Inside the inner city

Elliot walked inside the bar and everybody looked at him warily, they hadn't expected him to come again after he was done with Daunt, everyone who had a price put on their head left the bar in a hurry and in the end very few people were left since only criminals came to this place.

"Here are your 5 silver coins, give me what I asked for."

"Uh... yes sir."

The bartender looked at the empty bar and released a sigh, that was the issue with this bar. Whenever a guard, a soldier or a strong bounty hunter came in everybody left and it was a huge monetary loss to the owner.

The bartender left through the backdoor and came back a minute away with a folder paper.

"This is where the hidden entrance is."

/

Elliot went out of the bar and felt a fair number of eyes were looking at him.

'The guys who left the bar when I came in ? Or did I already attract the attention of someone else ?'

As Elliot didn't want to be followed from now on he disappeared from where he was and reappeared a second later on top of a building, his agility had been boosted so much that he could do almost magic stuff like this without any effort.

He looked down to the ground and saw a bunch of people grouping where he was and looking around.

'Aren't they used to seeing stuff like this even in this fantasy world ?'

Elliot wasn't aware yet because he had very little contact with people from this world but super-humans like him and magicians were only the elite of this world, on top of that : things like items with addictions stats or skills were mainly owned by nobles and rich people such as merchants.

In the end he recognized a few people he had seen in the bar amongst the group and decided to leave, they were probably just waiting for him to leave. He went to a inconspicuous spot and opened the paper, inside it was a map with a red circle somewhere around the inner city's walls.

'It should be around here...'

After looked right and left for some time Elliot saw a broken down house, since all the houses around quite pretty and new. This old house attracted his attention, on top of that it didn't have a door and had a sort of curtain.

Elliot pushed the curtain away and went inside, his hand was inside his cape while holding the dagger. This place really wasn't the kind of place he would have went to if not for the quest and to help the kids.

Behind the curtain there were a few people sleeping on the floor, he looked at all of them and he realized they all looked homeless.

'A homeless shelter ?'

He walked deeper in the house and there were stairs going down where the inner city's wall was supposed to be, Elliot smiled and went down.

'I guess this stair will take me underneath the wall, how is it possible that such an obvious entrance to the inner city wasn't found by a guard or whatever yet ?'

Although Elliot was curious he didn't care that much and just went down, half a minute later the stairs changed direction and started going up instead of down, very soon Elliot was out in a very pretty but empty house.

'I guess a broken down house wouldn't be inconspicuous in the rich inner city.'

He looked through a window and saw that the sky was still quite high and decided attacking now wasn't a good idea, he went to the second floor of the house and opened a random room. Since the house was empty he just went on the bed and started resting while waiting for the sun to go down.

/

That night a shadow jumped from roof to roof in the direction of the central palace with its cape flapping through the wind, the sound was quite loud but since that night was very windy Elliot knew that nobody could hear it.

The central palace wasn't surrounded by any wall since it was already in the safe inner city and only had metallic fences surrounding it however Elliot didn't miss the hundreds of guards standing as straight as poles !

During his nap that afternoon he had thought of a plan, he wasn't sure if it was a good idea but still decided to go with it since he couldn't think of anything else.

After jumping over the fence Elliot slowed down his breathing and started making as light steps as he could, since he was wearing the dark cape on top of that he was like a shadow moving through the night, no one was able to see or hear him.

'Alright before killing the baron I need to free everyone.'

He grabbed a guard on watch and strangled him, he wasn't even able to do any noise and was bought to a dark place.

"I'll ask you a few questions, if you make things harder for me you're dead, get it ?"

Elliot whispered, he couldn't know this since he wasn't able to feel it but this weak guard was feeling an immense pressure due to Elliot's strength, similarly to how Elliot felt in front of the old man who gave him the quest.

The man nodded and Elliot took back his hand.

"Recently a village in that direction was attacked by the baron and all the adults were abducted, where are they ?"

"S-Some of them are dead, the rest are in the dungeons."

"How did they die ?"

Elliot was already furious against the baron but now it had just been multiplied by 10.

"Some men were forced to work on construction sites too hard and died from being beaten up while some women were killed by the baron himself when they refused to sleep with him."

Elliot's cold eyes were piercing the soul of the guard and he didn't have the courage to lie to him and so told all the truth straight away.

"Where is the dungeon ?"

"Behind the palace, there is a sort of tomb locked by a metallic door. It leads down to a cave where all the villagers are held."

Elliot made the guard sleep on the spot and left towards the dungeon, he wasn't scared of the guy remembering his face since it was so dark there that even Elliot had a hard time seeing what the guard looked like and anyway when the guard will wake up the castle would be in a mess already.