Bolts hurt. Luckily my bolt reached no organs. As we reached the diner I pushed and pulled the bolt the rest of the way through. Causing it to fall into my waiting hand I then pulled a healing potion out and gulped it, I could feel it beginning to work the skin stitching itself back together, he turned to Qoloa “So what happened Ashot said that it was a simple smash and grab.” the small goblin flinched “true, it can be summed up as bad luck.” she shrugged one of the file drawers was trapped when I opened it triggered an alarm.”. When we reached the diner me and Qoloa stepped out of the carriage and I threw the offending bolt and the empty vial to the side of the road as we walked into the diner.

After paying the electrum coin again we were shown in too the back of the room again which was the same save for another chair placed within the room. Ashot was smiling at his desk “Well done, well done.” clapping along with his statement. Qoloa smiled as she handed a clear crystal to the fixer which glowed slightly” Wonderful work Qoloa despite the hiccup” The fixer reached under the table and came up with a small bag “Your payment with a monetary deduction for getting caught.” at the look of blank despair until he pulls an even smaller box the kind that holds a ring and added ”Have no fear the bartered portion of your pay remains the same.”.

Qoloa reverently took the small ring box and then as she started to leave remembered the money and picked up the money and left. There are only two things that come to mind to instill that sort of reaction one is drugs which she doesn't have the signs of and the other being “You gave her a Class Crystal.” the fixer hummed non-committal “That's very generous of you.” “Not for many years of dedicated service.” the fixer replied” Regardless we have valuable information to peruse lets view this immediately” Tapping the crystal it brightened and placed a picture on the wall.

I wouldn't want to have to describe the three hours of pouring over documents to find the information needed, the dissatisfying part of these types of cases is the fricking paperwork. As we looked through we found a complaint from the company about the slow progress of the digging, apparently the director had been reporting that digging had been slow and was behind schedule. “They weren't behind schedule, when I talked to one of my clients they said nothing about behind schedule.” “Then why would he make himself look bad it's counterproductive to stay in the company and in one piece also if he was on or even better ahead of schedule then a hefty bonus would be his failure could get him blacklisted.” being blacklisted would be fatal figuratively and possibly literally. The companies were known to fire people who have failed, and sometimes they were known never to be seen again we flipped through more photos till we came to the medical records, and the discrepancies were glaring “No accidents or deaths.” I whispered. ”Now that is bullshit, I bribed the morgue enough to get that info and they had several of each.” Ashot replied grimly “Well your client thought something was suspicious it seems they were right.” “Yeah, but about what and why?” silence reigned as we finished looking through the photos.

It seems that something more than incompetence and corruption is going on. I thanked Ashot and stepped out of the diner the company shutting down a mine that needs to connect to the underground network, a director lying about a high gold invested road transit being behind schedule when it wasn’t while facing a swift reprisal for failure, and now the same company locking down the mine preventing access. What’s going on? There were rumors of hidden caches of gold and weapons hidden in the lower depths of the city but that didn’t seem to be it as the miners would find it first and word would leak out, he cant be fleecing the company because it's too obvious one look at the situation by the review board then the game would be up, and with the digging that his ordering it runs the high risk of running into the dungeon which is bad on so many levels.

What few understand is that dungeons are a form of Genus Loci, they are a protective spirit of an area this is usually a piece of land which it forms a symbiotic relationship with a source of energy like a ley line or place of cultural or religious significance and grows like an organism creating forests or other such natural features along with protectors. A dungeon on the other hand is a parasite, it grabs a hold of a curse or being of power and siphons off the power from it, and just like a regular Genus Loci will grow and create features and create Protectors, but unlike the regular Genus Loci which is naturally passive the dungeon is predatory. It will create motes of physical constructs of concentrated mana to lure in adventurers to kill and feed off of their mana decay, and failing to find prey in this manner it will send out hunting parties to kill or capture living things around it to grow. The important aspect to remember is that they are living so if you drill into something's body it will retaliate and it has many methods to do so.

Stolen novel; please report.

Breaking into the mine is a no-go for the moment yet it is the surest way to get to the truth so it will have to happen before the end but there was one avenue left before that last step, looking down at the slip of paper in his hand he gazed at the address of the director and headed to the street corner to hail one of the centaurs going past. After negotiating a price I was dropped outside of the residence in one of the nicer neighborhoods and I walked up to the residence. A two-story building surrounded by a fence with an oak door with windows along the side, the house was a simple red and white color scheme the owner splurged and got bars put on the windows.

The first rule of breaking into a house is to knock at the door. It seems counterintuitive but think about it if you go to a house to break in what if there are people inside, by simply knocking you find out if someone is inside. After three good hefty knocks, I conclude they are either deaf, dead, or not home; so the next step to breaking into a home use the doorknob worst case it's locked, best case it's unlocked. This door is locked stepping back he examined the fence again small bars won't be able to climb add to that the bars are spiked and bladed at the top. A frontal approach is required then after checking if anyone is out on the street seeing no one he tries the lock it seems stupid which it is but when some people run an errand, they don't lock their doors. As he touches the doorknob it opens a little, he pushes and it swings right open, this isn't good leaving it unlocked is one thing, but leaving it totally open is totally different.

As he steps inside he shouts “Hello, anyone present!” only silence answered, he pulls his long dagger out “Director Abercront I have some questions for you.” I smelled a metallic stench, this was bad, I began my search on the ground floor turning left and heading through the doorway found a table set for two, A guest perhaps I walked into the next room and saw a kitchen with food being prepared with a roast cooked but left out in the open flies were starting to fly around it. Someone stopped in the middle of their meal preparation.

I walked out of the kitchen and headed back to the entryway and checked the other room a grand living room to see a corpse hanging in the middle of the room tied to the ceiling dangling over a pot filled to overflow with blood with symbols drawn in blood on the walls and floor. This is so bad this stinks of cults, why did it have to be cults why couldn't it be corruption or political intrigue yet right before me is the corpse of Director Abercront having been bled out with blood-drawn symbols everywhere, the problem with cults is they tend to be insane with most plotting the end of the world or bringing back there masters to the earth dimension so it can rule all.

I hate cults I really hate cults, he shook his head he needed to be focusing on matters he was in a house with a dead body killed by cultists if he was caught here the Watch would torture him for information, then the Inquisition would arrive and torture him for information and if he was lucky he would survive long enough for them to believe him, he was suddenly very grateful of the holomask he wore. He needed to search the room, he flicked his gaze across the room let there not be a trap, let there not be a trap “Shit!” there was a trap. From what he could read of some of the letters he could read a summoning, of what he couldn't tell and he also read activation if someone entered the room there was no way he was going to trip this and summon some malevolent entity into a suburb.

I headed back to the entryway and headed up the stairs then I came to a hallway that ended with three doors bracing myself I opened the door on the left revealing a bathroom trying the door on the right I found a study with a desk with maps on it, a filing cabinet, a bookcase and a body right in front of the door. Garbed in tan leather armor with the Interborough Transit Logotype plastered on it and was missing a head. Giving the room a cursory glance showed no signs of the head this is messed someone, or something took the head with them, looking at the pristine floor again he realized that was not all the perpetrator or perpetrators took with them as there was no sign of blood on the floor after checking the corpse he found it bloodless. What could do this? There were many possibilities far too many to count, he looked through the person's pockets to see if there were orders on him or something to tell why he was there. Finding nothing he stood up he needed to be vigilant what did this could be nearby, yet he also had to finish the search for information in the house the more he looked into this the more it seemed that this was a dangerous situation for the city.

He stepped over the corpse and entered the room and examined the desk with the maps on it. He examined the maps on the desks they seemed to be of the Doufield Sanitarium and the current Dourfield Mine, there were markings made on the maps the one on the sanitarium was measurements of an underground tunnel; on the other map of Dourfield Mine were the exact same measurements and direction. so they are digging into something a tunnel, but a tunnel to where? The angle measurement was too great to go to anything above ground, it was concerning if the target had to be where the tunnel went if he was right which he was afraid that he was then it was headed straight to the dungeon and when they connected their tunnel to it then a stampede will occur leading to a multitude of monster swarming the city and thousands of deaths.