"Interesting," William found a set of stairs lying ahead. When everyone descended, and they kept doing this for long minutes, they finally arrived at what could be described as an underground hall.
William didn't know why, but it seemed that anyone trying to do anything dirty had a thing to have their secret bases hidden deep underground. "Lead us," William knew such a place must be filled with tons of traps and defensive arrays to stop any invaders. And when Thomas just took a random look around, he spotted lots of these traps indeed.
He kept pointing towards their places, describing to William how they looked. At the same time, William identified every single one of them, letting his friends help in deactivating everything, purifying this hall from all the traps.
Doing this wasn't actually difficult, especially with William's presence, especially when most if not all of the traps needed brutal force to get deactivated.
Ibra and Sara had their fun, while Ro kept laughing from time to time. Lina kept herself by William's side, not doing anything until she was told to. Thomas was the leading and orchestrating mastermind behind them. And in less than two hours, they purged the entire hall.
"Time to see what that bastard kept hidden from everyone," William moved his eyes around, "start searching carefully, don't leave a speck without getting checked."
He stood in the middle of this hall. There were too many scrolls on two sides of the wall, while a big desk was in another corner.
Aside from that, there was a big table made of a black ore, one that was surrounded with twenty wooden seats, telling William that there were lots of meetings that happened in this place.
"Go and check if there are any hidden paths here," William could tell the visitors Richard met didn't come from the hidden door they walked through.
If weird folks kept coming and going from this mansion, then many would have noticed this. So it was expected to find a hidden path, and Thomas found three not just one.
As for his friends, they found lots of scrolls speaking about different matters. Be it the general situation in the city, dirty secrets regarding many members in these forces, ending up with detailed layout of the entire place… Everything was pointing out towards a grand scheming mind that worked on this plan for years.
And William didn't find anything weird about any of this. He already suspected Richard from the first moment he met him, and knew he was by any means a normal young man.
William stood on the head of the table, looking at the many scrolls his team gathered for him. "They are all speaking about local matters… Weird…" William expected to find something that could link Richard with any dark force. But it seemed he placed too much hope on nothing.
The scrolls the team found were just speaking about things happening or related to the city.
"Perhaps we can find more by going through these tunnels," Ibra was eager to go through these tunnels, imagining finding himself at one of the dark forces bases in the area.
"Don't think too much," William rolled his eyes, "the best we can find is tunnels filled to the brim with deadly traps. Then at the end, we will find ourselves standing a few kilometres away from the city, appearing just in the middle of nowhere."
William's guesses were true. These tunnels were indeed filled with tons of deadly traps. And at the end, they opened at nowhere, just kilometres away from the city.
"Then…" Sara felt how depressed and disappointed William was by finding nothing.
"Did you see nothing else?" William turned to Thomas again, clinging to the last hope in finding anything.
"Let me check everything again," Thomas paused before an idea appeared in his mind, "this place looks like a shining galaxy in my eyes. Everywhere here has connections with Richard or with lots of people who met with him."
"Then?" William didn't get what Thomas wanted to convey here, so he asked.
"Why not move everything aside, let me see the entire hall clean from anything?" Thomas said what he wanted, and William didn't say anything. He simply turned to look at Ibra and Sara, and the two started to deal with this.
Ibra didn't like tidying anything, never did anything like this actually in his life. So he simply waved his glaive loose, cleaving anything and turning them into shreds. As for Sara, she worked with others in moving everything towards the hidden tunnels, activating the traps there, ending up destroying them as well.
"Now?" This didn't take more than ten minutes. And now the entire hall looked empty except for them. Even the table and desk were dealt with.
Thomas didn't speak, started to walk around, seemingly seeing things better now.
"There," and in a few minutes, he pointed towards a spot, "there is something hidden ten metres under this spot… It's like a tiny room, one that won't exceed two in one metres at most…"
"Great," William was excited to have something at the end, "keep looking around, try to see if there is anything else hidden here."
"Tsk! Why does this place give me the vibe of a snake hole?" Ibra complained, "since we got here, and I was destroying things…"
"As if you aren't happy about waving your glaive around," William rolled his eyes, motioned towards the spot Thomas pointed towards, "crack it open, and pray we'll find something interesting there."
"Tsk! If that bastard didn't hide anything useful in such a forsaken hole then I'll kill him myself!"
Ibra raised his glaive, and used a scary technique before landing it with all his might over that spot. The entire building rumbled and the ground trembled, before a hole appeared there.
William stood on the edge of it, looking at the five metres gap, "do it again, and try to control your power this time."
"I'll increase it then."
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