The red point on my Map ended up stopping at a place seemingly in the middle of the forest. We had brought horses so we could keep up with the movements of the carriage. I still couldn’t ride a horse. To this point, I had never found a good reason to learn. Thankfully, one of the girls was willing to let me ride behind her. I clung to Shao tightly since every move made me feel like I was about to fall off. With Portals, horses weren’t needed very much. That was my reasoning.
As we reached the edge of the forest, I could see it was a mansion hidden out in the middle of nowhere. This must be where the gambling guild kept the large profits they were raking in from the gladiatorial matches.
Why were we picking on the gambling guild? That answer was rather simple. They were in with Lord Reign. They received no taxation, so all of their awards went to their pocket and didn’t contribute to the city’s health in the slightest. As for what Lord Reign got out of it, I wasn’t sure. My current thought was that they were somehow tied with the Imperial Cloud Meadow, but I wouldn’t be able to confirm this unless we could get into the mansion.
Unfortunately, the security looked pretty tight. Anyone we killed would also likely notify others of our presence. In this world, a person’s death was as much an alarm as anything else. That meant that we needed to get through and get the money while capturing and silencing every person there.
That was easier said than done. There were a lot of guards present. I could see the carriage holding the money approaching the mansion. There were fifteen guards, half of them were Knights. There was double that amount already at the mansion, waiting for their delivery. Presuming there were more inside, and I was looking at nearly fifty opponents against a team of seven. Maybe, we should have just raided the carriage itself. Fifteen would have been difficult, but we might have been able to succeed.
Another option would be to start taming monsters, or possibly using Terra’s golem machine to create a small army. At that point, I could just create a Portal and bring a large number of my soldiers over. However, if I did that, there would be no way to make this look like a Bandit raid. Plus, we might even start a war immediately. Silently wiping out the forces sent to kill me had pushed the pair of us into a stalemate that has lasted the last two months, but if I showed any sort of aggression against Lord Reign, that war could start sooner rather than later.
“Miki, can you put people to sleep?” I asked.
“I can, Master,” Miki whispered back. “The more alarmed they are, the harder it is, though.”
That made sense. We’d need to lull them into a sense of peace before we could do our attack. If they all fell asleep, then we could complete the entire task without killing anyone. Although I wasn’t afraid to kill these people, which is exactly why I picked those who were doing jobs that were just a little bit nefarious, I would feel better if no one died.
I started looking through my Inventory and my inventory ring, trying to come up with something that I could use. Just when I was about to give up, my eyes fell on a certain box in my Inventory, and a clever idea came to my mind.