The villagers of Tavil kept their word. No one came to disturb him over the course of the day. Probably not many even knew Kaden was down there in that cellar to begin with. He had much time to rest and heal. There was still little bit of Fulin left, by the time Kaden determined himself to be fully healed. Afterwards he had plenty of time to continue his experiments with his internal formation.
Kaden found no problems with his design. While at such short notice, it was impossible to see the true results, there was no sign of anything going wrong. Therefore he added more of those smaller seals into the internal formation to refine more fire mana.
“This is good”, Kaden thought to himself. “While I still have a few Fire Stones left, I will run out soon. With this, I can slowly, but surely feed my core fire mana. My future path is clearing! This will do now, but as soon as I can, I must ensure efficiency.”
All in all things were going well. Kaden was already getting very familiar with his increased power.
Still, there wasn’t much more he could do. Being healed and having finished with his experiments for the time being, all he could do was to wait. Kaden spent the night simply cycling his mana system.
As it would happen, Kaden notice the next day that soldiers from Sacronan had finally come to the village. It couldn’t be helped. At least the few soldiers were still only at mere Channel Opening and his plan, if he was to be discovered, would easily work.
The soldiers issued questions to Leir to which he answered according to his deal with Kaden. It was good thing that they had not betrayed him. Kaden really didn’t want to inflict pointlessly the same thing, that had happened to him, to others. Then again, if they stood between him and his survival, there would be consequences.
Kaden frowned a bit as he observed from his hiding place that the soldiers seemed to want to search the village more. It was to be expected so he wasn’t surprised. Kaden moved some bags on top of whatever bloodstains there was on the floor and then also moved some boxes. Unless the soldies were really throughout and wanted to start moving around things a lot, they wouldn’t discover anything suspicious.
Once this was done, Kaden himself went into a corner just around the stairs. A place that was kind of out of way and drew a small formation there. It was an illusion formation. While such things were not Kaden’s specialty at all, the soldiers were weak enough that even a basic illusion would be able to fool them. He had learned all kinds of basic formations to broaden his understanding.
Once the formation was done, he sat down in the corner. To anyone looking there, would only see a wall. If Kaden had invested more into such formations, he would be able to put in a mental suggestion too and no one would even accidentally walk that way. Illusions were too tricky and just childish games, in his opinion. Yet, he had to agree that there were some uses.
It took some time for the soldiers to go through the houses they wanted to check. Eventually they came to Leir’s house and also down into the cellar. There was three of them.
“More dust and trash”, said one of the soldiers. “These villagers have nothing worthwhile and we have to search their trash piles for some heretic.”
“I heard the guy is a mutant!” Said another. “I heard from others that you become a mutant, if you mate with beasts!”
“Haha, and you believed that?” Said the first one. “It obviously happens when you worship beast gods. They give their blessing to you and you become a beast.”
“All of that is bullshit”, said the third one eventually. “You get affected by some magic too much and you start going weird. Now cut the shit and lets continue. I’m not detecting anything here.”
“Why do we even use those things?” Asked the first one. “I heard this guy already got past even better detectors.”
The third soldiers was silent for a moment and apparently was adjusting his tool a bit. “Thats because when we die, everyone else will know the target was where we died. It sounds as shitty as it seems.”
“Whatever”, said the second soldier. “I’m rather here looking through villager trash than be at the shoreline. I heard that strange high beast boar was seen there again and they are hunting it. It has water affinity and can survive in the sea, even if it isn’t a fish beast.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Yeah, lets go, there are a few more houses to go through”, replied the third soldier. “Better take our time and make sure no one will send us there, if we seem to be idle.”
Afterwards they left the cellar never knowing that Kaden literally sat next to them.
“Shit!” Kaden was cursing in his mind. “That Cerulean Boar again?! No one has killed it yet? Damn stalker! Why won’t it go after its own kind! It probably can guess where I am going. It is intelligent enough. I’ll hide in Sacronan for a little longer and even then take some time and care before I return.”
Kaden waited behind the illusion until he could no longer sense the soldiers being in the village. None of them would return unless they for some reason decide to sweep the area once more or have definite reason to think he was there.
In other words, Kaden was now relatively safe. Only people who knew he was there were the villagers and since they had done nothing, they wouldn’t do anything. This was good. He wouldn’t have to kill them.
Actually, Kaden could have hidden his presence entirely from the villager and not leave it to a chance. Yet, there was reason why he didn’t do so. This was because Kaden still had some business to deal with them later.
For rest of the day and the next night, no one came down to the cellar and he cultivated in peace.
Then the morning after that time had passed, Leir and a few of the hunters came down.
“Do you need something?” Kaden asked from the corner he was still sitting at.
“Ah, you are still here”, Leir replied. “We kind of hoped you would have left already.”
“I will stay two more days”, Kaden told him. “By that time the search has either ended or moved elsewhere.”
“In that case we will continue pretending you aren’t here”, Leir said with a nod.
“Speaking of which”, Kaden said. “How is the situation? Any news of me spread among the villagers?”
“No”, Leir said and shook his head. “Hunters understand the situation and that girl, Illiana, is too shaken and won’t speak about it.”
“This is good”, Kaden replied and was silent for a moment. “Hmmm, would you be willing to listen to a request.”
“What sort of request?” Leir said with a frown.
“I was thinking of asking later about it, but since we met earlier like this, I might as well ask”, Kaden said and then pointed to himself. “As you can see, recent times haven’t treated me very well and I still have some distance to travel. My clothing is dirty, bloody and torn. Sell me some ordinary common clothes. I attract less attention, if I don’t wear military uniform of the Saint Empire, yes?”
Kaden then pulled out some mana crystals. “I have some coins too, if you prefer those”, he added.
It was Leir’s turn to be silent.
“You are more reasonable than your, uh, appearance suggests”, Leir then replied.
“I can be reasonable to people who I don’t have any grudges with, if neccessary”, Kaden replied. “Yet, the number of such people is low.
Leir did not answer anything to that, but accepted the mana crystals Kaden was offering. One of the hunters left to get some clothes with some excuse.
“I wasn’t completely sure all this would work, you know”, Kaden said suddenly to Leir. “Since it did work, I will give you some advice for free.”
“What kind of advice?” Leir asked.
“You guys, this entire village”, Kaden started. “You are worthless.” Before Leir had time to object or anything, Kaden continued. “There is basically nothing of value here. Usually places like this are ignored entirely, but once they aren’t, you are doomed. You will be tossed aside or used brutally without any concern for your wellbeing.”
Leir didn’t say anything.
“It would do good for you to prepare for such events”, Kaden continued, in a very matter-of-factly voice and seriousness. “Spend some resources, get a formation master from some nearby town or city. Have them rig the entire village with formations. Have them ready to be loaded full of dire beast cores that you probably can hunt for. Pile enough that even someone like me would suffer. Just in case your village here will suffer a catastrophe that you simply aren’t strong enough to stop. Whether it is a beast swarm or people from more advanced areas. Have the last act of spite and deny them everything. Blow it all up. Kill them along with you. Trust me. It is better choice than be subjected to whatever they have in store for you.”
Leir wasn’t really sure what to think of Kaden words.
“To warrant such extreme actions...”, Leir started talking.
“It is just an advice”, Kaden said and waved his hand. “Perhaps you are lucky and it won’t be needed in your lifetime, but some day it might be good to have ready. At such time, you will be happy to have something.”
Leir was putting some clues together and could make some educated guesses. He needed not to speak about such matters, but he could guess some of Kaden’s personal experiences.
Soon after Kaden’s new, more discreet, clothes were brought. He checked them and nodded. With those clothes on, no one would at least immediately recognize him as an enemy soldier. A long cloak would cover some of his appearance, even if his armor under it and his talons and other inhuman parts would be visible, but he could try to hide those a bit, if he needed to.
“In the morning, two days from now”, Kaden said. “If situation doesn’t change, I will be leaving.”
“In that case, I hope you luck”, Leir said. “Whether you are from Saint Empire, heretic or monster, you kept your side of the deal even, if you clearly don’t have to. Your actions are even understandable so I won’t hold it against you either. Yet, no offence, I hope we never meet again.”
“That would be extremely unlikely”, Kaden replied and sat down again to cultivate.
Leir and the hunters left Kaden alone. Even when Leir finally got back to discuss all the matters with rest of the village’s hunters, he still could not get Kaden’s words out of his minds. The way he had spoken them would haunt him for some time at the very least.