This is the first time I left the kingdom; I may have come close to the border several times before but I never came close to crossing the border the closest was when the team led by Ana had to capture some criminals. The one who got the furthest was a green core wind element warrior, if he hadn't been so tired after running to the border it wouldn't have been so easy to catch him a few kilometers from the barrier that protects the realm.
I still don't understand why he ran for the border; it didn't even make sense to do that when you'd be hit by an invisible wall when you got there. Without brute strength or the ability to open the barrier around the realm, he'd hit her right in the face when he got to her.
Despair destroys the ability of idiots to think, another example of this is Akin a criminal with a large group branching out into more than one city and involved in other types of crime. He really is a smart guy for most of his life, he has to be able to deal with a bunch of idiot criminals and some with great greed to the point of trying to bring him down.
But now he's been reduced to a pawn for the sole purpose of setting up a meeting with the cultists who have a really cool name, it seems they have more than one identity, but the one Akin knows and the Society for Divine Studies this guise makes that they seem like a benevolent group especially when they give food and assistance to the poor in the cities, they have a base in.
It's actually pretty smart to get your prey delivered to your door instead of kidnapping them from some busy place in the city, by Akin's explanation there are even some foolish nobles who actually give money to this society that preaches those only gods are omnipotent, and little mortals like them must exist to fulfill their will and desires.
The problem is that most nobles and victims of the cult think they worship a good goddess and spread food and affection as a sign of their adoration for her, but in the basement of their bases, which is very cliché, rituals of sacrifice and necromancy are performed to worship the evil god Whiro who is famous for having crazed freaks as his worshippers.
Raven was shocked when Akin told us the protective god of these monsters, this type of God is not famous for such cunning cultists but for crazed freaks who spread plague and death wherever they go, but considering that they plan to cause a huge amount of damage. chaos and death during the war which seems like a great project to bring joy to Whiro.
Their identity as Whiro worshipers no longer seems strange, but the real problem for us is that this group of cultists seems to be well connected among the nobles and possibly other groups of cultists. Because of that Raven almost gave up on attacking them completely as it would be very difficult to be able to attack all the buildings that belong to the Society of Divine Studies without letting them realize that something was wrong.
So, Raven with the permission of her superiors will destroy the group of cultists in the city of Misfus in the neighboring kingdom Kavenus that will likely go to war with us in a few months.
This is another problematic factor with this mission, the cultists who plan the mass attack using the materials that contain the element of death and fire as a full-scale bomb and perhaps even the element of poison since Whiro is a god who worships your cultists spread plagues, it is outside our realm and we cannot ask the temples for help so that our group can receive diplomatic protection to kill the cultists without running great risk that the cultists discover their identity has been discovered.
That would be a horrible and humiliating result for all of us and our mistake would be to simply believe that other people and intelligence division of the enemy kingdom and competent, the only positive point of this scenario and that all temples would be angry with the kingdom of Kavenus and especially its king that allows the nobility to help cultists of the evil god Whiro in various cities like Misfus.
Which would cheer our king for a few days because when the cultists attack all the participants in the war, the king's joy will fade and we'll be screwed no matter where we hide from his wrath.
During the trip to the neighboring realms, we traveled together with Akin's group that was under our control, just to make sure we marked ourselves more of his men so that this group wouldn't appear strange to the cultists we're going to ambush, the members of Raven's team. or the team that is as reinforcement cannot be together with the smugglers.
Raven wants the cultists' entourage to be off guard when they arrive at the ambush point, the more of them we capture the more information we can get from them in order to be able to decapitate their main base that is responsible for the preparations for their operation in the war.
In addition to our two groups there is a combat unit not as strong as ours accompanying us, but Raven is still in the absolute leadership position. We had to turn to help because Akin informed us that the base we are going to attack has an abnormal number of cultists inside it.
The project to create bombs on a large scale is not the only project being created there, last year Akin smuggled in a large amount of building materials and materials used to conceal structures. From their base which had served as the main point of their operations during the war, because of the numerous enemies and that they are not weak our team needed reinforcements, Akin's men are not enough to keep the cultists busy when their base is attacked.
When we passed the barrier at the edge of the realm, I finally had the chance to study it and open a portal in it, with Mia's help as my assistant this time. I was quite happy that day even though I had to warm up to the negative atmosphere the smugglers are giving off, I can't blame them for that as they know they're going to be used as frontline warriors to keep the cultists busy.
Obviously not all of them are buying the promise of freedom and the chance to loot the unimportant religious items or banned materials. Those who survive the attack on the base will have this opportunity and after the base is destroyed and the operation is over, they will be able to run away with their winnings and hold on with their life in Misfus.
At least that's what they believe, but I'm particularly skeptical. Knowing Raven as I do, she will let the poison inside them slowly kill him if they survive the operation. But I particularly prefer them to die than to be able to return to their criminal lives in another realm.
During the portal I opened in the barrier I could be sure that it is not that difficult to pass through the barrier of the realm, but that doesn't mean that this barrier is weak. In reality she is very resistant to direct attacks against her, but when the attack is actually a portal between the barrier's huge energy points it's not that difficult.
The biggest problem is that the bigger the portal the more energy it takes to keep it stable, being cut in half by the barrier shouldn't be a legal fate. Without the rune tools that are helping me and the magic cores to power them even if I had five times my amount of energy, I wouldn't be able to open this portal for everyone to pass through or even keep one half his size for a few minutes.
But after closing the portal when all the caravan members were already in Kavenus' realm, I learned that I can blast a hole in the border barrier by myself in case I need to flee to another realm. My personal tools are more than enough to open a very small portal that would allow me to pass through the barrier, obviously it would be a really small hole but big enough for me to get through by squeezing through them so I don't have a tragic fate of being trapped in the barrier of a realm like the criminal I captured in the past.
It didn't take long for us to get to the meeting place early, and when I say early, I mean we have about five days to set the trap at the beginning of this small grove. The instructions given to the cultists are that the smugglers will be in the woods and only when the group has signaled from far away from the woods and received the answer will the materials be taken to the area between the two groups so that everyone can feel safe during the process. replacement.
With so many days to set the trap this location has been completely changed to set up the locations so that warriors and mages can be well positioned to attack the cultists from all sides at once. Any trap I've participated in before doesn't even come close to the amount of preparation being used here.
Rune arrays, elemental coverings to trick the enemy scout, and trap locations have been set up in addition to the hidden holes underground where warriors will be hiding to attack the cultists.
I'm far from it, my position is quite secure at the top of one of the trees in the woods to keep watch to trigger the alarm if something goes wrong and the signal for the attack to begin.
I'm pretty excited to see an ambush of such a level of detail and involving so many strong warriors and mages can escalate into destruction, I just hope materials not being damaged would be a huge waste of money that we would be held responsible for, not that the army asked us to. if we paid for them, but Raven and Mia would have to deal with a lot of paperwork because of it and it would make their moods look awful.