Ajax was conflicted about how to go about reporting that the bug had been placed. On the one hand he didn’t want to draw any more attention to himself than absolutely necessary, on the other hand he wanted this whole thing to end as quickly as possible, which is why he went to plant the bug in the first place.

In the end he decided that getting to sleep and discussing this with Kate and Tom in the morning was the best course of action. Since he was on an obscure path and had been using his stealth skills for the past twenty minutes he decided to spend his mana and pumped [Syphon Mana] as well as his stamina to get back to camp as quickly as possible.

With his full stats the three hour journey was shortened to twenty minutes. As he got back both his stamina and his mana were hovering around the one hundred mark. He knew that they would replenish fast enough to be almost filled by mid morning so he quickly changed out of his gear while catching his breath and crashed into his cot.

Kate woke him up later than usual the following morning to get ready for breakfast. His stamina had fully recovered after a good night's rest but his mana still had a few hundred points to go. He quickly got back into his gear and went to the mess tent where he quickly joined Kate and Tom at their table after he picked up his food, luckily they were alone.

“Morning” he greeted them after he took a seat.

“Morning” Tom answered back with Kate giving a nod as she took a sip of an herbal drink that was supposed to wake you up. It wasn’t coffee , the green coloring, sweet taste and slightly syrupy consistency sent that message to him when he first heard of a morning pick me up drink.

“How did you little night-raid go?” Kate asked with a joking tone.

“Night-raid?” Tom asked, surprised. “What is this about a night-raid?”

“Restless here wanted to go on a night-raid before they had a chance to properly set up.” she explained.

“And you let him go through with it?” Tom asked as Ajax was downing a mug of the herbal drink. He was too out of it so he decided to wait until they reached a point where they needed his input.

“Well why not?” Kate said.

“What do you mean why not?” Tom was getting a little worked up.

“Well either he gets caught or he doesn’t. If he gets caught all that’s going to happen is that he will spend the rest of this skirmish as a prisoner. It’s not like that puts him in a position to get found out.” she just waved him off.

“But …” Tom trailed off, not finding a point to argue.

“So, how did it go?” Kate asked again, giving Ajax a smirk as her ears twitched on top of her head.

“Better than I could have hoped for” He said as he put down the empty mug.”So well in fact that I don’t know if I should be reporting it.”

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“Oh that well?” Tom laughed “Just what did you manage to do, get a look at their assault plan?”

“I planted a bug in their war room.” Ajax ignored the good natured ribbing from his brother. “I hid it under the piece representing their main camp on their map of the area.”

This answer wiped both the conspiratory look on Kate’s face and the sarcastic one off Tom and replaced them with serious ones. They both knew the importance of what he claimed to have done and it was big. That type of inside information could swing this skirmish wildly from the start. Since the ones to get the credit and suffer the humiliation should that happen would be the nobles in charge of both sides the spy who did this would be put under a lot of scrutiny.

“Are you serious?” Tom asked, though his tone assured him that the question was rhetorical.

To respond Ajax just placed the listening end of the device on the table.

“So, what do you think I should do with this?” Ajax asked both of them.

“I would say get rid of it, you definitely don’t want that kind of focus centered on you.” KAte said, knowing that his level, age and capacity for mana could be found out quickly by any motivated noble with an axe to grind.

“Wait a moment.” Tom cut in. “How did you manage to sneak in and plant this?”

At my confused look he decided to expand on his question.

“Did you use your mana in any way?”

“I used it when I returned to cut down on the travel time and catch up on my sleep, otherwise [Stealth] and [Deception] are the only skills I used to get in and out of their camp without being noticed.” Ajax said. Tom was slightly nodding his head as he got a faraway look in his eyes.

“Let's bring this up to the commander then, he could probably make use of it without revealing your involvement.” Tom said after a few seconds of thinking.

Ajax and Kate both exchanged a rather skeptical look but in the end Tom was the one who knew the commander best and Ajax wanted to trust him after the help in not only being moved to this unit but also concealing his level. With only a slow nod from both of them the three quickly finished their breakfast and headed towards the command tent.

As they reached the command tent Walter was just exiting with a set of empty plates, probably from the commander's breakfast. He stopped after two paces when he saw the three of them walking up to the tent and Tom’s determined look.

“Morning, “ he greeted them, “ how can I help you?”

“Can you get us in to talk to the commander, we have something he will want to hear.” Tom said drawing strange looks not only from Walter but also the two guards standing at attention at the entrance.

“Alright …” He said slowly and returned to the tent only to come back out a few seconds later without the plates. “Come on in.”

When they entered they found the commander looking standing over the map-table. It was similar to the one where Ajax planted the device. Considering that there should also be one in their own main camps command tent Ajax deduced that they must have used this area quite often for such skirmishes. Unlike the enemy’s map which only had their main camp placed, this one also had the three smaller guard unit camps placed on it.

“You three again, what is it this time?” he said.

Tom had warned the both of them as they finished their breakfast and on the way over that the baron’s son had thrown his weight around yesterday after he introduced himself as the liaison and sent him back with some nonsensical orders just to put on a show for the Archduke’s party.

“Well, sir, we wanted your help to deal with a bit of a situation.” Tom said as his eyes flickered over to Ajax.

“Uhhh,” the commander groaned while rubbing his temple. He then addressed Ajax. “Get it out then, what did you manage to do this early into this mess.”

“After I finished setting out some traps last night I went to scout the enemy base. Since they were in disarray setting up watch-towers I was able to infiltrate their camp and place a bug in their command tent.” Ajax said as he placed the listening device on the table between him and the commander. “ The issue is that I don’t really want to deal with both the negative and positive fallout should it be known that I am the one who placed it.”

Both the commander and Walter stared at the device on the table.

“Where did you place it?” Walter was the first one to break out of his shock.

“Under the piece representing their main camp, it was the only one that was placed in position.”

Walter looked like he wanted to ask something else but he was stopped in his tracks by a booming laughter coming from the commander. “Now this, this is a problem I am happy to have.” he got out between laughs.

“Leave that with us here and both you and Kate can head on out and carry on with your tasks, Tom you might as well wait here since I will be sending you over to the main camp with a message very soon.” The commander moved over to the table and started writing out a letter.

Both Kate and Ajax gave a quick salute and moved towards the exit of the tent when the commander called out to them again. “Don’t worry about this, I’ll keep your name out of it and make sure you get the reward for this”