Chapter 44 I have a problem.
Isaac slowed to a casual but fast paced walk right before he rounded the corner. Just ahead was the location Topaz had referred to as ‘The Lounge’. It was a place of depravity that also doubled as the main meeting place for Topaz and others like her. According to Topaz, there were no less than four large criminal organizations with solid connections in Sapphirestone but only one of them in particular was the one that Isaac was after.
The organization that Isaac was after went by the name ‘Civil Servant Company’. The CSC was known as the premiere mortal trafficking organization. Topaz had pointed out something strange about them to Isaac in a bid to get him to let her escape, or at least put in a good word for her with Arthur. According to Topaz, criminals avoided dragon and divine symbols and symbolism because they survived by staying out of sight of those such powers. The CSC emblem was a dragon. A royal purple dragon. That combination tickled something in the back of Isaac’s mind but he hadn’t voiced his concern. Just because the emblem was a dragon that was the color of a green dragon’s eyes didn’t mean that a soul and time magic wielding dragon was not-so-secretly in charge.
Isaac strode around the corner with his hood up and head down. He walked purposefully towards the door like he was late for a meeting but trying not to show it. There were two guards on his side of the door. The door itself was closed and made of solid steel in order to give those inside some added protection in the event of a raid. “Hey, slow down friend.” The first guard spoke while moving to cut Isaac off. The second guard stayed by his post at the door which left the two half a dozen feet apart. The distance was a bit further than Isaac would have liked so he mentally switched to his backup plan for dealing with them.
As Isaac approached the first guard, the guard moved into the middle of the hallway to cut him off. Isaac sidestepped half a step to the right without slowing his forwards momentum to line up his soon-to-be double execution. His left hand snaked up and lashed out like a viper while his right hand flicked forwards towards the second guard. Three fingers from his left hand, whose tips were coated in death flames, punched straight through the first guard’s windpipe and tapped his spine on the other side. Simultaneously, A throwing spike was launched at the second guard’s face. Utilizing the momentum from the first throw, Isaac swung his right hand up to his shoulder where he grabbed another throwing spike out of his Inventory and launched a follow-up while returning his hand back to its original position at his side. While the second spike was being launched, Isaac’s left hand extricated itself from the first guard’s neck.
One throwing spike impacted the second guard’s faceplate as Isaac’s hand pressed on the first guard’s chest to push him out of the way. The second spike hit the second guard in the eye socket and the first guard began to fall. Just as the second guard was about to cry out in pain the shock to his brain hit before his adrenaline rush could or his scream could sound out. Both guards dropped like sacks of rocks. The first one clutched his throat for a moment before his spine gave out, and his spinal cord was pinched by a vertebra falling through where another one should have been. The second had his mouth hanging open as one eye rolled back while his brain’s gears all seemed to strip from the massive amount of trauma it had just received. Both would soon be dead and that was good enough for Isaac so he continued on.
Isaac walked through the steel door as if it wasn’t there. He simply took a step and teleported three feet forwards to the other side of it. His sudden arrival wasn’t even noticed by the collection of ‘individuals’ on the other side. What Isaac saw and smelled turned his stomach. There were beds and booths surrounding a large circular bar that was staffed by a small handful of people. Every kind of drug that was in circulation was being used by one person or another in the room of nearly fifty people. At a glance, Isaac could tell that only eleven of them were ‘important’. Three of them were specifically very high ranking in their respective organizations. Isaac didn’t like how he could tell which ones were which.
There were nearly two dozen men and women who were stripped of everything save for their chains. A dozen more who were wearing little to nothing but were obviously not slaves, that didn’t mean they weren’t being compelled with magic or drugs however. The nearly three dozen instances of ‘entertainment’ were not split evenly among the eleven ‘important’ individuals. The three that had stood out were surrounded by no less than half a dozen each.
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The smells of sex, drugs, and alcohol were nearly overwhelming and a thick smoke hung in the air. There were glowing stones scattered throughout the room, but they were all set inside paper lanterns to keep the room as dim as possible, while still allowing those inside to see. It only took Isaac a moment to decide to kill all but one of the leaders and all of the bar staff while sparing those that had been ‘entertaining’ them. The only leader he would leave alive was the one from the CSC because they were going to have a very intimate conversation once he sobered up.
Isaac pulled his old steel sword out of his Inventory. He wasn’t sure why but the gleaming cross shape of the weapon just felt right at that moment. He kept it tucked inside his cloak as he walked up to the bar. With one motion he vaulted over it and slashed through the first bartender’s neck. By the time Isaac was done, and the screaming stopped, there were exactly thirty seven people still alive in the room.
—
Shamesh heaved open the vault door and stood face to face with two hundred and sixty safety deposit boxes. Half of the boxes were locked with dial locks while the others were locked with simple skeleton key padlocks. He took one step inside and felt magic stir all around him. Shamesh’s consciousness raced as he tried to find a way to protect himself from all of the unknown spells that were activating.
The skeletal mage surrounded himself with a bubble of reality magic that had a hole just barely large enough to maintain his connection with his master. Nearly a dozen control type spells tried to take hold of him at the same time as a ward attempted to counter his Reality Bubble. Shamesh had expected the counter so he had cast it at the highest level possible which was far too powerful for the mid-level counter spell to negate. The control spells either washed harmlessly off of the Reality Bubble or tried to force their way in through the tiny hole that remained in it. The ones that tried to force their way through were weakened to a point that Shamesh could physically shrug them off which was a good thing because of what happened next.
If Shamesh’s eyes could have gone wide in shock, they would have, as four branches of reality destroying disintegration magic appeared simultaneously from each of the top four corners of the inside of the vault. All of them impacted his Reality Bubble at around the same time and took a chunk out of it causing the spell to burst apart like a soap bubble. Immediately after the bubble burst, a thick green cloud of smoke spontaneously formed in the air around him and inside the vault. A moment later and a burning white cloud formed after it in a tornado of scorching phosphoric fury.
Shamesh dispelled the burning cloud of death with a Command: Negation with enough power behind it to counter a Meteor Storm. Again a ward tried to counter him only for it to be blown through by a massively superior force of mana. Next up was a summoning circle that began to glow in the middle of the floor. Concentric blood red lines that surrounded black letters that burned with torment and pain radiated a power that utterly disgusted Shamesh the entire way to his core. Once again, he shattered it with a dispel that was beyond the scope of the precast wards.
Shamesh stood there in silence for a long moment as the poisonous cloud ran its course. Nothing else tried to kill him as he waited. He knew that he was running out of time because if any of those that he had knocked unconscious woke up, the entire section of the complex would go into lockdown, not just the vault. The reason the vault went into lockdown by itself was that there wasn’t very much keeping someone from teleporting to just outside the vault directly if they knew where to go. Once there, if they could deal with all the safety systems, like Shamesh, security would need to be able to get to them to confront them directly.
‘A chest for my treasures, a place for my pleasantries, a box for my curios, a capsule for my memories.’ Shamesh chanted in his head. He couldn’t speak the incantation aloud because the wards would just counter his attempt at speech. This did mean that he had to try a bit harder to cast it but that was fine, it only took him a bit longer. It took him nearly fifteen seconds to cast the spell in question as he fought through multiple attempts at countering it as more and more wards burned out, but eventually, he was successful. Shamesh stared at the amorphous swirl of colors and liquid fog that had coalesced in front of him. He nodded at the pastel gyre and turned to regard the surrounding lock boxes.
If Shamesh could have sighed, he would have as he raised both his hands and burned through nearly half of his remaining mana casting Stars of Doom over and over again to burn through the rest of the dispelling wards. Eventually, he had a successful cast and three marbles of disintegration focused reality magic formed over each of his hands. Each one raced forwards and slammed into a different padlock. Shamesh walked over to the now unlocked boxes and pulled the first one open. Inside was a series of stacks of copper coins. The next one was full of silver coins and the one after that was electrum ones. The next two were gold and platinum and the final one was copper bars.
Once he realized the pattern, Shamesh immediately got to work collecting only the most valuable of the loot. He took only the platinum coins and bars as well as any and all jewelry and precious stones he could find as he raced through the lock boxes. He was nearly done when he heard a person’s voice from the way he had come from.
‘In the words of my master: ‘Shit.’’ Shamesh thought to himself as he felt two dozen more wards activate at the same time in the lobby of the underground bank. He was officially stuck and running low on mana. ‘Master, I have a problem.’ Shamesh sent to Isaac as he realized that he would not be able to get out alone, not in a reasonable amount of time anyway.