, it looked like she’d been here for more than a month at least.
So, she was probably a cultivator or a magician. It was possible that she was able to sustain herself through the natural mana in the air.
[I have a better way of estimating the time, Michael.]
How?
[Please head down the stairs and let me analyze the candles all around the room.]
That was a brilliant suggestion from ChatJK5. He’d be able to see how long time had passed from how much the candle had melted.
He headed down the stairs and saw candles resting on tall holders half the size of a normal human.
There must have been hundreds of them.
Once he was near, ChatJK5 showed her calculations.
[The candle wax is made out of an ancient material that was known to last for thousands of years.]
Wait, thousands?
[And since the candles have already melted more than halfway through, it is safe to conclude that a thousand years has passed since the candles were first lit up.]
He was speechless. A thousand years? Could the blonde girl really have lasted in this prison for a thousand years?
If so, then who really was she? She definitely wasn’t a normal human. She could only be part of the beastfolk race, since they were the only ones with extended lifespans that could reach up to the thousands.
I’m rushing to conclusions. The candles have lasted a thousand years. But it doesn’t mean that she has also been in here for that long.
Still, there was a part of him that believed her to be some kind of semi-immortal being. After all, she was special enough to be imprisoned here with shackles made for beings above the Nascent Spirit realm.
He walked back up the stairs, still reeling from the discovery.
Then, he saw Fudge and the blonde girl giggling to themselves, seemingly having a great time.
“Hehehe, really?”
“Yup! I’ll show you later,” Fudge promised.
He didn’t know what they were talking about, but it definitely wasn’t good.
“Master, can you free her now? Please?”
He was going to say that it was impossible because the shackles were indestructible to low-level beings like him.
But then, Harbinger gave him an idea.
[You have something that can damage it. Your Unity weapons.]
He perked up. If there was something that could damage Aubility Power, then it was definitely his Unity beams!