“Is he your acquaintance, Boss?” Kidd asked. “Could he be from Drarith? You only sold your potions openly back then.”
“Probably not, I didn’t recognize him,” Ewan said. “Though I don’t really remember every face I met in that city either, so who knows.”
“It’ll be a mighty coincidence if he’s indeed from Drarith and we meet here again,” Lance said.
“If that really was the case, he would’ve sparked the conversation from mentioning Drarith, use that to increase the familiarity before inviting you,” Stefan said. “With what went down back there, it would be more unusual to not talk about it when you’re meeting again.”
“If Drarith’s out, then either he guessed it, Boss, or he bought your information,” Kidd said. “Do Potioneers have some kind of mark? Like the shipmates I used to hang around with had rope marks on their hands. I also had it before, but its faded now.” He showed the faint scars on the webbing of his digits, rubbing them with his thumb.
Stefan sniffed at Ewan, his nostrils twitching under his blindfold with his jerky inhalations. “There is a medicinal hint on you, but it could just be my preconceived notion,” he said.
“So, either the smell or my information…” Ewan mumbled. “Information’s unlikely, unless it traveled from Drarith to this area quicker than us. It is possible if someone took the shortest route and without any stoppage, but I don’t see the motivation behind it. We are but mere ants in the grand scheme of things, not worth it to go to such lengths to spread our information.”
“We know too little to make an informed decision on this, Boss,” Kidd said.
“Indeed,” Stefan said and leaned back, and his baggy gown sprawled on him.
“Will he be a threat to us though?” Nana asked, a faint frown puckering her brows. “That man in his team was glaring at us.”
“More precisely, he was glaring at me,” Ewan said, looking at Nana with a playful smirk tugging at his lips. “I need to get used to this if I am to bring you around with me.”
“Was he provoking us for that banal of a reason, sir?” Lance asked, gaping with unmasked perplexity. “He could get his whole team killed.”
“He seemed pretty young but was already a Step-1. A little bit of inflated arrogance tends to tag along with that kind of achievement, and it can haze up reason,” Ewan said. “If their team is sane enough, they won't act on his hostility alone. But regardless, if we meet in the wild, we eliminate them all if we can.”
“You’re the same age though…,” Nana said under her breath.
“I’m much younger.” Kidd tagged along at the same volume.
“Let’s move on.” Ewan glared at the two and shifted the topic. “We need to confirm the pirates’ strength before making a move on them. Lance.”
“They’d prepared a thick file, sir,” Lance said and took out a slab of a dossier from his storage pouch, its pages bound on the spine while a thin cherry-colored film passed for its cover.
“Nyte, scan it and display,” Ewan said as he leafed through the notes, keeping it on the table for Nyte to scan. When he passed the halfway mark, as the pages on the left pulled on the spine harder than the right, Nyte finished copying the data and displayed a holographic image of the dossier for everyone else.
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It recorded the pirates’ activity areas, their raids, their routes, the territories they avoided, the ships they sank, and the battles they fought, yet it only had one word for the whereabouts of their lair—Graventos. Nonetheless, it had plenty of what Ewan needed to formulate his plan going forward. The strength of the targets they frequently chose hinted at the pirates’ limits, the might of the islands they raided added to that hint, and the weight of the territories they avoided pronounced clear margins for their levels.
“What was the last Seigneur’s level?” Ewan asked, his head buried in the file, and the scraping crunch of the pages turning rang at interludes. “What was his character like?”
“I couldn’t get his exact level, but he was still in Step-1, Boss,” Kidd said, tinkering with the holographs with a childish glee, scrolling the pages back and forth, putting his head through, muddling the image. “For his character, he was pretty arrogant, they said. Inflexible and rigid in his approach, he didn’t like to compromise or bend his knees for anyone.”
If the words held their weight, then someone with such attributes wouldn’t like to deal with anyone he had to fold his waist for, Ewan mulled. After all, the existence of crisp distinction between power levels demanded a strict hierarchy. Regardless of how imperious he was, he couldn’t defy someone higher than him if he wanted to live. Thus, the pirates he employed and dealt with could neither be higher than him nor equal to him in strength. And it further sharpened the hazy extent of the pirates for Ewan.
“Oi.” Kidd poked Stefan in the ribs. “How does this work?” he whispered, pointing at the holographs. “Oi, are you listening?” He poked again when Stefan ignored him.
“I can't see them you fucker!” Stefan bit back and jabbed his palm in Kidd’s chest. “I don’t know the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Who told you to have your eyes gouged out and go blind then,” Kidd grumbled, rubbing the poked region with a scowl. “Nyte, don’t display them for him, don’t waste the energy.”
“First surge should be their limit, sir,” Lance said.
“Seems like so,” Ewan said, still lost in the file, rechecking the bits to fortify his inference. “We need to confirm it on site though, and we need to check their numbers too.”
“How though?” Nana asked.
Ewan glanced at Kidd and Stefan. “We poke them and wait for their reaction.”
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Status: Healthy
Step-1 Severynth [Spirit-Nebula: Zeroth Surge]
Subtype: Step-0 Elementalist
Name: Ewan Ayres
Species: Human
Vitality: 7.0
Spirit: 25.6
Anima: [Fire – 25.6 | Ice – 25.6 | Blood – 25.6 | Mystic: 25.6 | Dark: 25.6]
Astylinds: 5 [Potential: 0]
Rolling Cat [Toast]: Step-1 Severynth [Spirit-Nebula: Zeroth Surge]
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Fire Monkey [Orange]: Step-1 [Level-10] [Grade-B]
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Imp [Frost]: Step-1 [Level-10] [Grade-B]
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Bloodthorn-Lotus [Iris]: Step-1 [Level-10] [Grade-D]
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Necros-Crow [Ghost]: Step-0 [Level-6] [Grade-D]
Equipment: Common Clothes; Yurn [Neck Gaiter]; Moonkeeper [Crystal-Ball]; Rainwarden [Staff]; Blackfeather [Overcoat].
Storage: Journal; Elementalist—The Path of Anima [Subtype-Book]; Spellbook; Bloodlust [Spell]; Transmute [Spell]; Unknown Book [Radon’s Legacy]; Anima-Crystals [Novas Coins]; Hub-Connector; Ingredients.
Novas: 24,285
Anima Crystals: 7,160 grams