Leyocan snuck through the underground corridors until he finally reached the barrier control room.
As anticipated, it was heavily guarded, with 5 high ranking armored knights standing at attention around the room.
A single archmage was seated in the center of the room.
He was dressed in an elegant, Azure blue silk robe with celestial bodies embroidered into the robe.
His eyes were closed and he seemed to be concentrating heavily.
A silver circlet with glowing diamonds embedded into it was resting on the top of his head.
Leyocan recognized it as an 'circlet of clarity'. An enchanted piece of equipment that was quite popular amongst the magic wielding community.
The story was that it was first invented by a wizard apprentice to help him pass his final exams, but quickly became popular amongst war mages.
It not only helped wizards maintain their focus, but it also helped to expand the range of their thoughts.
Due to their popularity, it was extremely expensive to buy such an circlet.
It was also heavily regulated and it was forbidden to own one without a writ of good standing from an Monarch or Grandmaster.
They were also banned from any academic institution that taught magic to students.
This particular archmage was no doubt using it to maintain his barriers over the entire underground complex.
In order to boost security, King's Peak Prison didn't use conventional doors. Everything in the prison was kept locked away by the barrier network.
Several Archmages were required to run the network over the course of the day.
This made the prison expensive to maintain, but it also made it impossible to escape from.
An escapee would need help from outside the prison if they wanted to escape.
This network also made Leyocan's situation especially difficult.
He couldn't use the sleep bombs from earlier to knock everyone out in the room as that would also knock out the archmage and disable the entire barrier network.
This would not only free all the inmates and cause pandemonium in the prison, it would also alert the other archmages who were currently off duty.
Who would then alert the guards.
In 10 minutes an army would decend upon the prison and the troublemakers would be quickly subdued.
This meant that Leyocan couldn't kill or knock him out. He'd have to take him alive.
While still keeping him subdued enough that he can't use magic to escape from Leyocan.
Luckily, he had just the thing for that.
One of the people that joined his clan was a former member of the Arcadian clan.
He taught Leyocan and the others how to create a poison that dulled a mage's ability to call on magic or to communicate with his mind.
Problem was that he had no idea if the magic that was currently being maintained would work.
Or whether the network would fail the moment the poison took effect.
"Only one way to find out." Thought Leyocan.
He loaded the special dart into the pipe and fired it at the Archmage.
As soon as the dart struck the mage, he rushed into the room.
The knights cried out in alarm and reached for their weapons.
A knight swung a large two handed axe at his chest but Leyocan slid underneath the blow, then drove his blade into the man's knee.
As the man cried out and dropped to a single leg, Leyocan grabbed the man's head and pulled it backwards to expose his throat.
He then drove his blade through the gap between the man's helm and his breastplate.
As the man fell, Leyocan grabbed his axe and tried to block a mace strike with he haft of the weapon.
But the mace broke the weapon in two, leaving him holding a sharp stick in one hand and an axe head in the other.
He stabbed the man in the side with the shaft, then as he went down, he split the man's head with the axe head.
Leyocan kicked another knight between the legs, then grabbed his head and broke his neck.
Only two knights were still left standing. Both carried large kite shields, but one used a longsword, while the other carried a spear.
As the spear wielder stabbed with his weapon, Leyocan grabbed the shaft and drove his knee into the underside of the man's chin.
As the man staggered backwards from the blow, Leyocan ripped the spear out of the man's grip, before hurling it back at it's owner.
Leyocan drew his sword again as he and the last surviving knight exchanged blows, with neither side being able to wound the other.
Realizing that the only way he was going to slip past his guard was to give the knight what he wanted.
As he parried and deflected the knight's strikes, he began walking backwards as if he was being driven back.
He struck at the knight, but he deflected the sword with a shield bash, before spinning his sword and driving it right into Leyocan's chest.
He coughed, before falling forward on his face.
Much to the knight's suprise, the assassin's body desolved into smoke before his eyes.
As he looked around, he suddenly cried out when a sword was stabbed right through his back until the blade came out the other side.
The man peered at the sword sticking out of his chest, until he fell forward, revealing Leyocan standing uninjured behind him.
Without the knight's knowledge, Leyocan had created a shadow duplicate of himself, while the real Leyocan slipped into the shadows.
Once the knight dropped his guard, Leyocan finished him with a stab through the back.
He sheathed his sword and walked over to the Archmage.
The wizard was in an clearly dazed condition, but was still conscious and unharmed.
Leyocan grabbed the man and dragged him to his feet, then pulled him towards the exit of the control room.
"Come on! Let's you and I take a bit of a walk!" Said Leyocan.
Much to Leyocan's relief, it seems like his gamble worked.
The barriers around the prison were still active.
He could only hope that someone hadn't sent out a distress call to the other guards.