Kayn, who had been released from the chains a few moments ago when the battle started, decided to watch rather than participate. This was his first chance to really observe powerful individuals in combat with each other. Kayn was especially interested in Yelena, but her movements were too fast for his eyes to catch and her illusion spells too seamless for him to even detect when she cast them.
Kayn could only sigh as he probably wasn't going to learn much from trying to observe her, so he switched his attention to the rest of the group. Charlotte mostly stood in the back and provided support with shielding or a perfectly timed fire ball while the other casters had individual jobs as well. One was assigned crowd control, one was pure damage, and the last caster of their group was a hybrid between the two.
The melee mages of their group, not including Yelena, amounted to four individuals. One wielded a hand and a half sword, one a giant battle axe, one a massive two-handed mace, and the last a pair of daggers.
Watching each of their movements was quite helpful for Kayn as he would be able to incorporate some of their fighting styles into his own, especially the sword wielder as Kayn himself had adjusted his style to a single sword over the years.
The group of guards knew that there was no tomorrow for them, so they were attacking with reckless abandon, just trying to get in any damage on their killers if the opportunity presented itself. A few of them even tried attacking Kayn, but every single attack was blocked by a barrier that would pop up precisely when the attack was about to land.
Kayn would occasionally glance at Charlotte and when she noticed his stare she would smile and nod at him. There was a silent understanding between the two that Kayn would sit this battle out and while he could protect himself, throwing up one more barrier wasn't hard for Charlotte.
Out of the entire group, Kayn was most interested in learning Charlotte's barrier spell and Yelena's illusion spells. However, he also knew that it was unlikely either one would teach him without a massive amount of remuneration.
These two had been perfecting their craft for many, many years. Even if they were in a partnership of sorts, no mage would give away their personal spells and practices for free and most would only pass it down to someone special as a legacy of sorts. Figuring out a barrier spell on his own would be fairly easy, but illusion spells would be difficult.
The fight quickly came to a close as Kayn stood there lost in his own thoughts. The members of the group, and Yelena in particular, moved around the blood-soaked room looting anything they could find. Yelena had even made the Carnet ambassador and Phillip cough up their own spatial artifacts, her eyes shining as she glanced into their contents.
Kayn couldn't believe someone of her probable age and power was this greedy for money and various things. Shouldn't she already be ridiculously rich like Charlotte was? He himself wasn't doing too badly for himself, at least in his opinion. But once again, remembering what Charlotte referred to as chump change made him reconsider his opinion of his personal wealth.
The only two people they left alive were thrown into the corner while the rest of the group proceeded with their looting. Once they ensured that everything was taken care of and they had moved all of the bodies to one side of the room, they began to search the warehouse rooms.
There were a variety of useful goods still stored that they hadn't sold in this auction, so it was all rounded up to be distributed later based upon need. If no one wanted or needed an item, they would split those items between the 10 of them evenly at random.
Unfortunately, they didn't find anything that was worth a ton of money, but there was some good stuff that Kayn definitely wanted if he was allowed to ask for it.
It took them roughly an hour to go through the massive warehouse rooms, which there were three of. However, one of the rooms was used as a massive housing area for the slaves who worked in the auction house, such as butlers and entertainment.
They found a good number of people cowering in the corner of one room, trying to keep their heads down and praying that they wouldn't meet their end today. These people were all led back into the main room where they would wait until they left the facility.
However, upon seeing the dead bodies and massive amount of blood strewn about, some of them threw up while others straightened their backs further in order to not get on the bad side of the people who were taking them.
It was now time to check the last door which everyone assumed led to the prison block where they kept the slaves before sale. A few of Kayn's group stayed back with the previously discovered slaves, but Kayn and the others all entered into the last door.
As they expected, it was another spacious room with large cells lining the perimeter. The smell in the air was putrid and stank of blood, death, and excrement. Each member of the group that entered grimaced upon smelling the air, but none of them reacted much as they had all witnessed worse in their lives.
They started front of the room, unlocking and directing the slaves that were inside on where to go. The slaves seemed to be separated based on their sex and age, race wasn't taken into consideration. In total, they found around 20 more adults of various ages and three children less than 16.
It wasn't until the group approached the last cell that one of their group members reacted stronger, punching a massive hole into the nearby wall. "Fucking bastards."
The scene in front of Kayn was something that would come straight from a horror movie back on Earth. A sizeable pile of bodies was piled up in this cell, all in various states of decomposition. Most of them were elderly, but there were a few younger ones include two children.
Kayn entered the room and examined the corpses, trying to get a better understanding of what had happened here. A few of the older ones were definitely murdered as their necks were sliced open, he could only guess that they weren't selling and they didn't want to keep feeding someone that wasn't going to make them money.
The rest who weren't directly killed were most likely extremely sick from what Kayn could tell. A few though were definitely used a punching bags or "stress" relief. Kayn clenched his fist seeing the state some of the bodies were in as not just women but men and even the children were killed this way.
"Those bastards' deaths were too swift…" Kayn mumbled under his breath.
He would have loved to give these poor victims' families some kind of closer, but he had no clue how to identify any of them. All of their belongings were taken long ago and the bodies were all thrown into this pile in the state they were born, naked.
At this point, Yelena spoke with a somber voice, "Hey Char, what should we do with them? We can leave them for the authorities to discover once we alert them of the situation, or we can cremate them here and now. At the very least we should give them some dignity in death and lay them out individually."
Charlotte stood there in silence, contemplating on what they should do. They planned to alert the Palatine authorities of this operation after they had evacuated themselves and any survivors, but what would they think about a bunch of dead bodies?
Would they even bother to give them a properly burial or just leave them down here after they finished their investigations, burying them with the facility once they destroyed it?
If what their group assumed was correct, the report they made would be buried by the ones at the top who were corrupt. Then everything related to this place would be forgotten.
Charlotte herself had a direct line to the Emperor, but while this was a serious issue as he was a former slave himself, they didn't know who was truly behind everything.
If she alerted him to the situation too soon, he would definitely light a fire under the royal forces to do a clean sweep of the city, but meanwhile the upper political echelon that had their fingers dipped into this would just hide away until things blew over before starting up again.
Charlotte stood in contemplation for a while before making her decision, "We will cremate them before we leave. Remove them and line them up in rows on the ground, we will place sheets from the beds in the other room over the bodies before we send them off to whatever god they worshiped.
"Once that is all finished, we will evacuate with those we have rescued and rendezvous at the safe house where the previous group is currently being kept. Seven will then bury this place using earth magic once Six evacuates the store above. Also, don't forget to capture and interrogate the store managers about their knowledge of this place.
"We are no longer going to report this, we need solid evidence on the people in charge here, and the two we captured should hopefully give us some much-needed insight. For now, we hit them where it hurts and silently bring down their operation, one piece at a time."
The group members all nodded and got to work while Six left the area to go into the above general store and clear it out. Meanwhile, Seven analyzed the map they had drawn out of the complex as he had to destroy the entire place while at the same time replacing the ground with earth magic so that the buildings above them weren't all destroyed.
Each group member was given a number to be used as their name aside from Yelena and Charlotte herself. Most of them didn't know each other before this all started, but they all knew Yelena or Charlotte as these two were the recruiters of this little group. Kayn in particular liked his code name for once, Zero.
About half an hour later, all of the dead slaves' bodies were lined up in rows and covered with blankets or bed sheets. Between Charlotte, Kayn, and Five, they had three fire mages. The three worked in tandem as they ignited one row each with intensely hot flames in order to do the job quicker than just igniting them and letting them be.
A few of the rescued slaves had even helped lay out the bodies and even fewer were crying. Kayn had observed these few slaves caressing the faces of and crying over a couple of the dead. It occurred to him that they were most likely family.
With a gloomy atmosphere, the group began making their way out of the facility once the dead were cremated fully. As for the bodies of those slain today, they were all thrown into a pile and left to be buried, much like the dead slaves had been.
While they were walking, Kayn couldn't help but droop his head, deep in thought about how he wanted to do more. Unfortunately for him, the semester was starting soon and his time would be split. It was for the best though, for his mental health at least.
He needed the academy and Kinzie to help keep his mental health up, otherwise if he had to kill people and then see scenes like today constantly, he would probably turn into a much colder and more detached person. Kinzie and his students would definitely help keep him centered and his mind focused on what needed to be done.