The smell of blood stung Ali’s nose as he sat down for a break. Since the escalation of the conflict between the two crime syndicates, all of their members got involved and the battles were fierce. During the chaos, his group sought out opportunities to weaken the Lightning Clan. After the first two days since the escalation, it became apparent that the Lightning Clan had the upper hand. Their necromancer had proven to be impossible to beat, forcing Thunder Clan members to avoid direct confrontation with the monster. To even the odds, the Dark Cult members were given orders to only target Lightning Clan members.

Doesn’t feel like we’re getting anywhere.

With a group of four, they could only focus on the thugs. However, it felt like the Lightning Clan never ran out of thugs. Either they kept recruiting or they had other ways of replenishing their numbers. Ali brought up the issue with his group and the others agreed that this was too suspicious. Taking a risk, the group chose to head to the Lightning Clan headquarters. They were betting on the chance that the place would be poorly guarded due to the syndicate winning the conflict at hand. The group of four were observing the headquarters when Thunder Clan members approached out in the open. A few of the Thunder Badger members started hurling insults, attracting the attention of the Lightning Clan members holding the front entrance.

“Why would they approach in the open like that?” whispered Kurata.

“I’ll send Tian to observe from above.”

The air serpent flew until he had a clear view of the entire headquarters. A thick wall separated the base from the streets. There were a total of eight buildings within the walls. The one resembling a fortress was the primary residence of the Lightning Clan leaders. Beyond that, the other seven buildings were unknown to the Dark Cult. Ali learned that the Lightning Clan did an incredible job in keeping their secrets. Even the fortress had many secrets outsiders knew nothing about because only the meeting hall was ever open to outsiders. To this day, no one had survived after learning of the other secrets.

Do you see anything suspicious, Tian?

Ali waited patiently while his air serpent observed from above. Meanwhile, the battle outside the headquarters heated up with both sides losing members and the Lightning Clan losing at least one of their leaders. Several minutes later, Tian relayed that a group of unknown individuals had just scaled over the walls. They were so swift that, if he wasn’t looking in that direction, Tian would have missed them completely. The teenager then asked his companion to get closer as he wanted to know if any alarms were triggered. When there was no activity within the walls, Ali and the others sneakily got to the same wall section and scaled it themselves. As soon as they scaled over it, they reached a dark alley to observe if anyone thugs had noticed their entry.

Stolen novel; please report.

“Our goal is to gather intel and assist the Thunder Badger if possible,” said Belen. “If things go wrong, we must flee at once.”

While it wasn’t official, Menna did hint that, if possible, an alliance with the Thunder Badger wasn’t out of the question. Since they fought the Lightning Clan frontally, their strength had grown weaker and weaker. At this point, the syndicate could be absorbed into the Dark Cult. Yet, absorbing a syndicate wasn’t an easy task. Either the syndicate had to be even weaker or the Dark Cult proved that being absorbed was a positive for the Thunder Badger members. The former would result in too small of a gain while the latter had been difficult to achieve thus far.

Belen must be hoping to find an opportunity in all of this.

“What are we going to do? We know almost nothing about this entire headquarters. One mistake and we’re dead.”

“Kamis isn’t wrong,” replied Belen. “Let’s avoid the fortress for now. We can first check on the other buildings. There must be one that serves as living quarters for the thugs.”

“Once we hold a couple of them hostage,” said Kurata, “then we can get them to spill their secrets.”

With no idea of where to start, the group decided upon the building before them. Tian did a quick look and confirmed that there were only two ways in. One was the main entrance that had two thugs guarding the entrance. The other way in was a hole in the roof. The air serpent briefly went down, discovering that the hole led to a storage room inside. After a short discussion, the group got to the roof before they went down the hole.

“What is all of this?” asked Kurata as soon as they were inside.

Large pottery jars were neatly placed on shelves. Kurata opened one of the jars but he then went to the corner to vomit. Ali stepped towards the opened jar, disgusted by the contents inside.

“It seems like there are human organs and blood inside,” said Ali. “I suspect the other jars have similar contents.”

Kamis offered to check and, a dozen jars later, he confirmed Ali’s suspicion. Once Kurata regained his composure, the group sat down in the center of the room while Tian was sent to the hallway to keep a lookout.

“What…what are these jars for?” asked Kurata.

“They might be the answer to how the Lightning Clan has so many thugs,” said Belen. “They already have a necromancer. It’s not absurd for them to have some forbidden ability to constantly create thugs from these jars.”

“Let’s destroy them now!”

As Kurata was about to get up, Kamis stopped him.

“They will know of our presence if we do. Let’s try these.”

Kamis brought up a few scrolls and placed them throughout the storage.

“These scrolls mimic a timed explosive ability. In three hours, they will detonate and destroy everything here. We can time it so we are out of here before these explode or, if things get dangerous, the explosions can serve as a distraction while we flee.”

“Then we have a three hour time limit to work with.”