The mayfire castle has been well built. I will have to admit that much. Looking at the place I am reminded of any place that can be called a trade hub. The people of the mayfire castle is a mixture of mercenaries looking for work, merchants looking for business and farmers or miners looking to sell their goods. Basically it is a busy place, perfect for a person like me to hide my presence.
Looking at the place on first glance, you will not think that the place is in the hand of bandits. The farmers are still going about their work, the merchants are still trading their wares. It is a scene that you can find in only bustling cities. It is pretty rare for what is essentially a frontier fort. The mayfires seem to have been quite adept in running this fort. It is hard to become successful in a place like this.
You can still sense the presence of the bandits though. Everybody is startled like a deer in the eyes of the lion, especially the merchants. Most are forcing themselves to stay calm, to pretend that they have nothing valuable at hand. To pretend that they have nothing if possble. If they fail at that though, the bandits are more like a swarm of locusts than men. They will leave nothing.
Well, this could also be due to the fact that i have been spending most of my morning following my target. Steve, the heart burner seemed to be quite the feared person in the castle. I haven't yet figured out what his work is exactly supposed to be, other than giving these people nightmares and making me really annoyed at following the man for so long.
I have been following him for quite a while. It was actually not that hard expect for the fact that I had time knock out a farmer. He was roughly about my size in build, so I borrowed his clothing for some time.
I didn't cause any real lose to the man though, since I left him with my clothes. My clothes would be worth ten times the mans clothes. The man will wake up by the evening, with my clothes. If he is wise, he would keep it safe with him house and sell it once the bandits leave. Else, the bandits would be making quite the killing.
Sadly that was the only set of clothes that I have at moment. The farmer is pretty clean though, and his clothes quite Comfortable. Otherwise, I don't know if I could have gone through with it.
While I still feel quite awkward He seems to be some kind of an accountant or more accurately some kind of an appraiser, I think. He has been visiting all the major stores in the city. I have heard every bandit group has a group of people like that. After all, it would be quite stupid to take stuff from people if they you don't know what is precious among these people. Still, what would let a man with such a useful skill end up among the bandits, I don't know.
Well, his goal is not looting. I can be certain of that. Firstly the number of people following him would not be so meager than. They would be large enough that i would have to actually worry about the underlings too. Thankfully, they seem to be not a lot. I am certain that there at least ten of them. I can't say too clearly as I have to keep distance from them. The heart burner has a mana sight that is about as good as mine at this moment. I almost got detected by him, until I completely stopped channeling my vital mana.
They are not cultivators by cultivation and their powers have been granted to them. They are armed quite heavily though. Every one of them have at the very least two weapons, most of which I think have been recently looted. One ordinary weapon and one magical weapon, I am certain. I can't say for certain since the mana of Steve is quite bright. That is pretty significant problem when dealing with somebody who has gained power like Steve. Well, no matter how magical a weapon is, it is nothing but a sharper blade until you have enough mana to power it.
I would have to assume these weapons would be due to the mayfires. They must have barracks in the outer keeps after all, which is something that the enemy would not leave alone. Magical weapons are also quite rare. Anyways, fighting them is going to be a pain. Killing them will take a few moments, but a few moments in front of the heart burner is going to be dangerous. This is especially true if I want to get rid of him by surprise.
No better to leave them as fodder for my blade. That would leave me more things to worry about at the moment, though I should be able to manage it. Still, just this preliminary following has not revealed as much as I hoped I could learn. The only thing that I can confirm is that the enemy has not cultivated his strength. That tends to leave pretty solid marks that someone with sensitive enough mana sight can understand very easily.
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Taking me as an example, the way that I move, the way that I react and the way that I weave spells all will show very obviously that I am a cultivator, specifically a formation mage. That Is because it takes years of crafting for us to grow our powers. You repeat something for years, you tend to pick up a few habits along the way.
The one that I am following is the ideal example of a dark cultivator or demonic cultivator as the general folk call them. They usually gain their strength from demons, gods or the myriad magical beings of this world. A warlock would be the best example of this or demonic mage. To do so they would need rituals, much like what the bastard in front of me is. Some tends to have pretty reasonable rituals.
For the knowledge king, you will gain strength as long as you provide rare books to him. The dragons tend to use you as guards. The longer you work for them, the more powerful you will become. Some can even become as powerful as the dragon I have heard. How that works I do not understand. Warlocks might use formations but it is a completely separate art.
That is what I have to assume the person in front of me is. Demons are creatures of fire and souls. So a being that accepts burnt hearts as an offering is definitely a demon. Though, a demonic cultivator this close to the mountain is a security hazard. I am certain getting rid of him should be quite rewarding.
Demons tend to give you acess to magical flames, called as hell flames. The flames tend to burn using souls, so I can't be hit by their flames. Damage to the souls at moment will be quite hard to handle.
Still, the most deadly part in all of this is going to be the fact that demon worshippers tend to be crazy durable. They fight in a manner similar to vampires when they are weaker, only a vampire relies on his ability to feed and regenerate and the demon worshiper can fight purely on the strength of his body. That means the endurance I can gain from my sword will not be enough to take him down, especially when he is surrounded by servants to act as meat shields.
Leaving that though, this might be able to explain some of the discrepancies that the blood heart gang is showing. They were never a particularly aggresive gang. They are what the guard corps call as the hyenas, bandits that will attacks anything that is weaker than them, but run away they meet a member of the guard corps. Well, when you have demonic ritual to complete you cannot help but be quite proactive. After all, why will you be careful if you have your own heart on the line.
It is quite pitiful to look at it actually, the way that demon worshippers are punished for not completing their tasks.
In summary, demonic cultivators are a pain to deal with. Most tend to have one or two tricks at the very least that makes killing them a pain in the butt. At the moment though, my main question is what should I be doing.
My main goal is the grimoire that the formation merchant is supposed to have left in his shop. There are three main possibilities. First and simplest is that Steve has yet to find the grimoire and it is still in the formation merchants abode. Then retrieving the formation would have been quite easy. Just sneak into the building and steal it from whereever placed.
But, this option is clearly not possible. I would have the book with me already if that were not the case. After all, Grimoires tend to be filled completely with formations to seal the content present in it for everybody but the owner of the grimoire. It will be quite easily visible if it were just laying about. I still went to the mans shop to verify it. That was actually the beginning of my little scouting trip. Such formations tend to emit a lot of mana.
The second possibility, is that he has found it and has hiddent it somewhere. This possibility makes the mission nearly impossible, because it would not be particularly for Steve to hide the mana emissions from the books. The only way that I can realistically acquire information would be to ask the man myself. It is pretty unlikely too since the grimoire is quite precious and you do not leave your precious stuff in a camp full of people whose work is to steal stuff. That would mean that i will need to make use of soul searching, a branch of magic that i find very uncomfortable to use. It is very close to necromancy.
And that leads to the third possibility, where the book is on the mans body. This makes my work both easier and harder though. Easier in the sense that I would not need to look particularly hard for the books, but then the book can only be acquired by killing the man.
Well, I have at the very least verified that I will be gaining nothing by following the man any longer. Men like this tend to have safe houses. Locating that area has been my goal, which to be honest I found quite early. The only reason that I have things till now was to figure out what he has been doing. That seems like a mystery that I have to be satisfied not knowing an answer too.
Anyway, his base is a three floored building that I have to assume was a smithy in the past. Now it is nothing but the example of bike bit of magic. I don't even need my mana sense to see the many hearts the man has sacrificed in the place. I am sure that if we were to dig up the basement of this place, I shall find piles and piles of body. Thay actually leads to the main question, how did the man have the time to do all of this. It is not something he could have done in just three weeks. That is a question for later. If need be, I can ask his soul too. For now, I have to focus on getting to that state.
Too bad the formation merchants store had been looted. I would have liked to get a few materials to build up a couple formations. Relying only on my sword is quite risky.