Why am I going shopping? I need a bunch of sealable bottles for my plan, and I can’t just make them, as they're spell components. Focuses, specifically, but some can’t be bypassed due to necessity of how the spell works.

So I visit some fancy stores, looking at the various bottles with stoppers they have available, and use my Appraise skill to map their value. Whenever one pings as worth over 100 gp, I buy them out of that one.  I end up visiting about fifty different stores in ten different states before I figure I have enough.

I then Greater Teleport to the third basement of my warehouse, call the door for the Keyhome with Forbiddance, and walk in. I'm immune to everything that blocks planar travel due to Galactic Emissary from the Vortex Dragon, and it's not my Forbiddance spell, so I walk right through. I set up two sets of shelves, and stack all the empty bottles one the first set.  I take the time to make a calling diagram, loading it with Magic Circle Against Law. I also land a Persistent Zone of Truth spell just outside it, and a Persistent Major Image of Debbie Diplomat. I dismiss my own illusion of visibility, and cast Mage'sPrivate Sanctum over the entire Keyhome.

I then use Planar Binding to nab the first person named by the Shaman as belonging to The Guardians of Free Will. One Mark Zelinski.

"You should be dead!" are the first words out of his mouth upon seeing the illusion.

Ignoring him, I slap him with Dominate Person. Things proceed smoothly after that.

《Tell me why you say I should be dead.》

"We used the Devil's Dagger. Nobody survives that."

《Tell me what the Devil's Dagger is, how it works, and where it's located.》

"The Devil's Dagger… is a legend we created to take down deities centuries ago. It's a dagger, previously a human named Derrick, who we raised to honor said invented legend before we fed him the apples. The use is very simple: At midnight, you focus on someone you want dead - you don't even need their name, just some way to identify the being uniquely - and use the Dagger to kill yourself. Your target dies with you, regardless of any defenses they may have.  It's located in a secure facility in Alaska. I don't have the address."

《Tell me how you make people OK with that.》

"We don't. The dagger does. We just take an agent who we are sure isn't a mole, tell them who needs to die, and put them in the room with it at midnight. Once the hour has passed, we send someone in to clean up the body.  We have a camera on it: no words are said. The agent simply picks up the dagger and does the deed. We tried mind control experimentally on comparatively disposable people … the controller died, not the expected target.  Drugs, hypnosis, voodoo… doesn't matter. It must be done by someone who is willing to kill for us of their own volition.  I'm guessing my predecessors put that into the myth to make turning it against us basically impossible. It makes it very expensive to use, though. A good man dies for every threat we use it on. How did you live?"

If I tell him that, he might eventually find a way around it. Not that I expect him to ever leave, but better to be safe than sorry.

《You don't get to ask the questions. Tell me the proper names of everyone you know that's knowingly involved with your organization.》

He rattles off a list of names, which I memorize via Autohypnosis.

《Thank you,》I tell him, as I grab a bottle from the first set of shelves, and cast a Reach and Persistent Smoky Confinement spell on Mark, turning him into vapor and stuffing him in the bottle. I deposit the full bottle on the second set of shelves, labeling it when I do.

"Dan, how much XP was Mark worth?" I ask at the voice in my head.

"As an Expert-6, you got 1,200 XP for defeating him," is the mental reply.

I go through the list of names he gave me the same way, Planar Binding and Dominating them all, confirming they actually know about the organization and participate in its goals,  wiping the memories of the few that really didn't before sending them back, getting names of other people in the organization, the names and powers of any Supernatural they know of, and any other information that strikes my fancy, all while claiming XP for each.

When I'm done with the names he gave me, I go through the names they named, and then the names they named, and so on.  I have over a thousand full bottles on the shelves when I finally run out of people who know what that organization actually does. Also account numbers, addresses of now empty buildings, passcodes, security phrases, phone numbers, email addresses, and many other things.  Not that I need the money. Sadly, I did end up doing something the organization feared: I interfered in politics.  There's three senators, four congressman, and six members of the House of Commons sitting on the shelves. Also about a dozen generals of various ranks from six different militaries.  At least I don't have a president in there.

I do end up taking seven breaks to level up as I systemically murder the organization that killed me.  Not that I've killed anyone doing this, technically. The organization is very, very dead, but technically the members are all fine, just stuck in stasis, unaware and ageless, waiting for someone to open their bottles so that their lives can resume.

Which I won't do. And it's going to be really difficult for anyone else to even get to them. Dan could pull it off - little stops Wish Transport, and he looked through the door before I started so he could place the Forbiddance for me - but the place blocks divinations and teleportation, and is not on the material plane. It should be pretty secure.

I don't like "should" though. So I fill all available volume in the Keyhome with Wall of Stone spells. That should make it harder to get in. Even Wish Transport will have an issue: There’s literally nowhere to stand. And to cap it off? I plane Shift, with the key, to my Divine Realm, where I bury the key underneath my mansion. That will have to do. Anyone wanting to get these folks back will need to go through some pretty extreme steps.

Of course, now I've rocketed up to level 18….