Chapter 574 574 Hiding In Plain Sight
Chapter 574 574 Hiding In Plain Sight
What Wolfe meant by a secondary defensive system was the Lightning Sprite, along with a [Shock] inscription. Both would defend the doors indefinitely, stun anyone who tried to enter without the talisman, and keep the arrays safe.
Inside the building, it was mostly open space, with four guard towers watching the workers’ movement inside. They did have a constantly running sink though, so maybe they weren’t guards, but water quality monitors. Either way, they would notice right away if something went wrong inside the facility.
“This room here is a good one. It’s solid and secure, but it’s not used for anything at the moment. It was intended as a chemical treatment storage room, but we haven’t maintained a supply at that level in decades, so this room just sits empty, while others store the chlorine in case of emergency.” The Coven Leader explained.
It would have to be a real emergency as well. If a whole city full of witches couldn’t cast enough water magic to keep their drinking water supply safe, then things would have gone horribly wrong, well beyond what had happened last winter.
The room wasn’t a large one, barely three metres across, but it was large enough for their purposes.
“Priya, will you create a number of empty crates for me, and one pedestal to set the arrays on? We’re close enough to the centre of the city that a few metres one way or another won’t matter, so I want to set them up in the corner of the room, then pile crates around them so that they’re out of sight and won’t draw attention even if someone does enter the room.” Wolfe asked.
“Alright, but for that, it would be better if there was something in the other crates. If we fill them with something simple, or even bring over some extra stock of something that belongs in the building, it would be even less suspicious if someone did come searching here for nefarious purposes.” Priya suggested.
The Coven Leader nodded in agreement, and gestured to the corner of the room.
“If we put it there, and assemble some racking around it, we can hide it inside an empty barrel and pile other boxes and barrels around it. We’ve got plenty of random products that could be moved here and nobody would ever miss them. In fact, we would use out of date products, and just pretend that this is a forgotten storage room.” She suggested.
“Excellent. Have them moved in, and I will make a barrier around the room to keep everyone out. Priya can make a nice placard for the door, and this can be your new damaged and leaking products room. Nobody will ever know that there is a secret hidden in it, not even the rest of the council, if you don’t choose to tell them.” Wolfe informed her with a wink.
Priya created the pedestal for the arrays to sit on, and Wolfe moved them into place. Then he set a gravity spell to keep everything in place, making the pedestal weigh two tonnes, and Priya created the metal drum to go over it.
“There we go. It will sound empty if you tap on it, but it is now too heavy to move, so it shouldn’t be tampered with. Once Priya creates the racking and a few decoy boxes, I will create the defensive spells, and you can start having the rest of the disguise moved in.”
Priya got right to work, creating heavy orange metal racking in rows inside the small room, extending right to the ceiling for support. The Coven Leader sent a message to the workers, and only minutes later, a happy maintenance worker showed up with a cart full of hazardous materials containers, all of which were partially emptied and damaged.
“Thank you so much, Coven Leader. It’s not often that someone thinks about maintenance when they’re asking for assistance. This is all that we’ve got at the moment, but having it in a secured room will be a huge relief.” He informed the old woman.
Priya had put a row of racking on either side of the small room, and with the large cart, both were quickly packed to over half full. They started by the door, so nothing was over the barrel with the arrays inside, but Wolfe was going to cast a barrier over it anyhow.
“Thanks for the help, gentlemen. We will activate the defensive spells right away, so if you need in here in the future, be sure to obtain the security token so that the spells don’t try to sanitize you on the way in.” Priya told them with a wink.
“Sanitize?” The worker asked curiously.
“It’s a lightning-based spell that will burn impurities and contaminants off. But if you don’t have the security token, it will try to do the same to you as well, and I’m quite sure you are fond of having your flesh attached to your body.” Priya replied.
“Oh, that kind of sanitized. Yeah, I’ll make sure that everyone knows not to mess with the lightning barrier. But will that keep the damaged product from spilling?”
Priya nodded. “There is a barrier layer as well, to keep leaking product from touching anything else before it can be cleansed. There shouldn’t be any leakage onto the floor at all.”
“This will be awesome. You have no idea how stressful it is to clean up a hazmat room when you don’t know what has spilled and what it has contaminated.” He quietly cheered.
It seemed to Wolfe that they had actually done the maintenance guys a favour by setting up a disguise for the new spells.
The maintenance team closed the door behind them, leaving the trio in the now crowded storage room with a single light in the middle of the ceiling.
“Alright, first, the barriers between racks and along all the walls, so that nothing gets damaged.” Wolfe explained as he got to work.
“Then the sentry spell. This one will stun anyone who tries to enter through the door without a pass or being recorded in the spell’s inscription. I will put you in it so that you can come here if needed without a token, Coven Leader.
And then, finally, I will create the [Lightning Sprites]. Two of them should be enough to guard the room, and they’ve got rank two [Lightning Bolt] spells as their final defence if someone should attempt to damage the barrel with the arrays. With an extra layer of defence on top of the barrel, we’re ready for Priya to cast a cleaning spell on the room.”
Priya sighed, as Wolfe could use Air Magic to clean the room, but clearly he wanted her to add Witch Magic to it as well, to keep the room cleansed and purified and not just swept clean.
The spell didn’t take much to complete, and Wolfe extended her a thread of mana from the Mana Gathering array to complete it with, so it could continually feed off the array as needed and remain self-sufficient.
“Alright, that’s everything. You know, that Lightning Sprite is kind of cute. Do they have any level of intelligence?” Priya asked.
“A little. They can determine some basic things with the arrays that I’ve given them, but I haven’t added hundreds of layers of knowledge to them to make them truly aware.” Wolfe explained.
The Coven Leader smiled and reached out a hand toward the Sprite.
“It is rather adorable.” She agreed.
“It’s also made of solid lightning. This isn’t a pettable version.”