Ember speaks up after my final words to Lith.
"Yes, that's a good idea."
He points directly at one of the white mana-shielded walls of the penthouse suite. To me, however, it looks as if he's pointing to the building with the multiple layers of denser shielding and compartments inside it.
"That building in particular, I think we should check it out."
He opens a telepathy link between us and continues.
"I sense leftover residue of the Lich King's Soul Energy."
Both Abby and Maria look in the same direction with Soul Energy Circulating inside their eyes, invisible to everyone else in the room that has not awakened this level of energy cultivation.
Abby is more fixated on another tower, the one filled with weapons and gear, while Maria stares down at the empty tower with a single hole in its lobby leading underground.
After a moment of silence, Lith answers my initial claim by walking over to the elevator and opening its door with a ding.
"I don't see why not... This will be the first time in months I've been outside in the center of the city. I'm interested to see how things are too."
We all get into the elevator and take it down to one floor above the lobby.
The door slides open with a ding, and a very similar-looking rectangular door is visible on the other side of the room.
Lith presses a small silver device and it opens up, revealing a containment room about twice the size of the elevator we just left. Once we're all inside, the door shuts us out of the building and puts up a dense layer of mana shielding. A final door opens on the other side of this room and it leads to the outside world.
The midday sun shines in as we all walk outside into the Royal Coin District of Valor City.
Our footsteps on the smooth black stone streets echo throughout the silent city.
Not a single soul is outside with us.
There are just under 20 office buildings with similar blocked off mana shielding setups like the Galeheart tower, but none of them are as large or as well maintained.
They're all business owners or trade associates that work in reselling goods and services in this city or Sector 1, or even other regions but have set up their base of operations here for tax purposes. Each and every one has a transport platform in their building, meaning all of these businesses are either monitored or working in conjunction with the Association in some way.
Even Lith in the Galeheart tower, at one point had to make a deal to get a transport platform installed.
However, the 3 largest buildings in this city, the ones that look newly built, and have the highest graded mana shielding on them, surprisingly do not have a single teleport platform inside.
The Association was not in control of the Dark One's actions at all, and this makes me even more curious about this scene.
We all walk out into the street, and the white door shuts behind us.
While walking through the streets, the emptiness and silence is pretty eerie.
It makes things especially strange with my advanced perception abilities. I can hear and sense people in the Platinum, Gold, and Silver district not so far away, going about their daily lives, shopping, and having fun in the city.
We walk past buildings full of workers that have no idea the entity they're hiding from indoors is dead and gone.
Everyone looks around this area in awe, before we make it to the front of the first large building previously owned by the Dark One.
The outside of the building is tinted a dark shade of grey, nearly black, but the humming coming off of it shows that this is just the outer layer of metals that hold that mana shielding in place.
There are no control panels or simple ways I see to get in, so I just raise my right hand and allow dark red Soul Energy to seep out and form a large rectangle on the building's wall where the single door to enter is locked.
Then, melt through the A-Grade mana shielding with ease, incinerating that portion of the wall and letting the remains fall into my item storage.
There is a burst of energy where the shielding is broken off, but my Soul Energy absorbs all of that excess blast automatically so none of my party is even close to being caught in the crossfire.
Once the reactions die down I deactivate my Soul Energy and we walk through the rectangular opening in the base of the building like nothing out of the ordinary has happened.
My teammates all follow without reacting much either but Lith walks through the makeshift doors with wide eyes as he didn't know it was even possible to break through shielding this thick with such ease.
The lobby we walk into is dark, but once I step into the center of the room, a series of automatic lighting fixtures begin to turn on.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
Starting at the bottom floor that we stand on, then moving upward one by one up over 100 individual stories.
The walls are all dark grey, similar to the outer layer of shielding that surrounds the outside of the building, however, the floors are made of what looks like clear glass. Even the spiraling staircase upward that only follows the outer walls is clear glass as well.
Standing at the bottom of the building here, I can see up to the top floor just by looking up, and on display, mounted on every wall, there are thousands of weapons, shields, potions, artifacts, and even full suits of armor.
Everyone looks around at the gear in awe, and we even begin climbing the stairs up, however, all I'm doing is conducting detailed scans of all these items.
The majority of gear here is really only C and B grade items, while the a few pieces of gear near the top of the tower nears A Grade, but none of it is even close to the drops I managed to get after killing the Ranked up Dark Guards.
There are about 20 suits of full appraisal blocking armor at the top of the tower, and these are really the only items that fully pique my interest.
As we walk up, I use telekinesis to grab a few interesting items that catch my eye. They're mostly high-grade B-Class items and unique looking gems, but nothing that I can confidently merge with A-Grade material or Mythic Grade skills without something going horribly wrong like creating a cursed item.
I don't bother to take 99% of the gear into my item storage because it's just more common grade gear, making a comment under my breath.
"You would think someone like the Lich King would have some A-Grade weapons or even higher, right...? It must be hiding the good stuff somewhere else."
Lith responds to my murmurs.
"Do you know how rare it is to find monsters, or even hunters at that level?"
I turn back to him with a shrug.
"I don't know, it's pretty common in big labyrinths. Plus, we're talking about the criminal overlord of an entire continent, not just some random guy."
Lith laughs.
"You really are an interesting one, aren't you? You're aware that the Association only has 4 registered A-Ranked hunters in the entirety of the 8 great regions. There are less than 100 registered A-Rankers in the entire world. This is the pinnacle of power we're talking about. High-Grade items above C and B grade don't exist in great numbers. There isn't enough mana in this world to even maintain the mass creation of items like the ones you're after."
He points to all of the gear on the walls as we continue climbing upward with near 100% stat boosting perks and elements imbued into them, along with essence stones and range gems and potions.
"Each one of these treasures is enough to be the main prize at the end of a grand scale auction. The winnings would be enough to set a normal family up for the rest of their lives."
I cross my arms, turning to everyone and nod as we get up to the top floor.
"Well, I took everything I want. Once we make our way back down, if you want any of this gear for personal use, feel free to take it."
I turn to Lydia and Fisher.
"You two gather up enough gear to give everyone in the Recruits army enough solid weapons and armor for 10 battles like the one we just fought. Plus, let's plan for enough gear for the army to grow as well.... So 10x that number again."
They both nod and I watch Abby, Ember, Arie, Monk, and Maria as they act pretty uninterested about most of the gear in this tower too.
I turn to Lith.
"Once they've stripped this place of everything of value to us, travel to some of these high-end auctions and slowly sell off the remaining gear. Keep 50% of the sales and reinvest it into higher security for Valor City, the other 50% I want for myself."
He agrees to my terms happily as we make it to the top floor and the two rows of black suits of armor come into full view; 20 in total.
[Full Appraisal Blocking Armor Set][Un-Bonded]
Is the label on all of them.
I immediately open my item storage and allow 10 full armor sets to fall inside.
None of the other gear I've ever seen has had this [Un-bonded] rating on them, it's the first clue I'll have toward recreating or at least understanding gear like this in the future.
Then, I speak up to Lith again.
"Those other 10, I need you to put your elite troops in them to guard this inner portion of Valor City as well as the arena. We need to keep up appearances. We will be the only ones to know the Dark One is dead."
The corner of Lith's mouth turns up.
"Very well, I'll make sure it's done."
He walks around the sets of armor and examines them further while my teammates all make the slow walk downstairs, placing about half of the gear on the walls into their item storages for personal use or for the future army of recruits to use.
Soon after, Lith places the black armor and leftover gear on the walls into his own item box and we leave the stripped tower just as quickly as we entered through the small hole in its lobby.
The shell of a fortress is left behind as we walk through the silent streets again, approaching the second tower. This is the one that even at this up-close range I'm unable to completely scan what is inside.
Ember warned me while in the Galeheart tower that he sensed dormant Soul energy from the Lich King here, and now that I'm this close to it, I sense its presence too.
However, all that it is is dormant. I feel no threat, just the afterimage of energy. So, I break through the front door in the same manner, slicing a rectangular hole through its dense mana-shielded walls.
Once we enter this building, an automatic light turns on in the empty black lobby just like the last, however, there is a black ceiling above us and an elevator at the back of the room that leads upward to bring us into the incredibly high-grade shielded floors above.
Now that I can scan the full building from inside, I'm starting to piece together what's here using my Soul Energy senses, but it still doesn't seem real...
The elevator door opens at the back of the room by pressing a small button on the wall next to it, and the panel inside leads us to any floor we wish.
I click on [Floor 59] as it's the highest floor in this building that has extra shielding on it. Every floor above this one is empty, just like a normal building, but with only one layer of mana shielding like every other office building in this district.
As the elevator door dings open, a second wall of shielding automatically opens to reveal the true nature of this floor and the final veil of disguise is lifted.
I immediately activate my Soul Energy Aura to counteract the Orange wave of light that flows toward us.
The energy is captured, incinerated, and its remains are locked away in the depths of my item storage the moment it is absorbed by my Aura. This energy that flows out is nowhere near the strength of the aura that was used directly from the Lich King itself when it was fighting me.
The sight before me as the mist clears confirms exactly what I saw in my mind's eye when I entered this building. It's the reason I chose to come to this floor in particular, but still doesn't make what I'm seeing any less shocking.
There are 3 large glass tanks of orange liquid with a single human floating inside each of them.
They are fighters from the Valor City fight arena who I recognize very well.
The visual from a few days ago of them being consumed by the [Curse of The Lich King] carried out by the 5th ranked Dark Guard beneath the fight arena is still very fresh in my mind.
Max, Sia, and Ace float before us in a state of suspended animation with their status sheets wiped completely blank, soaked to the bone with remnants of the Lich King's orange Soul Energy.
Below me on the other floors floating in orange pools of Soul Energy just like them, there are hundreds of other high level hunters and fighters held captive by the Dark One.