We spent about an hour discussing our plans. The outcome was that we would all participate in the upcoming raid. Then we would split into three groups, Rose and Red heading back to their oasis, Aurelia and I would expand her merchant guild while Yellow would wait for her Majesty and take her to the tribal world.
I had given Yellow the coordinates to my exit point along with a memory package of all my experiences in detail. She should be fine.
We then left the mansion under Yellow's guidance quickly flying across the sky until we reached the president's estate. We landed in a small grove on the estate and scanned the surroundings.
"So are we doing this the safe and steady way or do we just go wild?"
"The President is going to be trouble anyway. No need to play nice with him."
I spread out my mind like a net over the entire building and any possible structures below. Quickly, the underground dungeon came into view and I started to search for Aia's position. Once found, I shared my senses with the others and we exited the grove.
Aurelia spread out her time domain and slowed down time for the entire estate. Only our speed was unaffected and we became blurs in the eyes of all the guards. Not willing to take our time with opening doors we simply kicked them in, the guards wouldn't catch up to us anyway.
The dungeon was secured by an enchanted steel door with a thickness of half a meter. Very resistant against spells, not so much against Red's full power kick. The steel door cleared we quickly found Aia's room that was defended by another steel door, not enchanted and way too thin.
Red decided to just jam his hand in above the door and then literally crushing it beneath his hand. Inside we found a sobbing pile of misery that was once called a human. Aia was in worse shape than we had thought.
"How dare you enter here you thieves!"
The sentence was hard to understand since it was yelled incredibly slowly. Simultaneously a poison covered arrow was launched at us by a slow-moving girl, probably Ken's sister. The arrow was covered in a dark green light, an innate understanding of poison was used to launch it. It would seem the president had a hidden trump card.
"Aurelia take care of it, will you."
Lesson number one for newly advanced rank two archmages. Never fight a mage of higher rank in their domain unless your innate understanding is much stronger than theirs. Under the influence of Auralia's time-domain, the arrow was reduced to its former components and the innate understanding infused into it was dissipated.
"B class summoning, miniature earth wyrm come forth! Count twenty."
Summoning magic was really useful. The twenty miniature earth wyrms I had summoned were chowing through the stone at lightning speed and made a diagonal path upwards. Red picked up Aia and sprinted towards the hole. Through this hole, we exited the underground dungeon and took to the skies. Only Rose remained a moment longer and muttered a spell before joining us.
"Rose, what did you do back there?"
"I freed all the others imprisoned below. They all have a chance to escape now."
"You realize that these people were imprisoned for a reason right?"
"Being an obstacle for the president isn't a crime. And If they had committed a real crime they should be in an official prison not some dungeon. Also, their life energy is low and I can feel that they are poisoned so if they manage to escape it's the guards' fault."
"Maybe we shouldn't have escaped through a hole. Too late for regrets now."
We ascended further into the atmosphere until we were at a height that didn't allow others to follow us. Using air magic was really convenient to evade low leveled trash since flying, providing air to breathe, and tracking someone at the same time needed a decent level in air magic.
"What do we do now? We got the girl and pissed off the president."
"You guys go ahead and enter the lower realms as planned. I'll bring the girl along and do some convincing so she understands her situation."
Yellow received the unconscious Aia from Red. From somewhere in the clouds a space ship emerged and advanced toward us. I was a little incredulous at the sight of it.
"You already built a space ship?"
"It's more of a flying laboratory and workshop. It has only the most essential functions and wouldn't be able to operate in space. But I like the design so I went with it."
"Then we'll leave this to you."
Aurelia seemed very eager to return to her merchant guild and directly opened a gate after saying her goodbyes. I followed after her and we stepped out of the gate inside a well-furnished room.
The room looked like a medieval office with a large window at the back, a large dark oak table sits in the middle of the room, and piles upon piles of documents sit on said table.
"What's with that pile of documents?"
"I don't know. Last time I left here the table was cleared."
"Why do I not sense any humans nearby?"
As I said those words Aurelia had approached the table and picked up the uppermost document. An expression of fury appeared on her face as she crumpled the sheet of paper, threw it aside, and grabbed another one.
"Those ingrates! These are letters of resignation! They quit on me! I'll go ask Priscilla what is going on."
She stormed out of the room with large strides and slammed the door shut behind her. Left alone in what was probably the guild masters office I checked through all the documents. The upper one hundred were indeed letters of resignation but below them were three sealed letters that caught my interest.
They were all addressed to Aurelia but there were two different handwritings used to indicate the recipient. The first letter had bold and elegant handwriting that seemed a little childish. The second and the third looked practically identical and the handwriting was clean and sophisticated, evidently, the sender of these two letters had gone through rigorous training to achieve this level of handwriting.
Now to the most important question. Should I open them myself or tell Aurelia about first.