Chapter 341: A payoff to consequences

“Boss, are you sure about this? Doesn’t seem like anyone is home,” An imp asked as the group crept to the front door, all keeping quiet and low to avoid suspicion as they hid behind a dark spell.“You idiot. It’s the middle of the night, of course it seems like nobody’s home. The guy has to be dead asleep. Now come on, make this fast before anyone notices.”

The head imp had needed to grease a few palms for the info, but they’d managed to find where the craftsman they were looking for lived easily enough and planned a quick in and out, getting whatever they could grab or else just kidnapping the man for a while to put to work.

That was an admittedly tantalizing option, even if it did come with more risk than he cared to bear. He knew that man could at least manage rare items which would earn them plenty for the effort, but if the rumours about him being able to make ultra-rare items were true… He couldn’t stop himself from drooling just thinking about it, only leaving his thoughts as the man he had working the lock started to swear.

“Hey hey, not so loud,” He hissed. “What’s the problem?”

“Something’s wrong with this lock boss,” His underling said as he pulled his tools away. “I ain’t seen anything like it and something in it just shocked me something fierce.”

“Are you really telling me you can’t handle a little shock?” He asked before smacking the back of the man's head. “Just get to work and do it fast.”

“Alright, alright, relax,” The picker muttered, getting back to it, doing his best to ignore the strange feelings coming over him as he did. Even if he hadn’t seen a lock like that before, he was confident he could do something about it with enough time, but the issue was that the longer it took the better the odds of being caught were. Even if the streets were empty from how late it was and they were mostly safe from potential eyes, the goal was getting in and out fast.

With that fact so firmly in mind, it was easy to push his discomfort away, ignoring the shocks and burns that kept going up his arm, as well as some other less obvious effects, right up until it became too much and the lockpicker collapsed to the ground.

“Shit, what happened?” The boss asked, shaking the man and getting no response as it snapped into place. “Must be worse boobytraps than they shock. Damn it, okay, change of plans all, we’re getting in a bit rougher than expected.”

Having one man knocked out was annoying, it would mean they’d need to waste the energy on carrying him back, but with four others they were still in a good condition to get in and out so he opted to take an approach with less finesse, sliding a wedge between the door and the frame before giving it a powerful strike with a hammer, breaking the lock and letting themselves into what they found to be a dark and empty hall, not knowing what else they’d just activated for the act.

The imp boss kept his ears sharp, trying to stay alert for anything and thought he heard a sound only moments after entering. He turned to his underlings, ready to signal them to move if need be, only for the floor to fall away in the same instant he did, all of them falling into a small, tight hole with short screams coming despite themselves before getting back under control.

Seeing their situation, the only thing they knew was that they were in trouble as the one in charge got up, kicking off one of his men that had landed on him before rushing to give out orders.

“Fuck, who the hell puts a fucking pitfall into their home? Okay, boost me out, this has gone south way too fast and we need to ru-”

Before he could finish, another enchantment activated. An air one, blowing a fine metal powder out of minuscule holes in the walls that none of them could originally see, covering their skin and getting breathed into their lungs as they all instantly felt the effect as the fine moribusial dust ripped their mana from them, making them all collapse back into a pile out of mana exhaustion as an alarm went up.

Vulcar stood at the back of the house with his two friends, each of them mentally preparing themselves for what they were going to do.

It hadn’t been hard to find the apostle’s house. Even with Eneth being a smaller god, there were enough of his believers who were sympathetic to the idea of showing the person who was working to all but destroy their faith their proper place that they were able to learn where he’d owned a home in the town he resided in, with those who lent their aid thinking it would only be a confrontation, not the assassination they were aiming for.

As he firmed his resolve, ready to do what he felt he must, he placed his hand on the back window, drawing a deep breath as he looked to his companions one final time. “This is it, your last chance to get out of this. Go back to your families, live your lives, and pretend you were never here. I can do this alone.”

“Don’t be a fool,” One said, placing a powerful hand on Vulcar’s shoulder. “We’re in this together.”

“We’ve come too far to quit now,” The other agreed. “I’ve made my peace and already split my belongings amongst all I want having them anyway. Now stop trying to scare us out of it and let’s earn our martyrdom already.”

He couldn’t help but smile at his two old friends, both so willing to see things to their bitter end with him, all for the sake of their god and it gave him the strength to renew his determination as he went to break the window, only hesitating once more as they all heard the sound of a quiet bang before they did.

Casting their eyes at each other, without words they rushed to move as fast as they could, thinking the man they wanted must have been up so late into the night and they threw themselves through the shattered edge one by one, rushing to get to the door out of the empty room they found themselves in, only to end up running face first into a clear barrier, crashing to the ground at the same time that first alarm began to ring so loud that none of them could hear each other if they wanted to, followed by another, just as loud but different in tone.

Vulcar felt his eyes widen as he processed things. He didn’t know how, but the owner of the house must have gotten word and laid a trap for them, and given what they all knew of his personality, none wanted to discover what would happen if they became the prey.

With one mind they all bolted back to the window, the adrenaline keeping them from immediately feeling the dark enchantment affecting the room as much as the barrier one did as they found their only other way out just as blocked, the transparent layer of magic only letting things in from one side.

But as much as he pushed himself, Vulcar saw no escape, and as the two beside him eventually collapsed to the floor, he came to know that his goal of freeing his god from the wretched wrath of the church of Myriad had failed before it could even begin as the darkness finally took him.

“So that’s some of the finer aspects of soul structure, but as for how the summoning spell interacts with it…” Helori trailed off as she spoke to Ben, getting a distant look in her eyes before addressing her would-be student. “And it looks like you’re about to be woken so we can continue this later.”

“What?” Ben asked, but before any answer could come he felt himself being shaken awake, his mind coming down from his god’s realm to reside once again on the mortal plane, finding Thera standing above him.

“Oh hey, missed me so much you couldn’t wait till morning?” He tried to joke since nothing about her expression made things seem serious, only tired as she just shook her head.

“Ben, why is your house screaming?”

“What?”

As he shook off the last bit of sleep that came with his body resting it was easier to notice what she was talking about. The distant but still loud sound of sirens going off down the street, at a volume that was penetrating the thick walls of their home.

“Um, either something went wrong with my enchantments that caused them to go off for no reason, or it looks like someone was trying to rob me. Myriad, what’s it look like?”

“Oh shit.”

Hearing that he didn’t stop to explain what was happening to Thera, instead rushing down the street where the house he owned stood, a large crowd gathering in front to try and understand what the commotion was as it looked like one of the town’s guards was trying to enter, as only the smallest part of Ben noticed something wrong with the alarm going off. The fact that it was actually two of them, marking two different locations.

“STOP!” He yelled out, trying to get his voice to reach over the volume and seeing it work as many in the crowd turned to him as he pushed passed, getting to the front door. “Sorry, sorry everyone, I’m the homeowner, just let me turn things off before anyone goes in!”

One guard whom Ben had seen before, someone who had been working to deal with the crowd who had come to try and either recruit him or take orders from him, stepped forward to try and find out what was going on. “So I suppose you have a good explanation for this?”

“Ahem, yeah long story short it looks like someone was trying to rob me and it set off some defenses. Give me a minute.”

He had made sure to set up a way to activate and deactivate his enchantments from the outside, with where they were deactivated needing to be done at a different point each time to keep anyone who saw how he did it the first time from using it against him. He was rather proud of it too, he just hadn’t expected to actually see that design put to use so quickly as he turned off the alarms only, not bothering with the ones inside as he went to explain what happened, both Thera and Sonya coming to his side soon enough.

“So it looks like someone broke into the front as well as the leftmost back room,” He explained. “They should be secured, but for the ones in the back room they might be fighting off any effects they’re under so if any of the guards want to go around back to make sure they don’t escape once I bring the rest of the enchantments down that would be awesome.”

The guards looked unsure amongst themselves for a minute, none of them having ever heard of someone placing large-scale enchantments on a house before, but eventually, two did as he asked as even more came due to the commotion and Ben deactivated the rest.

“Oh, also you might want to not touch the ones who went through the front,” He explained as they went through the door. “They’ll be covered in a morbusial powder to drain their mana. Actually, while you’re here Thera, do you think you could help me with reclaiming it when they get out? I’d be shocked if they haven’t been breathing it in while they’re trapped.”

Too tired to comment on how it sounded like he was ready to doom any intruders to a permanent case of mana exhaustion if she wasn’t around, she did as she was asked, both her and Sonya peeking inside to see just what he’d done to the building and being as shocked as anyone to find its entrance started with a pitfall.

“...Ben, you are not doing this to my house,” Sonya told him, already seeing a future where something went wrong if he did.

“Well, there’s a lot of different enchantments I tested here so you have options. We can discuss them tomorrow but for now, I’ll mark off the pitfall.”

The various guards were unsure how to react to both what they were seeing and hearing, electing to ignore it rather than deal with a man who was both an apostle as well as an awakened skill holder, as two very different groups were eventually dragged out.

“Huh, sobeks working with imps for some B and E? Do we have populations of either in town?”

Myriad told him in exhaustion, sick of what he’d seen as he looked into the minds of both groups.

At that his god fell silent, leaving Ben to not only process what he’d just heard, but figure out how he was supposed to explain that to the guards as Thera and Sonya both stood by his side.