Chapter 73: The Raid
The sun was rapidly setting over Lornfell Academy, casting long shadows across the cobblestone courtyards.
Arthur stood near the towering iron gates, his dark Shadow-Weave armor blending perfectly into the fading light. He watched as his squad approached from the first-year dormitories.
Emily had her Titan Knuckles strapped to her belt, while Felix hauled his massive Aegis Bulwark shield on his back. Chloe walked closely behind them, her white healer’s mantle pulled tight against the evening chill.
"Alright, Vance," Emily said, stopping in front of him and crossing her arms. "You texted us to gear up for an overnight watch. But I think you’re forgetting what day it is."
"It’s Wednesday," Felix grunted, looking nervously at the academy patrols stationed near the gates. "If we get caught outside the walls past sunset on a weekday, we don’t just get detention. We get expelled."
Arthur didn’t blink. He reached into his coat, pulled out a rolled-up piece of official academy parchment, and tossed it to Emily.
"We aren’t breaking curfew," Arthur stated flatly. "We are officially conducting an advanced field observation on ambient mana decay. The academy won’t come looking for us."
Emily caught the parchment and unrolled it. Felix leaned over her shoulder to read the text.
"Approved and sponsored," Emily read aloud, her eyebrows shooting up. Her eyes drifted to the bottom of the page, staring at the jagged, violently messy red ink signature. "Professor Moon? Since when does the strict professor sponsor first-year field trips? And what the hell happened to her handwriting? It looks like she signed this while falling down a flight of stairs."
Chloe, standing just behind Emily, felt her breath hitch.
She stared at the ruined signature. Her mind instantly connected the dots. She knew Arthur had gone to Elena’s office earlier. Seeing the frantic, completely destroyed handwriting of the untouchable High Elf triggered a massive, immediate spike of subservient arousal. A deep flush crawled rapidly up her neck, and her thighs squeezed tightly together beneath her skirt.
Arthur’s eyes flicked to the blushing healer. He didn’t say a word. He just offered a faint, knowing smirk.
"Let’s move," Arthur ordered, turning toward the gates.
The freezing night air of the industrial sector was thick with smog by the time Arthur and his squad arrived at Warehouse 9.
Inside, the warehouse was quiet but tense. Sylvia was sitting at an appraisal table, organizing a stack of documents. Garrick was perched high up in the wooden rafters, keeping watch over the loading bay, while Mira sat near the cold forge.
"The anonymous tip?" Arthur asked, walking into the center of the room.
"Dropped in the commercial district lockbox an hour ago," Garrick called down from the shadows. "The inspectors will process it by dawn."
"Did Darius send scouts?"
"If he did, they didn’t get close enough to see anything," Sylvia said, looking up from her ledgers. "The perimeter is completely clear."
"Good," Arthur said. He pointed toward the back of the warehouse. "Emily, Felix, grab a corner and get some rest. We hold the floor until morning."
The hours dragged on. The industrial sector remained dead silent.
Around 3:00 AM, Emily and Felix were asleep on their bedrolls. Sylvia was resting with her head on her desk upstairs.
Arthur sat alone on a wooden crate near the lead-lined box containing the corrupted cores. His high perception kept him fully alert, tracking the faint sounds of the city outside.
Soft footsteps approached.
Chloe walked over, holding a steaming tin cup of black coffee she had brewed over a small mana-burner. She didn’t ask stupid questions. She didn’t nervously fish for compliments. She simply offered him the hot cup, her blue eyes filled with a quiet, intense devotion, silently seeking his approval.
Arthur took the coffee. He held her gaze for a second and gave her a single, approving nod.
At 6:30 AM, the heavy iron doors of Warehouse 9 violently rattled.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
"City Inspector’s Office! Open the doors immediately by order of the Council!" a harsh, authoritative voice boomed from the street.
The warehouse instantly snapped to life. Emily and Felix bolted upright, grabbing their weapons. Sylvia walked out of her office, her face a mask of absolute, professional calm.
Arthur tossed the dregs of his coffee into a bucket and nodded to Garrick.
Garrick dropped from the rafters and threw the heavy deadbolts back, sliding the iron doors open.
A squad of six heavily armed City Guards marched into the warehouse, led by a stern, gray-haired Head Inspector holding a glowing crystal clipboard. They looked tense, their hands resting on their sword hilts, fully expecting to walk into a den of dark-arts smugglers ready to fight to the death.
Instead, they found a pristine, highly organized workspace.
Emily and Felix were sitting calmly on their bedrolls. Tolan was quietly sorting herbs at a table. Arthur was leaning against a crate.
"Who is the Guild Master of this establishment?" the Head Inspector demanded, his eyes sweeping the room suspiciously.
"I am," Sylvia said, walking down the wooden stairs. "Sylvia, of the Obsidian Hand. Can I help you, Inspector?"
"We received an anonymous tip regarding the trafficking of highly illegal, corrupted monster cores," the Inspector stated coldly. "We have authorization to search the premises. If you resist, you will be arrested."
"There is no need to search," Sylvia replied smoothly. She pointed to the lead-lined box sitting alone in the center of the appraisal floor. "We quarantined the hazardous materials the moment they arrived."
The Inspector blinked, thrown entirely off guard. He walked over to the box and looked inside. When he saw the twelve pulsing, necrotic cores, his jaw tightened. "You possess these? This is a Class-A felony."
"We intercepted them," Sylvia corrected firmly. She pulled the stack of paperwork from her coat and handed it directly to him. "Those were slipped into our standard delivery of smelting coal last night. Here are the receiving timestamps, the merchant guild manifests, and the witness testimonies of the drop-off."
The Inspector scanned the documents. "The manifest bears the official red wax seal of the City Inspector’s dispatch office. You mean to say someone from our department is involved?"
"A smuggler forged it," Arthur spoke up from the side. "Tolan. Show him."
The guild alchemist stepped forward, pulling a small vial of pale blue liquid from his belt.
"Real Inspector wax is blended with lumin-moth scales," Tolan explained in his quiet, academic tone. He poured a drop of the reagent onto the red wax seal attached to the crate lid.
The vibrant red wax instantly hissed, bubbling and bleeding out until it turned a sickly, bruised purple.
"Standard dyed beeswax," Tolan confirmed. "A cheap street forgery."
The Inspector stared at the purple wax. "Even if the seal is forged, these cores are still corrupted. How do I know you aren’t manufacturing this dark rot yourselves?"
Arthur looked at Chloe. "Cleanse it."
Chloe didn’t hesitate. She stepped forward, her pristine white academy mantle flowing behind her. She raised her mahogany staff and pointed it at the lead-lined box.
She channeled her holy mana, casting a concentrated beam of cleansing light directly onto the cores.
Crack. Hiss.
Thick black smoke poured off the crystals. Three of the cores violently fractured under the holy pressure, the purple-black aura instantly evaporating to reveal hollowed-out, cheap F-Rank gray husks beneath.
"Look at the fracture points," Sylvia instructed. "Those aren’t naturally corrupted cores. Someone hollowed out cheap F-Rank garbage, injected them with necrotic sludge, and sealed them with alchemical resin. We are just a fledgling guild. We don’t have the facilities or the motive to manufacture artificial dark-arts weapons."
The Head Inspector fell silent. He looked at the purple wax, the shattered husks, and the flawless paper trail.
"This straw packing material..." the Inspector muttered, pulling a piece of brine-moss from the bottom of the crate. "This only grows near the southern shipping docks. Varrik Slate’s territory."
"Varrik Slate runs the southern docks," Sylvia confirmed coldly. "And he is currently under an exclusive smuggling retainer for Darius Holt and the Red Boar guild. They tried to slip poison into our supply line to frame us for a raid."
The Inspector’s face darkened with absolute fury.
He tapped his glowing crystal clipboard, officially logging the evidence.
"Seal this box. We are taking it as evidence," the Head Inspector barked to his guards. He looked at Sylvia, offering a stiff nod. "You handled this perfectly, Guild Master. The Obsidian Hand is cleared of all suspicion."
"Thank you, Inspector," Sylvia replied politely.
"Guards!" the Inspector shouted, turning on his heel and marching toward the open doors. "Form up! We are marching on the Red Boar warehouses immediately!"
The guards grabbed the lead-lined box and hurried out into the foggy street.
The heavy iron doors slid shut.
Emily let out a loud, breathless laugh, throwing her hands in the air.
"Holy shit!" Emily cheered. "We actually pulled it off! We just got the city guard to do our dirty work."
Sylvia leaned against the appraisal table, letting out a long, heavy exhale as a fierce grin spread across her face. "Darius Holt is waking up to a raid right now. He’s going to lose his clean-market status, his contracts, and a massive chunk of his stockpile to fines."