Chapter 15 Georg (10 years after Hope, Winter)

"You goin to start?" Becker asked as they looked at the courtyard from the rooftop. "I will, but give them a little more time, they still have a couple hundred feet to go." he could see much farther than Becker due to his passive skill Eagle eye. The other five were closing in on the watchtower made of stone. The huge mansion was located a couple hundred feet behind it. 'Let's see if this one goes as smooth as the last one.' Georg changed his profession to mercenary after the corruption in the Defense force he helped found became too great.

It wasn't that he really cared about the politics but one had to be associated with the Guild to even earn a living in the Defense force. 'It's not like there's enough work there anyways now that they finished the 200 feet high wall.' past the mansion the wall could be seen looming over the city. People who didn't leave the walls didn't even know about the monsters outside anymore. Most mercenaries still worked for the Guild but there were other channels and many didn't want the Guild to know about their actions.

Very much so in this case as the mansion belonged to one of the self proclaimed nobles. They held some friends of their employer imprisoned which now had to be rescued. The job sounds simple but waltzing into a political leaders mansion and abducting a couple of his treasures wasn't as risk free as working in a smithy. 'The pay is ridiculous though and our team is good this time.' the five others were now very close to the watchtower. Georg tapped Becker on his shoulder "Time for you to go Becky." the bulky Thief took off with surprising speed while mumbling "I'd kill you for that if you weren't such a good fucking archer." Georg grinned. Becker was the first mercenary he worked with when he left the force two years ago.

"Alright, let's get this party started." Their plan was to make a distraction in front of the mansion while two of the five in the front went for the library where the most valuable possessions of the owner were stored. There were so many magic traps and strong personnel guarding it that it was impossible for them to actually steal something but Becker would carry out the real job in the meantime. Georg steadied his greatbow that weighed over a hundred pounds and took an explosive arrow from his inventory. 'I love this skill.' he was thinking about his arrow storage skill:

Arrow storage - Passive Skill

Store up to 150 (Tier 3) heavy arrows in an instantly accessible inventory space.

Requirement: Any Heavy Archer class

Level 100

Heavy arrows are arrows, or anything used as arrows, weighing over 10 pounds. Georg made some of them himself but the special ones like exploding arrows came from the Academy. He had an alchemist friend that built new kinds of rockets before Dawn. 'Let's try one of them.' He didn't yet have the chance of trying the explosive arrows. They had a magic spell built in and cost him 50 gold a piece. Georg loosed the arrow which flew nearly straight at its target.

Before it hit the arrow emitted red light and the watchtower was enveloped in flames. 'For an explosion it's rather quiet.' the fire was a stored greater explosion spell. When cast the spell isn't very loud either but the arrow was still a little underwhelming to Georg. There wasn't much left of the watchtower because the arrow first penetrated its stone wall and then exploded inside. The five mercenaries consisting of two warriors, one rogue, a healer and a wind mage immediately sprung to action. The wind mage, Davion blasted the windows of the mansion facing the ruined watchtower. One of the warriors Steven and the Rogue Catherine immediately jumped inside.

Georg could only trust them. They had the hardest job next to Becker. He looked around the mansion with his eagle eye and spotted a couple archers and a caster emerging on the roof. The two archers took aim when a lance at 200 miles per hour hit one of them. The archer was blown off the roof from the force and was dead before he even hit the ground. The two others fled back inside while narrowly avoiding another lance.

'Aaah, missed that one. Oh well another five gold wasted.' he checked the area again. Luckily there were quite some trees around the property reducing the sound generated by the explosion and increasing the time any reinforcements would need to get here. The fire went out pretty quickly because of the snow that covered all of New Sydney this time of the year.

The three remaining mercenaries of his team were engaged in combat with some of the guards the entered the yard. They occasionally ducked for a couple seconds to give Georg a clear shot but they mostly wanted to fight themselves to earn their keep in the group. Members were replaced often as they either died, couldn't handle the high risk or were simply unable to fulfill their tasks. Some even left after a couple jobs because they earned enough money to lay low for a couple years. Those were the kind of jobs Georg's team did. They didn't have a team name as all of them though something like that was silly but the general populace and an occasional employer would refer to them as the suicide wolves mostly because their most famous member had a wolf as a pet. Well that wolf killed him in his sleep eventually but the name still stuck.

All their jobs were high risk high reward and they were sought after by a lot of people. Not because there weren't teams just as good but nearly all of them worked for the Guild. Even though they took most jobs, of which very few could be classified as morally acceptable, the general populace loved them. They had some sort of Robin Hood feel about them because they never worked for the Guild. They didn't distribute their earned money either or actively worked against the men in power but the people took what they got.

Another one of his arrows or rather lances shredded one of the guards in front of the mansion. He was dragged back inside by one of his friends while the others covered their retreat. No enemies remained outside the mansion and hopefully most would gather around the library.

They were there for only ten minutes when Georg spotted the first squad of adventurers advancing from outside the property. 'Team of five, well equipped. Looks like a Gold team.' They didn't want to turn this into a full scale battle so he signaled his team that only ten minutes remain. He did so by shooting an arrow containing a regular fireball inside the mansion so that both the team outside and the ones inside could hear or see it. The two inside would have to leave in five minutes time. They were likely engaged in a figurative trench war with the guards at the library.

The adventurer team was halting their advance, likely waiting for another team to reinforce them. They might've seen the lance and heard the explosion thus reevaluating the risk. Only seven minutes later another team joined up with them. 'That's Platinum, time to vanish.' He checked that all his teammates safely evacuated and then left too. He silently ran for a couple hundred yards checking his surroundings. 'Now all that's left is Becky.' if their employer could be trusted the sought after people were held in a side building of the mansion and it shouldn't have taken Becker more than six minutes to get them out. He was a specialist in lock picking and silent killings. No door could keep him out for longer than two minutes, except it wasn't wide enough for him to fit.

When Georg came to the street he checked both sides and entered the sewers. New Sydney is the only city with a good sewage system but that brought the negative side effect of criminals escaping easier. The sewers in the center of the capital are very easy to navigate but further out existed a complete labyrinth, mostly because some ruins had to be integrated or even bypassed by the system. New Sydney spans an area of around 250 square miles. Creating a city this big in only ten years created more than a little chaos. Everybody helped build though because nothing is a better motivation than a Troll threatening to smash your house.

There luckily were huge stone deposits in the area and quarries were soon build. Most of New Sydney is paved even though more than a third of all the stone was needed to build the walls. They finished it in the sixth year. Smaller properties were simply claimed by whomever had build a house there. Most houses were made of wood because fire wasn't that dangerous anymore. Every other mage could use a water, wind or even fire spell to fight or extinguish the flames. Georg was already four streets away from the mansion when he exited the sewers. The first place any pursuers would search was the immediate vicinity of the mansion. The second place were the sewers. Georg removed his hood and continued on.

The mansion was in the northeastern most part of town. Mostly rich individuals lived there mostly because of the biggest lake that was located in the area. The Guild headquarter certainly had something to do with that too but their influence covered the whole city by now anyway. Georg was pretty much save at this point. His huge bow might've given him away but there were more heavy bowmen than one might think. Every bigger group used them as artillery because of their often increased eyesight. Additionally most guards and civilians simply didn't care about somebody attacking some noble. The city wasn't badly governed and most people had an alright life compared to the time before Dawn or the first couple years here.

He went to his house that was located in the southern part of the city. He walked for a couple hours before reaching his district. Public transportation didn't exist and horses would attract too much attention. When he entered his beautifully built wooden house he removed his bow, got himself a mug of beer from the cellar and sat down on the porch. 'Today was a good day.' he thought as he took a deep swig from his mug and savored the beautiful sight of a winter evening in the busy New Sydney.