The smuggler group is between a medium and large group more of them than I expected, but their power level is not that great. In direct combat the group in the shed couldn't take out the smugglers easily without having an element of surprise, but they are strong enough to keep them busy until the others get there to subdue the smugglers.
I doubt this is necessary as the point of the mission is to sell the goods to them and make Akin or whoever is in charge of these criminals interested in the rarer materials. I believe that Akin must be there, but I could be wrong as I found out before there is more than one poison element user among these criminals.
"Anything interesting?"
"Their identity is hidden so I can't see their face, but from their body language it's not wrong. Most of them are warriors, I think there is only one mage among them."
"So, you didn't even see a green scale among them?"
"A poison element user, but I don't know if it's Akin or his cousin. Do they have any other members of your tribe among the criminals?"
"No, but if the snake among them is quite possible it's Akin. Jared's job is basically to be bait for enemies, the idiot even avoided speaking his name during our meeting, but I doubt Akin will leave an important task like checking the materials and operation of his new supplier."
"Verify is a good term to cover up the fact that he doesn't like us very much, he will try to steal from us if he is too tempted to eliminate potential competition."
"Exactly, that's why there's almost nothing of value in the warehouse other than the materials of the element of death and fire and the materials he bought. We can't let him get too greedy; he wouldn't risk a good supplier for a very small short-term gain."
"Keep an eye on the warehouse windows, Wolf. If something happens inside the light will be visible through the window, even with this silent alarm here we can save a few seconds if you realize something is wrong inside the warehouse before someone activates one of the alarms."
I look at the glass in the shape of a small grayish glass bead placed over the rune arrangement Mia made, if someone activates one of the alarms inside the warehouse these one and the other three receivers will light up signaling that we must attack.
I spent several hours with my eyes focused on the warehouse, I have much less difficulty in this type of task than other scouts because I can see the mana and aura of the people inside the warehouse. Watching them move and using that information to deduce what's going on there is much more stimulating than looking out of a window and waiting for a light to change.
It seems that all is going well the goods are moving quickly to Akin's wagon, the rest of the colored lamps are standing still, but I notice that the warrior containing the poison element next to Mia now disguised as a redhead is starting to roam around. storage.
I don't know if he's bored or is analyzing the shed to decide if he's going to leave or try to steal everything in it now, it's also possible that he'll come back later to try to disguise his men to throw the suspicion of the thieves' identity to another group. This would be a bad scenario for several reasons, one the shed will be empty and this can make Akin think that something is wrong with these merchants, even possible that he is being targeted by his target's greed which would make him very cautious.
I hope he doesn't give in to his greed and try to steal Mia. The trade was slower than I expected and from Raven's impassive face I couldn't take anything away, but hers is that it's beating a steady rhythm without producing a sound, I know she's nervous about how long Akin's been there inside.
It would be interesting to see her reaction when I saw Akin arriving at the box that contains the materials that contain the element of death and fire that are the most valuable materials in the shed.
This is the decisive moment today, is he going to steal or is he going to try to buy the material?
Even from this distance I can see that Akin's aura and Mia's mana are getting 'excited' and that's not a good thing. I prepare to activate the alarm and grab my bow, unfortunately this doesn't go unnoticed by Raven who stops timing her foot.
A dead silence dominated the room as I focused on the shed, luckily for me nothing bad happens the aura and mana of those inside the shed are normal and Akin's warriors continue carrying the end of the contraband purchased by Akin.
Looks like it all worked out, and Akin isn't taking the bait. It looks like he's going to calmly walk away following Raven's script, she'll be overjoyed when she finds out that all the 'actors' in her play are behaving properly.
As they started to leave the shed marking the end of this phase I feel Raven is smiling even without looking at her.
"Do I activate the signal for them to be followed?"
"No need for that, we already know the location of most of their bases and due to the lack of any message from Mia's side everything must have worked out. We're one step closer to tracking down the cultists, Lobo."
To confirm Raven's hunch the glass bead on the table began to give off a faint green light, that's the sign that everything works the way it should.
"See, everything is working out. Looks like we're in luck with our debut."
"Shouldn't it be rookie luck?"
"No to rookies on my team. Let's wait a little longer and see if they come back while Mia makes preparations to empty the warehouse, we can't give Akin's greed a chance or another member of his band of criminals trying to steal our materials."
"Shouldn't greed make them easier to predict? The more I learn from you, the more complicated it seems to predict the thieves' movements."
"They are intelligent living beings and I am not sweating intelligently in a satirical way, greed is what moves people like them, but it can take many forms, Wolf, it can make them cautious, it can make them choose destructive options or they may end up choosing an option that makes no sense to us but to them means continuing to live."
"Luck and misfortune are the simplest way of saying that living beings and the outcomes of their decisions can have, today Akin may have made the decisions I wanted him to make, but that wasn't completely luck I created several movements so that that option was the one he chose, but at the end of the day he could have made a stupid decision and tried to attack Mia to steal everything. That would suck but it wouldn't surprise me."
After another lesson, the operation here disappeared, taking one of the observation points where a couple would keep surveillance of the shed, to see if smugglers or other criminals would attack him trying to steal our materials that are no longer here.
In the end none of this happened, the only move that happened involving the warehouse was that a trio of smugglers set up an observation point to watch the shed, when this news reached Raven, she laughed like a child it seems this is a good sign.
It took four days for a message to reach Raven saying that Akin wanted a meeting to discuss selling sensitive matters on a medium scale. It seems that the cultists were happy with the idea of getting the materials they were looking for, in Akin's message he made it very clear that money was not a big issue, but for the business to work we would have to ensure that we can sell 60 kilos of materials to them three times in the next three months.
A big requirement because these materials are hard to get once or twice, according to Raven he did this to be able to extract more information about us, but during the meeting with Raven she managed to get Akin to lower his requirement to forty-five kilos, according to her this was a more realistic amount to sell more than that would be suspicious.
When they meet, I thought she might make a move against Akin, but she said it wasn't time Akin still had his guard up. During the encounter Akin took several bodyguards including three mages who stayed with their guards outside the inn.
Making a move now would really be too risky, it took a month and a half for the opening that Raven expected to appear, this is a solitaire game because Akin is a pretty cautious criminal when it involves the cultists, no one wants to cause trouble for these types of people because that only brings the fury of a bunch of lunatics.
I had thought it strange so many weeks ago when Raven said we'd have more time to rest during missions than on missions, but now I can only accept that she's right.
Ana is loving this because she's basically put all her focus on her training and she's not the only one, most of the group members who are in the final stage of the green core have this routine. I'm obviously different, although I don't avoid training most of my time is spent training with Mia and learning from Raven who has been killing a part of her free time teaching me about various enemies and the reasons for every move she made, both large and small movements during encounters with smugglers.
I really learned a lot about how to plan and set up a theater in Raven, after that I realized that her work is really very complicated and her goal can pack a lot of lives. As Ana's second in command for several months I have already learned a lot about many things, mainly the underworld and during these missions we cleaned up a lot of trash, but with Raven now I have learned how a criminal think just like cultists and we may not have been a success yet, but when this mission ends with a positive result, we will have changed many people's lives for the better.
I was shocked at how many people have already been killed or harmed by this group of cultists, given their possible large scale plan Raven is certain that we will save several thousand lives by destroying this group of cultists.