The night sky swept over the mostly slumbering city of Halberg, with the exception of night time patrol and a few busy bodies with nothing much to do moving about in the middle of the night from drinking or whatever activities kept them from being at home slumbering. Another exception were the two men atop the building overlooking the Halberg artefact exhibit and dealership building silently watching over the back entrance as the assigned guard lazily read over the day's newspaper.
"Security's pretty lax around for such an important building don't you think?" Ry asked his partner Hugo.
"Not exactly, there's two more at the front and four on the inside if you also include the array set up around the building. Also since the Guardians ramped up night patrols not a lot of the city's crooks can do much without getting caught," Hugo took out a vial of sedative and put it in a dart loading it into his mini crossbow.
Ry did agree with his reasoning though, the Guardians were quite an elite group of law enforcers under the direct command of the governing council of Tyra, the nation on which Halberg resides in. Tyra itself is a hub of all cultures and races from basically all over the world of Rava with the council being made of each of the six major races, Human, Dwarf, Elf, Beast, Demon, and Fae. With the coexistence of races throughout Tyra so was a boost in economy meaning enough funding to make the Guardians a quite unfathomable force.
They had academies to train every field of combatant, be it spellswords, those trained to wield both weapons and magic; usually quite hard to master, pugilists; powerful hand to hand combatants almost always adept at a range of martial arts, battle mages; specialized in magic classes for battle, as well as aerial sieges with the introduction of airships loaded with ballistas and cannons. To put it simply Ry and Hugo wouldn't want to wish a run in with the Guardians.
Their target for today was the recently aquired Blue Sarphin Soul, a gem named after the tropical rainforest region it was discovered from at the southern tip of the continent, from the Juriah Empire. How Tyra convinced Juriah to let them have it not many know, however that didn't matter to Ry and Hugo whose client was really itching to get his hand on it.
With a keen aim Hugo let the dart fly, cutting through the air and sticking itself right in the guards neck. In a matter of seconds the guard was down and Ry and Hugo had to move in fast to move the body from sight. Once hidden they proceeded to the building's edge where Hugo felt up the wall around it till he stopped at a block. Taking out his dagger, its steel enchanted to be ten times stronger and thrice as sharp as a normal dagger, of course the effect being only temporary lasting but a day.
Increasing the strength of material way beyond its limit was hard enough without it falling apart, making it last was another story. Lucky enough for them their employer had been quite generous in supplying whatever they needed.
Hugo cut up round the block before removing it and placing it down the side. Behind it was a mana crystal, one of the key cornerstones of the four point intruder detecting array laid around the building. It would have been easier to take it out and compromise the whole system but the thing was designed so that any major interruption on the power generation would trigger it.
The solution to this though was a more subtle diversion of the existing mana away from the array till it was no longer functional. Of course there had to be a device capable of doing so if the thieves and crooks living in this city wanted to get away with anything with most businesses or premises employing the use of arrays and that was the mana dampener. A device made of a stone that was found to be able to divulge all present mana to itself, however the stone itself was quite rare and expensive to obtain. In other words Ty and Hugo were just lucky their employer turned out to be quite generous. Hugo placed the dampener next to the crystal and prepared to scale the wall while the dampener slowly did its job.
By the time they were looking in through the upper floor's window the array was down, and seeing no guard present broke in through the window into the records office. It was small room with two wooden desks and chairs and stacks of paper all around. Looked like they'd been busy the past week.
"How are we going to handle the other guards without them alerting everyone else. It'd be hard to move around without getting spotted," Ry asked, pressing his ear next to the door, waiting to listen for any approaching footsteps.
"Don't worry about that," Hugo took out a metal container from the bag he'd been carrying with him along with two masks.
"Here, put this on," handing one of the masks to Ry and putting the other on. He opened up the vent just by the ceiling, used as part of air conditioning to regulate the temperature for the more sensitive artefacts they possessed, which really worked more on the set up of an air funneling array though the two didn't know where its power source was. Though that wasn't necessary since it was more of a convenience as Hugo uncorked the can and launched it into the vent.
"What was that," Ry looked up to the vent, wondering what was supposed to happen.
"Just a little something to make sure the guards won't disturb us for the next thirty minutes. Though it'll about five minutes to take effect," Hugo took a seat on the desk closer to him, drumming on it with his fingers while humming a little tune. None of it was in sync though and it really irked Ry.
"Stop that please," Ry whispered.
"What? You know I was almost a musician once," Hugo kept on with his little melody.
"I can tell why that didn't work out," Ry commented, impatience slowly getting the better of him.
"What's that supposed to mean?!" Hugo jumped up from the desk, scratching his light beard.
"You'd better stick to being sticky fingers for the rest of your life. You have no talent," the fact that Ry said it so flatly did hurt Hugo a bit.
"Hmph! You're no better yourself Mister thief!" Hugo jabbed his finger into Ry's chest but before Ry could do a little of his own jabbing Hugo signalled.
"It should be alright to go now. Be careful though, can't tell if it worked on all of them," Hugo picked the door lock and slowly opened up, checking for to see if anybody was present. When the area was clear the two of them began moving, making their way to the south side of the upper floor, where the Sarphin Soul was being kept in a glass display with another sealing array on top of it. Well Ry wouldn't bother with it though, it was Hugo's department to deal with it, he just had to keep a look out.
The two split up with Ry skimming through the whole upper floor to find one of the guards unconscious by a jewellery display shelf and another right next to the flight of stairs descending to the lower floor. If he'd been a few feet closer when he got knocked out he'd have barrelled down them for sure. Creeping down the steps he made it to the first floor where the he confirmed the other two were out as well.
'Well that's that. Hopefully it's all smooth from here,' Ry thought to himself, moving towards the front entrance and peeking out one of the windows. The front guards, a human male and wolfman beast kin, were in full view having some sort of chat with occasional bits of laughter. Looked like they wouldn't be having trouble for the remaining fifteen minutes.
That would have been the case if Ry didn't see the two approached by two other figures. From the black coats with white streaks they wore, Ry had already made them out to be members of the Guardians.
'Shit! Better tell Hugo to make it quick,' Ry backed away slowly from the window, making a stealthy but rash movement back upstairs to Hugo who was currently working on the sealing array.
"Hurry it up, we've got more company," Ry slid over to his side.
"What now? I need to focus," Hugo looked over at his partner.
"Guardians, right outside. They might have figured something's wrong. You have to get this done fast," Ry said.
"Alright, I'll have this done in two minutes. Keep an eye out." Ry nodded moving back to the steps just in time to witness the door opening. The one of the guards along with the two Guardians stepped and all the alarm bells in Ry's head went off.
It wouldn't take long for them to spot the first body, so Ry rushed back to Hugo.
"We're out of time. Guardians are in the building," Ry whispered to him.
"I'm just about done, we can't bail now so just try and stall them," Hugo finished up on the array and went to work on the glass casing lock.
"For f*cks sake, just brake it. Sneaky's out the window now," Ry took out two kunai blades, preparing himself incase he'd need to fight to give Hugo the time he needed.
The footsteps coming up the stairs though told him he didn't have much of a choice.
"Damn it, you better get this done," Ry moved quick reaching the steps and going down them fast enough to take them by surprise. He swung at them with his kunai forcing them to go back down.
"Aya, get him out of here, tell him to call for back up," the blonde pony tailed human female guardian spoke, taking out her dual broadswords.
The other one, a ginger haired, tanned cat girl nodded, escorting the guard away.
"Surrender now and make this easy for us all," the blonde raised on of the blades at Ry.
'Like I have much of a choice,' Ry sighed inwardly, launching himself at her once more, hoping he wouldn't have to drag this out too long ...