This office is quite simple for a noble merchant who is actually a cultist who serves as a front to kidnap victims to be sacrificed to cultists, at least that's what I believed, but from the quick perusal I gave the papers I found in the room to avoid picking up useless papers, I've found that these cultists have a pretty wide and diverse range of trades they're worse than I expected.
It's not like I expected to find out that they do any good, but I'd expected them to do normal trades besides selling medicines and potions that publicly are the only business of this society of charitable nobles.
But from the papers I'm collecting they're kidnapping easy targets not only to sacrifice them in rituals, they've also entered the slave trade, sex slaves, selling organs and specimens for secret research, it seems to many healers who study the human body no more. they can get material for their experiments and to finish they accept the commission of suicide guards.
This last product is quite rare, creating a suicidal guard is not something as simple as training a warrior slave this warrior is literally a living puppet. To create this type of guard requires the help of a mind element and a life element mage, programming the mind of a warrior is a very cruel and stressful process for the target of the process.
This is also a reason there is no such thing as a mage, a mage's brain is not able to withstand the need without suffering greater damage than is necessary to create a living puppet.
It's useless to have a mage who can't do magic as a bodyguard but a puppet warrior is also not perfect, they can only sweat your aura in a simple more consistent way and not your elemental energy but for a guard who won't betray you or avoid danger to protect you even if that danger will kill him and a small sacrifice, I understand why such a product exists.
Apart from the trade involving the victims of the cultists I didn't find anything very interesting in this office, I was impressed that they don't better hide the papers about their various crimes, but for some a drawer with three runic protections where one of them will destroy the contents of the drawer is considered safe.
When I finished stealing all the papers from the two offices on the second floor of the mansion, with the help of the two undersigns who are now carrying two backpacks full of papers and parchments I went to check the power cube that is on the office wall. This time there was no suspense nor one I already knew what I saw here, removing the picture of happy children playing in a field of flowers I find a safe with clotheslines layers of runic protections.
They're not a big deal, but the size of the vault is. This thing is quite big and depending on what is inside the safe I don't know if it will be possible for us to carry it without decreasing the group's combat capacity, the mage may be far from us but he is still awake taking a walk on the first floor.
Ignoring the sigh of sadness and anger that came from the two assassins when they saw the vault, I pulled out my rune scroll and began disabling the vault's defenses. We don't have much time before Raven and the other groups start raiding the cultists' underground base.
When opening the safe in front of the shocked eyes of two assassins who had finished gathering the important papers of this office, inside the safe was something different from what I expected. A weird statue besides the items I already expected to be in the vault, I don't recognize the statue, but from the two-pointed horns curved on the female statue's head and a good clue to this figure's identity, it's an ancestral demon or a member of some kind. tribe that has horns as a striking feature.
I can't see divine power in the statue, but as my vision isn't that accurate when it involves divine power, I'd rather not risk it. I wrapped the statue in a really expensive cloth, it was given to me by Raven so in case I find something dangerous like a statue of a half-naked woman with horns sticking out of her hair, I'm quite curious to know who that woman is.
Stuffing the little mystery into my backpack I turn to the cash book and a compilation of legal documents, there are deeds to some land in town that are useless, but there are some that aren't from this town are probably cultist ware sheds so still are useful. But after I took all that out there was still one last item in the safe, underneath the books was a dark metal rune card that doesn't look like some kind of magic tool or rune diagram.
Maybe this is some sort of secret ID card, it looks very different from the card I saw from the temple of wealth, but it can also be valuable and it's not sending or leaving any sort of trace so it won't hurt a single bit. it with me.
After leaving the office we still had to leave some gifts around the mansion to make sure that any cultists who try to leave the mansion have the opportunity to receive Raven's good intentions. On the way I looked in a few more places that could be a safe, but I ended up only finding more connection boards despite being a bit useless I still sabotaged them, you never know when to screw with the alarm system of the mansion you are breaking into will help.
After a few more minutes all the presents were planted around the mansion, taking a last look around I noticed a dark spot under the floor of one of the rooms next to us. There's nothing interesting near this room other than the kitchen, it's probably storage or room for the servants to stay in, but strangely there seems to be a no mana spot there.
Before entering the room, I look in the mage's direction to make sure he's still far away, but to my surprise he seems to have started moving from the room. It seems like we don't have much time, I quickly enter the room after deactivating the common alarm on the room door and use my knife to remove the old wooden board inside this empty and dirt-filled room, an abandoned room.
I don't mind looking crazy to the Lazy Cat who is signaling us to leave the mansion soon before an alarm goes off and the entire mansion is in chaos, after all Raven and the others have already started the attack.
To be precise, at this very moment Raven must have already killed the guards and maybe even spilled blood inside the tunnel complex. It won't be long before the entire city is thrown into chaos, but I'm really curious to find out what's under that wood.
Removing the board I find a black mirror, what kind of barrier is this? I used the tip of the knife to pull the mirror up and when I did that, I noticed that mana started to leak through the opening I created, this is not a mirror but a box made of a mirror material, but luckily it doesn't seem to have sent neither an elemental or mana pulse through the air so I don't think I even triggered an alarm.
So, I started digging with my knife until I was able to remove the black crystal box from the ground, it's not a big box I wrapped it in a cloth so I wouldn't risk scratching the crystal or letting the lid open, don't lock it not one in it if i turned it upside down its contents would fall out without a problem.
With my interesting new premium, I went out the window along with the two assassins at the exact moment the fire mage ran out of the mansion, the sound of the door being slammed traveling through the almost completely empty hallways of the mansion. Looking back, I breathe a sigh of relief when I realize that the desperate mage is not heading towards us but towards the entrance to the underground base, it looks like someone has activated some alarm down there.
Leaving the mansion, I realize it's over, literally over for me. I'm going to leave this city and never come back, I don't want to see all the destruction and suffering that will happen in this city, but soon I saw a group that I believe are Camani priests talking to one of the cultists, this will go very wrong for the whole city.
I made my way out of the city since there was no more walking for one of us to do it inside, it took us about half an hour to get to the meeting point and start getting into my last night task, I'm going to be on top of a tree again to keep an eye on the city and the exit point for Raven's group, but this time I'm not alone, I have two assassins in the branches next to mine.
Three cretins waiting to see the city catch fire from afar, I hope the mansion's fire doesn't spread to the neighboring houses or the smoke kills many innocent people in the city. To make a decent trap we had to put a lot of fuel in the runic arrays, each of them can set fire to the manor on its own if there's enough time for him to do that and I put several of them in it.