The four guards at the passage entrance saw
"Hey, what's wrong?" one of the guards asked.
"Don't even mention it. It's too disgusting. Great Swordmaster Begna is so cruel..." Lorist knocked on the iron-barred gate as thick as a bowl. "Brother Stam wants me to grab some tools and go clean up down there. We'll have to haul the corpses out later too."
A guard came over to unlock the iron gate and said, "You fool, why do it yourself? Go to the first floor and grab a few slave servants to do the cleaning. Anyway, the corpses are just going to the beast pen to feed the magical beasts..."
Lorist nodded. "That's what I was thinking too, but Brother Stam told me to hurry up. If it takes too long going back and forth between floors, Great Swordmaster Begna might get unhappy again."
Another soldier chuckled. "You two are just unlucky — you happened to catch Great Swordmaster Begna in a bad mood. By the way, how many died just now? The screams echoing back were enough to give me chills. I bet those slaves died horribly..."
The gate opened. Lorist walked in, found a good position, and replied with a smile, "Four."
In the flash of sword light, the four guards' lives froze in that instant. Four sword strikes — each one a clean slit across the throat. The four guards didn't even manage a scream before they crumpled to the ground. Lorist raised his hand, and Elle rushed out from the shadows with seven or eight family soldiers behind him. Working quickly, they stripped the four guards down to nothing. Apart from Elle, three more family soldiers of similar build were selected to don the four sets of Imperial Guard Corps uniforms.
The remaining family soldiers dragged the four bodies away. Lorist looked Elle and the three family soldiers up and down and nodded with satisfaction. "Good. Thank the gods those enemies still wear those antiquated bronze helmets — anyone who isn't familiar would have a hard time telling the difference. You four hold this position. If any enemy patrol can't recognize you, let them through and take them out. If they start getting suspicious, strike immediately — don't let them escape to send word..."
Elle nodded. "Understood, my lord."
Lorist took the keys and headed back. With Elle on the job, he felt at ease. The Imperial Guard Corps soldiers left behind here were only bronze or black iron tier in combat force — only the squad leaders might be silver tier. That wasn't much different from the
"Thanks." The slave Great Swordmaster Hughes took the bronze keys Lorist had brought back and opened the four adjacent cells, releasing the four gold-rank gladiators. As he removed their shackles, he made the introductions. "This is Jades, this is Mason, this is Sandehank, and this is Prom. All four of them are gold rank, which is why they were locked up here with me. Oh, and what should we call you?"
"Norton Lorist. Just call me Locke," Lorist said with a nod toward Hughes and the four gold-rank gladiators.
"Our lord is the head of the Northland Roaring Bears — the Norton Family — and a count,"
But Great Swordmaster Hughes didn't attach much importance to Lorist's title of count. He simply nodded and replied, "Very well then, we'll call you Lord Locke or Lord Count. Jades, Prom — here, take these keys and go release the rest of our people down below."
"Just call me Locke. My friends all do." Lorist watched Jades and Prom disappear into the darkness with curiosity. "There are more people down there?"
"Right. This third underground level was originally for housing silver-tier and above slave gladiators. There are twenty-seven more locked up in the innermost cells. Your people were mainly kept here because they stayed too tightly together, which made them a target for heightened security," Hughes explained.
"My lord, did you say our family forces have already captured the port of Nubite?" Fatty Shi asked from the side.
"I did." Lorist gave a brief overview of the current battle situation. "The reason I infiltrated this royal city was because I was worried about you all. Fortunately, I arrived just in time — otherwise, I might never have seen you again in this lifetime."
"My lord, you shouldn't have taken such a risk alone. It's one thing for us to die, but the fate of the whole family rests on your shoulders. If anything had happened to you, we could never have atoned for it."
"Exactly, my lord. You shouldn't have risked so much..." Fatty Shi echoed.
"Don't be ridiculous. I may be the head of the Norton Family, but I'm also your friend and brother. You became captives because you fought for the family. If I had just turned a blind eye, would I even deserve to be called human?" Lorist said.
"Well said, and you've done well too. Noble lords like you are rare these days. Lord Locke, what's your plan going forward?" Great Swordmaster Hughes chimed in from the side.
"But I can't guarantee how many of us will make it out..."
Great Swordmaster Hughes gave Lorist a long, deep look, perhaps curious about what gave him the confidence to claim he could lead everyone out of the royal city. He pondered for a moment and said, "If all you need is to get out of the royal city, you don't have to fight your way out. I know about a secret passage. Follow me..."
Hughes turned and walked off. Lorist followed with Fatty Shi and Tock, leaving Jim, Clinber, and the other family knights and soldiers to wait behind.
They walked down a pitch-black corridor, and ahead came the sound of commotion. Drawing closer, they saw the two gold-rank gladiators helping a group of people remove their shackles. Seeing Great Swordmaster Hughes and Lorist's group approach, they all called out greetings.
Great Swordmaster Hughes led everyone to the door of the innermost cell in the row. He stood before it and sighed for a long while, then ordered the gold-rank gladiator Jades to open the cell door. After entering, he moved aside the broken wooden bed against the wall and the moldy straw mat on top of it, then tapped one of the large flagstones on the floor and lifted it up, revealing a very small underground cavity — just large enough for a person to squeeze through...
"This secret passage... Old Jones spent fourteen years digging it. By the time he finished and was ready to escape, he fell in the arena..." Great Swordmaster Hughes said with emotion. "That day, before the fight, he excitedly told me he was going to hide two slices of black bread at dinner so he could sneak out that night. But I never saw him come back down... That day's fight was one man against two saber-toothed tigers..."
If a slave gladiator won and survived the match, they would receive a hearty meal as a reward — roasted meat, potatoes, black bread, and cheap wine, enough to eat their fill. Taking a couple slices of black bread back for a midnight snack usually went unnoticed.
"Where does this passage lead?" Lorist asked.
"I don't know." Great Swordmaster Hughes shook his head. "Old Jones told me he'd dug all the way to the underground sewer outlet. Only one last flagstone remained. Remove that, and he'd be free. But Old Jones has been dead for two years, and I was never placed in this particular cell, so I was never able to verify it for myself."
With that, Great Swordmaster Hughes rummaged behind the broken bed and found a small metal fragment and a thumb-length piece of wire. "These were his tools. The metal piece is a broken sword tip that Old Jones picked up and hid during arena combat. The wire he found in a broken wicker basket. The most important thing is that both of these could channel combat force to form a sword gleam. Old Jones used these two tools every night to unlock his shackles and secretly dig for fourteen years until he broke through to this passage."
Incredible. Lorist remembered watching a classic Hollywood film in his past life — something about redemption, he couldn't recall the exact title — in which the protagonist, wrongfully convicted and sentenced to decades in prison, used a metal spoon to secretly dig a tunnel from his cell over the course of ten or so years, eventually reaching the sewer and escaping to freedom. This Old Jones bore a striking resemblance to that film's protagonist, except he hadn't had the same luck. He'd died in the arena just before his escape could come to fruition.
"My lord, let me go down and take a look," Tock said, already moving toward the opening.
"Here, wait." Fatty Shi thrust a torch into his hands. "Take this so you can see properly..."
Tock was gone for about half an hour before climbing back out of the cavity covered in dirt.
"My lord, the passage isn't very long — only about fourteen or fifteen meters. But it's too narrow to turn around in, and very stuffy. At the far end, there's a row of flagstone walls with a small space behind them. I smashed through two large flagstones, and sure enough, there's a sewer passage behind them. Two people could walk abreast. I followed the direction the wind was coming from and went two or three hundred meters to reach an outlet, but the outlet is barred with two rows of iron bars as thick as a bowl..."
Tock made a gesture to indicate the thickness and hesitated before continuing. "I checked it out and the outlet seems to be in a depression. Outside, about fifty meters to the left and right, there's a tower connected to the city wall. If we go out through this outlet, we'd be easily spotted by enemies on the walls and towers. If they attacked with crossbows from range, we'd be completely defenseless with no way to fight back..."
Tock crouched down and drew a semicircular arc on the ground, placing two small circles at the endpoints to represent the two towers, then marked a point in the middle of the arc to indicate the outlet.
"Where does the other end of the sewer lead?" Fatty Shi asked.
"I didn't go that way. It just seemed very dark and long — I couldn't tell where it went. And I was worried you'd be anxious waiting, so I came back," Tock shook his head.
"I don't need to check — I know where it leads," said Great Swordmaster Hughes. "I once heard from a slave gladiator that the exit is on the Ring Road. Actually, this sewer doubles as an overflow drain. The Haneabada Archipelago gets heavy downpours frequently — sometimes lasting two or three days straight. The royal city doesn't flood precisely because of these sewers. Each of the four districts has one like this with an outlet. On the tenth of every month, guards go in to inspect and have the slaves clean them out. The slave gladiator who told me this used to be one of the slaves who regularly cleaned the sewers. He was sent to the arena after he beat an overseer. He only survived three fights before dying in the ring..."
"My lord, what should we do now?" Fatty Shi asked.
From what Fatty Shi and the others had gathered, the gladiators were only given a single bowl of grain porridge per day while locked in their cells. They'd rallied somewhat at the sight of Lorist coming to rescue them, but once they started marching, they wouldn't hold out for long.
Moreover, from what Tock had discovered, escaping through the sewer outlet would be extremely difficult. Such a large group would inevitably alert the guards on the walls and towers, and without weapons, they'd suffer devastating casualties from ranged attacks. He was supposed to be leading them to safety, not dragging them to their deaths...
If he tried to first eliminate the guards on the walls and towers and then lead the group out, that wouldn't work either. Although the wall and tower guards didn't pose a serious threat to him personally, the reality was that the enemy maintained heavy security on the walls. Storming the walls would definitely alert the enemy. If they sent a couple of Great Swordmasters to pin him down while dispatching others to pursue Fatty Shi and the rest, these unarmed family soldiers would have no way to resist. No matter how strong he was, he couldn't possibly save everyone...
For the moment, Lorist was at a loss. He stroked his chin and pondered for a long while, but no good idea came to mind.
"Lord Locke, you mentioned earlier that the Imperial Guard Corps garrisoning the royal city marched out this morning. Do you know how many guards are still stationed at the arena?" Great Swordmaster Hughes's question interrupted Lorist's reverie.
"Oh, there should be a little over two hundred Imperial Guard Corps soldiers guarding the arena — roughly two squads," Lorist replied.
"That's perfect. Then could you lend us a few weapons, Lord Locke? I'd like to free the slave gladiators on the second level too, and seize the first floor as quickly as possible so we can catch our breath," Great Swordmaster Hughes said.
"Hmm?" Lorist was taken aback. Hughes's words seemed to carry a hidden meaning.
"Oh, let me explain, Lord Locke." Great Swordmaster Hughes quickly clarified upon seeing Lorist's expression. "Actually, those two hundred-plus Imperial Guard Corps soldiers you mentioned are only responsible for patrols and oversight. The arena also has a hundred to two hundred instructors and stewards living on the other side — they're the ones who truly pose a combat threat. And the arena's other second-tier Great Swordmaster, Giluweit, resides there as well.
However, the underground cells where we slave gladiators are held can only be accessed through that single entrance on the first floor. If we strike quickly and seize that entrance first — preventing those gladiator instructors, stewards, and that second-tier Great Swordmaster from coming down — then we'll have the time we need to plan our escape..."
"Where is the arena's armory and food storage?" Lorist asked.
"Also on that side." Great Swordmaster Hughes squatted down and drew an oval on the ground, mimicking what Tock had done. "My lord, this is the arena. The underground cells where we're held are on the right side, and the beast pen is right next to them. The gladiator instructors and stewards' quarters are on the left, along with the food warehouse and armory. Every morning, the slave servants go over to pick up provisions, cook them upstairs, and bring them down to us. After we eat, the guards and gladiator instructors take us out to the arena for various training sessions..."
"Oh. So Great Swordmaster Hughes, how do you compare to that second-tier Great Swordmaster — what was his name again? Is there a big gap in skill?" Lorist asked.
"Generally speaking, I can hold my own against him. If we went all out to the death, he might not be my match — but even if I won, I'd pay a heavy price. And they have a dozen or so gold-rank gladiator instructors who'd swarm me all at once — I wouldn't stand a chance. Don't let the fact that Jades, Mason, and the others are gold-rank gladiators fool you. They haven't been eating properly and are weighed down by those heavy iron chains — they're far too weakened to fight effectively. That's why I'm saying we should fight our way up first, while the guards are still relatively few, and seize the first-floor entrance. That's the only way to buy ourselves time," Great Swordmaster Hughes replied frankly.
If that was the case, why not seize the arena first? A sudden idea sparked in Lorist's mind. While the enemy was still off guard, he could first deal with the two-hundred-strong Imperial Guard Corps patrol squad, then head to the other side of the arena to eliminate the gladiator instructors and that second-tier Great Swordmaster. That would buy his family soldiers time to rest and recover. Meanwhile, they could widen the secret passage for easier passage, seize weapons for initial arming, eat their fill, warm up, and rebuild their strength — making the eventual escape far more assured...
"I have an idea," said Lorist.