141 Chp.2: Some escape plans

As Misune continued to clean his teeth, Haku began to reflect on what he knew about the arena. He wasn't someone who waited for enlightenment to magically strike him: every day, every single day, he spent hours and hours reasoning to find a weak point in the defenses of the prison in which he was locked up in for a year now.

The problem was the lack of information. Haku knew too little of the world around him: even if he had managed to get out of the arena, he wouldn't have known where to go. He didn't know the capital and its structure, and once outside he didn't know what its surroundings were like. Unfortunately, the collar made it impossible for him to investigate: he had tried to go to other places instead of always the same corridor, but the cursed object prevented him. Haku had hoped that when he grew up they would have taken it away from him, at least to replace it, and he could have used that moment to try to escape; even if he didn't get far, he could discover the right path. After many attempts, he would be able to figure out which direction to take to exit. At that point, he would use the nullification rune to escape when no one expected it. Unfortunately, however, they had never removed the collar: it seemed to get bigger as time went by, adapting to his ever wider neck.

Haku had considered using the rune prematurely, taking off the collar and trying to sneak out using the invisibility rune, then coming back and putting the collar back on pretending it still worked, and repeating this until he found his way out. out. Unfortunately, however, he soon realized that the arena was very well protected to avoid escapes: to begin with, the door to the dormitory only opened from the outside, so unless he broke it down he couldn't get out. Besides, it was always full of guards outside. Haku wasn't sure he wanted to risk it: if humans discovered that he had a way to remove his collar, they would surely use even more drastic security measures.

Therefore, he had to find a way to discover the floor plan of the building before attempting to escape. He would only get one go, and he couldn't afford to make mistakes. Since he couldn't find out by himself which direction to take to get out of this place, he necessarily had to use another source of information.

His first choice had obviously been Misune. Before becoming a slave, the half-elf lived in the outside world, so she must know the path. Unfortunately, Haku had overestimated the newcomers' ability to remember: they seemed to have a knack for not remembering certain details. To top it off Misune had become a slave when she was just thirteen years old, and apparently memory capacity diminished the younger a newcomer was, and so the half-elf had only been able to describe a very botched and poorly detailed journey.

For Haku this was inconceivable. He memorized everything that happened around him, even the smallest things. Anything could be useful after all. It seemed absurd to him that anyone could use his memory in any other way. Although his siblings, despite the different intelligence quotient and the different passions and personalities, had an excellent memory and were almost never wrong in describing a past situation in minute detail. Sadly, it seemed like it was very different for newcomers than for dragons. And Haku found that very, very irritating.

The only areas Misune had been able to describe well were the ones she commonly visited: the slave dormitory, the beast prison where she worked before being assigned to him, the corridors she habitually walked. Even though it wasn't much, it still broadened Haku's knowledge of the layout of the place. It was still a small achievement. Haku wanted to send her to investigate, but he was more than sure that the slave would be inexperienced enough to be discovered, so he shelved the idea: if they saw Misune wandering through the corridors of the arena looking for the exit, they could connect her to he. While humans were unlikely to do more than taunt him for his futile attempt, since they were convinced their collar kept him at bay anyway, they might have chosen to further restrict his freedom to better ward off future attempts of escape.

Haku had hoped that Misune would be able to at least explain to him what the capital was like. After all, he'd be there once he was out of the arena, and he'd have to know the quickest route to escape and what dangers he might encounter. Unfortunately, once again Misune had proved of little use: although she had been born and raised there, she knew only a small part of the city. Haku couldn't understand it: when he was born he had done everything to get out of the cave and explore his mother's territory, how was it possible that the half-elf, who was at least twelve years old at the time, hadn't done what he had done in a few days? The newcomers really were pathetic creatures. Haku felt ashamed that the kind of the dragons, his kind, had been brought to the brink of extinction by such beings. Once again he cursed the second sun and the catastrophe it had brought about: if it hadn't been for that, the newcomers could never have even thought of scratching the mighty dominion of the dragons.

At least he'd been able to get some basic information: the city was divided into three main districts. At the center was the noble district, where the houses of the nobles were located; the nobles, from what Haku understood, were those who commanded the kingdom and managed its administration. At the center of the noble district was the royal palace, which served both as a home for the king and his family and as the center of the country: it was there that the nobles met to discuss laws and decrees with the sovereign. Clearly that was the most guarded place of all, so Haku should have avoided the noble district at all. When he'd asked Misune which direction it was located, she hadn't been able to answer, saying it was impossible to point it underground; when he'd asked her if she could at least tell him if it was north, south, east, or west, the half-elf had asked him what the points of the compass were. Haku had to exhale quite deeply to avoid exploding with rage that time. If there was one thing he hated it was ignorance: how the heck had Misune managed to live for seventeen years without even knowing her way around!?

The second district, which surrounded the noble district, was the merchant district. It was the 'middle part' of the city, the bridge between the rich and the poor. There lived the common people, that is, who weren't born of a noble parent, but still possessed a good fortune. Most were merchants, hence the name 'merchant district', but there were also bankers, judges, lawyers, doctors and other high professional categories. Many nobles did business with them and the poor came to them for help, so the merchant district was the busiest in the city, and consequently also contained many important attractions and buildings. The arena was one of them: Haku had therefore discovered that he himself was also in the merchant district.

Therefore, if he wanted to escape, he would have had to cross the entire third district, or the 'common district', where the commoners lived. By 'commoners' humans meant all those people who were of humble origins and who did not possess great wealth, therefore practically the majority of society: farmers, breeders, tailors, carpenters, and so on. This was the district Misune knew best, having lived there most of her life, so she was able to describe it a little better: the houses were mostly wooden, the streets were not very paved and not there were a great many guards. As a result, it would be easier for Haku to escape and if he found an obstacle he could easily break through with his current strength. Obviously, however, Haku had no intention of attracting too much attention, so he had chosen that he would have implemented his escape in the middle of the night: apparently the common district did not have much artificial lighting and almost everyone went to sleep very early to be able to wake up at first light of dawn and immediately start working. As a result, it would have been easy for him to slip away without attracting attention. Even though it was over ten meters long by now, he was still able to move without making a sound and could use the invisibility rune to disappear completely. If he could escape without causing too much trouble, he could be fleeing into the countryside before anyone noticed him.

The problem was that to do this he needed to know the layout of the streets. The capital was not small and if he wanted to escape before they noticed him he would have to get out of the city quickly. And if he wanted to be silent he couldn't start jumping from one roof to another, also because probably many of them wouldn't have supported his weight: by now he had become too big and he couldn't do as he did a year before, when he could climb trees and jump from branch to branch. Therefore, he had to know the streets of the district ahead of time. And perhaps Misune had been able to provide those information? Of course not! The half-elf had only been able to tell him about her birth neighborhood and some adjacent ones, nothing more.

That, in the end, was all he got from that slave girl: a cobbled together explanation of the arena and an even less detailed explanation of the city. In short, a pittance. Even if it was still much more than he had been able to discover on his own.

In any case, they had still been useful: now Haku knew perfectly what were the problems he had to solve. First, he had to find out which way out of the arena was. Second, he had to figure out how to get past the trading district the arena was in, since there were sure to be guards there. Third, it had to make it past the common district.

He had already formulated a plan: to get out of the arena, even if he didn't know the main exit, he could use the gate that allowed him to enter the combat zone. At night the stands would be empty, so no one would notice. Between the stands and the fighting zone there was at least ten meters of wall, but Haku was sure he could scale it using his claws and powerful muscles. Once he reached the stands he could have gone out as any normal spectator would have gone out. Once outside, it would have been enough for him to use the rune of invisibility to remain unnoticed on the streets.

This plan reduced the problems that he had to solve to just two. First, he had to know the plan of the city, or at least of the streets that ran from the arena to the edge of the capital, so that he could escape as quickly as possible, or he risked still being there when the sun came up and that would create not a few problems since it would be difficult to find a place to hide. He would have been invisible, not untouchable: with hundreds of humans clustered in the same street, it would have been impossible not to bump into them.

The second problem he had to solve was figuring out how to get out of the dormitory and get to the gate without being noticed. As already mentioned, the door only opened from the outside, there were many guards, and the slightest noise would surely rumble through the corridors, alerting everyone to his escape. He had to find a way to become as quiet as possible.

In a year, he still hadn't been able to find a solution for these two problems. But he was sure that, evaluating every possibility carefully, sooner or later he would find solutions. He didn't have much else to do after all, and his determination to return to his siblings was very strong. He would have continued, for a thousand years if necessary, but he would have found a way.