Chapter 94: Rescue
"Demiurge."
"Yes, Ainz-sama."
Demiurge raised his head immediately. Behind his glasses, his eyes held a gleam of anticipation.
He had prepared himself to receive commendation. Arranging a private meeting between Ainz-sama and the white lizardman — such thoughtful initiative deserved recognition.
"Next time, don't act on your own in matters like this."
Demiurge caught the note of reproach hidden in those words with his usual precision.
His body went slightly rigid. He bowed deeply.
"As you command, Ainz-sama."
Inside, Demiurge was working through a set of feelings entirely unlike those of a moment ago.
It seemed Ainz-sama preferred to manage such things himself, from start to finish. His own contributions had only interrupted Ainz-sama's enjoyment of the process.
He reflected on this in silence.
That white lizardman had earned Ainz-sama's favor, but she was ultimately of a low and humble race. Perhaps Ainz-sama wished to approach the matter at his own pace and in his own manner, rather than be handed something already arranged.
What foolishness on his own part.
Demiurge condemned himself silently for his presumption. Ainz-sama's wisdom reached depths he could not fathom. And he had presumed to smooth the path, only to end up disrupting Ainz-sama's original design.
"This subordinate understands." Demiurge's expression showed genuine remorse. "This will never happen again."
Ainz gave a slight nod. A quiet relief settled inside him.
Demiurge had finally understood.
*
The capital's illegal brothel.
Sebas pulled open the iron door at the end of the passage without any particular effort. The rusted hinges screamed. Beyond it lay a stone staircase descending into the dark, damp air rising from below carrying the smell of mold and blood.
Having regrouped, Lucian went first.
The stairs were narrow. Moss covered both walls, wet and slippery to the touch. With each step, the smell grew stronger.
Sebas followed close behind, sharp eyes sweeping the scene ahead as it came into clarity.
The stairs reached their end. Lucian stopped.
It was a dungeon.
Iron bars ran from floor to ceiling, cutting the entire space into seven or eight cramped cages. Each held people, arms extending through the gaps like dead branches hanging outside. Mostly adult women. A few were children.
Lucian and Sebas's arrival didn't make any of them raise their heads. They held their positions without moving, like bodies from which the souls had been removed.
Sebas walked to the nearest cage.
Inside were three women. The oldest looked barely over twenty. The youngest was still a child. Their clothes were in rags, and the exposed skin of each was covered in wounds that had layered over each other, old under new. Something that looked like intersecting whip marks and burns, and other wounds whose origins Sebas couldn't identify.
"It's all right now."
Sebas crouched down, bringing his gaze level with the youngest girl's.
His voice was quiet, the way someone might speak to a frightened small animal.
"We're here to get you out."
The girl raised her eyes.
They were large eyes. But the look in them was vacant — eyes that had lost all their light.
Sebas reached out and took hold of the iron lock on the cage door. A light twist, and the lock crumbled in his palm.
"Come out." He stepped back half a pace, clearing the entrance. "You're free."
Nobody moved.
The women remained huddled in their corners, posture unchanged. The girl drew back slightly and buried her face in her knees.
Sebas's brow pressed together a fraction. He moved to the next cage. The same action. Each time, the answer was silence and nothing else.
He stood in the center of the dungeon, surrounded by seven or eight open iron doors and dozens of unmoving people.
Not one of them showed any joy. Not one showed any relief. Not even the most basic response.
"They no longer think of themselves as people."
Lucian's voice came from behind him, oddly loud in that dead silence.
Sebas turned.
"They've been here too long. It isn't only their bodies that are imprisoned. Their minds are too."
Lucian started walking. He stepped into one of the cages.
Inside sat a woman in her twenties. The wounds covering her were no fewer than a soldier's from a real battlefield.
Lucian drew his sword. The blade slid from the scabbard with a quiet, cold ring.
Sebas's body shifted slightly forward. An instinct to step in.
But out of trust in Lucian, he held himself back.
Lucian's sword came down.
The tip found the rusted iron shackle at the woman's ankle with precision. The chain snapped. Fragments skittered across the floor.
Her ankle was exposed. The skin around it bore a deep line of black-purple, ground in over years.
The woman raised her head.
Her eyes moved over Lucian's face and the blade in his hand, then dropped again.
Perhaps in her eyes, this rescue was just another script some noble had commissioned.
She had prayed to the Four Great Gods for deliverance more times than she could count, and received nothing. She had long since stopped believing that anyone would come.
Or perhaps it was something else. Perhaps she was afraid of being saved.
She knew the rules here. She knew exactly how to deal with a noble so the beatings came less often, exactly how to please the guards so the portions were slightly larger, exactly how to curl herself small in the corner of the cage to draw as little attention as possible.
If someone took her out of this place now, she would have to learn all of it over again. A different darkness, different rules. And when that time came, would she hold on long enough to learn them?
The shackle on her foot had been cut away.
The one around her mind had not.
Lucian crouched down and took a chain from his waist. He fastened it to the shackle still on her wrists, then moved to the next woman and did the same.
"Sebas. Let's go."
He had connected all of them to a single chain.
He gave it a pull. A soft, continuous sound of metal on metal.
Something in that sound woke a response from somewhere deep in their instincts.
They stood. Their movements were stiff, mechanical. And they followed.
This was the guards' method.
Only this way would they move.
Sebas watched this in silence for a moment.
He answered, and fell in behind Lucian.
The stairs were long. Nobody spoke on the way up. The women kept their heads down, eyes on the heels of the person in front of them, their steps slow and shuffling but never stopping. They had grown accustomed to walking this way. Accustomed to following.
The group finally emerged from the brothel.
Morning light came down and touched them.
A few raised their hands instinctively to shield their eyes.
They hadn't seen sunlight in a very long time.