I'm a Immortal Tavernkeeper, But My S-Rank Daughter Doesn't Know That!

"Did they really put poison in the food? Why would they do that?" asked Robe, his arms crossed as he looked uncomfortable and stared at the metal tray on the floor.

Victor turned over the mushy food with the rusty spoon and didn’t notice any superficial traces of the poison. This indicated that the poison had been put into the food and mixed with the other ingredients to disguise it.

"Their aim is to eliminate us, without leaving much trace or evidence," said Victor, keeping his voice low to prevent it from echoing loudly.

Robe’s eyes widened. He understood how serious the situation they were in was, especially as it directly involved the Duke of Kozáni and a Rank-S hunter, but his mind was still struggling to accept the brutal reality of the conspiracy.

"But why? Why do they want to kill us so badly?" asked Robe, his voice trembling with anxiety.

Victor sighed, pondering possible motivations. "I don’t know for sure, Robe. It could be that they’re assuming we know too much about something, or maybe it’s just a question of eliminating uncomfortable witnesses. What matters now is that we need to find a way out of this situation. The question is... how do we do that?"

The old hunter approached the railing of his cell and tried to force the bars, but to no avail. Although the bars shook a little in the face of his thundering strength, they were made of pure steel, so Victor could only deal with it if he had his sword with him.

"Damn it, there’s no way to force a way out. We’ll need..."

As Victor spoke his thoughts aloud, trying to find a way out of these cells, a soft creak of metal resounded from the cell to his left. Then Robe appeared in front of him, with a rusty key in his hands.

"How...?" Victor asked, dumbfounded.

Robe, with a confident smile at the corner of his mouth, said proudly:

"Earlier you called me a thief, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a thief has a few ways to escape from chains, handcuffs and cells, right?"

"But at what point did you take the keys from the guards? Was it when the cook came?"

"No, I was still sleepy when he left. I didn’t actually take the key from any of them, but I made my own." Robe then lifted the key in his right hand and the object seemed to turn into a liquid and then into a slightly rusty metal spoon. "I have my tricks too."

Victor’s eyes widened briefly. The skill Robe had just demonstrated was rare, very rare, and truly useful for a thief. Mastering metal with bare hands was something that magicians and blacksmiths had tried for millennia, but only a few had succeeded. It was a mysterious power, linked to magic and the supernatural at the same time, Robe was probably descended from someone very powerful and skilled and didn’t even know it.

Victor watched Robe turn the spoon into a key again, and then open his cell without much noise other than the characteristic click of the lock unlocking.

"That was impressive, Robe. Congratulations." Victor admitted as he left the cell.

"I know!" With his hands on his waist, he said proudly.

"Now, we need to get out of this corridor quietly."

The dungeons they were in seemed much more complex than they were. From what Victor had noticed while being ’loaded’, the dungeons were divided into small sections by floors, with each section being a corridor with cells parallel to each other. As the section in which Victor and Robe had been placed was empty except for them, they were probably still on the second floor of the dungeons, while Wanda should have been on the last.

Theoretically, all this was good for Victor, because it made it easier for him to escape. However, things obviously weren’t going to be that easy. After all, they were still under the duke’s castle.

"What should we do now?" whispered Robe, keeping close to Victor as they advanced cautiously down the narrow corridor.

Victor thought for a moment, pondering the best strategy for escaping the dangerous situation. The weapons room would be the first logical destination. That’s where they probably kept Victor’s sword, a special weapon that had accompanied him in countless battles and that he trusted as an extension of his own body.

"Let’s go to the weapons room first," whispered Victor. "I need to get my sword back and then we’ll see what we can do."

Robe nodded, understanding the importance of that mission.

Victor then opened the door to the section they were in. It was a heavy wooden door and it creaked a little, so Victor opened it slowly, peering in. Victor looked down both sides of the corridor of that block and noticed other wooden doors that probably led to the other cell sections.

There was no one guarding or watching the whole area, so Victor signaled Robe to follow him as he passed through the door.

Victor and Robe slipped silently down the corridor, keeping under the shadows of the torches burning in holders on the walls. The place was very quiet, so the tense atmosphere was exacerbated.

As they reached the corner on the right, Victor raised his hand to signal a pause. The distant sound of metallic footsteps was reverberating down the corridor to his right, indicating the approach of a patrol.

Robe held his breath, his eyes wide, and his trembling hand held the key. He could turn that key into a small needle, but nothing more.

Victor, on the other hand, seemed calm. He stood in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to act as the footsteps grew louder and louder.

When the patrolman finally came around the corner, he was wielding only a flashlight. His eyes were half-closed, oblivious to the presence of the fugitives, and his eyebrows rose at the sight of a man as big as a bear towering over him.

In one swift movement, Victor emerged from the shadows and his hand moved with lethal speed. A sharp blow hit the vulnerable spot on the guard’s neck, and he collapsed silently to the ground, without any chance of reaction.

Robe blinked twice and rubbed his eyes, trying to process how quickly Victor had neutralized the threat.

The guard’s flashlight fell to the ground and rolled to the thief’s feet.

"You...!" Robe spoke out loud without meaning to, because he was surprised, and stopped in mid-sentence. "You’re impressive," he whispered.

"Thank you, but now be quiet and put on that armor. If there’s a patrolman nearby, there must be others." Victor ordered.

The fact that the corridor where Victor and Robe were at that moment was empty didn’t mean that all the dungeon corridors would be empty. In fact, it was more likely that everything was so quiet for another reason - after all, they had been tried once, so they would try again, and it was best for the assassins if there were no guards watching them at all.

Robe put on the armor of the guard knocked out by Victor because the hunter was too big to put on armor that wasn’t adapted to his body, and now they could move around the prison with a little more freedom and speed.

When they found two patrolmen talking together in one of the corridors, the patrolmen looked at Victor with amazement and almost drew their swords from their sheaths, but at the last moment a voice stopped them.

"Calm down, calm down!" Robe said, practically stepping out of Victor’s shadow. "I’m just taking the prisoner to another wing." He argued.

The patrolmen exchanged glances and relaxed their shoulders.

"Wow, what a fright! For a moment, I thought he had somehow escaped from his cell." One of the guards said, placing a hand on his chest.

The other guard, with the visor of his metal helmet slightly raised, seemed a little more suspicious about the situation.

"Is that so? According to the orders I received, the old hunter should stay right here, in the first wing, to distance him as much as possible from the S-Rank. Who gave the orders for the transfer?"

Robe wasn’t just an ordinary thief, he was one of the best in the entire city of Kozáni. His skills went far beyond a bit of transmutation. He was shrewd and knew very well how to improvise. So Robe pushed Victor forward and, with the acidity of a normal guard, said:

"Is it your job to wander these corridors monotonously or to keep an eye on my work? Just know that whoever gave me the orders doesn’t want his name thrown around. This man here is too dangerous to stay in ward one and is being transferred to an appropriate place. Now, if you’ll excuse me."

Faced with Robe’s bluntness, the patrolmen were surprised and stepped aside, making their way into the passage.

Before continuing, Robe looked back and asked:

"By the way, I don’t work on this floor. Do you know where the weapons room is?"

"Um. Just go straight to the end and then to the right, from there..." The more innocent patrolman was speaking, but the other grabbed his arm and stopped him from continuing.

With a still suspicious expression on his face, the second patrolman muttered something to the first, and Robe noticed his right hand moving slowly towards the pommel of his sword. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

"Oh, shit... I guess I was too greedy." Robe whispered to himself. "Run, Victor!" The thief threw back his helmet and started to run.

The two patrolmen quickly drew their swords and prepared to run after the fugitives, but Victor didn’t move a muscle and, with his hands still bound by the handcuffs, said:

"Run? Why exactly would I do that?" Victor looked at the two guards as if he were looking at two ants, and they felt the weight of the hunter’s gaze.