<h4>Chapter 374: The Deal Pt.10</h4>


    After about five minutes Donny had something he felt should open the door but when he activated it nothing happened. Getting back to work he quickly found the reason which was that the formation that was on this side was no longer attached to the door in any way.


    He hadn''t expected this because he had seen his brother open the door toe out of the safe room but he guessed he was just going to have to ept that his brother had really prepared for this meeting.


    With his first two methods having failed Donny decided to just slowly drain the energy in the barrier protecting the door because he had already taken too long and his brother would be gone even if he got out right now.


    When he had weakened the barrier by about half Donny heard something he hadn''t expected, which was someone outside the dooring towards him. His guess was the maid had been told to let him out after a certain amount of time by his brother so he wouldn''t destroy the room while trying to get out.


    Stopping his attacks expecting to be let out Donny saw the door start to open just a few secondster. He was sure the confusion on his face would have been evident to a blind person when he saw that it was his brother that opened the door. "Alright you three grab him."


    Before he could get over his confusion three men that hade with his brother came into the safe room and surrounded him. Donny didn''t know who any of them were so he had no problems killing them and sent his formation out to slice through all of them in one attack.


    This never happened though because before the formation could even make it halfway to where the first man had been he was already being pushed to the ground by the three of them and his formation had somehow been destroyed. This was thest thing he needed to know something weird was going on because his brother should no longer have the money to hire three people that were as fast as these three were.


    Each one would be worth a small fortune and there were three of them. "What''s going on? Who are these people?" He didn''t expect a straight answer but anything would have made him feel a bit better about what was happening because it would have shown his brother was willing to talk things out but when his brotherpletely ignored his question and started to walk out of the doorway to let the three men carrying him out he knew this was probably going to be really bad for him.


    After he had been dragged up the stairs he saw that there were more people inside the house and the color they were wearing gave away what group they belonged to. He had been under the assumption the Demon Worshipers had left but it seemed that wasn''t exactly the truth.


    "Alright here he is like I said." As soon as his brother started talking Donny was able to put together that this was some type of trade and if what his brother said earlier about trading away the shield for his life his guess was that wasn''t the only thing they had asked for. For whatever reason the Demon Lord had always seemed to be after him and it seemed he had finally given up on talking him into anything and had just sent people to capture him.


    It was slightly unexpected because Donny had felt like the Demon Lord had forgotten about him after he left the Holy Domain but it seemed he had still been nning to get him onto his side. "We left the gold in the next room over if you want to check it before we leave."


    Donny was actually kind of surprised they had paid his brother for this because it felt like there was no reason for them to give him anything if they could force him to do their bidding but if you looked at it as not a one time payment you could see this as the beginning of a long term partnership.


    His family held a pretty high position in the Metal Domain so having them in the pocket of the Demon Lord would be a good thing for the Demon Worshipers in the long run. This was only true if the Demon Worshipers nned to keep an active presence in the Metal Domain but he saw no reason why they wouldn''t be.


    Watching his brother walk to the next room which would be an office their father used to use but Donny knew it was now more of a storage room to his brother. After about a minute his brother walked back out and nodded before saying. "Go ahead and take him. I''ll be waiting for your next orders."


    Hearing this Donny knew he had guessed right about the rtionship his brother now had with the Demon Worshipers and that his brother was probably already under the effects of the loyalty curse or at least he was hoping that was why he was having such an easy time looking him in the eye while selling him to the Demon Lord.


    There was a lot of evidence that said people had less guilt doing terrible things if they felt they had only done it because they absolutely had to. It was possible he was just giving his brother more credit than he actually deserved though because it had been a long time since they had seen each other so his estimation on what his brother would or wouldn''t do might be off now.


    "Alright go ahead and knock him out. We can''t let him make a fuss on the way out of the city." Turning his attention away from his brother and on the man who seemed to be in charge because this was the man who would be the one who he would need to ovee if he was going to escape before he was brought in front of the Demon Lord.


    He could already tell this wasn''t the normal Demon Worshiper because of the way they were acting and how strong the people with him were but he needed to try to tell just what he was dealing with in the few moments he had before he was knocked out by them. The calm look on the man''s face was all he got before he felt something hit him in the back of the head presumably to knock him out but it didn''t work so he got to hear onest thing from the leader.


    "That didn''t do it, try a little harder this time." Donny hadn''t moved since he had been hit so the fact the guy could tell he was still conscious was going to make escaping very hard. If he for some reason was to wake up before they made it to their destination and he was right about their ability he would just be put to sleep again right away with no time to take advantage of. "Smack."


    ...


    As he was getting closer to the Holy Domain, Lake was starting to get confused. He had his arrow set to point out Tiff because she was who he was bringing the dagger to but he was starting to think it wasn''t leading him to the Holy Domains capital. There was an easy way to look for this and just changed Detector to look for an arrow that was pointing at the Holy Domains capital.


    When he saw the direction the arrow had been lighting up on change he was able to tell he had been right and there was about a ten degree difference in where it was leading him. With how far he was from the capital still this meant Tiff had to be at least a few hours away from the city but she could also be much further if she was past the city or closer to him than the city was.


    Either way this had made him change his n to going to the Alchemist Guild first since he had no idea how far Tiff was at the moment and he might as well go to the ce he knew the amount of time he had to run to get there first. Once that was done he could spend all the time he needed to find her while also having a list of items he could start to look for to use with Inner Vault.


    He had been thinking about it and he was pretty sure Inner Vault was the answer to his problem he had with his Perception being too low. A few items that gave ten or twenty points would probably double the speed at which he could run from ce to ce, which was one of the things he had hoped his new skill would help him with before he had unlocked it.