The next morning.

Refugees flowed out from the periphery of the castle in the middle of the city, driven out by skirmishes between the castle’s defenders and the Order’s knights, who were beginning to set up roadblocks and barricades all around the castle. Preliminary reconstruction work had also begun for the damages inflicted by Kinesia; workers flowed in, and the corpses they found flowed out.

This chaos of people going whichever way was a prime hunting grounds for slave rings. All it took was a child going 10 meters down the wrong alley, and they’d never be seen again.

The Order did what they could to crack down on the slave rings, and they’d nearly captured them all — all except one. They had seen success from relying on tips from the rather upset locals to find the rings, but this particular one kept packing up and leaving at the very last minute.

Alyssa was already active on her feet. She was in her room, practicing with pistols, letting them float around her in a steady orbit. She let a rifle float above her, and she grabbed it with both hands, pulling herself up, then letting herself down.

She’d tried flying with her guns, but that just simply didn’t work at all. The best she could do was use them as steps or hanging bars.

“How is it?” Jon asked. He was seated in the corner, as always.

“A little discomfort. It should be alright before the Order makes their move.”

The door opened, and Amani poked her head in with an empty basket. “Madame Alyssa, Sir Jon, I will see myself out now.”

“Keep your eyes open,” Alyssa said. “You don’t yet look the part of the Theater. If anyone badgers you” —

“I am still a warrior, Madame Alyssa. Please don’t worry. And I will only be buying bread and fish, it’s not as if I will need to stray from the main road.”

Jon tossed a sheathed knife at Amani. She caught it with a hand and widened eyes. Upon seeing it was sheathed, however, she relaxed. “Thank you for your trust,” she replied. She disguised the knife in her dress, lent to her by Alyssa. With it, she would blend in with the townsfolk.

She closed the door and walked down the quiet hallway. At some point, the quiet was a painful thing for her, reminding her of everyone whom she’d lost. After Ravena answered her prayer, however, she became content with it, instead. Somewhere out there, her friends, family, and ancestors were watching. They didn’t need her to be some great warrior, she knew, but this was the path she chose.

Under Ravena’s wing, she would exact vengeance upon those who had massacred her people and enslaved the rest.

Today was going to be her first real step towards that goal. She would need to train for a long time — she had no delusions about how much effort it would take to achieve her goal — but first, Sir Jon had given her her freedom, and she intended to repay that in some way.

Today, they would have bread and fish for breakfast. Madame Alyssa had told her that Sir Jon had a small obsession over Gaelish toast. Hence, to repay her savior, she would also need to procure some milk, butter, and eggs.

She left the theater, walking down the steps. The plaza in front of the theater was still mostly craters, but there were workers hard at work filling them in and flattening the ground. A handful of masons were busy cutting white-gray stone blocks to shape and fitting them in with the existing ones.

She skirted the plaza, then cut across a slow-walking crowd of people: men, women, children, and elderly alike. They were being relocated for the Nth time today. Hopefully, the fighting near the castle wouldn’t blow up the houses they left behind.

She turned the corner to a main road, where there were lots of people already setting up their wares and carts for the day. The main market was still a further ways down, and that was where the fish was at.

A group of five children chased each other down the road, running past her sides. Despite recent events, at least some things felt normal.

She was happy enough about the scenery, gently closing her eyes to appreciate the air — until she heard a whimper.

She snapped her eyes open and scanned the immediate surroundings. Ahead of her was the group of children who’d just passed by her. One of them was crying, surrounded by the other children, asking her what was wrong.

She counted them. Four. They were down one number.

Of all the things she hated most in the world, kidnappers ranked second to slavers — but in a way, they were practically the same.

She saw a particularly dark side road, and she ran towards it. The basket in her hand would make a half-decent shield. She unsheathed the knife Jon gave her, then dropped a handkerchief before she turned the corner. At the very least, it should be a decent bread crumb if she didn’t make it out of this dark place.

Ahead, she saw a man dragging a flailing child. Good, he hadn’t gotten far. She charged. “You let her go!” she screamed.

Her appearance was so sudden that the kidnapper didn’t even have time to threaten her with harming the child. Still, he didn’t hesitate to throw the child aside and receive Amani’s knife slash with his arms.

Under his long sleeves was a guard of padded cloth, wrapped around his forearms and extending over the back of his palm. Amani’s slash only managed to mess up his sleeves, but little else.

He responded with a heavy punch, which Amani easily evaded by jumping back. This gave the man space to pull out his own knife, however, and he charged right back at her instead.

He slashed at her neck, but she blocked this with the basket. His next slash was met with the same guard. Amani slashed at the same time, finally nicking the man’s chest. The damage didn’t get far, however, as he was also wearing some leather strips there.

They traded slashes for a long ten seconds, but it was finally Amani’s lack of endurance which caused her to slip. Feeling tired, she committed to a hammer-fisted stab, wanting to settle this once and for all, but the man took this opportunity to step into the attack, into a blind spot, and grab her by the jaw.

Laced in the man’s gloves were a particular kind of medical poison. Once a certain dosage was inhaled, the victim would slip into unconsciousness in less than five seconds.

Once Amani had been gone for a minute too long, Jon wasted no time to gear up. He was just about to leave through the theater’s lobby doors when Alyssa came out. “Do you need extra cartridges?”

Jon eyed her for a moment, then finally fixed his coat. “No. This won’t take long,” he said. Alyssa saw him off, watching him go down the steps. She’ll be the one standing guard over the Theater once more, but it took every bit of willpower to convince herself that her role was important, too — but she could never fully convince herself. She wanted to be out there, hunting down trash for the sake of a sweet new junior.

She looked down at her wooden leg, reminding her even of the wounds inside her body; she could only curse her luck.

He traced Amani’s steps down busy streets, where there were carts filled with vegetables and people haggling over their prices. There were enough people here that it should have been nigh impossible to kidnap anyone in broad daylight.

As he walked the cobbled road, he found a blue handkerchief on the ground, next to the opening of a narrow side road. He picked up the handkerchief and looked down the road. It was completely deserted. On both sides were towering shanties, casting the narrow road into melancholic darkness.

He went in. The people behind him were throwing concerned glances his way, but his steps were certain. Whatever happened to him wasn’t going to be their concern — he looked like what knew what he was doing.

There was a stifled scream, and Jon broke into a sprint, readying a pistol in his hand. It had been too faint to precisely track, but it was in one of the shanties to the left. He kicked in a door, startling a woman on the other side. Not this one. He moved to the next dwelling just a few paces away, kicked in that one’s door, and moved on to the next.

Third time’s the charm. As the door broke open, he met eyes with the dirty drifter inside. The man had slammed the door on Amani’s cage, and his eyes were wide, not registering what course of self-preservation he should take when faced with a man in a suit, pointing a pistol right his way.

It was already too late for him. Jon fired, getting the man in the heart. He fell over, hitting the ground, gasping a few times. By the time Jon walked and stood over him, he was already dead.

Jon looted his body and found the keys to the dog cage that Amani had been locked inside of. She was gagged and blindfolded, and she was breathing roughly from panic. “I’m here,” Jon said. His words stilled her, and she did what she could to control her breathing.

He turned the key on the lock. Opening the door and cutting the rope binding her like a straightjacket, she ripped off her blindfold and gag. Jon offered a hand, but she got out on her own. Her legs were weak, however — a psychological rather than physical effect — and she collapsed to her knees.

“I — wait. Please,” she pleaded. While she regained her bearings, Jon peeked outside to be sure, then he went back inside the tiny dwelling, checking through a doorway’s curtain into the only other room. No threats. He closed the door facing the street.

While Jon moved about, Amani eyed the dead body before her. It was certainly not her first time seeing a dead body, but this was the first time she felt any relief from it.

She looked back up to Jon. She had had many captors in her life, but only one savior.

However, before her gratitude towards him, she was first a warrior. She took her time to stand up, steadying herself.

The door opened, and a dirty man peered at her. “Hey! What” —

Jon pulled him in, pinning him to the ground. The thug’s head landed right beside the dead one’s, and it soon became clear to him just ‘what’ was going on.

“Who sent you?” Jon asked.

“I ain’t tellin’ you shit!”

“You’re talking to an agent of Ravena,” Amani said. Her words paralyzed the man. Jon looked at her, seeking an explanation. She looked at Jon. “Everyone is afraid of Her. Use your status more.”

Jon worked off of a hunch. “Where are they now?”

“Even if you let me go, they’ll just kill me anyway!”

[Hold his head with your right hand.]

That was a peculiar request, but Jon did so, anyway. Just as he did, the man began to twitch and squirm, all the while screaming. It reminded him of how people would turn in modern zombie films, and for a moment, he suspected that that was what was happening.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

The man eventually stopped moving. He was panting. “I...I get it,” he said, tired and resigned. Ravena just had a little chat with him, that’s all.

“I-I’m just a courier, okay? I don’t actually know who the top dog is,” the man explained. “I pick up the poor bastards here and move them to a slightly bigger place, that’s all!”

There wasn’t going to be much of any useful intel Jon could get from him — but he was still going to squeeze him dry for anything.

“How long have they been in this area?”

“S-since before I even signed on! Er, 10? 15 years?”

“Just here?”

“This whole district.”

Those were just about the only useful bits of intel he could gleam from a grunt like him. That just left the issue of what to do with him —

[Kill him.]

He was honestly surprised. He looked down at the man, and he wasn’t even resisting anymore. “Just make it quick, man,” he said.

[It’s part of our deal. Just do it.]

Jon suspected that ‘our deal’ wasn’t the one involving himself. Well, it was all in good order, it seemed.

He pulled out a pistol and pointed it at the back of the man’s head.

Seeing this, Amani saw an opportunity. She’d felt that Jon had been underestimating her all this time. Certainly, he was stronger and more skilled than her, but when she’d said she was a warrior, that wasn’t an exaggeration. She was the last one of her tribe, and she had a kill count of her own.

“Wait,” Amani said. “Let me do it.”

Jon looked at her. All he saw was a child proclaiming herself a warrior. He was about to ignore her and shoot the man, but someone unexpected interrupted him.

[Let her do it.]

“Really...” he muttered, loud enough that Amani heard it. It was against his sensibilities. He couldn’t just up and give a child a gun, watch her kill a man, and then witness the road of blood she would eventually pave — even at a goddess’s request.

[On this occasion, I cannot have you assert your correctness. You have much to learn if you cannot tell what temperature burns in that child’s eyes.]

Begrudgingly, he looked into Amani’s eyes. He’d hoped to prove Ravena wrong by finding something familiar in them, like hatred or contempt — but they weren’t there. Why weren’t they there?

[See?]

Alright. “Fine,” he said aloud. His voice carried some un-contentedness, even as he flipped over the pistol, presenting its grip to Amani.

She took it and, without hesitation, shot the man on the floor, right in the back of the head. The swiftness of the act caught him off-guard. It was as if the girl was already a seasoned assassin — even if not necessarily well-trained.

He didn’t understand a lot of things, it seemed.

Amani handed him the pistol. “Are we going?” she asked.

He nodded. “Right.”

He turned around, but he heard rummaging from behind him. When he turned, he saw Amani going through the mess of the dwelling. “Looking for something?” he asked.

“A basket,” she replied.

“A basket?”

“I haven’t finished our groceries.”

Groceries? After going through something as rough as getting stuffed in a cage and killing a man? He...truly didn’t understand a lot of things.

It ended up that he provided escort for Amani as she did their groceries. A young child caught him off guard when he ran up to her, gave her a flower, and ran away. His experiences fighting against child soldiers had him on-edge when it came to children, but after one good look at the flower and the face Amani was making because of it, he deemed it no threat.

He brought her back to the Theater, but he didn’t go inside with her. There was a whole slave ring out there that needed taking down. The thought of it pissed him off more than it usually did — perhaps because it had affected someone he knew.

From the top of the Theater’s steps, Amani watched him disappear into the crowd in the broken plaza. She hoped he’d already recognized her as someone with her own will and struggles ... and that she wasn’t just a child.

Jon found himself in the alleys again. There were piles of rubble and blown-out walls here and there. It seemed that Kinesia had seriously scattered booby traps all over the place.

Eventually, he found himself back at the back-alley coffee den, scanning the place for a certain face. Some of the other patrons there flashed curious looks at him, but nothing more.

“Ah! Mr. Fuze, you’re here!” Damian called out with a satisfied clap. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Jon approached him, sitting across him. “There’s some intel I need.”

“Information?” Damian chuckled. “Oh, sure, I’ve got information. I’ve also got a favor.”

“Don’t accept cash?”

“Good sir, I need results more than I need cash right now. I hope you understand.”

Jon sighed. “What is it?”

Damian smiled. “I have a competitor whose ship will be arriving in a few days. Ah, the short of it is I need that ship sunk.”

“You can’t be more specific?”

“Sadly, I’m yet to collect more information. All I know is that the ship's cargo is valued well over two million. It’s not unreasonable to find it well-guarded...and it’s not unreasonable if I say you can take whatever you find and can carry from it while you’re there, no?”

It’s a risky deal. “Give me more intel on the target, then I’ll tell you if I can do it.”

Damian cupped his chin. “Hm, well, being cautious isn’t unreasonable either.” He snapped his fingers. “Let’s lower the bar a bit. How about I give you the info you need, then let’s go break into a certain place for some info about the ship. It’ll be a two-man job getting in there, anyway.”

“And where’s that?”

“Oh, just the port authority. It’s quite a pain evading the Order crawling all over that place, you know?”

The Order. He’s supposed to be doing them a favor, but now it looked like he needed to do a favor against them to do a favor for them. Funny. Jon rubbed his thumb across his fingers.

A disturbing thought crossed his mind. What were the Order doing at the port authority? That was a civilian establishment. They had no business being there. “Alright,” he told Damian.

“Splendid! Now, what would you like to know?”

“There’s a slave ring...”

***

Damian could only give him a rough estimation of the ring’s operating areas — and their favorite tactics, fighting strength, mode of operation, and organizational structure. More than enough.

Crowds of people filled the markets of the city, but as one strayed further from the main roads, there would be men lurking in the shadows for easy marks. Some walls were only illusions.

A child passed by.

A hand emerged from the wall.

The child was gone.

Jon saw this from an adjacent roof. He hopped down and walked through that same wall, taking the thug on the other side by surprise. The man was still busy securing the binds around the child, so he had nothing to defend against a bone-cracking kick to the knee, bending the man’s leg at unnatural angles.

Jon freed the child with a swipe of the knife. “Stay quiet so they can’t find you. Run,” he told him. The child held back his tears and cupped his mouth, running out of the illusory wall and out of the alley to whence he came.

“You don’t know who you’re messing with!” the thug erroneously claimed.

Wrapping up the tenth interrogation of the day, Jon had mapped out the common safehouses of the ring. Taking out the safehouses wouldn’t put a stop to the operation, but that wasn’t his purpose. If he acted fast enough, he’d be able to get his hands on good intel before the guards could react and burn them.

The first safehouse was nothing more than a storage closet at the end of a narrow alley-between-alleys. Jon disguised himself with dirt on his face and a burlap cloak over his head and shoulders, and he hoisted a sack of dried grass over his shoulder. He knocked 3-1-2 on the door, seeing movement through the thin gaps in the sad door.

“Who’s it?” the guard challenged.

Jon copied the accent around these parts. “It’s Ernie.”

The slave ring subcontracted the actual job of kidnapping to beggars and common thugs. “Ernie” was just one among many codewords for them, the lowest of the low; if they were captured, they were easily replaced.

As soon as the door opened, Jon kicked the man in the chest. A second guard got up from the bench, pulling out a pistol, but Jon shot him before he could even raise his gun. The guard’s gun went off as he fell, hitting a far wall.

The first guard screamed as he scrambled away on his back. “Who the fuck are you!”

“Show me the books,” Jon demanded with a low, but steady voice.

“Fuck you!”

Jon pointed a pistol at the man. He showed him the books soon after.

The ledgers showed that this safehouse was just a relay station, after all. It had been here for a few weeks already. How could the Order not have found it? They must’ve been hunting for the main base, but if the main base were constantly moving, how did the relay stations know where to deliver their victims?

No, that didn’t need to be the case. The main base would definitely know where all of the relay bases and safehouses were. They would be the ones coming to collect.

This way, it was impossible to trace the location of the main base just from the information collected from a safehouse.

Even so, the ledgers provided a clue. Every four days, someone came to this relay station. The last time was two days ago.

He didn’t want to wait. The ring was likely using a rotating collection schedule, so now it was just a matter of finding a relay station which was due for collection today.

He spent the better part of the day hitting random safehouses and interrogating more thugs for location information. Some of them were too young to drink — an age he couldn’t bring himself to kill, assuming they surrendered.

Letting them go was a tactically unwise decision, but he didn’t have the time to surrender them to the Order, and he really, he was going through safehouses faster than those kid thugs could report his movements to their superiors.

Eventually, he struck a different kind of gold. He never managed to find a safehouse due for collection today, but from going through their ledgers, he found a lucky pattern. Going by the locations of the safehouses he’d already raided, and the collection dates in their ledgers, he realized that neighboring safehouses were more likely to be due on the same or next day — which meant that the main base was performing its collection activities based on proximity. The main base would move to a new area, collect only from the safehouses in that area, and then move on the very next day.

On a four-day collection schedule, that meant the main base was just switching between the same four locations.

Since they were operating inside just one district of the city, Jon’s work was cut out for him.

However, he had to find the main base today, or else their boss would panic after finding out about the loss of seven relay stations in one day. In the best case, they would cease all activity and lie low — in other words, they would be paralyzed, allowing Jon to casually narrow down his search — but in the worst case, they would have a fifth location to hide in, and then he’d lose them for too long.

***

Name: Jon Fuze

Level: 5

Kills: 55 → 72

Kills to Next Level: 5 / 25 → 22 / 25

Skill Proofs: 2

| Skill Claims |

> Hastened Sight (Unlocks Lvl. 10)

> Aerial Lockbox (Unlocks Lvl. 15)

| Skills |

> Summon Scribetool (Tier 1)

> Perfect Motion (Tier 1)

***

He left the alleys and blended into the crowds near the markets again. The ring employed lookouts, which alerted the actual kidnappers to potential targets; Jon was looking for those lookouts, careful not to appear suspicious himself. There were Order knights roaming around, and it wouldn’t do to be captured by them for acting as he was.

He rested along the road. There were plenty of people passing in front of him, but only enough that there were still plenty of gaps between them. It wasn’t unordinary to see people resting by the side of the road, so he considered himself invisible at the moment.

Two knights of the Order did the same, leaning on a wall 5 meters down the road from him. He strained his ears to pick up their conversation. Even if they were ostensibly the Theater’s allies, any bit of additional intel would help him.

“I really wish the captain would let us play around a bit. They looked really good, too” —

“Idiot, don’t talk about that out here.”

The second man’s annoyance gave Jon all the justification he needed to monitor them a little more closely. A minute passed, and he saw one knight nudge the other, pointing at a mother and child, 20 meters away, carrying a basket full of fruit.

As the mother and child passed them, one of the knights pushed off and bumped into them. The basket fell, and all the fruits fell out, becoming covered in dirt. The knight even managed to step on some of them.

“Ah!” the mother shouted.

“Ah crap, sorry about that, lady.” The first knight hit his helmet.

“There you go again.” The second knight shook his head. “Lady, if you’d like, we can compensate you. Our command post is right through here.”

“No, well, I can just replace these...”

“They must’ve been expensive, I insist. The city’s going through hard times, after all.”

“Ah, well, I suppose...”

The first knight led the way through a narrow path, while the mother carried her child and followed. The second knight brought up the rear, holding the basket with half as much fruit as it had started with. Jon stalked them.