novelraw Chapter 35: Mana Stone Mine
Chapter 35: Mana Stone Mine
Jensen stepped into Posey’s tent and stopped.
He looked around and nodded in appreciation. ’I guess it pays to be the bad guy, uhn.’
The tent was enormous, the thick canvas walls was lined with ornaments, and the floor was covered with woven rugs, each one layered on top of the other so the ground felt almost soft.
A large wooden desk sat in the centre, covered with maps and papers.
Beautiful magic lamps hung from the ceiling poles, casting warm light across everything.
In the corner, a real bed with a mattress and silk sheets. Posey’s tent looked better than all of his deputies’ tents combined by a lot.
Jensen walked to the desk and opened the spatial ring he had taken from Posey’s finger.
He reached inside with his mind and felt the contents then he stopped and his face fell.
’Wait,’ he thought. ’Where is...’
He pulled his hand out and did a quick scan of the room with his senses until he finally found what he was searching for.
A small box under the bed.
Jensen crossed the tent in three steps and dropped to his knees. He grabbed the box and broke the lock with one twist of his fingers and the metal snapped like dry twigs.
Inside were six spatial rings, they sat in velvet indentations, each one in its own little space.
Jensen picked up the first ring and checked inside.
Eighty thousand low grade mana stones were packed tight in neat rows from top to bottom.
The second ring all the way to the fifth had eighty thousand each making a total of four hundred thousand low grade mana stones.
Jensen let out a low breath. ’Now that is something.’
He picked up the sixth ring, this one was different, instead of mana stones he found weapons, although not a lot but they were all gamma grade weapon.
There were pills, potions vials, stacks of Gold Slips, skill books about 5 of them and finally, data-pads and ledgers. A dozen of them stacked neatly.
Jensen sat back on his heels and looked at Posey’s ring, and it simply had more of the same stuff as the sixth special ring.
Jensen pulled out the data-pads first, he tapped the screen of the first one and it lit up immediately.
There was no security locks since Posey had not bothered to protect his data-pad probably because he never expected anyone else to get their hands on it.
Arrogance or laziness Jensen didn’t care either way, it just made his job easier.
’He would have made a good accountant with this level of bookkeeping,’ Jensen thought as he went through the data pad.
He scrolled through the files filled with lists, names, numbers and dates.
The information included everything about his men from their name, where they came from all the way to his own personal thoughts.
It was quite obvious that everyone of his deputies that managed to reach their current level were all planned by him.
The information also told him where all the women and children had gone, they were in the mine.
A small camp had been created deep inside the mine tunnels, the women and children stayed there along with captives from trade caravans.
All of them were there to mine, the children carried small baskets of stones while the women broke rock with hammers, but the captives did the hardest labour.
Most of the provisions captured from trade caravans were sent down to that intern camp.
Posey only allowed these people to come up once a week to allow them to meet their families. They typically had a few hours together... about 6 hours and then back down into the dark.
From what Jensen could understand, Posey was planning to absorb other bandit groups around the area.
He wanted to unite them under his command; the mana stones gave him the resources to do it.
He was even planning to recruit a few town guards, and he already bought all the information on perspective targets for recruitment.
Because this mountain range was not far from one of the trade routes that connected Oakland Town to other towns, business was good for bandits giving them a good population.
Also, nobody really dared to venture into the mountain range, at least not deeply because everyone knew there were bandits here.
Nobody knew their number or how strong they were so nobody really dare come here even Posey had successfully become a Level 3.
Although Posey had focused all his might on mining, but he had to be careful. He could not let the secret leak to the rest of the bandit camps around him.
If they knew he had a mana stone mine, they would band together and take it from him.
So, he kept his men out on the surface and made them act normal.
This was also why the camp had so many lookouts and why they did not panic even when two of their outposts went silent.
Jensen set down the data-pad and looked at the pile of spatial rings in his lap and he smiled.
Then he turned his attention to the cave.
The entrance was partially concealed, and Posey had tried to use runes to hide it but failed.
Instead of cloaking the energy they simply disturbed the energy so much that made it hard to sense from afar.
He stood at the cave mouth and looked inside and saw the tunnel sloped downward.
As for the women, children and captive Jensen had other plans.
He still needed to go back to the city after all he could not stay here forever.
While he planned on leaving Herald behind to guard this location, he did not think it was enough to deter the wolves all around.
The other bandit groups would come sniffing around eventually.
For the people inside the mine, Jensen had to deal with them, releasing them was not going to happen.
If he let them go, the news of the mana stone mine would spread, every bandit, mercenary and powers for a hundred miles would come running.
Going in there to shut them up would take too long, hours maybe a full day and even then, he might miss someone.
No. There was a better way.
Jensen reached into Posey’s spatial ring and grabbed a large hammer and pulled it out.
Jensen walked to the cave entrance and looked up at the ceiling, the tunnel was supported by wooden beams and without them, the rock above would collapse.
He raised the hammer and threw it at the beams.
The wood pillars were destroyed instantly.
Jensen stepped back as the wood exploded and the ceiling could not hold anymore and the rock came down.
Thousand tons of rock fell at once causing dust to rise
When the dust settled, the cave entrance was gone, trapping the energy and everyone inside.
Jensen dusted dust off his body, took a last look at the now sealed tunnel before turning around and leaving with every thing important in the room.