Plunderer II

Looking at the few drops of blood that were floating next to her thanks to her spiritual energy the demon released a helpless smile. She had just split up with the sprite and it went off to carry out its part of the deal which meant she had to do her part. Problem was she wasn't sure how to go about it. Teleports were different from gates in that they usually limited the number of people that can be transported to one.

For low level formations you could easily trick the formation into thinking its teleporting only one person, which had been termed piggybacking by the black market and they readily taught everyone how to easily do so for the right price. More proper organizations have much safer and more expensive methods readily available for their members and thus to the rest of the world through bribery and betrayal. She obviously knew more than a few of those methods but they only worked on low level formations and with the right materials Noble level formations. The one she had on her, at minimum it was probably around the peak of Sovereign, not exactly the sort of thing that she - a mere mid-level Commoner - could nudge. Thus the sprite's hope to escape was pretty much null, this didn't she wasn't going to do anything though. She currently had something within her field of expertise that she knew squat about and a lab rat, she wouldn't be a self-respecting expert if she didn't try to see how much of the lab rat could move from point A to point B while limiting the damage to herself to almost zero.

But to do the task in question she needed some materials which, if the talkative guards are to be believed, could be found in the treasury underneath the dungeon which according to formentioned guards had a veritable store of weapons and resources.

She wasn't exactly sure about the dungeon's layout but all she had to do was snoop around. From the guards' conversations she gathered that due to the celebration upstairs the hosts had all the movable prisoners moved. She didn't quite understand what movable meant but it should mean the dungeon's pretty empty right now considering the fact that the number of the patrol in the dungeon was also decreased for some reason.

Overall, it meant that the only thing she had to keep an eye out for except for the few patrols were formations which wouldn't be a problem to her ah all. Maybe she could keep an eye out for the non-movable prisoners as well.

Moving toward the opposite direction to the sprite the demon started to explore the dungeon. The empty corridors and jail cells as much as they made things easier for her they also made the environment feel a bit eery. She moved as fast as possible while limiting the noise she made since she didn't have the formation that made people ignore her here and more importantly, she wasn't sure about the level of the patrols, using the formation on significantly higher leveled people would merely set off alarm bells which is the exact opposite from what she wants. Avoiding a few patrols here and there she eventually reached the stairs leading down.

This floor was the same as the previous one, avoid patrols while snooping around for the stairs, she hijacked a few detection formations here and there and on the opposite side of the stairs she took down to reach the floor she found the stairs leading to the next floor. This was repeated through 3 more floors before the succubus found herself in a long corridor dimly lit with purple light leading up to the big golden door that seemed to be begging the succubus to lighten it of a bit of its load.

Scanning the walls and floor, the succubus found more than a few detection formations, ether channeling formations to move ether out of the corridor, spiritual energy suppression formations, and various offensive and defensive formations.

The detection formation was simply hijacked and she made it so that it didn't detect anyone, and since the were supposedly no enemies the defensive and offensive formations became redundant. The only issue was the spiritual energy suppression formations and the ether channeling formations, which could be easily dealt with although a bit slowly. The problem with overlaying so many formations in one place was the increased probability of them interfering with each other, the problem was easily solved by a skilled formations master and just as easily become apparent when the enemy also happens to be a skilled formations master.

To deal with the problem the succubus used a technique called will enchanting, you had to align your will with a certain aspect of the will of the plane, once the two wills are aligned you enchant that aspect to something else. This technique was pretty good in that you only needed spiritual energy to use it and more importantly, the plane helps you to maintain the formation for quite a bit longer since you used its will in the enchanting process. And for the enchantment in question, since mana is pretty similar to ether, she added a few aspects which changed the formation from ether channeling to mana channeling. The formation stopped removing ether from the corridor and started leaching mana from neighboring formations. She had to be careful so that they didn't leach so much that the other formations fail since somebody may notice if that happened. There were multiple formations so she had to repeat this a few times until the corridor was being slowly filled with ether and she was standing about a metre away from the door that hid her prize.

She had avoided disrupting the formations closer to the door and now, scanning every inch of it and the surrounding walls the succubus was happy to see that she made a good decision. Every single inch of the place was filled with formations meant to automatically report any changes, there were even formations meant to report on the condition of the formations near the door. And, quite obviously, there were formations meant to report if the ether density got too high which meant she now had to hijack a few formations simultaneously or else she's pretty much screwed.

The only thing she could use was will enchanting, but the problem with will enchanting was that you needed time to align your will with that of the plane, time to make sure that the alignment is stable and time to actually enchant something.

Taking down a few seals, she sent a powerful wave of spiritual energy to hold back the ether and further divided some spiritual energy into a few strands and started the will enchanting process. Making sure that everything is stable across all strands she started the enchanting while maintaining a wall of spiritual energy.

The instant she was sure that she had hijacked all the formations she reactivated the seals and fell down on the floor coughing up blood. Taking a minute to reorient herself she stood up a bit wearily and after a few deep breaths she took out the formation she had inscribed in her cage.

Activating it she used it to get rid of the blood and with that done she moved on to the door. Will enchanting easily took care of any formations and the mist from her formation destroyed the mechanical bit and a bunch of other things that seemed to have a special function in there.

With that over she could finally enter the treasury.

The treasury was neatly organized and everything had its own place and threateningly enough items which the demon concluded were extra special were more protected than the door so they were a no go. The first thing she looked for was a void item but she didn't have much hope in finding one in here since they were common items that everyone had, but she did find some with special uses. There were ones to carry living beings but, sadly for the sprite, they were too well protected. In the end she settled for a small alchemical box meant to carry high quality and extremely rare materials that had to be stored in certain conditions, she wasn't an alchemist but as a formations master she also had to deal with troublesome to store materials sometimes and she did see quite a few worth collecting just a few aisles away. That was the second thing she decided to help herself to, she collected rare materials that even most Sovereigns would never hope to work with and then she collected rare some materials which were more practical for her level since she didn't have the power to actually use some of the higher leveled materials. She only collected the rare materials since she could buy the more common ones which opened up more space for things like dragon hide parchment.

After she was done with collecting materials, she went to look for a map. She needed a map of the Naeth Continent in the least since she didn't even know where the Lotus Flame Domain was and she needed to find out where she is and the best escape route she could take. She preferred to teleport to a flat area devoid of trees, from her estimates if she were to fully charge the teleport formation she could easily cover two hundred or so kilometers, a bit less if the sprite's presence affects the formation.

Reaching the aisle with the enchanted maps she looked for the best map among the obtainable maps. Preferably it should be one that could lock onto her current destination and could update its information. The best map she could get could lock on to her location but it had to be manually updated instead of automatically updating itself, but at least it seemed as if its capacity was pretty good.

As for her location, somewhere called the Mesa Garden, to the far east of which lay the Flame Lotus Domain. Checking out the map she decided to teleport north west, there were danger zones there but two hundred kilometers would be close to the edge so she could leave pretty quickly. Folding up the map she put it in her void box.

The demon got a utility belt to store the box in since it was awkward to carry around. The only enchantment she could detect on the belt was mana storage which she sadly couldn't fill up for now.

With that done it was time to look for a weapon. As a succubus, she wasn't exactly the warrior sort so she would have preferred to get her hands on a long range weapon, but sadly she had no training with the bow or throwing knives and all the flying swords were unobtainable. She didn't have training with any sort of weapon so she had to get something she could use at least decently without any training. That way of thought somehow led her to the unconventional weapons section. A few things caught her attention there, but the sword shaped mist that tried to attack her soul the instant she got handsy was a no go. So was the strange liquid that tried to eat her and the weird armor that tried to seal her inside it and burn her.

It was a troublesome selection process but she eventually settled on a bracelet made of five spheres joined by strands of corporeal energy. She could activate only two of the spheres right now and she couldn't actually tell what sort of enchantments they had, which usually meant that they were extremely powerful or extremely rare, both of which are good. The spheres could be activated with her spiritual energy which turned them into daggers but they needed mana to show their real power.

Playing for the daggers for a while, she finally turned back them to their base form and put the bracelet around her left wrist.

It was finally time to do 'something' about the sprite's blood and after that they'll have a fight on their hands.