The boy died. Not an hour after I had first attempted to heal him, he just stopped breathing. Miss Emily said that his heart gave out. I tried to save him, I really did. But Light mana would not listen to me. Even when I called upon every positive emotion I could think of.

The mana simply wouldn’t respond. Darkness mana did respond, but it wasn’t helpful. Miss Emily was right, I couldn’t heal with it. Light mana wouldn’t let me. That kinda made me angry. But it wasn’t as if I could do anything about it.

“Get out.” Miss Emily demanded.

I looked up at her.

“The girl’s gonna wake up when she wakes up. I don’t have space for you.” she stated. “Get out.”

I looked around. There really were a lot of people. And I wasn’t exactly taking up a lot of space…but people were avoiding me. There was a space of a few metres around me that people had been avoiding. I wondered if word of me had spread.

That seemed rather obvious. Oak and his men were about average around here. Perhaps even a bit above average in power. That made me far more powerful than the others here. I suppose I was making people uncomfortable now.

I gave a look at Elena, wondering if it really was a good idea to leave her here. Perhaps I should book an inn or something. But I couldn’t do that either. I didn’t have money. I should focus on that. Getting money.

Leaving the Eldanveir mansion without any was turning out to be far stupider than I thought. But it was also done. I had to deal with it.

I left the building, still nervous about leaving Elena alone. But Miss Emily did seem trustworthy. I had seen the woman try very hard to save men without receiving much in the way of payment. That was suspicious in its own way, but…well I would have to trust someone sometime.

And carrying Elena around would just attract too much attention. So I stepped out, walking in a random direction hoping that it would lead me somewhere. I realized quickly that this was in a different direction than I had come from.

I even noticed things I had not before. This was not merely a residential area. Like many slums, it was a commercial area. There were shops, barely larger than stalls and with little in the way of customers. There were people attending to them, but very few seemed to be buying anything.

Even the ones that were buying were negotiating. I saw a customer start screaming at a shopkeeper about his prices. Perhaps I had just come at a bad time. That was possible.

Or the people here were just poor. That was also possible.

Another thing I noticed was that there were no food stalls. There were stalls selling clothes, stones, and even strange looking herbs. But none were selling food. How strange. The street transformed from simply stone to cobbled as I walked, the shops getting larger as I entered a street I had not seen before.

The line that separated the gleaming white seabed path from the similarly white cobbled road was beyond distinct. A person had decided to stop building the path here. The area ahead of me was very different from what I had just walked through.

The buildings here were two stories tall and every one of them had a garden. There were still shops in the front and back, with extensions that covered the garden and extended onto the street. That made them at least thrice as large as the shops before. There were even some customers. A couple of them even bought something.

But it seemed so very empty and small. The market had barely lasted for a kilometer. The shops were mostly selling the same thing, and most of those seemed badly constructed. This really was the poor part of the city.

I headed along the cobbled paths, following them into what I hoped were the richer parts of it. The next thing I knew, I was standing before a wall. Not even a small one. This wall was almost as large as the city wall, with an actual gate. I walked to it.

The guards looked me up and down, their brows furrowing in confusion. I looked back at them, ready for some kind of confrontation. There wasn’t any. The guards clearly thought I was strange, but they didn’t block me.

But they blocked the person that tried to enter after me. I had walked a bit by then, but I turned around to look. Oak was the person they had blocked. I narrowed my eyes, wondering what he was doing here.

Had he followed me?

“I’m with him!” Oak yelled, pointing towards me. I blinked.

How…curious. Why would he do that? More importantly, what should I do? The grins on the city guard’s faces told me that they had something planned for this acquaintance of mine. I did not know if I had the power to stop them, though Oak seemed to think so.

Should I? On one hand, it could get me into trouble. On the other hand, it would provide me with a guide. A person to tell me where things were, and where I could get a job. That was valuable. Cause I didn’t even know where to start.

Rowan might have come here in the book, but he had been Rank 8 then. The organizations of the city had not mattered to him. I was not Rowan, and I was not the protagonist. I wasn’t even a real Rank 3. The organisations were a threat to me.

What if I messed up and got into trouble with one because of my lack of knowledge? A guide would help. Even one as suspicious as Oak. At least now he would owe me a favor.

I walked towards the guards. “Is there a problem?”

The guards looked at me, their hands gripping their swords. I prepared for battle. This was not what I had in mind. Why were they so quick to attack?

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The guards bowed. “Of course not, my lord.”

Oak was let through, just like that. I would have to figure out what had happened later. But for now I had a wannabe kidnapper to deal with.

“So, care to tell me what that was about?” I asked. “I don’t remember asking you to follow me?”

Oak shifted nervously on his feet. “I, ugh, had something to ask you.”

“That’s why you followed me for so long?” I raised an eyebrow.

“I wanted to ask you once you left Miss Emily’s but ugh…you were too fast.”

“What?”

“Well, you walked so fast that I couldn’t keep up.” Oak explained. “And the guards don’t like it if we run. With you walking on the Main Street I didn’t wanna take the risk.”

I looked at him skeptically. That was not the excuse I had expected. I had walked too fast? I supposed that was possible. Awakening my mana had boosted my physical abilities.

But had I really been walking that fast?

“Say I believe you—I’m not saying I do, what did you want to ask me?”

“The fish.” Oak said. “I want you to kill it.”

I just looked at him.

“The fish that has been spitting that poison, it’s killing all the other ones.” Oak continued. “The thing is too fast and without mana we can’t defend against its poison. If you could just conjure that shield you used to stop the spears, we could kill it.”

“And why should I help you?” I asked. The fish was risky though, I had seen what its poison did. If that thing got on me, I didn’t know what I could do. Perhaps I would die just like that boy.

“There’s a monetary reward.” Oak said. “The City Lord put it up.”

I frowned. “Why isn’t he killing it himself? If all you need is someone to put up a shield, he could deal with it easily.”

Oak rolled his eyes, and opened his mouth to speak…and then stopped. As if a thought had just occurred to him, he looked around nervously. I got his message.

“Do you know anywhere we could have some privacy?” I asked.

“I, ugh, haven’t been here before. The City Lord does not like the likes of us here.” he said.

I looked around me. On both sides there was a wide garden, the trees blocking any houses from view. I did not know how they were even growing trees down here. Then again, how was I breathing? There was magic at work here, clearly. Life magic could have made such a thing possible.

The thought of someone with that magic being here made me shudder. Life magic was scary. I didn’t want to go up against someone that used it.

“Returning is not a good idea.” I said. I did not want to give the guards even more reason to think I was strange. That bloodline ability of mine had helped me out before, but I did not know if it would hold if I took things further.

“Tell me, what do you know of this place?” I asked as I began to walk. Oak followed me, unable to hide his surprise at the change of subject. I was just making use of his presence to get some information.

“If you think this isn’t an appropriate place to talk, then we should wait till we get back. The guards will be far less suspicious if we take some time and make it seem like we actually had some work.”

Oak nodded hesitantly, though I could see he wasn’t really convinced. That was fine, I wouldn’t be convinced either. But if he actually wanted this, then he would cooperate. And I would get the opportunity to ask him about things. Like what the city’s politics was like.

I was not a fool. Rank 3 was a significant power here. I hadn’t been approached by someone yet, but I would be. And if I wasn’t careful, they might find out that I didn’t have power equal to an actual Rank 3.

The high rank was my defense right now. The city’s Guilds and even the City lord should not be able to deal with a Rank 3 easily. That only worked for as long as they thought I was a real Rank 3.

I needed to learn magic and fast.

And I didn’t know where to start with that. To make things worse, I didn’t have any money. Or a place to stay. I had been keeping an eye on my surroundings while I walked. There wasn’t a single inn on the entire street. Just shops and homes. The Lake of the Forgotten didn’t exactly get tourists, especially as the royal knights did not allow people to leave.

There might not be an inn here.

That meant I either needed to get a home or stay in someone else’s. Getting one would probably involve the City Lord. I wanted to avoid that. The City Lord might try to get me involved in local politics. Oak though, he might know where I could find a place to stay. And earn some money.

I needed that, but only if I could trust him. I couldn’t have him lead me into a trap. So I would have to get a measure of him. How trustworthy he was. I expected it to be about zero. This guy had tried to kidnap me.

But if I could get some more information out of him in the process, it was good for me. Perhaps Miss Emily knew someone I could actually stay with.

“So, the town has been split into two?” I asked.

“Yes, the royal knights did that when they built it.” Oak said. “This place is only for those that have awakened their mana.”

So that was why the guards had allowed me in. I had already awakened my mana. But Oak apparently hadn’t.

“This is where the Guilds are.” I continued. “Can you tell me about them?”

I was asking him questions I already knew the answer to. That would at least let me know if he was being truthful to me.

Oak looked at me. “…yes. There are three of them. The Alchemist Guild, the Mining Guild and the Adventure Guild.”

“Can you tell me how they rank against each other?”

Oak shook his head. “The Alchemist Guild throws its weight around the most, but I don’t know their actual rankings.”

That was a better answer than I had expected. The guy was better than I had thought.

“Why kidnap me?” I asked.

“What?” Oak asked in surprise.

“Why kidnap me? I admit, you seem very different from what I would expect a kidnapper to be.” I asked, looking him in the eye.

Oak began nervously shifting his feet again. “Well, ugh, that’s, ugh. I wasn’t really trying to kidnap you. The Alchemist Guild would have given you a reward. And well, ugh -”

“And you would have taken all of it.” I continued for him. “Tell me, why do that?”

“The, ugh, the poisonous fish I was talking about. That’s been killing all the other fish in the area and well, food’s a bit low right now.” Oak answered, not meeting my eyes. “The reward could feed us for a while.”

Oh fuck, that was tugging at my heartstrings. That was not the worst reason to kidnap someone.

I still didn’t trust him.