“Ready?” a quiet voice asked through the small gold hoop resting just inside my left ear.

“O, in position,” I confirmed in a murmur, the silencing bubble around me ensuring only my temporary allies could hear me.

Four other voices echoed my confirmation.

“Two, ready.”

“Four, in position.”

“Three, good to go.”

“Five, confirming.”

“On my mark then, good sirs.”

Three cleared her throat loudly.

“And ladies.”

I rolled my eyes, then focused. It wouldn’t do to get distracted now. Mana rushed through my veins, powering three separate layers of shielding spells and charging the invisibility spell enchanted into the necklace I wore.

A loud boom rang out not far from where I crouched on a low rooftop and a moment later Three’s voice returned. “Door is down. Moving in.” Despite her earlier humor, she sounded deadly serious now.

“Supporting,” Five added a moment later.

Working as part of a team was a rather strange experience. I was pretty sure I could have taken care of things myself, once I’d known their locations they were as good as done for, but that would have taken time and Adonia insisted on ‘helping’. Thus, here I was, attacking the small, nondescript apartment alongside five of Adonia’s ‘men’. They were nothing particularly impressive, middle-aged second and third circle mages, but I could respect their coordination and professionalism. As far as I could tell, they were all Adonia’s distant relatives. Cousins, uncles, that sort of thing. Far enough from the main branch to be unimportant but still close enough to be considered nobles, and thus eligible to be trained in battlemagic.

I silently counted to ten, then jumped across the gap from one roof to the next. With my circulations running at full strength, I easily cleared the eight-foot gap and landed lightly on the shingled roof. I could sense our targets moving around below us. One of them, the large one, was already down, his mana moving with the sluggishness of unconsciousness, but the other two were putting up a fight. That wouldn’t do at all.

The spell matrix formed in a matter of moments, long hours of practice having made it nearly instinctive. With a sharp crack and a muffled sonic boom, a narrow line of force blasted through the roof, through the wooden floor beneath me, and into the knee of one of the two fighting mages. I heard a loud scream, followed by a muffled thud.

“Glasses is down, crawling towards the back. Goatee retreating up the stairs.”

I weighed my options for a moment, then made a snap decision. The others were nothing special, but I had to assume they were competent enough to make sure Glasses wouldn’t be able to get away with a hole in his leg and outnumbered five on one. It was best not to let the third mage get his hands on any of his equipment or cast something properly dangerous. He wasn’t going anywhere. “Secure him, I’ve got Goatee,” I said into the transmitter. “Engaging.”

I felt him rushing up the stairs below me, his presence distorted by some sort of shielding spell. He was a surprisingly competent mage, his core was more finely formed than any of my teammates and his casting was fast and smooth. A few more years of practice and he would have been well on his way to fifth circle. Unfortunately for him, he’d chosen to fuck with the wrong person.

Two tendrils of invisible force slammed through the roof on either side of me, punching cleanly through both the clay shingles and the wooden beams beneath. They slammed into his shielding spell like a pair of sledgehammers and I felt the smooth dome of energy shudder and crack under my assault. He staggered slightly, nearly stumbling backwards down the stairs, but recovered quickly.

His mana surged and I felt a spell matrix take shape, but he was far too slow. I recognized the spell for what it was before he had even finished shaping it and the appropriate counterspell was ready in an instant.

His force lance collapsed in on itself, half-formed spellforms unraveling explosively under the sudden interference of my spell. I reflexively winced as I felt the mana from his failed spell lash back at him in an unconstrained torrent. Perhaps if he’d been ready for it and in a controlled environment, he might have been able to salvage things in time. As it was, wild mana surged up along his arms, tearing flesh, rending muscle, and pulverizing bone. He shrieked as his arms all but exploded, collapsing to the ground in agony. A moment later, my sleep spell temporarily put him out of his misery.

“Goatee is down.”

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“Excellent,” One said grimmly. “Two, four, secure the prisoners. Five, look for evidence. O–”

“I’ll be joining Five,” I said briskly, already cutting a hole for myself in the destroyed roof. “I can sense something in one of the walls, a safe I think.”

“Very good.”

“Two, make sure Goatee doesn’t bleed out. Spell backlash.”

“Understood.” Two was the team’s healer, not a particularly skilled one, but good enough to patch up minor damage and stabilize anyone he couldn’t heal fully. In all honesty, he was the most impressive of the group, even if his fundamentals were still sorely lacking. Lightcastle’s healing expertise really was top notch.

“I’ll clear the basement,” interjected One, “Three, on me.” I tuned them out at that point, slowing the flow of mana to the communication device to a trickle. The fighting was over and I hoped they could manage themselves from now on.

I dropped through the hole I’d made, the top layer of my shield spell briefly flaring as it absorbed the force of the fall, and glanced around. The safehouse was a small, nondescript building in a small, insignificant town some two hours walk outside the capital. The two-story home looked perfectly mundane from the outside, but now that I was inside I could tell there was more to it than that.

For a group of thugs, they had access to some impressive magic. The inner walls of the building were carved with a simple but thorough rune scheme I recognized almost instantly from an introductory text I’d read in my first year. The nine rune array was carved at each corner of the room and was likely the source of the interference I’d felt while divining for their location.

Closing my eyes, I focused intently on my mana sense. My range and precision was somewhat limited by the layers of protective magic I was using, but I had spent long hours honing the skill and working through interference was nothing new.

It only took a moment to zero in on my target and a quickly formed axehead of mana made short work of the thin wood panel above the staircase behind which I could sense a large object that almost seemed to repel the mana around it. As expected, I found a heavy iron safe carved with mana-dispersing runes. Perhaps a few months ago, that might have been enough to fool me. Iron naturally resisted magic and, combined with the runes, the safe was probably designed to elude simple divinations. Now however, the artificially thinned ambient mana around it was enough for me to notice that something unusual was going on.

Three more tendrils wrapped tightly around the iron box and wood splintered as I tore it out of the wall. I had to expend slightly more mana than I would have liked, the runes on the box flickering as they tried to disperse the invisible mana constructs, but once more it was not enough to make me lose focus. The box hung weightlessly for a moment, rotating slowly as I studied the lines of gleaming bronze set into the dull gray iron, then I gently lowered it to the floor.

Kneeling down beside the box, I carefully examined the locking mechanism on the front of the safe. It was a rather simple design, a smooth door with a single small keyhole. It would be simple enough to just bust it open, but that might damage something delicate. I could also try to just pick the lock, or even use an unlocking spell, but a safe like this was almost certainly warded against such elementary entry methods.

Thankfully, a solution presented itself before I wasted any more time trying something. Quiet footsteps heralded Four’s arrival as the young Earthshadow mage climbed up the stairs. “Mr. O, ah, I have something for you,” he called out. Reaching into a pouch hanging from his belt he withdrew a small iron key. “Goatee had this in one of his pockets. Two said you might want it?”

My eyes flickered between the small key and the safe. Well, that was easy. “And she was absolutely right,” I told him. “Let's see what we’ve got here…”

The safe opened easily on well-oiled hinges, revealing a small, tightly packed compartment at the very center of the thick-walled case. I was glad I hadn’t had to do anything drastic to get in, there were several glass vials of what I was pretty sure were third- or fourth-circle healing potions right on top of everything else and breaking them would have ruined the many documents beneath them.

I closed my eyes and focused on one of the spells I was maintaining, shifting the defensive shell into a slightly different configuration. A translucent barrier shimmered into view around me, covering my body like a second skin. Reaching down into the safe, I carefully removed the vials one by one using the barrier like a glove to grasp the glass without actually touching it. Perhaps it was an excessive precaution, what sort of person would put a topical poison or curse on a healing elixir of all things, but it was always best to be safe.

With those out of the way, I unpacked the rest of the safe onto a thin cloth I lay down across the ground. It contained about what I’d expected. I found a half dozen pouches of money and small valuables. Most of it was the local currency, but a few pouches did contain a not-insignificant number of pieces. I weighed a velvet-lined sack in my hand and focused on the mana radiating off the metal within. Deep-brass, I was sure of it. I’d had enough experience with the crate of it in my room to get pretty good at identifying it. There were roughly thirty of the small coins in the bag, enough to feed a small family for a lifetime.

The rest of the safe’s content was rather more interesting than raw currency. There was a thick stack of documents; a mix of letters, contracts, and signed notes that I was very interested in looking over. There were also a few more exotic items. I found a vial of something that felt very toxic, probably some form of potent poison, several magical trinkets, and a pair of thin booklets detailing how to cast a few basic combat spells.

I silently pocketed the three bags of pieces, leaving the regular gold, silver, and copper coins behind, and stood up. Directing mana into my communication device, I rejoined the conversation I had been mostly tuning out until now. “I got the safe. Some interesting documents, I hope. We can take a closer look when we get out of here. Everything secured?” Goatee’s unconscious body was long gone, carried away by Four after he’d brought me the key.

“Almost,” One told me, “You need a box?”

“Would be appreciated.”

“Coming up. We’ll sweep the rest of the floor before we go.”

“Good. Let’s get things done and get out of here. These men have a lot to answer for.”