Still on the coverage of the night, I meet with my team a few kilometers away from the base that I was assigned to study. Upon arriving at my group that is hidden behind a very small hill and close together, I saw Ana's eyes shining with two torches of excitement.
She really loves her job.
"How big is their base? How many smugglers do you have? Is their leader inside? To many traps and alarms? Why aren't you answering me?!"
I take back what I said earlier, she doesn't just love her job she's addicted to the point it feels like an obsession. She didn't even give me a chance to try to answer her questions before pulling me close to her so she could 'scream' at me at a low volume.
"Take it easy, Shield. If you don't give me time to explain I won't be able to answer you."
"Okay, answer now!"
"We have a small problem and it's not about security or about the smugglers, in those areas we're quite lucky. I counted up to sixteen smugglers but there may be a few more of them most of them are warriors but they all have gray cores I didn't even feel a green core inside."
"So, the group in there is the secondary one, we are really lucky eliminated they will be able to decrease the smugglers' fighting power well and we can also ambush their main group when they bring the next shipment here."
"On the issue of loading, we may have a little problem. I didn't go inside for obvious reasons, but I noticed that a lot of people inside and their gray cores are quite weak and they seem to be huddled together at the bottom of the two-story underground base."
"Are they smugglers?! Great, I love killing these motherfuckers."
In the middle of her statement Ana turns to the rest of the group.
"As they are quite weak, we are going to make a sudden and violent attack, but I want to spare their lives as much as possible. Interrogating them is extremely important to unravel the network of their suppliers, victims do not always have enough information to help us dismantle the operation of those who kidnapped them."
This is a truth I hadn't realized before, rescuing victims they can talk about where they come from and the characteristics of their kidnappers if they're lucky, but since kidnappers aren't overly confident or idiots, they won't let their victims know where they are or where they are going.
Just because they will become slaves elsewhere doesn't mean their victims will all die quickly or have a life completely controlled by their new owners. In fact, buying some slaves and using them to find out more information about who is responsible for enslaving them can be a good strategy, and expensive and has a chance of damaging the slaves' minds and memories, but it shouldn't be the riskiest tactic. available.
"What kind of barriers, traps, and alarms are we going to have to go through to invade the base, Wolf?"
"Nothing overly complicated, just a barrier we'll have to breach from the force covering the tent structure to various traps and alarms scattered across the field, but I can lead the team around them without too much trouble as long as you all keep your well-behaved auras, mana, and elemental energy, to some sensitive alarms that we'll have to pass by."
"So, we won't be able to make a covert attack directly on the smugglers? Will they notice us when we get inside the tent and make our way inside their base?"
"Unfortunately, yes, I can try to make a hole in the barrier that the structure of the hut has, but that will depend on luck because if one of the mages is watching the runic arrangements of the base, he may notice the fluctuation in the base mana. You can also see a physical alarm inside the base structure, I can't disarm it before the barrier has a hole in it, but if the person who made this security system is smart, he will make the physical alarm go off after the barrier is breached."
"So, it basically depends on luck to have a better initiative when breaking into the smugglers' base. What are the elements you sense inside the base?"
"Fire, wind, earth and light. Those must be the only elements we have to face inside, probably the mages I felt inside are from the wind, earth and light element."
"Light element mage? It seems that the smugglers have a good system for keeping the slaves alive, except for large operations and it is difficult to have a healer to keep the slaves healthy. Usually that kind of garbage doesn't mind much if some of the slaves die on the way."
"Wolf, are you sure the slaves are common people? Maybe there are some talented youngsters or with more than one element in there?"
"I can't be sure about the age of the slaves, but I don't think there's even a slave that stands out for having too many elements."
The slaves I saw were all gray-core warriors, not a friend among them. Come to think of it know there's something wrong with that, even though most of the untalented population that would be lucky enough to reach the level of a gray core after several decades of training are fighters a few untalented mages, but in mine of so many slaves they don't. a wizard?
Perhaps these slaves are not so unimportant to be chosen at random, I feel there is some purpose in putting together so many low-level warriors as slaves.
"Weirdly, common slaves can be worth a fair amount of money to the right buyers, but in general it's not as profitable to keep as many common slaves as these smugglers are doing. It's quite expensive and complicated to keep them alive and transport them over great distances without making their price go up too much making selling them for a profit difficult."
"But that's something for us to find out later, now our focus should be on killing the smugglers inside. Wolf, lead the way, the time has come to shed blood."
"Understood."
I made my way back at normal speed so I wouldn't wear out the mages on the team and prevent some idiot trying to strengthen his body with aura. We still have a few hours before dawn and it will only take me two hours to get to the cabin on the safe route.
I feel Fim's discomfort even though I'm not looking at him directly, that's a bad sign his aura may not be in a chaotic state, but it's moving very quickly through her body as if he's already in combat. This is dangerous now because he can trigger some of the alarms if your aura leaks out of his body.
Some rune arrangements here are quite sensitive to mana and aura, they are designed to prevent the base from being attacked or guarded by beasts or magical beasts. Most warriors and mages can control their energy enough to keep it inside their body.
I turned to End and signaled him to pay attention to his aura, this only made the situation worse his aura became even more agitated as he got more nervous. Looking at Ana I motioned to her if we could get rid of End, but I only received silence from her.
It looks like she's weighing the consequences of doing this. It only took a minute that felt like ten, but she ordered Fim to stay behind and attack the base after we invaded her. So, he's basically going to be the backup that might not even be needed, but that's better than him raising the alarm by coming with us or being sent away.
Leaving the problem behind, we arrived at the cabin without activating any of the alarms or traps. Now comes a real challenge the barrier surrounding the house structure is linked to the rest of the building's runic arrangements, from what I can see now that I'm extremely close to the enemies their state.
A few smugglers awake and the rest are asleep, among those awake there is only one mage who may be able to sense me tampering with the protective barrier. I take a scroll from my bag and open it to reveal a very complex rune arrangement that looks more like a miniature rune matrix.
Unlike the last time I forcibly opened a barrier I did it in a very direct way, but this time it takes a lot more care and patience. The rune arrangement I just revealed is basically a very useful tool for opening barriers without causing big ripples in it.
This tool was not created by me, this was a gift from teacher Frey to help me during the war and after. The various runic arrangements printed on the parchment in overlapping layers, each of these arrangements has an effect of its own.
By placing it parallel to the barrier I can activate multiple arrays to help me now. It took half an hour to open a stable hole in the barrier big enough for all of us to get through, I used more than four runic arrangements to keep this hole open with minimal disturbance to the barrier.
Due to the lack of movement of the smugglers I don't think anyone is actively watching the matrix, using a blade I cut the window latch and opening it calmly I entered the hut without activating the trap on the floor, the part or the walls.
I'm surprised that in the window only the runes on the glass are not on the window lock, using my aura as a cover I prevented the rune set engraved on the window from activating. Unfortunately, after releasing the window, I only have less than a minute before my aura that prevents the rune set from activating disappears.
With my team fully ready I signal you to get ready, by releasing this window I will only have a few seconds to go to the door and open it without activating the alarm so we have the ability to break into the next floor before the smugglers are alerted of our presence.