“Alright.” I said after a minute or two letting everyone recover. “I think we should get moving. Things should be over, but that doesn’t mean we won’t run into looters or something, I bet people will start picking this place clean soon.”
Callie nodded. “Good point. So what’s our next move?”
“Looting.” I responded bluntly. “We’re going to pick this place clean.” Despite being mildly traumatized, Bethy let out a wet giggle, wiping her face as she looked up. I could see a lambent red glow in her irises, but it was incredibly faint.
I offered her a hand. “You ok?” I asked cautiously. “Because I didn’t realize that was going to be so bad.”
She shook her head. “Feeding from multiple people at once like that was…rough. I take more than just stats when I drink. So many different inputs, so much pain from so many people at once…I’ve never done that before. And I don’t want to do it again.”
Callie reached down and pulled her into a quick hug, offering a soft smile. “We know. We’ll do our best to make sure we never need your help for something like that again. Right Shane?”
“Definitely.” I said with a nod. “If I’d know it would be so hard for you I wouldn’t have asked.” Not to mention how terrifying it was going to be. I was still shuddering on the inside from the screams, but I wasn’t going to say that, because I wasn’t an insensitive idiot. Bethy was already feeling bad enough.
Deciding that changing the subject would be better, I turned to Anna. “So what happened with the D-ranker anyway? I take it from the timing he noticed what was going on, but even then you had a lot of advantages. Why not just take him out and show up late?” I’d been kind of hoping for a backstab on Anna’s part to put down the other D-ranker fast.
She grimaced. “He was a Centurion with an Iron Body ability. Tanky as hell and the worst possible opponent for me. I tried to stick a knife in him from behind and missed. Luckily I had access to a pretty nasty poison.”
“Wait.” I blinked. “You mean…the wolfhornigator venom? I know I gave you my vials, but it shouldn’t have an effect on a D-ranker.”
She grinned. “It wouldn’t have. At least not until I distilled it and sifted out that nasty corrosive energy inside it. Took me a few vials of the stuff just to make a couple drops, but I infused them into a nasty dagger I had that soaks up poisons and it made a world of difference. The dagger itself actually amplifies poison efficacy.”
“And that killed him?” I said incredulously. Those wolfhornigators had been nasty, but not THAT nasty. Unless Belial had helped more than I’d though when I was dealing with the venom.”
Anna just grinned. “Not quickly. But enough ant bites will kill an elephant. I spent about fifteen minutes cutting into him. The first dozen didn’t do much, but the more little nicks I made the more poison got in.”
“What happened with the straw dolls?” I asked worriedly. “I mean, we set them up in very specific places. Not only would he have had to run all over to find them, Callie sabotaged a bunch of the defenses in certain spots before she placed them so there would be buildup of wounded soldiers to distract him.”
Nodding sagely, Anna said. “Ah, but we made one key mistake.” At my cocked head she clarified. “He was an asshole, he didn’t care about any of the rest of those soldiers.”
“Damn.” I said with a sigh. “Oh well, that’s what plan B’s are for. Now, lets get going. I remember seeing a storeroom on the blueprints that I don’t think anyone will have gotten to yet. Not sure whats in it, but I bet its pricey.”
Callie’s head jerked up, eyes glinting as she heard me mention loot. I swear that girl loved loot almost as much as me. I just grinned, turning and heading off as she scrambled after me. We had a good idea where we were going, heading being easy to figure out between knowing where the room was and the careful collapse of a big section of the manor. Landmarks made navigating easier for everyone.
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We came down the hall, then eventually stopped at a door. I gestured for them to follow me and we went back down into the basement, and headed down a side corridor. The collapse had cut off a big chunk of the place, but not all of it. We were able to move around pretty easily with my mental map.
Finally we came to an out of the way room in the basement, when we arrived, I gestured for them to shut the door and stand back. At first glance this was just a closet, but once they had moved out of the way I turned my gaze up, staring at the floor.
I triggered Pit of Despair and then Dust Construction, catching the disintegrating floor sections and smoothing and shaping them before returning them to stone.
Once I finished, I turned to Callie with a grin, bowing deeply as I gestured to the now neat and stable staircase leading up into the second floor where the store room was.
Grinning like a loon, Callie practically skipped up the steps, much to the amusement of our other two companions. When I reached the second floor though, I whistled in awe. Callie had stopped and was staring at the room in awe, and I couldn’t blame her.
Materials lined the room. Stacks of expensive looking metals, wood piles, gems, and various other construction odds and ends, all of which would make the creation of more buildings in the village all but free. And it wasn’t wish based so we could just donate it, or better yet Callie could wish for plans for herself and have them design us a nice guild hall or something.
This whole experience had shown me that my power might not be QUITE as strict with the whole ‘not benefiting’ thing as I’d thought, but it was a better safe than sorry kind of thing. I had no clue where the line was with that, and I’d rather be cautious than have a bunch of wishes get nixed because of unfair compensation.
“Alright.” I said loudly. “Start getting this stuff in your rings, and I’ll close up the floor behind us when we leave. No dragging your feet either. Someone is going to be here soon, and it would be better for us if there was no sign of us. Word gets out we stole a bunch of stuff and we’ll need to fight our way back to our own territory.”
They all nodded, and started stockpiling the materials, stuffing them away into their spatial storage. We all had plenty of room, so it didn’t take too long. We finished up and hurried back down the steps, and I used Pit of Despair again before taking control and closing up the floor.
Making sure it was in good shape, I grinned at the others. “Alright, we’re good people, let’s move. Abel and Mel should be safe from sucker punches behind the wards, since no one but us is likely to take that route, but they could still get pinned down from this side.”
We took off, taking the same hallways I’d taken to get here, with Callie and Anna covering us stealth wise. Bethy seemed…shaky, and pale, even for her. I was a bit worried, and wanted to get her to Jessie to look over and perhaps fuss over a bit. Our healer always knew how to make anyone feel better.
When we arrived at the spot we’d left the others, they were still there, standing around. Abel looked annoyed. “This was boring.” He said in irritation. “We just stood here and nothing happened. This whole thing was too easy.”
“No.'' I said with an eyeroll. “It was carefully planned. We made sure to account for…” I trailed off suspiciously, looking around. “MOST things that could go wrong.” No use tempting fate. “And this was our reward.” That didn’t feel like enough to offset the jinx, so I knocked on the tree they’d been standing under.
He shrugged. “Whatever. This next part is tough enough to be amusing, and maybe we’ll trip over some defectors on the way out.” he turned to Bethy. “You ready for this?”
“Sure thing.” She smiled wanly. “I’ve got your back. Just let me get the domain in place.”
We all frowned worriedly. Bethy hadn’t come up with a stupid fake name for Abel. That wasn’t like her. She loved teasing my mentor. And he always made sure to pretend to get all out of sorts about it because he knew it made her smile.
Great, I’d potentially traumatized my friend. My sister was going to kill me, as I wasn’t worried enough. She got her Domain up and then I nodded to Abel, who seemed to hesitate before finally recreating the process of overlapping his spatial alteration with the Domain and then slowly snaking us between the wards.
When we got out, I let myself relax a bit. We headed back toward our territory, but apart from stealth we didn’t really do much to hide. We were finished.
I put my arm around Callie. “Ok, that was rough, but we got through it fine. We planned everything out perfectly. And there was no blowba-” I was cut off by an explosion of flames in the shape of a giant sword construct appearing above us and smashing down towards my head, ready to bisect me.
It was so fast I couldn’t even think, let alone move. Luckily I didn’t have to. A massive square shield I recognized from back on Callus appeared around us, and while the blade punched through it, the momentum slowed, grinding the sword to a halt only a foot or two from my upturned face. My eyes were wide as I looked around, trying to find the source, finally locating a man standing in the air above us, looking down at me coldly.
“You killed my son.” The man said flatly. “MY son.” He said it strangely. Not like he was sad, but like I had crossed some sort of line. “Show yourself, guardian. Lest you think I fear your skulduggery.”
Zeke appeared across from him, dressed in a set of long robes with a porcelain mask on his face. Despite the outfit I knew it was him. I’d recognize him anywhere. “Do you know what you’re doing? Whose kid that is? Because I don’t think you do. What kind of Duke takes a swing at an E-ranker?”
I felt my blood grow cold. Duke. I could feel his power, feel it eclipsed mine by a huge margin, but I hadn’t realized it was by THAT much. Dukes were A-rankers. I’d seen Zeke kill an A-ranker before, but those had been punk ass pirates, not real A-rankers from one of the five core factions. This guy was a fucking problem.
In fact, judging by how strong A-rankers were and their sheer stat value, combined with how long it took him to get here, he might have come from another PLANET when he found out his son had been killed.
“He killed my son.” Said the Duke. “He dies. If his parents have a problem they can take it up with me. Remove yourself from my path guardian, and you might survive.”
Zeke stared at him for a few seconds, then slowly reached up and cracked his neck, first one way, then the other. “Bite my ass.” He said bluntly. “You want to touch my nephew, you go through me. Your kid was a psycho anyway.”
The duke’s grim face finally stretched into an ugly smile. “I was hoping you would say that.” Reaching down to his hip, he drew a small rapier, a sharp, fancy looking black with a gilded hilt set with gems. Taking up a fencing stance, he nodded at my uncle. “I’ll give you attack priority. Make your move.” Standing below a burning simulacrum of that very sword, I stared in fear at my uncle hovering above us. I wasn’t sure we could get out of this. It all depended on Zeke. I just hoped he would be ok.