Leaving behind the Heaven Tinkers, they blended into the crowds of Miri once again. Compared to the free cities, there weren’t many elves or monsters-blood here, and even adding the considerable numbers of dwarves, the human population seemed to be dominating nonetheless.

That was why Ethan didn’t find it strange that Beet who was eye-catching even in the free cities was getting a lot of looks. As he was used to mixing into the messes and hiding his presence to the point of being unnoticeable, it felt odd to be the center of attention in a foreign place. It wasn’t really uncomfortable though, just unusual.

‘’Did you join these Stardust Mercenaries, boss?’’ Adrian inquired, curious.

‘’Nah, I have a few friends among them, so you can say that we have a friendly relationship.’’

‘’And the one we’re going to meet? Is he one of your friends?’’

‘’She. And yes,’’ Ethan replied, throwing an amused glance at Adrian. ‘’She also has a high-tier master by the way. Maybe I should find one as well. I feel like I’m being left behind.’’

‘’Actually, master Damon–’’

‘’Yeah, no, thanks. I’m just kidding,’’ he said and added after seeing Adrian’s disappointment, ‘’Don’t get me wrong, Ace. I trust your judgment about this master Damon. It’s just that, this whole thing seems too transactional. If I ever have a master-disciple relationship with someone, I’d rather someone I can connect with in a deeper way, you know?’’

‘’But if you knew–’’

Ethan nodded. ‘’Then let’s talk about it again after I met him. Also, I don’t like the idea of having a backer in this lower realm. Our battle will only start after our ascension. If I can’t even thrive in this place by myself, what right would I have to meddle in the business of actual god-like beings?’’

‘’W-What do you mean, boss?’’ Adrian asked, furrowing his brows.

Ethan sighed. ‘’Don’t worry about it for now. I’ll explain everything soon.’’

After a time of silence, ‘’Where will we meet with this girl?’’ Adrian asked with a dubious face.

‘’We’re pretty close. It’s a teahouse called Samadhi.’’

‘’Ugh, seriously?’’

‘’Yeah. What’s wrong?’’

Adrian pursed his lips. ‘’That place is basically a gathering point of young masters and mistresses.’’

Ethan cocked an eyebrow. ‘’Really? Are we gonna slap some faces?’’

‘’You sound more eager than you should be.’’

‘’I wouldn’t mind some entertainment,’’ Ethan said with a shrug. ‘’I had a rough few weeks.’’

The place they arrived at was a three-story building with a luxurious interior design. Every floor was filled with young-looking people, sitting in small groups and chatting in leisure. Though, despite the abundance of high-spirited rich kids, Ethan didn’t think he could find the entertainment he was seeking. Because the moment they entered the lively teahouse, everyone who noticed them started to look severe, their loud voices quieted down and were replaced by hush whispers.

It didn’t take long for Ethan to realize that the looks they were getting were caused by Adrian who had already switched to his poker face, walking steadily like a stone-cold serial killer with a single goal in his mind. Meanwhile, everyone else seemed to be debating whether his goal was to kill someone or get some tea.

Taking the stairs, they climbed up, experiencing the same thing on every floor. In the tense atmosphere of the third floor, amidst the solemn gazes, Ethan noticed a pair of green eyes that lit up upon seeing them.

‘’Ethan! Adrian!’’ Rachel called, waving. ‘’Over here!’’

She was sitting with a boy and a girl who were wearing similar blue and white robes as her. As they approached her table, Rachel’s friends stood up awkwardly and offered her an apologetic smile.

‘’We still need to prepare for the exam tomorrow. I’ll see you at the guild,’’ the girl said and dragged the boy hastily, nodding at Adrian as they passed.

Rachel watched them in confusion before turning to Ethan, narrowing her eyes.‘’What did you do?’’

‘’Nothing,’’ he replied dispiritedly as he sat on the chair. ‘’I didn’t even have a chance. It seems someone else had all the fun while I wasn’t around.’’

Rachel turned at Adrian, raising an eyebrow.

Adrian passed the empty plate to the waiter who just came to clear their table without a care about the grave mood their table caused. ‘’It’s nothing. I became a target when some assholes learned who my master was, and eventually, they pushed me too much.’’

‘’They shoved your teacup to the table,’’ the waiter pointed out.

‘’It was my favorite tea,’’ Adrian replied before turning to Ethan. ‘’And an expensive one. I only drink that once a month.’’

‘’What happened then?’’

‘’I cut her throat with the broken tea cup.’’

‘’Her?’’ Rachel repeated with wide eyes.

Adrian nodded casually.

‘’Sounds like one hell of a teacup,’’ Ethan commented, still sulking for being left out.

‘’I have a weapon augment skill.’’

‘’You killed her?’’ Rachel asked in disbelief.

‘’No, I made her drink a potion afterward. They never bothered me again.’’

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‘’That’s probably because you put the bloody piece of teacup and the empty potion bottle into her hands and said, ‘life is a decision and death is a choice,’ to her with a deep tone,’’ the waiter added mechanically, cleaning the table with a towel. ‘’Before ordering a new tea and drinking calmly with blood stains on your face.’’

‘’I think that saying… doesn't mean what you think it is,’’ Ethan commented, suppressing his smile.

Adrian shrugged. ‘’It served its purpose.’’

‘’You’re focusing on the wrong things!’’ Rachel snapped, glaring at Ethan.

‘’You’re right,’’ he agreed with a nod and turned to Adrian. ‘’You owe me some good entertainment.’’

‘’We have a famous dancer coming in three days, sir,’’ the waiter cut in, standing straight next to them, already done with his task. ‘’Most of our patrons had already reserved a table for Miss Naida’s show.’’

Looking at Ethan’s sparkling eyes, Adrian sighed and nodded at the waiter. ‘’Alright. Get us a table as well, Manny.’’

Withdrawing her gaze from the peculiar waiter, Rachel leaned back in her chair and dropped her shoulders. ‘’Maybe I’m the one with the wrong frame of mind,’’ she murmured, getting a sympathetic look from Beet.

Taking their orders, Manny left promptly and returned with three fragrant teas and some biscuits.

Ethan sipped the tea that Adrian recommended and wholly agreed with him about its heavenly taste. Covering their table with [Void Mute], ‘’So? How have you been, Rachel? What are the others up to?’’ he asked.

‘’Oh, I’m doing great,’’ she replied, beaming. ‘’The Alchemist’s Guild is amazing here. It’s been a little more than a month since I came here with Master Ruth and all this time I was taking classes from her friends. I think I’ll need a few more months to finish them, and only after that, I’ll start taking other classes that interest me. Honestly, I can study alchemy here for years without a single complaint.’’

‘’You came here with your master? What about Pete and others?’’ Ethan asked and added after seeing Rachel looking around in discomfort, ‘’They can’t hear us, but try to explain in a roundabout way in any case. I’m kinda suspicious about lip-reading myself.’’

‘’Well, they are at the place you’d told us about,’’ she said. ‘’After talking with the man in charge there, Pete decided to settle there with the others. They are slowly building a small city. So they need all the manpower they have. Michelle stayed back at the free cities with Jasmine while I’m the only one here in Mirasatra.’’

‘’Huh. They didn’t want to contact our people here? Pete could have made a large recruitment.’’

‘’He wanted to but decided to delay it in the end. He, uh– Do you remember the transportation option of that place?’’

‘’Yeah, I used it once.’’

‘’That option is a one-way trip, but Saruman said with some materials, he can change it to a round trip. That’s why Pete wanted to fix that first before trying to expand the group,’’ she explained. ‘’The scouts who came to Mirasatra informed us about the situation here. And if you spoke with Adrian, you should know that this place is way too complicated right now. Our people are mingling with a lot of powerhouses. Pete didn’t want to do something without a backup plan.’’

A round trip? So those wells around the continent could be used to teleport to Wish Well with some tinkering. That would give them a huge advantage. But while a giant teleportation network is an exciting news, it’s also something that would make the powerhouses go mad if they heard about it. Regardless, they can’t do shit to Saruman in his home. Wait. ‘’Did you say Saruman? Did he say that was his name?’’

‘’Uh, no,’’ Rachel answered, confused. ‘’That’s what you’ve told us, and he didn’t say anything when we addressed him like that.’’

Ethan chuckled. ‘’I missed that guy. Once they’re done with the preparations, I’ll go visit him. Anyway, I think it was a good choice to be cautious. This place is even more dangerous than they’d guessed.’’

As Adrian drank his tea calmly and Beet tried the biscuits curiously, Ethan explained what happened in Marah to Rachel, causing her puzzled expression to turn into a panicked one. He asked her to be careful and not to spread the news for now, lest the Count gets more anxious and do something drastic.

For another hour, they kept chatting about what they were doing for the last few months. There were still many things to talk about, but Ethan didn’t want to keep Jeff waiting for too long. As he learned from Adrian that the bowling alley usually closed around this time, they decided to leave and grab Todd before settling into a hotel. He also invited Rachel to the auction, and they agreed to meet here again beforehand.

In the bowling alley, they found Todd sleeping on the bar as they expected. Thanking Jeff for the trouble, Ethan tossed his knocked-out prisoner to his flying carpet and made him float next to him as they left. With Adrian’s guidance, they found a nice hotel and got a room with two single beds.

Ethan dropped Todd to one of them and jumped to the other readily, drifting off to sleep in bliss after the exhausting day he had.

Then, he opened his eyes in the VR like he never left. Looking around with a thoughtful gaze, he sat in a lotus position and closed his eyes once again. Let’s start with meditation. I must find a way to advance [Fabric Tear]. That’s the priority for now. Since I have about a day here, I’ll dedicate half of it to this and divide the rest for the other tasks.

And so started his grind session in virtual reality. When he was bored from pondering about the skill, he created different enemies to fight against while limiting himself to a single skill, [Fabric Tear]. With mana stopped being an issue, he abused the skill like never before. From beginning to end, there were almost always two [Fabric Tears] in the battles. The moment they disappeared, he was activating another pair. Not only was he getting more familiar with the skill rapidly, but he was also figuring out more creative ways to use it, such as catching the enemy's foot in midair, using it to restrict their movements, or fighting between two enemies and trying to direct one’s attack to another. Without a doubt, none of them were easy feats, but he had high hopes to become better with time and experience.

After the day-long hard core training, Ethan woke up in his cozy hotel bed well-rested and learned from Ani that only eight hours had passed in real time, starting his day with a content smile.

He busied himself until Adrian arrived and left to explore the city afterward while dragging the hangover Todd with them. There were many alluring things to buy, but he only checked them to have an idea as he was planning to spend his money after the auction. Though selling some of the stuff that occupied his storage wasn’t an issue.

Asking around a few shops, he found the best offers and sold almost everything he’d planned to. The considerable amount of miscellaneous items went for 63 mana stones in total, the broken artifacts from Anpu’s times were worth 120 mana stones, and the best offer for the wendigo heads was 50 mana stones for 50 of them. He also got an offer of 20 mana stones for Veronica’s damaged sword but decided to keep it for now.

He had enough confidence in his funds that were reaching almost 400 mana stones even before the auction.

Ethan spent his time idly while catching up with his old friend and made observations in the city. Soon, it was time for the auction. They went to the Samadhi a bit early and waited for Rachel to arrive.

‘’Ryan should return from his hunting trip tomorrow, boss,’’ Adrian informed with his usual deadpan expression. ‘’I already left a message for him. As soon as he returns, he’ll find you on short notice. Then you can inform him about the mission.’’

‘’Um, s-should I be hearing this?’’ Todd asked, shifting in his seat.

‘’Don’t worry, Todd. I wouldn’t include people in my [Void Mute] by accident,’’ Ethan replied with a smile and turned at Adrian. ‘’What about the meeting you talked about?’’

‘’It’s a week from now on, and most of the earthlings in Miri should be participating in it.’’

‘’I see,’’ Ethan said absentmindedly.

‘’Are you planning to inform them about the Count?’’

‘’Kind of. I’ll warn them about the danger but I won't specify the cause of it. Not yet at least. More import–’’ He stopped himself sharply and jumped to his feet before turning back and making a grasping motion in the air. As he anticipated, his hand caught something, or in this case, someone.

A gruff voice reached to his ear as the person he was holding showed themselves, ‘’It’s me!’’

Ethan was surprised to see Vivian, who was staring at him with wide eyes and a red face, but only for a moment. ‘’Oh, hey Vi. Long time no see,’’ he said with a placid face and cold eyes before increasing the pressure of his clutch over her neck.