This base is quite common, after a few hours' drive we arrived close to the location of the cultists' base. With Raven hiding all four of us, we went scouting, yes, all four of us.
Me, Raven, Volkan and Little Flame are scouting our target, Little Flame basically just invited herself to go with us even though she can't help with this situation. Volkan can detect unnatural changes in the ground and I can detect everything else, but obviously I can't say that so and I have to let Volkan 'detect' the base perimeter and fill in some important information.
The cultists base and an underground type base as we all expected would be very weird if it were another type of base, but what made me uncomfortable was the fact that it is actually quite small. Six floors counting the structure on the ground and the number of slaves inside the base is not that great, but the amount of death element energy on the floor is quite large.
And as if the entire floor is filled with death, it looks like this is a slave processing base. The top floor must be the place to dump the bodies of the dead slaves or I could be completely wrong and this is a form of resource farm, it won't be the first time I've come across such a project but I doubt they would do it this close of a city in the kingdom that is being used as a training base.
They may have the advantage of having to spend little time transporting slaves and have a better chance of seizing opportunities to get slaves, but I don't think it's worth risking being so close to their enemy. It's not cheap to create an artificial resource like this, if the basement of that base is really some kind of farm, which I think is unlikely.
After spending nearly an hour and a half doing full reconnaissance of the enemy base and the sky already starting to light up, we don't have much time to organize the attack Raven had planned.
The numerous traps and alarms around the base aren't a real danger, not one that's difficult to disarm or avoid, but it will still cost us a fair amount of time even choosing the fastest route I found.
Enclosure defenses are going to be a lot more complicated, not how to sneak into the base. Volkan can open a tunnel, but the moment his magic reaches the base structure a huge number of alarms will go off and a very strong magic barrier will be activated in front of us preventing us from penetrating the base quickly.
The best option is still to invade the base through the front entrance, because the other two options that are the secret exits on the fourth and fifth floors of the base are being guarded and covered by a good number of traps. With the entry route planned we have to cut off the cultists' escape route, which unfortunately means that Volkan will not participate in the attack.
My dear lucky dwarf friend will be pretty safe outside the base waiting for the right moment to collapse the two cultists' escape tunnels, he'll also have to thwart any further attempts to escape overland, but I doubt he'll have a problem with that. that.
Among the cultists there are obviously one or two earth mages, but Volkan is very proficient at this type of task. It would take a mage in the final stage of the red core to force open the way after Volkan sealed off the base's exits, and that's basically impossible since I haven't seen anyone like that.
Unfortunately, I don't have a certain number of cultists because of the ridiculous amount of mana and elemental energy used around the base, but I was still able to confirm that there are only three red core people inside that base and four orange core people, and not one. one of them has the element of earth at its flashy core.
I really like the color of these cores; they stand out easily on mine with so much blue and brown. But among the storm of colors that cover the underground base when I study it, is the black color of the element of death, the few mages and warriors with that element scattered throughout the entire base.
The group of cultists really is a bunch of necromancers and death fighters, not that this is anything shocking. Among the many paths popular among cultists these two are those that have a very direct use of slaves, ultimately both paths with numerous ramifications require a great deal of death element materials that originate from corpses.
I think the second-best option was the warriors and mages who use human blood, but these people are quite rare, but they would need a source to constantly collect fresh blood from both humans and animals and magical beasts. The choice to use the life force of the life element in the blood is not a popular school among cultists, to be precise it is not popular anywhere.
Unlike necromancy, which is a very old and studied profession that has undergone several innovations, blood users are relatively new, but the real problem was the emergence of some terrible figures that made the temples of gods together and neutral try to destroy any legal organization that employed or researched this kind of use of the life element.
The biggest problem and advantage of this type of art is the fact that they can accumulate power very quickly, but with that comes great physical and mental instability. This aggressiveness must have come from the fact that life element warriors have great trouble fighting alone, as their element doesn't have a simple sternum elemental attack type like the other elements a crazy person must have gotten tired of using his element to strengthen his body while he is injured by his enemies, and so is the manipulation of blood that comes with numerous problems.
This person probably had a very sad ending, inventing a new path is not easy and always made mistakes, but when your path consists of modifying your vital force and your body, any mistake can be fatal. But I doubt there's anyone like that inside that base, the real problem is that I can't identify undead.
There should be several of them inside that base since there are several death element users inside, but why can't I see even one undead walking around the base or serving as a lookout? I figured a secret base where necromancers are processing slaves should have a few dozen wraith hidden around the base.
It's not like they lack the materials to create wraith after killing so many slaves, shaping the wraith's shape shouldn't be easy, but I doubt even one of the necromancers will be able to do that. I think there's something wrong here, better talk to Raven about it.
"Do you think there's something wrong with that foundation? I understand why you think that, but I believe we are very lucky, Jack really helped us out a lot and even annoying that we couldn't do anything for him other than kill the cultists who kidnapped his sister."
"Am I wrong then?"
"More or less, you're not wrong to think it's strange not even having an undead guard outside, after all there must be more than one necromancer inside. But what you don't know is that there's a problem keeping the undead near a slaughterhouse like this, Wolf."
"If the information we collect is correct, this base is used as a place to process the bodies of slaves, doing so requires a lot of care and space. You and Terra managed to map out the size of the base well and if I'm right their basement must be full of dead bodies being turned into raw materials for the necromancers."
'That's just one of the bases they must have set up, from the number of missing slaves and counting on the steady flow of slaves. I wouldn't be surprised if you hear more res or four bases like this scattered around the realm, it takes space and time to create locations like this so they have to have several in case one of them is discovered."
"It's very risky to make a really big place to process all the stolen slaves, today I'm lucky to have found such a place at the very beginning of the war. Destroying it could cause the cultists responsible for this large-scale operation to retreat to another realm if their operation has just begun, or slow down the speed they are stealing slaves to lessen the chances that their other bases will be found."
"Okay, but that still doesn't explain why there isn't even one undead here."
"Yes, it did, you just didn't notice. Look at your surroundings again, feel the grass on the ground and the air before dawn."
Okay, let's try.