Immortal Ki Technique

" Not a miracle, magic."

Walking over to the woman, Lowen did the same thing to the lock on her chains. With a thought, his sword became flexible and with another thought, it hardened within the lock. the chain on her arms made a small clink noise and Lowen gently lowered them to the floor, so as to not make too much noise. Bren following in and slowly shut the iron door behind them just in case any goblin guards decide to walk by. The woman, having her arms freed, wanted to immediately shout with joy but Lowen quickly put a hand over her mouth and whispered.

"Shhhh, I know you"re excited but we can"t be loud. I released you from these chains so now I need you to talk."

Lowen then gave a description of Clovis and asked the poor woman if she had seen him or not. The woman could only shake her head no, being chained to the wall she could only see slightly through the slit in the door, plus the fact that it was already so dark in the cave and you can barely see a face five feet away from her let alone anything else. Bren became upset with this news and began to curse under his breath.

" d.a.m.n d.a.m.n d.a.m.n, Lowen, she doesn"t know anything, we need to keep moving."

Lowen, however, held up a hand to quiet Bren and continued asking questions.

" Woman, tell me, do you know your way around here? do you know where they would hold someone important?"

The woman timidly answered.

"Yes, when I first came here there were many of us and these cells hadn"t even been built. At that time they kept us even deeper within this cave and herded us around like cattle."

The woman then explained in detail exactly where to go, remembering her words exactly, Lowen said.

" Okay, I got it, do you remember your way out of here and can you get there in the dark?"

The woman sheepishly nodded her head.

" Good, I want you to quietly navigate your way to the exit and once your outside I want you to hide in the nearby forest. If you meet a man out there do not be afraid, just tell him that Bren and Lowen rescued you and sent you out ahead of time, do you understand?"

The woman nodded again and Lowen and Bren made their way to the door, just as they were leaving the girl whispered.

" Wait, please wait, which one of you is Bren and which one of you is Lowen?"

" Why does that matter?"

" I just wanted to know what your name was. Are you bren or are you Lowen?"

Lowen then pointed at himself.

" I"m Lowen and that"s Bren, good luck."

" Wait."

" What else do you want?"

The young lady bowed with all her heart and said.

" I...I"m Lucy, thank you.

Lowen nodded at Lucy and then he and Bren turned and left. They couldn"t wait any longer and sped through the hallway. As they went down the hallway, they could tell that more of these cells held plenty of people in them. Right now though they had no time to rescue anyone else. The longer they stayed the higher the chances of someone discovering them. So like the wind, Lowen, and Bren blew through the cave at remarkable speed. Now that they knew exactly where they were going they no longer needed to be careful with which path they took, as long as they stayed swift-footed and quiet they could kill any opponent in front of them before they could warn the others. Deeper and deeper they made their way in, the further they went the more complex the cave system became. As a matter of fact, if they didn"t have Lucy"s information it could have easily taken them hours to figure out the proper direction, even with Lowen"s earth sensing ability. As they continue to make their way through the cave, instead of seeing more goblins, the situation was actually the opposite, there were less and less the further they made their way in, confusing the two. The two had no time to think of this though and continued on. Soon, the two came to another split in the cave which confused them even more. According to Lucy, there was supposed to be only one path.

" Lowen, that woman said there was only one path yet here we come upon two, that b.i.t.c.h lied to us, what do we do now?"

Lowen, however, thought differently, looking at the path Lowen noticed some oddities. Pointing at the left path he said.

" No, I don"t think she lied, look at this."

Lowen gently tapped at the inside of the left path and as he did, clumps of rock and dirt began to fall. Lowen quickly caught all these pieces and laid them down gently. Seeing this crumbling path Bren"s eyes widen in both confusion and curiosity.

" What does this mean?"

Lowen thought for a moment before rubbing the dirt off of his hands.

"I believe this left path was made recently."

" Recently, how recently?"

"Two or three hours, maybe less. I can feel that the earth energy here has moved to this left path within the last few hours."

Bren wondered why a path would suddenly appear. Did this mean the enemy knew they were coming, was the left past a trap or was the right? was it just a coincidence that it was made only a few hours ago? These were the questions buzzing around the twos minds. Bren grew impatient and finally asked.

" Which one should we take?"

Lowen shook his head, although the path to the left seemed to have just recently been made, that in itself could be a farce. An earth mage could with some difficulty could shape this path to look that way and then move earth energy from one side to the other, making it seem like it was recently built, when in fact that path could have been there all along. The two were completely stopped. Lucy had told them about one path and then as soon as they reach here there"s two. Was she lying or was her information just wrong? Did the enemy set this up in advance knowing someone would make their way here?

" Bren, it"s a trap or it"s not, either way, I don"t think Lucy lied, so if they did set this up in advance and knew that we would come and that when we did come we would be limited on time. At that point when we reached the splitting paths, we would have no choice but to split up to save time. That"s probably what they"re thinking. If this was set up for us, then they would already know that I"m an earth mage and that I would naturally spot that there was something wrong with the left path, which is why I would probably suggest going right. In doing so you would then go left and the goblin leader would probably take control over you at that point. He would then have you possibly try to kill me or something else along those lines. With me completely unexpecting it, you would come over as though everything was normal and then stab me in the back."

Bren hearing these words became shocked, he didn"t know if all of this was just Lowen"s conjecture but hearing how thought out it was, it seemed to be a definite possibility. If they truly did know we were coming, best bet would be to separate us and this was the perfect moment to do it.

"So what do we do then? How do we avoid this trap?"

Lowen rubbed his chin and smiled devilishly.

" Even if they don"t know we"re here I believe this was a setup just in case we did come. So no matter what, I believe it"s a trap but the only way the trap works is if we separate. Separating at this point would be stupid, whether they had a trap or not, our best bet is to pick one path and follow it together.

"Right, so which one shall we take?"

Lowen didn"t hesitate and pointed to the right. Just before they left, Lowen called Bren over and with precision Lowen channeled ki into a pressure point in Bren ears, blocking them completely from any and all noise. This way if the goblin leader could control others by using his voice, then Bren should be left unaffected. Bren felt a strange sensation in his ears and then nothing. The small sounds echoing in the cave became silent, the wind no longer howled and the drops of water dripping disappeared, everything, all of it suddenly stopped. It was so quiet that Bren felt it was eerie. Bringing his fingers up to his ear, he began to snap a few times but the expected noise never came, looking at his hand and then at Lowen he was surprised, to say the least. When Lowen had said earlier that he would block Bren"s hearing, Bren only figured that Lowen would simply put some cloth or something similar in his ear. He never expected this at all and found this technique that Lowen use was quite mysterious. Bren wanted to ask him about it but he knew now was not the time or place.

Taking the right path, the two ran in, albeit with caution. Lowen had no real reason for choosing the path to the right. He had no clue how his enemy truly thought, it could be exactly as he reasoned earlier or could be completely different, he had no way to tell. Lowen figured as long as he and Bren stuck together, then the enemies trap should fail.

Making their way through the path, it seemed to be continuous turns, left, right, left, left right. Not only that, the further they went the more and more narrow the path became. This path, however, was different from every path they had taken before. In this path, there were glowing crystals alongside the walls, lighting up the way. Each crystal glowed a light blue. Roland had told Lowen about these crystals before and they were nothing special. Apparently, these were just regular ordinary crystals, in this world when there is an abundance of a certain element, regular crystals like these will glow to match that colors element. Lowen could feel an abundance of water elemental energy flowing the deeper he went. That"s why these crystals that lined the wall glowed a light blue.

It had now been almost an hour and they were still headed down, finally, after coming around another turn, the path had come to an end and opened up into a large chamber. Walking in, the two could see just fine. There were hundreds of the same regular crystal glowing bright blue with light. To see so many of them lit up in this huge chamber, it looked as though they were staring up at stars in the night sky. Walking further into the dome-shaped chamber, it was surprisingly empty, there was nothing here. Looking around, this dome-shaped chamber stretched for about 500 ft all around and from the ground up it was also 500 ft tall.

( Why would they have a chamber this big?)

As soon as Lowen had thought this. the entire chamber began to tremble. Lowen and Bren both stared at each other before turning back around to look at the path behind them. The path as well began to tremble and shake and with a large *Bang* a big metal door suddenly blocked the path, sealing it shut completely. Lowen and Bren swiftly raced towards the door. If this was the trap, then they needed to escape immediately. Rushing to the door, the two both launched an attack at the same time, bren with a punch and Lowen with his heavy battle hammer.

* Clang* * Bang*

Lowen and Bren, using their full strength had left no marks on the door whatsoever. The two were utterly shocked at how thick and tough it was. To not even dent it, what the h.e.l.l was this door made of? Suddenly the walls of the chamber began to open up with hundreds of holes and as they did, hundreds of footsteps could be heard followed by many low growls and shouts. Exiting out of the holes, a horde of goblins began filling the chamber. As each one stepped out and spotted the two enemies in their home, their anger and excitement for blood grew. Seeing no escape routes and hundreds of enemies flooding in, Lowen and Bren took up their defensive stances. As they did this, another hole formed at the very back of the chamber, exiting out of it, two goblins made their appearance. One was the goblin leader from before and the other was the second circle earth mage. The earth mage raised a hand and a throne of stone grew out from the ground. Sitting down, the goblin leader looked at his two opponents and laughed wildly.

" Hahaha, you came, you actually came. Just as I thought, It seems everything is falling into place."