I had planned not to hide anymore, but it looked like Clarice found value in me doing that again. In any case, she decided to give me one of their uniforms. They were basically assassin elves, but if some extra armor was added to their dark uniform, we could call bat dark elves. When I said that to her, Clarice glared at me.
“Don’t say that kind of thing to anyone, even as a joke. Most people here hate dark elves.”
I wanted to ask more about dark elves since I didn’t read anything about them, but it looked like this was a taboo of a topic, so I decided to shut up.
“Can you paint that bow black and change its shape a bit? You made that, right? It is quite impressive. I had never seen anything like that. You had more than one bow back then too. You made all of them?”
I had to wait for a while for Clarice to stop shooting at me those questions… In any case, I quickly realized what she wanted. She wanted to make me famous as an assassin with a giant dark bow. It wasn’t actually a giant, but it was bigger than the ordinary longbows.
“You want me to kill people for you with this?”
“We don’t kill everyone that causes trouble to us, you know. We scare them to death, too. We also participate in some battles on a large scale.”
“The unseen arrow is starting to look a lot more visible.”
“Very funny.”
“Anyway, why do you think that it is a good idea for me to mask myself as a member of this organization when I want to get rid of those involved in the incident the other time?”
“The organization doesn’t work like you imagine. We don’t have a boss that receives jobs that pass to us. We are divided into a bunch of units. In order to lure out the people involved and their unit, we will need this.”
“Why?”
“Sometimes, a unit fights against the other to absorb the other. You can bet that those who were willing to risk the death of Jalal’s grandmother to blame you will soon look for you if you show your skill in order to recruit you. I can tell that you have gotten a lot stronger. Although you are still quite scrawny. Thanks to that, you can pass for an elf with the uniform.”
“Your plan seems more full of flaws than anything else that I have heard coming from you.”
“Trust me, all right? Anyway, how high is your dexterity now?”
“As if I would tell you about it.”
“It looks like we need to work on our teamwork and trust. Now then… the only problem is you, Glacien. Can she stay here for a while? She will draw too much attention, and a lot of people should have seen you with her.”
“Give her plenty of meat and she will be fine.”
Clarice resumed her patting on Glacien while I put on the uniform of the unseen arrow. I began to look like a ninja since only my fingers and my eyes could be thanks to the uniform. I already could semi-teleport with Shadow Step. I could fire magic shurikens too. What else was missing? Creating copies of myself.
“Anyway, is that woman in the shop truly your grandmother? I want to buy that quiver there.”
“She isn’t going to sell that. She only puts it there to attract clients. Can you imagine how valuable a quiver like that is?”
I couldn’t, but I still wanted… Still, did I have enough money to convince an elf who was probably at least five hundred years old to sell such a magic item to me? Most likely not, even more so if she had seen only a few of those around.
“That belongs to my grandfather… he is traveling the world after spending hundreds of years as the leader of the silver bow. To make him return faster, she told him that she doesn’t return soon. She will sell his quiver.”
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Was that something romantic? I could tell anymore… I spent too much time alone and worrying about my problems that my senses dulled for that kind of stuff. If this were on earth, a scrawny, tall, half-vampire would be a hit with the ladies, but everyone here either saw me as a walking abomination or they just saw me as a weird animal.
Even if she didn’t want to sell it, I could just use my knowledge and experience combined with Essence Extraction to keep the item intact and then just enchant it again after getting the knowledge of the effect… it was supposed to be a tier or two above arrow creation, so it should be pretty taxing to obtain it.
“Anyway, when are you going to explain to me what wounded you like that?”
“Right… we were doing some investigations about the conflicts on the border.”
“You guys came from the opposite direction, though.”
“Let me explain everything before you say anything… Anyway, we found some signs that humans have been contacting the dwarves before the conflicts started and in the last few weeks, some diplomats came offering assistance to help against them in exchange of a few things.”
Causing a problem and then selling the solution, it seemed like something the empire would do to achieve its goals. Putting that aside, if Clarice and her unit noticed that, why didn’t they inform the higher ups?
“Before you ask the obvious, my brother wouldn’t believe me… he also doesn’t want to risk a fight with the empire. Even if they are stirring trouble with us, as long as it isn’t so obvious, he would rather fight the dwarves. Rather, he would welcome the fight. For him, humans are doing us a favor.”
“Why?”
“You know, dwarves, they don’t care about anything else as long as they have their mines. While they have a bunch of labyrinths that grant them a lot of ores, they still look for more mines. They like efficiency quite a bit, so they destroyed some forests to build roads to transport their ores. They also took some areas from us in the past, so we have some bad blood between us.”
I tried to recall what I knew about the dwarves and their land. The knowledge that I had made sense based on what Clarice said, but it could be biased. They had two main factions. The most famous was the Forge Masters. The most skilled blacksmiths, artisans, and engineers of dwarven society belong to this faction. They are responsible for creating masterwork weapons, armor, and machinery that the dwarves are famous for. They try to buy all the mines in the world or take them over.
There was also the Arcane Order. Unlike many other races, dwarves have a unique approach to magic, often tied to the crafting of enchanted items, runes, and wards. The Arcane Order consists of runecasters, spellsmiths, and scholars of the arcane, who seek to blend magic with dwarven craftsmanship. They try to get their hands on the technology of other groups and fight those who try to copy them physically and economically. I really wanted to learn from the arcane order, but I had heard that they were a pain in the butt.
“I see… what else?”
“Everyone would welcome a war with them, but that would expose us to the empire. I don’t think that they can start another war so soon, but it is hard to say what can happen.”
“True.”
“Anyway, we went to interrogate those guys from the empire. We decided to attack them when they went to a labyrinth with their guards, but a single one of them stopped us… A single swordsman and he went easy against us. To make their group, look a lot less suspicious than they are.”
“That would make sense… they wouldn’t gain anything by killing you guys, unless they knew who you were.”
“They didn’t. I am certain.”
“In any case, can’t they use this as an excuse to team up with dwarves instead?”
“They know that we are stronger than the dwarves and that the unseen arrow isn’t an organization with a single head. So, they won’t do anything for now. Targeting them is our second option. It will make things work faster, but you don’t want to deal with them, right? Besides, I don’t want to fight that swordsman again.”
“Do you know his name?”
“No… I only know that he enchants his blade with lightning magic.”
Lightning magic… it seemed that Clarice was certain that the sword didn’t have that kind of enchantment. If that was true, then the attack power of the swordsman with magic could increase a lot according to his mana instead of the enchantment of the sword. I didn’t hear anyone who had that kind of skill… it certainly wasn’t someone connected with my family.
There was a small chance that it was Gerard. I hadn’t seen him in a while, after all. Jacques wouldn’t focus on lightning magic, he would focus on anything related to holy magic, nothing else. It was quite a curious situation.
“I don’t like how things are playing out, but I will bear with it for now… what is your plan?”
“First, let’s paint your bow to become as dark as possible. Can you change their effects to look cursed as well?”
“... I do.”
It looked like, despite the fact that she should be twenty years old, Clarice reached her edgy phase. I didn’t want to believe that all those theatrics were necessary, but I decided to follow her plan.
“We will head to a dungeon nearby to get some materials. Magic ink. You should have other uses for them. The recipe that will teach you is a secret to my family, so keep it as a real secret.”
“It will be hard to keep it hidden from my numerous friends.”
I didn’t have much use for magic ink, aside from making the tattoos. I had been neglecting those skills because of my lack of magic ink and the situations I was put in, but it would be a good idea to stock it a few hundred liters.
“By the way, what about your allies?”
“They will need to rest for a few days, so don’t worry about them.”