‘I see no reason why I shouldn’t at least try to take out one or two of them beforehand before dealing with the ones left behind.’ With his decision finalized Arthur peeked around the right side corner of the warehouse and conjured up a small pebble that he then tossed towards the middle of the length of wall. After a few seconds of waiting he did it again, and again for around a minute, but no one even looked around the corner to look at the source of the noise.
‘Clearly this isn’t working. They either don’t care about the noise because they think it's one of the two gang members I have already killed or they just think it's a rat. Looks like I will need to go with a more direct course of action.’ Arthur gritted his teeth at the failure that this plan was, he was hoping to at least have one come and investigate the source of the noise.
Arthur quickly and quietly chanted the arcane words and performed the hand signs and conjured four instances of the Tri Earth Bolt spell, one for each of the gang members guarding the front doors. Slowly walking towards the front Arthur held two of the spells in each of his hands close to his chest. When he slowly passed by the corner of the warehouse the nearest gang member didn’t even notice him for a second before quickly raising his spear and shouting at him. “Halt, state your purpo-”
The gang member didn't get the time to finish speaking as Arthur flicked his fingers towards he and his ally standing next to him who were both given their very own set of earth bolts that stuck them in the face killing them quickly. The remaining two gang members quickly turned to look at the cause of the commotion and were stunned when their ally suddenly stopped talking and fell to the ground. The man wearing the thick leather overcoat turned towards them and flicked his left hand towards them and they too were given their very own set of earth bolts.
The closest gang member was almost instantly killed by the projectiles lodging themselves into his eyes and lower jaw, the other one however managed to dodge two of the three bolts and was only hit in the shoulder by the last one. The pain shot through his body as he felt the bones with his shoulder crack from the impact, while he had never been shot with a bow he imagined this is what it would feel like. Fortunately or perhaps unfortunately the shock prevented him from shouting out in pain and left him weakened against Arthur who quickly followed up his attack.
‘Another tier one spell would take six seconds, that is too long.’ Arthur thought as he reached for his longsword strapped to his left hip and rushed towards the remaining gang member with a two handed grip and the blade pointed towards him. The gang member tried to move out of the way and dodge the attack but the shock from his injury slowed him enough where it was barely even a factor and Arthur was easily able to stab the gang member through the chest and push him to the ground. Arthur didn’t wait for the blood loss to kill his adversary and quickly brought the tip of his blade down on the dying man's neck, hastening his demise.
Now the only thing remaining was whoever and whatever was inside the warehouse. Arthur slowly opened the side door and slipped in without making any noise, the door did creak a bit but it wasn’t nearly enough to alert anyone. Inside was easily twice as many crates stacked almost up to the ceiling and towards the back of the warehouse the sound of someone walking and muttering to themselves could be heard.
With his sword still in hand Arthur crouched down and slowly approached the source of this sound, peeking around the corner of the stacked crates that abruptly stopped around two thirds of the way to the back Arthur saw three people wearing cheap overcoats made from a patchwork of different materials but were mostly leather. They were each at their own tables with a crate by the side as they did something with the contents and placed it into a second crate they had in the center of the room where they were starting to stack more crates.
Standing up Arthur was able to see the crates were full of the bundles of the dried grass-like substance called swamp weed and the people in the cheap overcoats were wrapping it with small pieces of cheap paper and a small bit of a sticky substance to keep the paper together. ‘This must be related to how this swamp weed is used, that makes this the place where it is processed and then packaged for sale. I would have assumed the security of this place would have been a lot better than what I dealt with already.’ As he watched Arthur noticed that each of the likely gang members had a large dagger on their hips making Arthur grit his teeth, clearly they weren't quite as defenseless as he expected them to be.
‘I could just conjure up a bunch of small earth projectiles all killing the three of them in one attack, but then I wouldn’t be able to integrate any of them for more information about other warehouses. However I could fix that by just killing two and leaving one alive, I interrogate the last one and have the information I want for my next attack.’ Arthur smiled with his new plan that he was more than ready to enact, he elected to just quietly cast the Tri Earth Bolts spell twice and use the earth bolts from that to kill the gang members and avoid any damage to the equipment. But to cast the spells without drawing attention from the chant he would need to take a few steps back and stay behind the stacked crates to limit the noise, thankfully the gang members were very busy with whatever they were doing with the swamp weed.
With two casts of the spell in hand Arthur slowly walked back to the opening with the three gang members and selected the middle and right most gang members to die and gave them each three earth bolts to help them with that. Quickly the two fell to the floor like puppets cut from their strings and the third gang member who was the farthest on the left looked to the source and shouted out in terror when he saw his colleagues dead and on the floor, though Arthur couldn’t see the terror on his face as he wore a poorly made mask with only two small pieces of glass for sight.
The gang member quickly reached for his dagger as his hands were shaking from the gravity of the situation, when he finally had it in his hands he had it in a two handed grip telling Arthur that this gang member and likely the others like him have had little to no combat training. They had likely been assigned this role due to their lack of combative skills.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
When the gang member saw Arthur he held the dagger out in front of him like someone with a longsword might to keep their opponent at bay, though the lack of reach the blade gave would render this strategy ineffective. The gang member also tried to slowly move towards the doors a step or two at a time, or at least he did until Arthur conjured up a few large spikes or earth and shot them towards the direction he was trying to run off to.
“You look like a smart person, so instead of trying to run away which might end up with me putting a foot long spike of earth through your spine, why don’t you instead tell me everything about this litter operation you have going on in here.” Arthur gave a large smile as he said this to scare the remaining gang member and make him think he enjoyed hurting others, though that was technically true he only enjoys hurting and killing bad people.
The scare tactic clearly worked as the tip of the dagger the gang member was holding quickly began to shake as his nerves couldn’t handle the stress of the situation and he quickly dropped it onto the floor. “Ok! Ok! I will tell you everything as long as I get to go free.” The gang member demanded with a shaking voice, to keep him on edge Arthur paused and looked as if he was thinking about it before agreeing. “Fine, I’ll let you go. Now hurry up.”
The gang member breathed in and out a few times in an attempt to calm himself before he started speaking. “This warehouse was used to both store and process the swamp weed for use before being shipped out to the dealers, there are several other warehouses like this one all throughout the territory still under the command of Yufur. Each warehouse does a specific part of the process and several do the same part to keep the production as high as possible.”
“And what about the actual swamp weed itself, where does it come from? I assume you aren't just growing the stuff out of the ground like grass.” Arthur hoped that was the case, but if they had magic them it wouldn’t be out of the question for them to acquire that much through such means, they had talismans after all so a mage wasn’t out of the question.
“I- I don’t know much about the suppliers of the swamp weed. All I know is they bring it in from some swamp located in the south of the continent and that is where all of it is grown.” Arthur frowned at the answer he received, clearly the remains of this gang under Yufur did not actually grow the stuff themselves and instead imported it into the kingdom and the city to process and distribute to their dealers. This unfortunately left room for someone else to start paying for the swamp weed from these suppliers and start the whole ring up again.
Arthur flicked his finger and a bolt of earth went into the remaining gang members' eyes and killed him.
/- - - - - -\
Mana : 15/42
+ 50 Exp
+ 50 Exp
+ 50 Exp
+ 50 Exp
+ 50 Exp
+ 50 Exp
+ 50 Exp
+ 50 Exp
+ 50 Exp
\- - - - - -/
Arthur took a quick look at his mana reserves and found he still had enough to burn the warehouse down if he started with the stacked crates of swamp weed in the middle of the room. But before he did anything drastic he wanted to take a look at what was on the table the three masked and coated gang members were working at.
The table itself was nothing important just simple wooden tables that looked to be well loved by their previous owners, the one crate was just full of small pieces of paper that could easily be wrapped around a small amount of swamp weed, though it must have taken a very long time to cut all this cheap paper down to this size, considering the sheer amount and size it must have taken days to do. The other two crates were full of swamp weed and finished rolls of swamp weed respectively, the crate of finished rolls was only half filled and yet there were easily one hundred inside of it.
Nothing aside from the daggers the gang members had were of any value to Arthur so he left everything as it was and quickly stepped outside. Starting with the bodies just outside the front doors he brought them inside and placed them against the stacks of crates in the middle of the warehouse, then he moved onto the two bodies behind the warehouse and dragged them inside and did the same.
With that out of the way Arthur opened the single person door and conjured up a small orb of fire, he was ready to make a run for it when the fire starts spreading to the rest of the crates that would lead to the entire warehouse going up in flames like the previous one. Thankfully like the previous warehouse it was far enough away that none of the nearby buildings would catch on fire either.
With a small flick of his finger the fire orb charged with ten points of Arthurs mana flew forwards and leapt forward onto the wooden crates like a wolf on a rabbit and quickly engulfed it and moved to those nearby. When the flames reached the inside of the crates the flames erupted like a volcano, the dried swamp weed made for an excellent fuel to continue its spread, but by the time this happened Arthur was already gone and walking around in an erratic way to see if anyone was following him. He travelled all over the area until he was absolutely certain that no one could keep up any invisibility or other similar spell types and follow him at the same time. When that happened he quickly returned home by taking a few shortcuts through several other properties with no one around or watching.
Arthur reached his home and quickly locked everything up for the night as his taste for adventure and danger were quenched for the time being. He spent the remainder of his evening reading the few books he had even though he already knew the contents, he did try out a few of the more utility based spells that were written down just to see if the explanation didn’t do the spell justice.
*******
Bohare scowled as she looked at the wreckage of one of the warehouses that was processing the swamp weed they just recently had brought in with some of their contacts that venture down to the south often. “Someone doesn't want us to have a return on our investment.” Bohare muttered to herself as one of her subordinates walked up to deliver his report on the damages.
“I am sorry ma'am, but there is nothing left to recover and the warehouse is completely destroyed. It would take several weeks to rebuild a new one and even that is assuming winter wasn’t just around the corner.” Bohare scowled as she looked at the pile of ash that was once several hundred gold coins worth of swamp weed. “I sincerely hope that we at least found a trace of the saboteur and are following up on that lead.”