Chapter 17

It seemed that tight security was not a concept Defias' leadership followed. What was supposed to be the entrance to their inner sanctuary was guarded by one ogre and two rogues who did a rather sloppy job of concealing themselves.

The canon and the subsequent guards before this entrance let them pass without so much as asking a question.

"Do you think you can handle the big guy while we deal with the rogues?" Corben asked Lonaraa.

An outwardly dull creature, like an ogre, more often than not had enough brains to use their massive size to their advantage. Nearly three meters tall, obese, and strong beyond reason, this ogre likely could turn anyone into a paste with a single blow of his massive two-handed hammer.

"I have not fought an ogre before, but I think I can keep him occupied for a while." Lonaraa replied with determination.

"Take the left one." Corben said to Eldum and then addressed Jithu. "Watch our backs."

"On it, boss." Jithu went into stealth.

With a lucky shot from Eldum and a precise frost bolt, two rogues dropped immediately so only the ogre remained standing.

With a roar, he immediately charged in their direction.

Lonaraa jumped in his path and swung her sword at the tall monstrous beast. She only left a shallow cut in the ogre's fat belly, making him only angrier.

He swung his hammer at her, barely missing her. Osbeorn charged to help and bit the ogre in the leg while Lonaraa went for another swing, this time digging the blade into the ogre's side.

Corben went for the proven tactic and cast ice shards under the beast's feet while Eldum took shot after shot at his head since the rest of the body took the bullets like a sponge.

The coordinated assault proved to be enough for the beast to fall to the ground and get killed.

Corben grabbed the keys from the ogre's waistband and opened the massive metal door.

The path forward proved to be unguarded with miners working on every visible ore patch. Between them walked a few goblin foremen mostly concerned with the integrity of the tunnels.

"Wait! There he is." Yiliana whispered and pointed at a smaller side tunnel where a few miners were slacking off while goblins weren't watching.

"Who?"

"The thief I'm looking for."

"I'll distract the goblins." Jithu instantly picked up on what was about to happen.

The rest of the group approached the miners. The one Yiliana had pointed out looked at the group and asked with a tired tone. "What do you want? Can't a man rest even for a few minutes?"

"You have taken something that belongs to a friend of mine." Yiliana said, trying to mimic a human accent as much as possible with mild success. The illusion cast on her only mimicked the appearance of a very tall human woman.

The miners by the looks of it didn't suspect anything either way with the thief spitting on the ground. "I ain't taken nothing. You thugs push us around too much as is."

"Looks like someone needs to be taught a lesson," Corben said with his best crime boss impression. He glanced at Lonaraa to make her know it was her time to shine. "Shake the goods out of him."

Lonaraa grabbed the man and lifted him off the ground with one hand. The rest of the miners instantly got on their feet and turned around resuming their work to not be witnesses to what was about to happen with their peer.

"H-hey, I haven't done anything!" The man whimpered.

"The golden necklace with a ruby you took from my friend is worth more than your life!" Yiliana played up her part and raised her one-handed mace above her head to strike the man.

"I didn't know. Please take it. I didn't know." Man flailed around in Lonaraa's grasp. Somehow he managed to reach into his vest pocket and pull out the necklace, dropping it on the ground.

"That's the one?" Corben asked.

"Yes. This is my friend's heirloom that got stolen."

"We'll let you get off easy this time." Corben said to the man.

The thief let out a sigh of relief. "Thank y-"

"Break his right hand." Corben interrupted him.

"What? Please no!" The thief whimpered.

Lonaraa looked at Corben questioningly but didn't say anything. They were pretending to be bandits and this man was far from innocent.

"You don't appreciate our generosity?" Corben played up his act even more. "Hold him down." He ordered Lonaraa, which she reluctantly obliged.

"Do the honors." He turned to Yiliana.

The elf smirked and slammed the mace down in the thief's hand with a sickening crunch. The thief let out a wail of pain but couldn't do much else.

"Let that be a lesson," Corben said to the man who cried looking at his shattered hand. Of course, it wasn't something a few healing potions wouldn't fix but it was a small consolation for someone in agonizing pain.

"You didn't see anything," Corben said to the rest of the miners who didn't even acknowledge that anything had happened.

Once they returned to the main tunnel, they found goblins gathered around Jithu, who was scamming them out of their money by playing a clearly rigged 'guess the card.'

With theatrical movement, Corben grabbed Jithu by the collar of her leather armor and scolded her for forgetting that she was on a patrol with him and others, simultaneously telling the goblins to return to work before one of the big bosses had noticed.

The next part of the hideout turned out to be a massive woodwork operation run by a goblin named Sneed, who had a big bounty on his head.

"Leave this to me," Jithu whispered and disappeared into stealth. If there was one thing she truly excelled at, save for being a pervert, it was engineering. Considering that an average goblin-run workshop was an engineering nightmare, it more often than not took just one accident for the whole thing to go up in smoke.

Sneed himself was operating a shredder which was a humanoid-looking wood-cutting contraption with buzzsaws for hands. It didn't take a genius to see where things could go wrong.

While Corben and crew walked through the workshop pretending to be a routine patrol, one of plank making lines stopped with a metallic grinding sound and thick black smoke started to fill up the room.

The scene was enough to catch anyone's attention.

Using the opportunity, Jithu appeared in Sneed's cabin, stunned the goblin with a masterful kick in the face and quickly pressed a number of buttons on the shredder's control panel. Before anyone had noticed her she went into the stealth again.

To everyone's horror, the shredder lifted its arm and jammed it into the cabin, decapitating the stunned goblin.

"Can you lunatics build something that doesn't kill you for once!?" Corben played the role of a shocked patrol guard to perfection.

He immediately ran up to the shredder which was letting out an array of sparks from the cut-up part, and pulled out the dead goblin.

He put down the headless goblin to the floor and shouted. "Who is second in command here?"

"That would be me." A goblin in blue overalls approached him. The goblin looked at his dead peer, shook his head, and added. "You can fix that one with a bandage."

"Funny. Resume the operation. We are going to report this to the boss." Corben picked up Sneed's head. "And get rid of the body before it stinks up the place."

It wasn't a hard guess that sooner or later someone would pick up on the accidents and their cover would be blown so they needed to work fast.

The team entered the room at the top of the spiral ramp. This section was a large round smelting room with a massive cauldron filled to the brim with liquid metal hanging in the air above the other team of goblin workers.

It was held up with four chains.

To call this setup hazardous would be a gross understatement.

"This looks unsafe," Lonaraa remarked observing the scene below.

"Exactly. Although there is a large chance we'll have to pass on a bounty head, I have an idea." Corben patted Eldum on the shoulder. "I'll hit the chains with a frost bolt to make it brittle and you shoot them."

"W-wait, you mean to pour molten metal on those poor creatures below? I know they are criminals but maybe there is a better way." Lonaraa looked down at the hard-working goblins.

"Only a good goblin is a dead one." Yiliana sneered. "You should have seen what those green bastards had done to the Stonetalon Mountains."

"We have to move fast. If we get caught so deep in we are as good as dead." Corben pointed out.

"But…" Lonaraa gave another glance at the creatures.

"Melt those green bastards. Just be careful. There is a chance they keep explosives somewhere nearby." Juthu remarked while closing a door behind them and jamming the locking mechanism so only an experienced locksmith could open it.

Seeing no one else agreeing with her, Lonaraa gave up. She, after all, was not as familiar with the race of the tiny green-skinned creatures as her friends.

"Let's go." Corben cast the frost bolts, encasing two chains in a thin layer of ice.

"Aye." Eldum took aim. Shooting one chain was not the easiest task. Hitting two in a row and in rapid succession was akin to a small miracle, but with his hunter's pride on the line, he was not about to miss.

With two shots one right after another, two of the chains broke and the massive cauldron tipped over, showering the goblins with molten metal.

Their soul-wrenching screams died down fast. In the shock, none of them managed to escape.

The cruel tactic did come with a price. One of the goblins had a bounty on his head which now was half submerged into half-molten metal. Writing off the loss, Corben cast a few frost spells to cool the room and Yiliana cast levitate on the whole group to get past the hazardous floor that was hotter than a stove.

After that came another long tunnel filled with miners and a few patrol groups which was easy to pass with the disguises.

At the end of the tunnel, they reached a locked metal door with no one guarding it. While looking as inconspicuous as possible, they waited for the bandit patrols to be as far away as possible. Once no one was in sight Jithu unlocked the door.

What awaited them behind these doors put the group in stunned shock. In an absolutely massive cavern filled with water, there was an almost finished dreadnought.

"Hey, do you have some explosives left?" Corben asked Juthu, who had already pulled a lot out of her bag during the whole mission. At this point, it was rather obvious that her backpack was a result of some insane gnome technology and held a lot more inside than should be possible.

"Plenty. Enough to sink that baby." The gnome instantly picked up on Corben's intent and disappeared into stealth mode.

"Wait!" Corben tried to grab the invisible gnome but it was far too late.

"We have to hurry. Let's find VanCleef and get his head before the lunatic blows up this whole cavern."

Everyone instantly agreed on his assessment and went forward. There was no time left to hunt down all the remaining leaders.

They were stopped by one of them, a massive black-furred tauren in a black leather outfit. The bipedal bovine creatures were one of the horde races but crime organizations rarely cared for political affiliations.

"Where are you going?" He stood in front of the bridge leading to the ship.

"Goblins destroyed the smelter. If you want to bring news to the boss we'll just go back to our patrol route."

The massive tauren rubbed his eyes and stepped aside, saying, "Damn goblins. Not even a week without an accident."

Navigating the ship wasn't the easiest task but after some stumbling around they reached the top floor with a small out-of-place cabin.

Inside they found a lone man sitting by the table and writing a letter. The black-haired man had the trademark bandana around his face but even then he was recognizable as Edwin VanCleef, the head of the Defias cartel.

"Something to report?" He asked without looking up.

When no one answered and he heard the door get locked, he added. "This again. Deal with them."

Four guards instantly came out of stealth and charged them.

But before anyone could land a blow a series of loud explosions could be heard from below. The cabin violently shook, knocking everyone off their feet.

"Take a deep breath, and get out as fast as possible," Corben whispered to his team and grabbed a bottle from an inner pocket, and shattered it against the ground.

He got on his feet and quickly bolted outside with his friends following. The bandits inside were overwhelmed by the rising fumes and all fell to the ground.

Corben took a breath and realized that the ship was rapidly sinking. If there was one thing he could always be sure of was that Jithu never used too little of her explosives.

"Lonaraa, grab VanCleef and let's run." Corben ran to the cabin door and opened them after taking a long inhale.

She quickly did as told and dragged the unconscious man out of the cabin.

"Cut off his head; we need to leave before chaos ends. And we need to find that-" Corben shouted.

"I'm back, boss!" Jithu appeared next to him.

"Lad, fresh air is coming from that tunnel over there." Eldum pointed at the opposite end of the cavern.

"Then let's go there. You got the head?" He turned to see Lonaraa finish the gruesome task.

With no time to waste, Yiliana applied levitation once again and they just jumped over the edge and flew towards the tunnel.

The waters in the cavern turned out to be too shallow to fully swallow the dreadnaught and it remained half submerged under the water.

Of course, the Marshal was a bit skeptical when they retold their tale back at Sentinel Hill but the few presented heads nonetheless resulted in a big payout.

After a few days, their tale was confirmed by the adventurers who stormed the hideout to claim what was left, adding an additional sum of money as a reward. The only downside was that the said reward came with a requirement to collect it from a noble.

‹x›‹x›‹x›‹x›‹x›‹x›‹x›‹x›‹x›‹x›‹x›

A week later the group stood in the office of the most influential nobles of Stormwind, Lady Katrana Prestor.

The beautiful and elegant black-haired woman eyed them with a subtle smile on her face. "By sabotaging Defias' attempts to build a dreadnought and killing their leader, you have done the Kingdom of Stormwind a great service. Please accept this reward and personal thanks from me."

Corben couldn't help but gulp when his eyes met with the Katrana's. Although she spoke in an uplifting, dignified manner and smiled, her eyes radiated pure malice and hatred.

'She is not happy!' Corben gazed back into her eyes.

'Could it be she or other nobles were behind this? It surely would not be out of the realm of possibility.' Corben accepted the bag of gold from her hands and deeply bowed. "It was our honor to be of service to Lady Prestor."

"Then I won't hold you up any longer." She waved for them to leave her office.

Once outside the Stormwind castle, he could let out a sigh of relief but not before looking over his shoulder a few times.

"Something wrong?" Lonaraa asked.

"I think we should watch our backs. I have a feeling that lady will be out for our blood."

"Yeah, something was off about her. Usually, I would have plotted how to expand my collection but I just wanted to get out of there asap." Jithu voiced her agreement.

"Then we should celebrate before nobles get to us," Yiliana said, unphased by their fears, and snatched the bag of gold from Corben's hands to see how much was inside.

"Agreed." Corben tried to get the bag back to his hands but Yiliana was surprisingly agile and avoided his attempts.

Proofreading by Sad_Smiles and Visur Nyxan.