He stared down the dark hallway feeling uneasy.

Things happened and with the new information given to him, Jacob convinced himself that what he was about to do is absolutely necessary.

Jacob pulled the edges of his mask, pulling it upward and covering the lower half of his face as well as most of his nose. This, along with the black gloves he wore on his hand were items handed to him by Xecania to help him run away during the middle of the night, as for why Xecania had a mask that covered the lower half of her face as well as a pair of gloves that were obviously meant to conceal the fur on her arms, well the answer is fairly simple: It is because the young heiress often found herself escaping the estate to get a "breath of fresh air," whenever she felt stressed.

Pulling on the hood of his cloak, Jacob tugged it downwards so that shadows hid the upper half of his face, concealing his eyes as well as his hair. Unlike the gloves and mask, the black cloak as well as the dark clothes that he is wearing actually belonged to him and he bought them back in the village for this exact reason.

After all, he didn't know when he would need to wear dark clothes during the night, just that he would.

This was inevitable, really, and Jacob's glad that he prepared for it beforehand instead of fumbling around like some sort of fool as he looked for anything that can conceal his features and hide him away in the cover of the darkness of the night. Though admittedly, purchasing the clothes and throwing them into his port had been because he was expecting some sort of situation where he had to act as a spy while being all sneaky-like, it was a dream that had come from the mind of a younger version of himself.

And Jacob, for the life of him, couldn't really believe that he's living that life instead of dreaming about it.

He held back a grin as he slowly made his way through the empty corridors of the Duke's mansion, there were no maids or even servants here and all that's left in the corridors were these paintings that depicted war and blood and gore and carnage- as well as a few monster statues that Jacob assumed were a personal commission by the Duke because of how... specific they were positioned as well as the obvious "wounds" on their bodies.

He wasn't trying to mock the man of course, it's just that, he found it weird that Duke Lezatian bought statues that depicted demons, minotaurs, manticores, and the like to be placed inside his house as some sort of decoration. The morbid paintings were bad enough, but then add on the creepy smile of the demon as "blood" dripped down its neck, the obviously angered face of the minotaur with a slash across its chest, and the roaring lion head of a manticore without a tail and ripped wings and things sort of just... fall apart for any visitor that's willing to even give the large statues a single glance.

And speaking of the Duke, Jacob didn't doubt for a single second that the man is probably watching him run across the halls of his mansion at this very moment. Watch is probably a vague term though because from what he heard from Xecania, the Duke is most likely just sensing his presence move across the mansion with mana or whatever its equivalent in physical combat is.

Of course, it's not like Jacob didn't believe Xecania either, he trusted that she was telling him the truth about the actual capabilities of her Dad and even when she didn't, Jacob knew that the man had lived years thrice than that of Jacob's entire life, so he didn't really doubt it that the Duke somehow had a way for him to know who was moving around inside his mansion.

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Whether it'd be through their energy signatures or whatever or a magical item, the Duke probably had something up his sleeve to do it.

Jacob stopped in front of the first window that he encountered and didn't waste any time as he opened it and slipped out into the night. He hang unto the ledge of the slightly open window, closed it, and dropped down into the grassy ground below before making a sprint for the walls of the estate, the guards patrolling around the area had made things easy for him by carrying torches, allowing Jacob to spot them well before they could and from what he knew, then none of these men have the ability to see through the Dark.

Hell, according to Xecania, they were only hired by the Duke as a "courtesy" or something along those lines.

Proof of her words came when Jacob reached the walls of the estate without anyone spotting him and when he got there, he started searching for the opening that the Duke's children used to go out into the city without telling their parents. In most households, a hole in the outer walls of their estate would probably spell doom for their family but Jacob assumed that the Duke probably just let it happen because for one, his sons were being adventurous and two, anyone brave enough to enter the grounds of the Estate without his permission will die a horrible death under his hands.

Before he went out of the hole, Jacob looked back to the windows of the mansion and spotted two shadows standing in front of the window, one, he knew belonged to Xecania, and the other could only belong to the Duke himself. Based on their position, it was obvious that they were staring at him and when Jacob met the "eyes" of the Duke through the darkness, he couldn't really help but shudder.

He went through the hole without looking after a second or two of locking eyes with the Duke's shadow.

Finally out of the estate's grounds, Jacob looked around the Dark forest and sighed in relief. He had already expected that Duke Lezatian would know about what he was gonna do tonight but that didn't really help make things any less unnerving, the man was scary to a fault and Jacob saw proof of those words tonight, he didn't know if Xecania told her father about what he was gonna do and planned everything out but that didn't matter at the moment, not when the Duke didn't kill him outright for talking to what the city would only call as a "criminal".

Jacob rushed into the woods without looking back, the Duke didn't do anything, he didn't tell the guards, and Xecania trusted him enough that she didn't tell anyone about what he was about to do.

He thought about it and the conclusion that he first came to was that the heiress is helping him because she didn't want him to tell people about her involvement but she had political power and influence in this city, one that she had grown over the course of her life while Jacob was just a simple mage that had just arrived into the city, if she wanted to, she can pretend that any claim that he's throwing her way are false and the people in the city would believe her over him.

And that's not to mention the guards that are more or less under her father's payroll, one that can blatantly ignore Jacob without any consequences because they were the authority of this city.

Okay, so Xecania wasn't gonna tattle on him and in fact trusts him, then that means her father does as well.

He can now talk to an information broker and find out about things that he otherwise wouldn't. Great.

This, Jacob assumed at the start, had been a good idea because people with information always existed somewhere inside large populations. But what he didn't understand is that the city he is in is an actual frontier for the Kingdom, making the information inside of this place quite valuable. And someone deliberately snooping around for them makes any future raids from the enemies easier- provided that they sell information to them of course - which means that any information broker working in this city is effectively a criminal that the authorities here don't want.

And that includes Duke Lezatian himself.

His daughter, Xecania had been the one to tell him about why it's a bad idea for him to seek out information brokers tomorrow morning while also giving him a tip about how finding them in the middle of the night wouldn't really be a crime if no one important found out about it. And it was just his luck that the people that would otherwise be concerned about information brokers were willing to stay silent for him.

When he saw the glare of the street lamps inside the city pierce through the thick canopy of the forest, Jacob fixed his mask again and in silence, headed out of the forest and into the dimly lit street of the city.