Steel, Explosives, and Spellcasters
Chapter 1056: 77: The Storm (Part 6)_2

Chapter 1056: Chapter 77: The Storm (Part 6)_2

Stepping out of the corridor, a basement almost the size of a bedroom appeared before them. There were no household utensils in sight, only a few small wooden boxes surrounding a larger one, serving as makeshift tables and chairs.

An oil lamp lay on the ground, dozens of dirty playing cards scattered around the wooden boxes.

Besides the passage and a small area for resting, the other spaces in the secret chamber were filled with wooden crates.

Winters surveyed the inside of the hidden cellar and thought that instead of calling it the “fox’s den,” it was more like a “fox’s storeroom.”

“Pry them open,” Winters ordered with some disappointment, arms crossed. “What kind of things need to be hidden in a place like this?”

The first crate, empty.

The second crate, also empty.

The third crate, still empty.

The guard moving the crates became impatient, his movements increasingly rough.

Upon opening the fourth crate, it wasn’t empty. It contained sealed glass bottles carefully separated by wooden sticks and straw.

“Wine?” the guard asked, puzzled.

Winters took out one of the glass bottles, removed the sealing wax, pulled out the cork, and sniffed it, then suddenly turned around and snuffed out the candle Caman was holding.

“What’s wrong?” Caman asked sternly.

Winters undone the copper buckle on his belt. A dark green glow refilled the chamber, and the liquid inside the glass bottles seemed darker.

Winters forcefully resealed the glass bottle: “Liquid fire.”

It took Caman a moment to process the information. He stared at the whole crate of liquid fire and said, “Xial is lucky.”

Winters tapped the oil lamp and the scattered playing cards on the floor with the tip of his boot, mentally simulating the air currents during a grenade explosion: “Is lucky.”

The crates that were opened next were mostly empty, but the ones not empty were filled with weaponry: liquid fire, grenades, firearms, gunpowder… The secret chamber couldn’t accommodate more, so the crates were moved to the adjacent basement.

The guard moving the crates could hardly conceal his glee: “The Empire’s Arsenal has been cheaply acquired by us, Centurion!”

Winters wasn’t looking for an arsenal; he paced the basement, frowning.

Another guard descended the ladder: “Sir, Mr. Schmid and the Sheriff from the north town are here, waiting outside.”

Caman and the guard moving the crates looked at Winters.

“According to that old man’s statement,” Winters lightly tapped the hilt of his sword, “the two assassins in the secret chamber were already hiding here this morning?”

“Yes.”

“Then they weren’t fleeing to hide here after we defeated them at Este’s estate,” Winters clapped his hands together. “They were protecting this secret chamber.”

The guard moving the crates looked puzzled: “Shouldn’t the arsenal be guarded?”

“Then why was it unguarded before? Most of the crates are empty now; doesn’t that mean there were more weapons stored before?” Winters spoke quickly and urgently: “In such a shady place, it doesn’t matter whether it is guarded or not.”

The guard scratched the back of his head.

Winters remembered the oil lamp: “Once exposed, the assassins guarding the arsenal would not have had time to move the remaining weapons. All they could do was to destroy them… or to go down with them.”

Upon hearing this, the two guards looked at the crates full of liquid fire and gunpowder, their Adam’s apples involuntarily moving.

“White-haired Roger witnessed Green Eyes boarding a carriage half a street away. If this were merely an arsenal, why would Green Eyes risk coming here?” Winters stared at Caman: “You are Green Eyes, what reason would you have to take such a risk?”

“I’m not the messenger, how would I know what a messenger thinks?”

“What is the messenger?”

Caman fell silent.

“Think! Think!” Winters grabbed Caman’s shoulders: “Think about those assassins, they had nothing on them that could prove their identity—including that Green Eyes! We know they are wolves of the Oath Breakers, yet we have no evidence. What does that tell us? That’s their modus operandi.”

Caman clenched his fist then relaxed it.

“If I were Green Eyes, on the eve of destroying the Steel Fortress, what would I do?” Winters answered his own question: “I would destroy all documents, kill all witnesses, erase all footprints, completely obliterate any trace of my involvement. Make the riots happening tonight at Steel Fortress seem like a spontaneous disaster. Just like…”

Winters’s voice grew lower: “Like another big fire,”

Caman understood, but he didn’t want to continue the conversation.

The guard moving the crates hesitated and asked, “Do you mean to say, the Empire hid their ‘traces’ here?”

“No.” Winters responded without a second thought: “Anything that could be destroyed would have already been destroyed.”

He changed tack: “But could there be some ‘not easily destroyed’, ‘no need to remove’, yet ‘must be well-guarded’ items? If I were Green Eyes, tonight I would place those items in the safest place and have someone guard them constantly. If everything goes well, they can be easily retrieved afterwards; if anything unexpected happens, they would be destroyed immediately.”

With that, Winters walked toward the secret chamber: “Move all the crates out, and check them one by one!”

The four of them worked together, highly efficient.

The remaining crates were quickly moved into the basement and thoroughly checked.

Nothing was found.

The two guards stared awkwardly at the tips of their boots, not daring to speak.

Winters drew his Longsword, surveying the walls of the secret chamber, then suddenly stabbed towards the empty crate used as a card table.

The Longsword pierced through the crate and into the earth, but the sound it made was a metallic clang as if it had struck iron.

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