Chapter 369: The Deal Pt.5

Seeing a town on the horizon, Lake had to say he wasn't sure if it was the one his arrow was pointing at because it looked much too small to have a thieves guild with more than a million gold inside. He guessed there was a chance it was though so he went ahead and entered it through the gate in the tiny earthen wall that surrounded the town while switching Detector to look for the Thieves guild he had come all this way for.

With the small size of the town Lake was able to find the building that held the entrance to the Thieves Guild quickly and was inside showing the person behind the desk his badge within a few minutes of arriving. Once he had gone through the secret entrance Lake found a surprisingly big guild office with tons people doing business. Not wanting to spend more time here then he would have to he got into line to talk to someone about a place he could use to open the barriers that held the items he would be selling to them.

After a short wait where he watched a few people trade in items for small amounts of gold Lake got to the desk and asked. "Do you have a room I could use to break into a vault I stole? I've been on the run so I haven't had the time to get the items out yet." He could tell his request was odd but nothing they weren't prepared for by the annoyed look on the clerks face but he was quickly shown to a room that was just big enough for him to work on one chunk at a time.

"Do you have anything bigger or could you possibly let me use a few rooms at once?" The clerk gave him an odd look probably thinking there was no reason they would need that much room to open something they couldn't see him carrying but he still got permission and was given access to more rooms that were in the same hall as his first one.

After the clerk walked away Lake wasted no time in summoning the first of three chunks to start the process of opening the barrier. Of course it didn't take him long to find the problem with opening it with force while inside and started to use Detector to try and find a way that wouldn't involve collapsing the building he was currently in.

...

"Donny we're just a few mountains away now." Feeling his eyes open Donny guessed he had actually ended up falling asleep after a while pretending to. Looking around he saw some of the others had come in and joined him as well. Fendis seemed to have never even tried though. "Has anything happened while I was asleep?"

"No, it's been completely normal the entire time." Donny had assumed this would be the answer since there was no way they would have been allowed to sleep through anything that happened but he still felt a bit relieved when he was told this. "Alright, help me wake the others up. We need to be ready to respond to whatever the situation in the Metal Domain currently is."

After they got everyone awake Donny walked outside to see what the guard was doing. The man hadn't slept in who knew how long and Donny was a bit worried but after seeing that his face still looked fine he stopped thinking about it and looked forward to see if he could get a glimpse of the fortress as they crested the mountain.

While this didn't work out how he had hoped because the mountain the fortress was on was in the way of them seeing it he did unexpectedly get a brief look at a small part of the city and it looked like it was doing better than the last time he had seen it. This was based on a very tiny part of the city though so he would have to wait till they got to the top of the next mountain to know if this was correct or not. historical

It only took them about a second to go over each mountain so they didn't have to wait long before he was able to confirm his thoughts. "They're rebuilding the city! How can this be, we were only gone for around a day?"

Donny understood why this was the first thing any of them said but he had probably been the first one to look away from the city and notice that where the fortress had been when they left was now empty and he decided to bring it to everyone's attention. "The fortress isn't there any longer."

These two things made it very easy to realize the war they had left a day ago was settled in the time they were gone. "The Temple looks like it's being rebuilt. We'll be heading there now." The guard had paused their progress at the top of the mountain but after he said this he sped them towards the city only stopping once they reached the wall.

"I'll be leaving the food here. Any of you that wish to stay here with it can but if anyone comes asking for free food make sure it's going to people that need it." Donny had no plans of stopping here but about half of their group did step off of the platform and stand with the boxes of food they had brought from Shallow.

Once they had split the people that had stayed with the guard continued into the city on a much smaller platform. Finally on the streets of the Metal Domain Donny was able to see the people who were working on the buildings were mostly people who lived here but was able to tell some of them were foreigners who had probably been sent by the other gods to help.

A large portion of whom were from the Life Domain that were known for their foreign aid efforts. "There's a lot less people than I was hoping for." Donny had been thinking the same thing because even if you added all the foreigners there was less than 25% of the people that had been on the streets when he had first arrived in the city at the beginning of this mess.

"A lot of people might be underground gathering resources to use in the rebuilding process." The guards' words made everyone a bit more hopeful but it would be hard on them if this ended up not being true later. "When we get to the temple there's a chance you'll be turned away so be ready for that."

...

After gathering information using Detector Lake now knew for sure that he couldn't open this by force without damaging the building around him but he had another plan that just needed time to open the barriers and he planned to go with that one.

Using Detector he had found that the barriers only had a few hours left till they ran out of the mana they used to operate. He didn't really want to wait around for this to happen though so he summoned the other two chunks into their own rooms before calling the clerk back to show them what he had brought with him.

After the clerk got over the amount of stuff he had somehow moved into the rooms without them noticing that surprised him a bit by asking. "So you're the one that robbed Keldon yesterday?" He just nodded after thinking about whether he should lie or not and say that there was a team that he was a part of that was responsible for the robbery because them thinking it was all him actually made it more likely that they would agree to his request.

"It will be a few hours before these barriers run out of mana, would you mind getting some of my gold ready while we're waiting. around a million would be fine. It's going to take a long time to transfer so much to me and this is a more efficient use of all our time." He could tell even though his request sounded rational the clerk seemed unsure.

"It's ok if you need to ask someone. I have to wait anyway." The clerk seemed happy he didn't get annoyed at them for not instantly accepting his request and quickly went to ask whoever was in charge around here. Being left alone, Lake used Man Vision to watch the clerk who had just left to see where they would go and who they would ask.

...

"Alright you five just wait here I'll come talk to you or send someone to help you find where you need to go as quickly as possible." After the guard said this he left and walked into the Temple leaving the five of them alone. It didn't take long for Fendis to say what they were all probably thinking. "We should have just stayed with the food."