Sorcerer… Cyborg???

Chapter 137: Stunning Surge(2)

Kothar tapped his food softly against the bottom of the door, causing it to rock back and forth slightly and make the slightest rattling noise.

"Duny, you hear that?" The high pitched voice asked, and the clinking of coins fell silent, as the soldiers stopped sticking and moving around their coins.

"Yeah, must've been the wind. Or one of those damn cooks' cats." Duny replied, and Kothar heard the scraping of a chair's legs across the stone floor.

As the gentle thump of the footsteps grew closer to the door, Kothar pressed himself right up against the wall, it would be best to wait until the last possible moment to take the soldier out.

Click. The door unlatched, and slowly swung open, and a shaggy hair soldier stuck his head out. 

"Huh, hey Duny! There's nothing out here." The high pitched soldier called out to the other.

"Yeah, I told you, it was probably the wind, get back here, so I can take the rest of your money. I'll be buying myself a new flask the next time a supply ship comes through again." Duny laughed at his comrade's misfortune, and jingled his coins, mocking him.

"Wait a minute, h-" The first soldier had turned towards where Kothar had pressed himself against the wall, and immediately Kothar sent the first of his Stunning Surges spinning toward him, one of the balls of lightning slamming into his chest, the other hovering outside. 

The soldier froze mid sentence, keeling over to the floor, hitting the stone floor with a dull thump. The ball of lightning still outside his body, hidden outside of Duny's eyeline.

"Hey, you alright? Don't mess around now. Come on, that's not funny." There was another scraping noise, and the thump of footsteps.

Kothar dispelled his first Stunning Surge and the first man started to groan and mumble, trying to bring himself to his feet but still disoriented by the shock.

"Hey, you're going to have to speak more clearly, you're not making any sense." Duny leaned over the body of his fallen friend, and Kothar's next Stunning Surge hit him cleanly in the chest, sending him to join his friend on the ground with another dull thump.

As the first soldier started to stir, Kothar knocked him unconscious with the pommel of his shorter blade, then dispelled his second surge.

Duny, the bigger of the pair, received the same treatment, and the pair of them slumped over, lying unconscious on the stone floor.

Kothar then dragged the pair into the room, which was lit by a few candles scattered around the room.

The pair had been playing cards on a barrel placed in the empty space near the door, the rest of the room filled with shelves laden with crates and bags. One wall had barrels all along its length and there was a small high window that looked out to the surrounding courtyard.

Kothar looked around the shelves, and quickly found what he was looking for, a long coil of rope, it would suit his purposes perfectly.

First, he cut some lengths of cloth off of their clocks, creating makeshift gags that would prevent either of them from alerting their superiors. Next, Kothar bound them tightly together with rope, back to back,  their arms and wrist tied together, which was a trick he had picked up from Docara, who had spent a fair amount of time on the journey to Multas telling them of handy tricks he had learned.

Tying prisoners up like this, would prevent any but the most desperate individuals from using magic to release themselves, as their hands would be tried together in such proximity that it made it impossible to damage the rope without harming the other person's hands. 

Once had finished tying them up, Kothar left the first room and carved a short message into the wood of the door with his blade.

'Two soldiers, unconscious and bound." Before heading back up the corridor toward the dormitory style room, he repeated the process, carving in the number of soldiers in the room as well stating that they were all asleep, carving out a simple picture of the layout of the room. 

This information would be invaluable to the others, as though most individuals specialized in reconnaissance were able to gather information behind walls similarly to Kothar, but they would do so with spells.

This active use of mana was still susceptible to alerting those with particularly sensitive mana perception, but Kothar could simply channel mana to his eye and observe the mana the targets gave off all on their own.

Now, Kothar kept exploring the first floor, he mostly lgnored those rooms with the weak mana signatures, marking them as 'Outpost Staff' before moving onto the next. Finally, he found the wide staircase that led to the next floor, it was lit brightly with mana crystals, and the faint starlight filtered in through tall windows set high in the walls. 

This floor had many rooms, and around ten of them were occupied with soldiers with more powerful signatures than those people. Kothar also marked the doors of these individuals,

'One soldier, take caution.' 

Before moving on to the third and highest floor, this was where the real threats were located.

There were three much brighter mana signatures, Kothar marked their doors also, 'One soldier, extreme caution.' Then sat and waited for the first of his fellow soldiers to make their way to the top floor, he wasn't going to risk taking on one of them while there was no one nearby ready to fight the other two.

Sitting on the stair, Kothar looked down between his feet, and watched as the Ursten soldiers moved around, their mana signatures bright and the outpost soldiers' mana signatures were snuffed out, while others dimmed and moved around very slowly. 

Evidently some of the men were not too worried about only incapacitating the enemy, with how many of the soldiers' mana signatures were winking out. 

As he sat there, Kothar saw one of the brighter signatures slowly moving up the stairs, ignoring the second floor and making its way up the stair, the slightest rustle the only evidence that someone was on their way.