The eight thieves holding short staffs only felt a sudden brightness from the image floating in mid-air, and immediately lost control of their bodies. No matter how they tried to move, they couldn't even control a single hair.

Lynch continued injecting energy into the magic emblem to ensure that anyone who tried to approach him would lose the ability to move. Meanwhile, he stepped forward, collecting all the short staffs from the masked ones' hands and tossed them onto the ground beside him.

"You can still speak," Lynch instructed the immobilization magic badge to move to the entrance of the room, then carefully sensed the waves of energy it radiated outward. Each time it immobilized an intruder outside, it demanded more magic power from Lynch. Through these changes, Lynch knew the number of enemies outside.

"There are about twenty more people outside, and they are in the same state as you, so don't expect anyone to come and rescue you." Lynch pulled down the face coverings of the masked ones, revealing ordinary faces without any vicious aura. If dressed differently and holding hoes, anyone would mistake them for simple farmers who dealt with the soil daily. However, they carried deadly weapons, throat-sealing poisons, and highly lethal magic equipment.

"As long as you try to relax and stop thinking about wrestling control of your muscles from my spell, you can speak." Lynch wore a smile on his face, but in the eyes of those immobilized, this expression represented danger and more schemes. "I now find the situation very interesting — if I punch one of you hard enough to knock you out, you'll relax enough to speak to me."

"Who are you? Why are you blocking our path?" A dull voice came from outside the room, and the people inside became even more anxious upon hearing it. The sweat dripping from their foreheads and the twitching facial muscles indicated one thing: either the person outside terrified them, or they feared Lynch would do something terrible to the person outside, thus showing that the speaker held authority.

"I'm not blocking your path; it's just that there are things in this world called crossroads." Lynch leisurely walked toward the door, and the eight intruders could only try to stop him with their eyes. "I'm just looking for some information here, and didn't expect... wait! If I discount the distortion of sound caused by the spell, I feel very familiar with your voice."

Stepping out through the blown-open door, Lynch's first sight was the thieves immobilized in bizarre postures. The air outside was filled with the acidic smell of blazing fire glue, but more apparent was the stench of blood emanating from the ground.

Passing by the immobile thieves, Lynch attracted their resentful and helpless gazes. These two emotions, combined with the slight sting from total muscle paralysis, perfectly embodied the word "pain."

"Who's speaking to me?" Lynch looked at the surrounding thieves, hoping to find an answer. But these intruders all understood that even moving their eyes or changing their facial expressions might reveal the speaker's position, so they remained utterly still, like statues.

"Lynch!"

If there were anything else in the world that could surprise a mage, Lynch had encountered two such things today: his name was accurately called out, and a small figure managed to break free from the spell's hold and walked toward him.

"It's me, Felps." He lowered his hood and removed the mask from his face. The halfling seemed incredibly pleased, with a smile curling the corners of his mouth and his eyes squinting into slits.

"What are you doing here?" Lynch found it hard to believe the reality in front of him, but his Eye of Insight assured him that this halfling was indeed the genuine Felps. "How did you escape my spell? Little Finger, there's not even a trace of magical effect on you."

The halfling looked even happier, comfortably leaning against the leg of a human thief nearby as if it were the soft backrest of a bench — the owner wouldn't complain anyway. "These are my subordinates, here to do some work. If I knew you'd come to this underworld, why would I have brought all these people together?" Felps took two deep sniffs. "If you release them, I'll tell you everything, all the answers."

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