Tales Of The Mighty Dragonair

"Wait for me here," John suddenly said before stopping at a certain level, "I\'ll do something first."

Arthur just silently watched him moving towards a certain path like he was very familiar with the layout of this place.

"How do you know your way in this messy place?" he couldn\'t help but whisper as he didn\'t heed John\'s words and followed.

"Not all the guards are savage and brutal like this one," John gave him a long glance before whispering, "few, a very rare of them would prefer to chat and rant over their lives with me. At least they would be more comfortable to speak with a dead man like me than anyone else, right?"

"And?"

"No time for that," John gave him a warning glance, "we are close and as you decided to come then I\'ll need you to help me kill a couple of them now."

"There are guards here?"

"Shh." John shushed him before he moved in a strict and confident way like he belonged to this place.

He took a turn right and then left before the two ended up facing a large room where Arthur felt deeply shocked when he saw the sign over its door.

\'Explosives?\' he thought before suddenly realizing the grand plan of John. \'Very brilliant… Causing a fire to cover up our escape is such a nice idea. This way no one would doubt our escape and would think it was a misfortunate accident that caused the fire… as for us, they will think we were killed by it.\'

He marveled at this simple yet very effective plan of John. The moment the two reached the slightly opened door, they could hear voices from inside.

And John took a fast glimpse from the slim opening on the side of the door.

\'Three?\' Arthur saw him making three fingers with his hand before he motioned for him to stand here and wait before moving towards the inside.

"Hi," he simply said before throwing his spear without warning towards the farthest one. "Sorry, you\'ll all have to die for me," he laughed before throwing the second spear in his hand.

Two were pinned to the ground before the third one jumped off his desk and screamed in rage:

"Damn you. Coming to this forsaken place to kill some weak guards? Go to the main castle and face the army if you dare!"

Arthur heard the man taking out his sword and then a clang was clearly heard before John\'s voice came from inside with his laugh:

"You won\'t be able to escape here alive… this I can promise."

Arthur knew what he meant and without any hesitation he moved his sword to block the door. Just as he did that, he felt his sword hitting something big before that body fell over the ground with a deep wound over his belly.

John already got his spear from one of the severely injured guards before muttering in a deep tone, "Gimme a moment, I\'ll be back to you once I finish here."

And he pushed the third body inside the room with many frustrated kicks before closing the door.

Arthur sighed before moving away and the screams of pain and wails of despair echoed from the depth of that room. "I hope none would hear them," he took a deep breath and waited.

After five minutes of this, the voices died down but John didn\'t hurriedly leave. Arthur knew he was gathering his spoils from rings and gears before starting his grand plan.

"I hope he just didn\'t burn the place while we are inside it," he couldn\'t help but say as he took a short glance over the explosive sign on the side of the room.

Arthur tried to think about how huge this place was to distract his worries. They were running for half an hour with all their might and yet he felt like they were so far off the ground.

"I hope the surface isn\'t far away," he muttered before hearing an annoying creak and next John appeared.

"Let\'s go."

Just in less than ten minutes after the silence of all wails, John came out of the door and threw a ring to Arthur, "this is your share, and I made sure you got something nice inside this time."

"Oh… thanks," Arthur took the ring before checking its content while running after John. "Damn. All these ores," he was instantly surprised by the huge amount of ore inside the ring.

"All are explosive ones," John said, "I didn\'t find many tokens with them but left some as a gift."

Arthur moved his eyes towards the side of the ring and found a small pile of flat and rounded ores with empty square center where something kept flashing there.

"What is that?" He took one out and started to marvel at its beauty.

"It\'s our world\'s famed currency," John briefly said before adding, "it\'s nothing much actually but a fancy shape from the outside. Don\'t expect more than a brief gush of energy if you decide to absorb it, a waste in my humble opinion."

"Absorb the energy?" Arthur didn\'t get his meaning, but John hurriedly shook his head as he said: "Not now… later, leave this for later. We are closer to the surface and the explosion could happen at any time soon."

Arthur nodded and stored the strange coin before silently following John.

Just in less than three more minutes they finally saw a different scene than the usual empty cells.

"There… are people!" Arthur glanced around and was shocked to see many people confined here.

"They are the ones getting caught just like you," John simply said while not even stopping, "let\'s go, we can\'t do anything to save them."

"B- But…" Arthur stopped all of a sudden, "I can\'t let them die here like that!"

"Releasing them will make a lot of ruckus and attract unneeded attention to us," John grabbed his arm before adding in a warning tone, "there is not much time left. I don\'t know when that explosion will happen… I won\'t risk my life for slaves, neither should you."

Arthur knew his logic was correct but his conscience wasn\'t aligning well with that. "There are keys, right?" he suddenly asked.