Panic erupted in the damp caverns like a sudden, violent fever. Dozens of freed slaves clutched their chests, where glowing purple veins pulsed beneath their skin. A steady, rhythmic hum vibrated through the air, growing louder and faster with every passing second. 'You've got to be kidding me,' Jasper grunted, his massive shoulders tensing as he took a step back. 'We just got them out of the cages. Now they're walking claymores?' Elias didn't answer immediately. His dirty-blonde hair clung to his forehead, soaked in sweat as his analytical mind began to process the magical frequencies radiating from the crowd. Glowing runes etched directly onto their collarbones flared with a sickening, unstable light. It was a cruel, brilliant piece of magical engineering designed to eliminate any witnesses and punish anyone foolish enough to play the hero. Six minutes. That was all the time they had before seventy-two innocent people turned into meat confetti, taking the entire cavern down with them. 'Jasper, create a perimeter,' Elias snapped, his fingers already beginning to glow with a sharp, concentrated white light. 'If one of these blows, the chain reaction will vaporize this entire mountain. I need you to contain the kinetic energy.' 'Are we seriously doing bomb defusal on our day off?' Jasper complained, though his hands were already moving. 'This is worse than a Friday night server crash at the Tokyo branch.' Heavy, dark gravity began to pool around Jasper's boots, rippling outward like thick, black liquid. He focused his S-Tier Dark Magic, wrapping invisible bands of crushing force around each slave to isolate their individual mana signatures. Calculations ran through Elias's head at lightspeed. His corporate training in data analysis had always been his secret weapon, but now he was applying it to volatile magical constructs instead of quarterly budget spreadsheets. Each rune had a core frequency of four hundred and twelve hertz, oscillating with a secondary frequency of five hundred and eighty. If he could introduce a counter-frequency of light, he could sever the mana feed without triggering the fail-safe. Carefully, he stepped toward the first slave, a terrified teenage boy who was shaking so hard his teeth rattled against each other. 'Hold still, kid,' Elias murmured, his voice dropping to a calm, practiced monotone. 'Look at me. Don't look at your chest. Just think about what you want to eat for dinner tonight.' Light gathered at the tip of Elias's index finger, compressing until it was thinner than a surgical needle. It wasn't the blinding, explosive light he used to clear battlefields, but a highly focused, S-tier photonic scalpel. Steady hands were crucial here. One millimeter to the left, and he would trigger the high-voltage defense mechanism built into the branding. Slowly, he slid the needle of light beneath the boy's skin, bypassing the outer layers of flesh to target the glowing mana threads. A sharp, metallic ping echoed in the cavern. Jasper's dark gravity flared instantly, swallowing a tiny puff of sparks that erupted from the boy's collarbone. The pressure in the air spiked, but the heavy gravitational field held it back. 'One down,' Elias muttered, wiping his brow with his sleeve. 'Seventy-one to go. We have four minutes and forty seconds.' 'I hate overtime,' Jasper growled, his face twisting in concentration as he expanded his gravity field to cover three more people. 'I hate it so damn much.' Sweat poured down Jasper's neck, soaking through his collar as he maintained multiple localized gravity wells. It was like trying to balance a dozen spinning plates while being pelted with rocks, requiring absolute focus. Every micro-explosion he contained sent a jolt of kinetic recoil straight through his massive frame, rattling his teeth. Beside him, Elias moved with frantic, robotic efficiency. Zap. Ping. Zap. Ping. His light scalpel snipped the magical threads with absolute precision, working through the crowd like an elite programmer debugging a corrupted system. Fear was a luxury they couldn't afford right now. If they let these people die, the guilds and the churches would use it to paint them as monsters, dragging them into endless conflicts. Retirement required a clean record, free of collateral damage. They wanted their peaceful, beer-filled future, and they were willing to work like dogs right now to secure it. Three minutes. Thirty people remained. 'Elias, speed it up!' Jasper roared, a thick vein bulging on his forehead as he absorbed a larger micro-burst from an elderly woman's collarbone. 'My mana is holding, but my back is killing me!' 'Shut up and hold the line,' Elias hissed, his eyes wide and bloodshot as he calculated three steps ahead. 'I'm working at ninety-eight percent capacity here!' Brilliant flashes of white light illuminated the dark cavern in rapid succession, followed immediately by the dull, heavy thuds of Jasper's gravity absorbing the kinetic feedback. It was a brutal, exhausting rhythm that pushed both S-tier mages to their physical limits. Two minutes. Ten people left. Heat in the cave was stifling, thick with the smell of ozone and burnt hair. Elias's fingers were trembling now, his mana reserves draining rapidly from the intense focus required to maintain such a delicate spell. Only three remaining. Final three runes began to pulse with a manic, high-pitched whine, their colors shifting from purple to a volatile, blinding red. 'They're going critical!' Jasper warned, dropping to one knee as he forced his gravity to compress around the remaining trio. Swiftly, Elias lunged forward, his light scalpel splitting into three distinct needles of pure energy. He thrust his hand forward, controlling all three needles simultaneously with sheer force of will. Three pings rang out in perfect unison. A violent wave of heat erupted, but Jasper's gravity slammed down like a massive steel vault, crushing the explosions into nothingness before they could expand. Silence fell over the cavern, broken only by the heavy, ragged breathing of two exhausted salarymen. Elias collapsed backward, sitting heavily on the dirt floor. His chest heaved as he stared up at the rocky ceiling, his S-Tier Light Magic fading into nothing. Beside him, Jasper let out a low, guttural groan, rubbing his aching shoulders. 'Tell me we get hazard pay for this,' Jasper muttered, his voice hoarse. 'Because if not, I am unionizing.' 'We survived,' Elias breathed, a grim smile tugging at his lips. 'Every single one of them is alive.' Looking around, the freed slaves were weeping, hugging each other in disbelief as the terrifying purple veins faded from their skin. But the relief was short-lived. A cold, heavy dread settled in Elias's stomach as he stared at the charred remnants of the runes on the floor. These people were bait. High Arbiters hadn't just enslaved them; they had rigged them to explode the moment they were freed, knowing exactly who would come to their rescue. It was a calculated, ruthless move designed to force Elias and Jasper's hand, or destroy them in the process. They didn't care about the lives of these innocent people. To the gods of this world, mortals were nothing more than disposable assets in a cosmic chess game. 'They really want us dead,' Jasper said, his eyes darkening as he reached the same conclusion. 'Or worse, they want to force us to play their stupid game.' 'We aren't playing,' Elias said coldly, his jaw tensing. 'If they think they can manipulate us into their holy war by threatening innocents, they've severely miscalculated.' Suddenly, a strange, metallic scraping sound drew their attention to the center of the cavern. One of the defused runes on the ground began to twitch, its blackened outer shell peeling back to reveal a glowing, crystalline core. Jasper tensed, stepping in front of Elias with his dark energy swirling. But the crystal didn't explode. Instead, it hovered in the air, projecting a cold, golden light that solidified into a pair of mocking eyes. One of the defused runes transforms into a miniature recording device, playing a message from Arbiter Michael: 'Your performance has been evaluated. Terminations begin now.'

Chapter 15: The Countdown on Our Free Time