Mantle of the Gods [LitRPG / Slow Burn / FTB Harem]

There was nothing there.

No buildings, no man hole, nothing. It was just a large open lot in town.

"Should I start digging?" I could tell that Gesai wanted to be doing something. But I wasn't sure what that something should be.

"If there's a room below us, you could cave in the whole thing." I shook my head. "I don't want to risk how many people that could kill. "

"What do I do then?" She began pacing.

"I don't…" I looked around. There was a Shim Grocery store to our west, a Mundane Supplies store to our south, and a Faeru accounting firm to our east. To the north was an incline with the 'better' Mundane neighborhoods that way. There were lots of vehicles in the grocery and accounting firms' parking lots, but almost nothing in the Mundane Supplies parking lot. Which was supposed to be closed.

"Atlas." Ether nodded towards the accounting firm. "Follow me."

There was a rather large Minotaur standing in front of the door and he waved us away. "This is private property. You need to leave."

I looked at Gesai, "What Tier do you think he's in?"

"Looks like Tier Three."

I looked at the Minotaur. "We're just here to get our friend and leave. We don't want any trouble."

The demihuman reached for his CB. "It won't be any trouble…"

I nodded. "Take him."

Gesai surged forward. It took three blows to knock the bull-man out, but he didn't draw his weapon and his hands were so busy that I knew he hadn't sent a message. Though I had no idea what kind of security this place had, there could have been someone watching this on a security feed and more security inbound.

"It's a hand scanner!" Oz pointed at the panel by the door.

Gesai grabbed the large man by the wrist and dragged him over to the scanner. Oz was waiting for it to unlock and threw the door open.

It was a two story building, with metal shutters that were protecting the wall length windows. A wide staircase wrapped around each outer wall, leading to a second floor that looked like it had one wide hallway running down the middle of it. The second floor wasn't what concerned me. It was the empty security desk in the middle of the ground floor.

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Ether ran over to the desk and sat down. There were two screens, each showing four fights going on. None of them were Astrid of Rix, which was a good thing. The cup of a hot beverage in front of each screen was not.

"They know we're here." I realized that I was stating the obvious.

"Yes, but…" Ether was looking around the desk for something to tell us where to go.

"There's nothing here." Gesai came back and slammed her fist into the wall.

I looked over at Oz, who had run upstairs with her. "She even kicked in the locked doors. There's not any stairs or an elevator that we could find."

Fray was behind me with her katana in her hands. "What if this isn't the right one?"

"I think we're at the right place." Ether looked up from her search.

"Why?" Gesai stopped at the front door.

The ivory woman picked up one of the mugs. "Because you didn't find whoever was drinking these."

The older woman walked over and touched the other mug. "They just got these." She started looking around the open room.

"Are they invisible?" Fray began slowly rotating. "Like Rix?"

Gesai looked around, "I don't think so. Trent has been having me use her to work on my stealth detection. I doubt anyone that could have stealth that high would be hiding from us."

"So they ran to…"

"I found it!" Oz ran in from one of the rooms in the back. She waved for us to follow her.

The layout of the first floor had the security desk to the left as we walked in, while there was a hall about two-thirds of the way from the left that ran all the way to the back of the building, where there was another door. There were three offices on the right and one large room on the left. She led us into the larger room.

Inside was a giant table, with nice chairs all around it. There were potted plants in each corner of the room and various paintings covering each wall. There was also a cut mark in the wall about waist high everywhere except a six foot section on the front wall.

"I was thinking that this wall was too big." Oz tapped on the wall that had the security desk on the other side of it. "I thought that any secret door would be built out of stronger material than the rest of the building." She tapped her handaxe on the section where there wasn't a cut. "I can't scratch this."

Ether started looking at the painting on the right of the section.

"Move." Gesai moved in front of Oz and punched the wall. She began shaking her fist as the wall barely dented. "This is a Tier Four wall." The older woman pulled out her sword, "This is going to take a few minutes."

"Hit here." Ether pulled the painting off the wall.

Gesai stopped midswing. "Why? That's not the door."

"No, but an elevator would have controls, which I couldn't find at the security desk. Which means that is a Tier Four door that's probably got some type of magical key to it. It also means that it is protecting stairs that the Minotaur could have gone down." She pointed at the west wall. "We know Rix is that direction, so either the stairs go that way." She pointed at Gesai. "And loop around. Or they go this way."

Gesai swung at the wall where Ether had indicated. Her sword cut into it like the wall was made out of paper. The older woman began to pull the plaster off, revealing stairs behind it that went down the length of the wall and under the lot to the west.

"Most people only think about going through the door, so they only reinforce the door and leave the rest of the structure made out of cheaper materials." Ether grinned, "Especially an All counter."

"Atlas…" Gesai looked at me.

"I'm going." I nodded at the stairs. "After you."