Chapter 159: The Vanishing Gutterborn
Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.
But right now, for Zane, the walls were walls.
They blocked the sun as shadow casted over the Wardens and Zane.
But no one cared about the shadow.
They wanted Zane.
Zane wanted escape.
"Where will you run now?"
The Wardens laughed as they slowly shrunk the circle.
No one rushed and not because they were afraid of Zane doing something. They didn’t rush because they wanted to savor it.
Savor the moment.
Zane looked around and seeing the walls, he believed they were made by a Skill of a Warden.
And the fact that they appeared now after all the running, meant the Warden needed time to prepare for it.
Also, all of them teleported before the walls came down. This skill also needed time otherwise they could have teleported any time and captured Zane.
But all these findings didn’t matter.
Zane had to go from here.
He couldn’t get in the hands of these men.
Even if he forgot about the revolution, his people, the tragedy of gutterborns, he could not forget about Milo.
He couldn’t let go of Milo.
She was waiting for him.
If something happened to him, she would cry her eyes out and that sight would break him.
He would hate himself for leaving her alone.
He hated himself even thinking about Milo crying after his death.
"Let me go." He said.
The Wardens laughed.
They paid no shit to his words.
Zane tried again.
"You all were not ordered to capture me. If you take me, the relic will never be found and the Emberlord will punish all of you."
They flinched.
But someone spoke:
"Everyone hates you, boy. No one would be punished for capturing a filth."
They came closer.
Nothing worked for Zane.
Even if he begged, they would capture him nonetheless.
Talking won’t help him here.
They would only sit still after capturing him.
Zane looked around once more to find any kind of clue but he saw only walls.
Walls with no gap.
He could try to climb them but it would take him too much time and he didn’t have that kind of strength to endure such a hike.
The only thing he could do was to wait for them to capture him or he could stall the time of capturing.
Zane was sure the walls couldn’t stay erected for too long as the Skill must have a limit, his only chance of leaving was to make it hard for the Wardens to capture him.
But how can he do that?
And can he even do that?
There were five hundred of them and even if he survived fifty of them, one of the Warden was bound to capture him.
And fighting them? That was a different problem.
If anything, Zane knew the Wardens were trained fighters in one on one combat.
Only someone with formidable strength and skill could handle them.
And Zane had none of those things.
He only had his brain, his eyes and a heart that won’t give up.
There was no way of escaping from the walls so in the end, he picked the option to stall.
He would make it hard for them to capture him.
And for that, there was only one way to move.
He turned to the mansion.
The last mansion of Blue Rose.
The mansion inside the four walls.
The mansion on whose garden everyone was standing.
Zane adjusted his ring and roamed his eyes around the wardens.
While doing that, he threw a challenge to all the mindless urchins.
"Catch me."
Only one phrase.
Zane said only that and in front of their eyes, with his aching feet of one thousand tons, he dashed towards the door of the mansion.
The door was locked as he expected but locks never stood a chance against him anymore.
He pointed his ring at the knob and in no time, the door opened and Zane went inside.
The Wardens stood outside in silence.
All of them looked at each other and in unison...
"Hahahahahahahaahahaha!!"
They laughed out loud.
"He thinks the mansion is enough for him to stay hidden."
"As if we aren’t in hundreds of numbers."
They laughed at Zane’s stupidity as even if he went inside the mansion, it wasn’t big enough to hide from five hundred men.
He would be captured one way or the other.
"You idiots!" One warden shouted.
All eyes moved towards the man who had his hands joined and his face contorted in pain.
"What?" Someone asked.
The insulting warden spat:
"He didn’t go inside to hide. He is stalling for time. I can’t keep the walls like this forever. He knows that. He will wait for the walls to go away and then he will run. So stop laughing and capture him!"
The warden knocked sense to others and they finally moved.
The man responsible for the walls was behind the other wardens, hiding, all because he didn’t want Zane to see him and realize that keeping the walls like this was taking too much of him.
He also hid because he didn’t want Zane to figure out that if he killed the man, the walls would go away on their own.
After the realization, most of the wardens barged in the door of the mansion except the man responsible for the walls. Some other wardens also stayed outside to protect the man if Zane came out of the mansion from a window or something else.
Around two hundred Wardens were inside the mansion now and all of them had only one mission.
Find Zane Atlas.
They spread around the whole mansion and it being empty helped them.
They checked every door, every room, below the carpet, behind doors, bathrooms, storeroom, basement, windows, under the bed, under the bedsheet, inside the cupboard, ceiling, inside the chandelier.
All of them turned the inside of the mansion into shambles.
They broke some hollow walls, thinking Zane hid inside them.
But all that chaos, all that destruction amounted to nothing.
They didn’t find Zane Atlas.
All of them gathered in the large hall of the mansion and shook their heads.
Not one of them found Zane Atlas.
They would have thought he went outside from a window but if that happened, he would have been captured by the wardens standing outside.
But no such news came to them meaning he wasn’t outside as well.
Therefore, they reached an impossible conclusion.
Zane Atlas wasn’t in the mansion.
He went inside it in front of their eyes but he was nowhere to be seen.
All of them gritted their teeth and clenched their fists.
They slammed their legs on the floor and hollered the one question they all wanted the answer for.
The Question being...
"Where the fuck did he go?!"
Where was Zane Atlas?
