The Extra is a Hero?-Chapter 315: THE PRISON VISIT
Chapter 311: The Prison Visit.
The night air of Sylvaren was usually filled with the gentle, rhythmic humming of the nature spirits. Tonight, that rhythm was about to be violently disrupted.
We stood on the balcony of the Guest Spire, looking down at the shimmering expanse of the city. The Royal Dungeon wasn’t a separate building; it was located beneath the Plaza of Reflection, a massive circular courtyard dominated by the famous Waterfall of Light—a cascading sheet of liquid mana that fed the city’s aqueducts.
"The target is the Plaza," I said, adjusting the clasp of the Void Stealth Cloak. "Maria, we need the Silver Guard to vacate the dungeon entrance. Make it big, but don’t kill anyone. We need a distraction, not a massacre."
Maria Frostheart stepped onto the railing. The wind whipped her translucent white hair around her face, but she didn’t shiver. If anything, the air around her seemed to freeze in deference.
"A distraction," Maria mused, a cruel, beautiful smile touching her pale lips. She raised her staff. "I’ve always hated that waterfall. It’s too... loud."
She dropped.
She didn’t use a spell to slow her fall. She simply plummeted toward the Plaza, three hundred feet below.
"Maria!" Leon hissed, reaching out.
"Watch," Selena said, her obsidian eyes tracking Maria’s velocity. "Impact in 3... 2... 1."
Maria didn’t hit the ground. She hit the water.
CRACK-BOOM.
It wasn’t a splash. It was the sound of a glacier calving.
A shockwave of Frostburn erupted from the basin of the waterfall. In a microsecond, the cascading liquid mana—millions of gallons of it—froze mid-air. The massive waterfall turned into a jagged, towering sculpture of ice. The freezing effect didn’t stop there; it raced outward, turning the cobblestones of the Plaza into a skating rink and freezing the fountains solid.
"Alert! Magical Anomaly detected in Sector 4!" sirens began to wail across the city. "Deployment of Silver Guard requested immediately!"
From our vantage point, we saw the armored units guarding the dungeon entrance scramble toward the Plaza, slipping and sliding on the sudden ice.
"Guard density reduced by 84\%," Selena noted, her voice flat. "Optimal window for infiltration is now."
I threw the Void Stealth Cloak over Leon, Selena, and myself. The world turned grey and muffled as the Void mana bent the light around us.
"Move," I ordered. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺
We moved through the shadows of the city like ghosts. The Void Stealth Cloak was a prototype, burning through its durability at a terrifying rate, but it held. We slipped past the confused sentries and descended the spiral staircase into the earth beneath the Plaza.
The Royal Dungeon wasn’t made of stone bars and iron doors. It was a hollowed-out cavity within the petrified roots of the World Tree. The cells were cages made of living thorns that responded to the prisoners’ mana, tightening if they tried to cast a spell.
We reached the deepest level. There, in a cell suspended over a chasm of dark, swirling mist, we found her.
Professor Lysandra.
She was kneeling on the rough bark floor, her wrists bound by glowing vines that pulsed with a suppressive green light. Her robes were torn, and her face was gaunt, but her posture was perfectly straight. She was meditating.
"Professor!" Leon whispered, rushing to the edge of the thorn-cage.
Lysandra’s eyes snapped open. They weren’t filled with fear, but with a sharp, terrifying intelligence.
"You shouldn’t be here," she said, her voice hoarse. "If Valen catches you, the diplomatic immunity won’t save you."
"We’re breaking you out," Leon said, gripping the thorns. "Maria is causing a scene upstairs. We can get you out before they realize—"
"No," Lysandra cut him off. "If I leave, I prove them right. I become the fugitive they claim I am. And besides..." She looked down at the vines binding her wrists. "These are Spirit-Root Bindings. If I move more than ten feet from this cell without the key, they will crush my wrists."
"Analysis," Selena stepped forward, her eyes scanning the bindings. "Composition: Ancient Wood reinforced with Blood Magic. Breaking strength: 50,000 PSI. Disarming requires a mana frequency match of the King or the High Arbiter. Probability of forced removal: 0\%."
Lysandra looked at Selena, taking in the changes—the cold eyes, the mechanical cadence. A flicker of heartbreak crossed the Professor’s face. "Oh, child... what did the Life Dew do to you?"
"It optimized me," Selena replied, ignoring the sentiment. "Professor, we require intel. The Council claims you planted the artifacts. We know this is false. Why were you framed?"
Lysandra looked at me. "Because I found the door, Michael. I was researching the history of the First Era for the Academy’s archives. I found discrepancies in the mana-flow of the World Tree. The Rot... it isn’t a disease."
She leaned forward, her voice dropping to a whisper that barely carried over the hum of the dungeon.
"It’s a bargain."
I felt a chill go down my spine. "A bargain? With whom?"
"With the Abyss," Lysandra said. "Eighteen years ago, during the war with Malakor, the Tree was dying. The mana was drying up. The High Council—Valen and his predecessors—they were desperate. They didn’t just execute Malakor to stop the coup. They executed him to silence the one man who refused to sign the contract."
"What contract?" Leon asked.
"The Verdant Pact," Lysandra revealed. "To save the Tree, the Council grafted a root from the Abyss onto the World Tree. It provided infinite mana, but at a cost. The Tree is no longer pure. It feeds on the Void now. And the ’Rot’ you see? That’s not the tree dying."
She looked at us with haunted eyes.
"That’s the Tree digesting the world."
The revelation hit us like a physical blow. The "glitches" I had seen, the erratic spirits, the King’s illness—it all made sense. The system wasn’t crashing; it was being overwritten by corrupted code.
"So Valen isn’t trying to cure it," I realized. "He’s trying to manage the symptoms."
"He’s feeding it," Lysandra corrected. "He needs a high-vitality sacrifice to keep the Abyss Root dormant for another cycle. That’s why he wants Selena."
"The Blood of the Usurper," Selena stated, her face unchanging. "My genetic vitality is high enough to act as a buffer agent."
"We have to stop him," Leon said, his fists clenching. "We have to tell the people."
"They won’t believe you," Lysandra said. "Valen controls the narrative. The only way to stop this is to sever the Abyss Root. And to do that, you need to enter the Spirit Realm."
She looked at me.
"Michael, the Archives contain the location of the Spirit Gate. But be warned. The Rot... it isn’t just a biological process. Over the last eighteen years, it has gained a rudimentary intelligence. It knows you are here."
"Let it know," I said, checking the timer on the Stealth Cloak. [Time Remaining: 2 Minutes]. "We’re going to the Archives. We’ll find the Gate, and we’ll cut that root."
"Go," Lysandra urged. "The guards are returning. I can feel the vibrations."
"We’ll come back for you, Professor," Leon promised. "I swear it."
"Save the world first, Leon," Lysandra smiled sadly. "Then worry about your grades."
We turned to leave.
As we slipped back into the shadows, Lysandra’s voice drifted to us one last time.
"Michael."
I stopped.
"Be careful," she whispered, looking at the dark chasm beneath her cell. "The Rot listens. And it remembers the Void."
The Exit
We sprinted back up the spiral stairs, the Void Stealth Cloak flickering as its durability hit critical levels.
We burst out into the Plaza of Reflection just as the cloak disintegrated into sparks of purple light.
The scene was chaotic. The waterfall was a frozen monument to Maria’s power. Silver Guards were slipping on the ice, shouting orders, trying to chip away at the glacier blocking the main thoroughfare.
Maria was nowhere to be seen, likely having retreated to the shadows or the Spire.
"We have the location," I panted, leaning against a frozen fountain. "We need to get to the Archives."
"Objective updated," Selena said, her eyes flashing. "Infiltrate Royal Archives. Retrieve Spirit Gate blueprints. Neutralize the Abyss Root."
Leon looked back at the dungeon entrance. "We’re leaving her there."
"For now," I said, gripping his shoulder. "But now we have the weapon Valen fears most."
"What’s that?" Leon asked.
"The Truth," I said. "And a map to the heart of his lie."
[System Notification: Quest Updated]
[Quest: The Fractured Crown]
[New Objective: Break into the Royal Archives]
[Time Limit: 48 Hours before Lysandra’s Execution]
(To be Continued)
