CHAPTER 111.

Hearing his name, Remmel craned his head in pain and barely met her gaze, his eyes widened.

“Amber? Agh…!”

And he grunted, the white staff digging into his body with a grotesque sound of bones breaking, interrupting the reunion. Meanwhile, the people in the surroundings were tense and unsure of what to do. All their levels however, seemed to be above level 100, interestingly enough.

“Huh, is he your friend?” Frei asked, confused as she lessened the pressure on the assassin.

“Yeah, so let him go,” Amber said.

At that, Frei removed the stake and Remmel grunted, slowly getting up, as he grabbed at his open chest, in pain.

“How can you even survive the poison in my dagger,” he said in disbelief.

“It’s not the worst I’ve dealt with,” Frei said, offering the assassin his weapon.

He scoffed and reached for it, yanking it off Frei’s hand before turning to the people in the surroundings.

“Take a break everyone, there are things I have to discuss with these people,” he said, calling out to the surroundings.

There was some hesitation but after some exchanges everyone went their separate ways; except for Aveline, she remained there unsure of what to do. The exiled noble seemed at a loss for words, and honestly, Amber didn’t really have anything to say either. Instead, she turned to the disgruntled Remmel.

“To think I’d be bested by a mage so easily,” he grumbled before looking at Frei. “Who even are you⁠—” And he paled, seemingly using his Appraisal on her. “You are…”

“I am?” She tilted her head.

“You are… the Arcane Council’s⁠— wait, why are you with Amber…?” He stared at her incredulously. “Aren’t you people trying to kill her?”

Frei smiled, tipping her hat. “She’s my master.”

Amber frowned, “Hey.”

He paused, his eyes widened for a moment before placing a hand on his chin and looking at her dubiously. “Are you serious?”

“Why would I lie?” She raised her brow.

Remmel seemed to ponder for a few moments before he seemed to decide on something. Though, Amber never expected what he was about to say next. He cleared his throat and then made the most unexpected question in existence.

“Since I am technically Amber’s master, does that make me your master?”

There was a silence as Frei tensed, and a moment later the temperature dropped by several degrees as bloodlust permeated the surroundings.

“Do you want to die?”

“This just feels like a bad joke, that's all.” He shrugged, pretending as if he hadn’t just pissed Frei off. “I never thought she’d end up joining the Arcane Council.”

“I didn’t join,” Amber answered flatly, realizing the amount of misunderstandings Remmel had misconstrued in his mind. “Frei just decided she needed my help and now we are here.”

“Hooh, interesting.” He pondered. “What could someone as strong as her need help with that only you can provide? Can’t say I’m not curious.”

“Something that someone as useless as you would never be able to give me,” Frei answered simply.

He laughed at that, and Amber frowned. “More importantly, why did you ignore my letter? What was the whole point of me joining this stupid organization if you’re just going to ghost me?”

“Well, I don’t expect you to understand what I’m about to say, but I was waiting for you,” he said simply. “Plus, you didn’t call yourself beloved so I didn’t feel like informing you that.”

“This asshole…” Amber muttered.

“This seems too complicated, I’ma just tap out, before I kill this guy,” Frei said, turning and then pausing when her eyes landed on Aveline.

The ex-noble woman immediately flinched, her golden hair looked messy, a far-cry of what it had once been. And she was practically shrinking under the mage’s gaze. Frei raised her brow.

“Ain’t ya the noble that tried to exile Amber? Ya made rounds in some underground circles. Why are you here? Ain’t ya scared of being executed given we’re still in Cytel?”

She flinched before collecting herself, “Mr. Remmel took me in and now I'm a member of the Obsidian Rose. And no, I’m not afraid.”

“Huh, I see.” Frei looked her over. “Your class is a bit interesting I suppose.”

Aveline said nothing, instead, she remained looking at the ground. And finally, Frei waved her hand dismissively and walked away. Amber finally turned back to Remmel who seemed to be pondering over things, before he finally turned to her.

“So, you’re with a member of the Arcane Council now? Didn’t expect that when I sent you the communication.”

“You sent it to me when I was already in the town,” Amber retorted.

He shook his head. “In my defense, gathering such information is annoying and tedious, and more than anything confirming her level range took a while; hence your information arriving at that timing.”

“Just send me shit as you find it,” Amber said.

“Gotcha.” He nodded. “You should prolly go gather your friends, then I’ll take you to our camp and we’ll talk.”

“About?”

“About why I was waiting for you, duh,” he answered, with an annoying tone.

And a loud roar went off in response. Amber turned with annoyance as trees in the distance toppled, and as the earth trembled. The bear monster came sprinting at full force, breaking through the forest and heading straight at her. It was badly bruised and its maw was twisted, from her kick, yet it was very much alive.

“Huh, I thought you killed it,” he said.

“Maybe when I hit my level 200 advancement I’ll be able to kill them in a single kick,” Amber shrugged.

Remmel glanced at her, his eyes widening slightly. “Now taking a better look; is it just my imagination or have you leveled up almost twenty times since meeting?”

“Just your imagination,” Amber answered simply.

The bear broke through all the trees, and some of the people milling in the surroundings immediately ran, Aveline also shrunk and Amber simply used Curse of the Vanquished, then heated up her core, exerting it and swung⁠—

Wind Cleave.

A line of blood burst from the bear before it was split in half, the ground was cleaved and blood exploded in all directions as the monster landed dead before it could even reach it.

[You have defeated a [Fortis Bear. Lvl. 182].]

“What the…” Aveline muttered.

And following that, many gasps came staring at the mess she had just made.

“You are also much stronger…” Remmel said, slightly confused. “Shouldn’t such progression in strength take years…?”

Amber shrugged. “I’m going to go get my companions.”

“Right…”

And with that, Amber began to walk away, ignoring the stunned stares from the onlookers. To them it was unbelievable that the monster had been split in half, but to her… It was insanely weak…

“Amber,” Aveline called.

She turned. “Yeah?”

In all honesty she didn’t have much to say to the ex-noble, at this point she had been punished by others on her behalf. In short: she didn’t have any particular feelings towards Aveline. The woman hesitated for a moment before speaking.

“I’m sorry for trying to get you exiled, there are a lot of different actions I could’ve taken…” she said, closing her eyes. “That’s all. Sorry for being antagonistic just because your actions didn’t align with my ideals…”

Amber blinked, she certainly didn’t expect an apology. “It’s fine. I’m sorry for punching the marquess, too.”

She nodded hesitantly. “I hope that one day we can be friends, sorry again.”

And with those words, Aveline left, it was a rather short interaction, but it probably gave her closure so Amber didn’t mind it much. Instead, she headed out to retrieve her companions because it seemed that whatever Remmel wanted to talk about was going to take a while.

Considering she walked all the way there, it took her a few minutes. And when she arrived she saw the carriage on the side of the road, the horses were still knocked out, and Frei was just sitting on it with her legs swinging. Cecile and Asil were properly seated inside the cart, and they seemed to be talking about something.

“Oh, welcome back,” Frei said, acting surprised.

“You sensed me a while ago,” Amber replied.

Cecile looked over at her. “Are you done with your asshole boss?”

Amber blinked, before starting to explain, “About that; I think y’all should come with me. He seemed to want to talk about something important; he has a base or something. Unless you all just want to wait until whenever it’s done.”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Asil and Cecile shared a glance before nodding, it seemed that they didn’t have anything better to do.

Frei on the other hand just sighed. “Do I have to go? I really don’t like him.”

“You don’t if you don’t want to,” Amber said, indifferent.

“Welp, I’m going anyway,” she said, hopping off the cart. “I’d rather see what he has to say. He seems relatively important.”

“Right.”

And with that, the arrangements were taken care of, and after storing the carriages, they brought the horses along.

* * *

When they arrived, they found Remmel and two cloaked mages waiting for them, everyone else seemed to have already cleared out already.

Remmel pointed behind them. “Why are your horses fainted?”

“Can you take care of them?” Amber asked.

“Yeah, that was the plan,” he said simply.

“Then it’s solved.”

He paused before sighing and walking over to their group. “Alright, I guess it doesn’t matter if they’re conscious or not.”

The mages followed after him, and he stood in front of them, the mages on the other side surrounded the group, making a triangle with Remmel being the tip.

“Alright, you kids are ready to go to the Obsidian Rose’s super secret base?”

“I’m probably older than you,” Frei said.

“Me too,” Asil added.

Remmel scoffed. “It’s just a form of expression, but I’m over two-hundred years old y’know.”

“Huh, so you’re an old man?” Frei blinked. “Gross.”

He clicked his tongue before turning to Amber. “Get your servant under control a bit.”

“She isn’t my servant,” Amber stared flatly.

“Why not?” Frei asked from behind.

A sigh left her, the worst part is that Frei was probably serious but only said it outloud to get reactions. It was obnoxious to Amber, grating to some extent, but more than anything it was really stupid and in a way funny⁠— just in a very stupid way.

“Let’s just go to your super secret base,” Amber said.

Remmel nodded and gestured at the mages, a moment after they raised their staffs as green light enveloped all of them. And then, after a few seconds of it gathering around them, it flashed and⁠— they were inside a spacious war-room. Or what seemed like it.

“Alright, take the horses you two, try to wake them up and get them fed.”

“They only need to take them for now, they won’t wake up,” Frei said. “I’ll handle it later.”

Remmel just nodded. “Alright.”

And with that, the two mages walked to a horse each and teleported away along with them. Leaving the group alone with Remmel inside the spacious room. It had a large roundtable in the center, one with a map of the continent of Sarliane, and the wooden walls were lined with weapons. It was as if they were in a very large shack, considering almost everything was made out of wood.

“I suggest y’all take a seat for what I’m about to discuss with Amber,” he said as he himself grabbed a chair at the table.

Amber also went over to a chair across from him. “What do you even want to discuss?”

She sat down as he seemed to be pondering, and everyone did the same, except Frei; she was instead just looking around the room and touching the weapons along the walls like a kid. Though Remmel didn’t pay it any mind, instead he began to speak.

“Alright, so do you know about the situation in the Republic of Mercenaries or should I fill you in?”

“I know it,” she said simply.

“Good, well due to it, the current leader of the Sacred Forest has left to seek the aid of the Primordial Spirit of Cytel, given they have a relationship. Since the Demon of Genesis is a worry,” he explained.

“Right.”

Amber hadn’t expected to hear that, even though it shouldn’t have been all that surprising, after all Val’leri did hint at having outside relations.

Remmel continued, “So, with that, there’s been a bit of a void in the Sacred Forest as of recently in that sense, and due to it the security around their topmost secret facilities has been relaxed.”

“Ya intend to raid the vault?” Frei asked from across the room. “Don’t bother, there isn’t anything interesting there.”

“That’s one of the targets, yes.” Remmel nodded. “But we aren’t there just to raid and get information⁠—”

“What information do you want to get there?” Amber asked, somewhat interested. If the information was super secret, then perhaps it was in her interest to learn about it after all.

Remmel paused before coughing. “The information is in regards to a dormant Primordial Spirit in the Republic of Mercenaries. I don’t know all that much about it other than they’ve been dormant there for a century or two, for some reason.”

“Right, and you’ll use this information to…?”

“Sell to the Arcane Council, sell it elsewhere, just to have it, dunno.” He shrugged. “I don’t dare to wake a god from its slumber for sure.”

Amber blinked. “You’d sell it to the council?”

“It’s just business, nothing personal⁠—”

“If ya wanna sell it to the council sell it to me, otherwise I’ll quite literally kill ya. And then maybe I’ll kill the buyer too.” Frei said from across the room.

Remmel shook his head. “I’ll take that into consideration. But are you sure you should be saying that? That’s quite traitorous.”

“I don’t care.”

The assassin took a breath as he thought about what to say next, Cecile seemed somewhat interested, and Asil was pretty interested in how the conversation was heading. Finally, after a moment, Remmel continued,

“But as I was saying, we aren’t there for the information. In fact, all of that is a secondary objective. This is an operation that I am spearheading, so I’ll be personally acting here to deal with a single objective.”

He turned to her.

“And I’m hoping you can join me in this operation,” he said, meeting her gaze. “Hence why I was waiting here this entire time.”

Amber blinked. “And the operation is?”

“Well I believe you’d be interested,” he smiled simply. “This operation relates killing two Arcane Council members⁠— their bounties are quite good after all. But I know you don’t care all that much about that specifically, that said you’ll get to keep their loot and a third of their bounty. However, aside from that, after this mission you’ll get access to one of the perks from being loyal to the organization and me, your boss.”

“What is it?” Amber raised her brow.

And in response, Remmel raised, leaving it up in the air for everyone to see.

“One month.”

Amber was now confused. “One month?”

“One month of half of my intelligence department researching any topic you desire,” he said simply. “To put it into perspective, researching Frei had a single member and took a month to get her level range. But if half of my department did it… it would take less than a day. Of course, this is a one-time thing to encourage members, so don’t expect it again.”

She paused. That… that could be very useful, but at the same time…

“How about devoting half of a week to your research department whenever I request a topic from now on,” she suggested.

Remmel immediately frowned. “A quarter at most. Assuming you only ask once a month.”

Amber pondered for a few moments, it was a counter offer and the fact that he had taken it meant that offering the month wasn’t actually a big deal to him in comparison to this. Yet… Amber didn’t really want to go out of her way to kill Arcane Council members, not unless she got something really good out of it.

“A third, and multiple times a month,” she said.

Remmel’s frown deepened. “No. A quarter of my resources is already a lot, take it or leave it. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

Amber immediately got bothered.

“I’m not a fucking beggar. I’m not going to the Sacred Forest to level up in the first place and I barely care about their loot. I’m going for information. Plus you ignored me for so damn long, and almost got me fucking killed with late ass information,” she said annoyed. “Seriously, I’m sure I could ask Frei and she’d do a half decent job at finding information about anything.”

“I would!” Frei piped up across the room.

“Also, I’m sure she wouldn’t ignore me for so damn long while doing it either. So, why should I inconvenience myself for stuff that doesn't actually benefit me? And I’m sure many other big organizations would be interested in recruiting me just from potential alone, yet you’re just doing the bare minimum to keep me around.”

He was staring at her as if she was spouting some insane nonsense, which further pissed her off, especially because the more he heard the worse it got. All her annoyance from Remmel ignoring her was coming out. She had joined for information specifically, that had been his promise. And yet, he did such a lousy and shitty job at it so far that it was insulting. So if he didn’t care, why should she?

“So why the fuck would I agree to anything less? If you insist that only a quarter is possible then I want that quarter to research that topic to exhaustion before moving on, regardless of when I ask. Of course, if it affects you that badly then you can halt whatever I ask when needed, but don’t treat my requests of information like you treated your promise to make me join your organization. Show me this means something to you,” she said sternly. “Otherwise you can fuck off.”

At this point, the assassin was glaring daggers at her with bloodlust that she hadn’t felt from him before and yet, Amber just glared back. She wasn’t going to tolerate this disrespect, not when she knew Remmel couldn’t even kill her⁠— not easily at least.

The staring contest continued, and after a few seconds a sigh left Amber as her annoyance toppled over. She was done. Remmel didn’t give a shit about her, so she didn’t need to give a shit either. No counter-offer, no nothing. Not even an attempt to keeping her around with a compromise, or even an apology for that matter.

“Whatever, I don’t care.” She stood up before gesturing to her companions. “Let’s go, Asil borrow power from me to teleport us out.”

“Sure thing,” he agreed, looking at Remmel rather confused.

The assassin had yet to move, and just as everyone gathered, he finally spoke.

“Fine.”

He sighed, lowering his head.

“You can have access to a quarter of my intelligence department whenever the fuck you want,” he said clearly annoyed. “But…”

He raised his gaze slightly, his silver eyes coldly meeting hers.

“If you fuck up this mission I WILL ensure you die by any means necessary, Amber. And you better be willing to do other missions of this nature too without giving me shit over the rewards.”

“Sure.”

He shook his head at that and stood up. “You’re a strange one.”

With that, the tension in the room went away and Remmel began to walk away, and with that, the conversation was essentially over. Frei gave her a slap on the back.

“I’m proud of ya.”

Amber scoffed. “You barely even know me, how can you be proud?”

“‘Cause I can tell this asshole pushed you around on his first meeting with ya,” she said, rocking her. “I mean what I say, so don’t be so grumpy with me.”

At that she paused, realizing she was being an asshole to Frei for no particular reason. She had just been that pissed off.

“Right, sorry⁠—”

“Amber,” Remmel called, standing near the door. “In return for letting you research a topic starting now, I’d like to ask something of you.”

“What is it?”

He looked back. “Come here, I have to show it to you and explain it.”

She raised her brow, but appeared next to him with the 3rd Rank of Quick Step. She wasn’t going to bother walking, not right now. He nodded with a rather neutral expression and then he opened the door. Sunlight immediately poured in, and for the briefest moment her vision was white before it readjusted.

And she paused from what she saw. She saw a large field with wooden houses and buildings in the distance, almost as if it was a village surrounding it, but the thing that gave her surprise was what was happening in the field itself. Hundreds of people were fighting each other, from mages to assassins to even normal warriors.

“This is one of our training grounds, there’s almost two-hundred trainees and they’re all nearing level 150, save some exceptions that are above that,” he said simply. “And in short, rumors about you have spread around, especially because you’re a member of the rose too.”

“Right. How have rumors even spread?”

“I bragged about recruiting the Hero of Cytel of course,” he said with a smile.

A sigh left her, “You really are an asshole.”

“Anyway, some people were rather disrespectful, in fact they think you’re quite weak and overestimated. So, here's my offer:”

“Yeah?” Amber met his gaze as his eyes curled along with his smile.

“Fight everyone here at once and humble them.”

Is he serious…?

“Everyone?” she asked incredulously.

“Not interested?” He tilted his head. “I think it’s a good opportunity for you, you’ll probably level your skills from the carnage⁠ and also get to start your research⁠— ah don’t kill them though.”

He corrected at the end, and Amber finally looked over at everyone. She was still annoyed, and as he said this was an opportunity for her resistances probably. Also, she had never fought that many people before.

That sounds kind of exciting.

And as soon as the thought entered her head, she had to stop herself from getting too ahead.

“Two topics,” she said. “Then you have a deal.”

“Consider it done.” Remmel grinned.

At first she wouldn’t have entertained the idea, but now that it had entered her mind, she couldn’t get rid of it, and ultimately, a smile settled on her lips.

Amber nodded. “I’ll do it then.”

She turned towards all of the people training, resolving herself on the insane challenge that was ahead.

“I’ll fight all of them.”