Paralyzed (Tboah!AlbeCale)

25) Orange Hair is a bitch. Hans is baby <3

"Alright, everybody! Continue down the left path! Let's go!"

...

"Damn..."

"Wow, so many..."

Deruth and Eric had exited the carriage and were riding horses now, since the ground had become too soft for carriage wheels, and the many cave entrances would be extremely hard to navigate with a large, inflexible vehicle.

Everyone had searched a few caves already, with no results. They all looked the same; abandoned and dusty.

But the cave which the Henituse+Eric group took had led to many different side entrances inside the deepest part of the cave. There were at least twenty, and were made of chiseled rock, as if someone had hand carved them. They had called the rest of the search party to meet up at this point after discovering it, so the whole group was crowded around this place.

"Which way should we go, count-nim?"

Deruth hesitated at Hilsman's question. He wanted to find his son as quickly as possible, but there had to be a shortcut or an easier way to choose the correct path instead of blindly doing whatever.

Suddenly, someone spoke up. They were the leader of the royal knights.

"I strongly believe we should go through that entrance. I have strong senses, and I can feel a presence inside."

The woman who previously introduced herself as Tasha, had a serious expression. It did not seem like she was just pulling this out of her ass.

"Sure, I guess there's no route that is obviously the correct one. Anyway, it will only waste time overthinking things."

Deruth agreed with her for those reasons, but Tasha knew for sure that she was correct. Her wind elemental had called other elementals nearby to help with the search, and had found him.

What worried her was that the elemental who found Cale said he was acting odd.

– He is not super injured on the outside, but they are saying strange things! He is also talking with a person with orange hair, who is also tied up! This guy seems crazy, you should hurry!

'Orange hair? The only person I know who has that color is the Henituses' deputy butler, but he's with us. Did they kidnap someone else as well, perhaps?'

"Let's go, everybody check your weapons one last time, we may have to fight if there are guards or accomplices. The knights who are watching the horses have been notified that if we do not return within one hour, they will try and find us. Make sure that doesn't happen."

"Yes sir!"

As they walked through this particular cave section, some of the knights noticed fresh looking bootprints of varying sizes, as well as evidence of weak magic spells which were most likely used to create lanterns or light orbs.

The farther in they walked, the darker it became, and the colder the air got as well. The ceiling also lowered even further, forcing the tallest of the knights to hunch over a bit.

Every little noise echoed inside the pathway, and small water droplets sounded quite loud as they fell from the ceiling every once in a while. The eeriness of the noise seemed to never go away, putting the entire search party on high alert.

Eventually they came to a more narrow stretch of the path, forcing everyone to walk single file. Tasha was at the very front for navigation and trap sensing, as her secret elemental buddy tipped her off if there were any abnormalities.

Everyone else thought she just had extremely good senses since she was in charge of the royal knights. She made sure not to correct them.

At some point during the trek, her elemental suddenly spoke up.