To my utter and complete shock, we did NOT get immediately attacked when the lights went out. The screaming had me setting my stance for a fight, but apparently nobles were just weirdly jumpy. Reaching out a hand, I clasped Callie's fingers in mine. "So...can you see in this?" I asked calmly, completely unable to spot literally anything in this oppressive darkness. "Because I'm planning to use an...alternative means of sight, and I don't want to blind you."

"I can." She responded succinctly. From her tone she was incredibly focused, probably trying to process a large amount of data at the same time via her shadow sense. "Go ahead and exclude me."

With a nod, I reached for my Moonlit Night ability, filling the area around us with fog. Now, one might be curious how further occluding the sight of everyone nearby would make it easier for me to see, but Moonlit Night manifested the fog as a translucent cloud of light to mark its boundaries. Once the fog spread, everything was suddenly perfectly well lit, easily visible even in pitch black.

To me. Easily visible, to me. The people weaving through the crowds slipping hands into pockets suddenly found themselves just as blind as the people they'd been robbing, and shouts of their dismay joined the shrieks of panicked nobles.

I was frankly shocked that had worked. Whatever this was, it was clearly enough to block off E-rankers from being able to see at all, barring unique abilities like Callie's. The only reason besides my slightly higher Impact I could attribute the quirk to was that I might not be ACTUALLY seeing anything. Maybe the cloud was acting as a kind of sonar? Or whatever the physical version of that concept was.

Thinking through the possibilities, I casually reached into my coat and slipped out my staff, releasing Callie's hand as I hauled back and smashed the E-ranked stick into the masked face of one of the thieves as he got a bit too close to Callie for my liking. He fell over with a shout, and I spent a minute beating him violently about the head and body with the weapon, just to really drive home the message.

He was an F-ranker, like me, but I had three extra Impact and was beating him with an E-ranked stick, so there wasn't much he could do, especially without the ability to see, except curl up in a ball and take his punishment. After confirming he was down, I kicked him once for good measure glaring down at him for a minute before moving on. Putting his creepy thief hands on my girlfriend in the dark wasn't going to fly.

Leaving the whimpering thief in a puddle of his own blood, I pulled Callie with me out of the way of the main force of thieves and up onto the steps, just to get us some room. The fog wasn't effecting her, since I hadn't brought her into the skill other than to exempt her from the stealth aspects, so her ability to merge with shadows let her process everything that was going on with extremely high precision.

Finally, after about a minute and a half of darkness, a voice shouted. "ENOUGH!" A loud thud of something hard striking floor came down, before a wave of bright energy blasted across the hall, dissipating the choking darkness and leaving everyone confused as to what was going on.

A tall, stately man with far too many rings on was standing in a circle of dark figures, glaring at them in rage as he held a brightly glowing staff. For a second I thought they were attacking, but after a moment I realized that they were all completely paralyzed. One of the rings, a green stone thing in a gaudy gold setting, glowed sedately on his hand as his blue eyes blazed.

"Shadow Troupe." He spat. "To think you would be so brazen as to assault an event where I am in attendance." He slammed the staff, a tall dark rod of wood with the end wrapping a glowing crystalline stone, once on the ground, and an eruption of plants exploded from the ground, reaching up and wrapping around all of the dark figures.

Looking closely, I could see the faces of the men hidden behind beaten masks of matte black metal. They were creepy and featureless, though they gave the impression of amusement. These weren't great masks, Zeke would have been appalled, but they definitely lent their wearers an air of competence and mystery. One of the ones being restrained, choked out. "Magister Weston." As the plants started to grip him harder.

A magic user. I'd heard of them, the owner of the Wizard's Tower where we found the ritual information we used to defeat Suvaya was one of those. It was a job dedicated to learning and practicing spells. When a person took a Job, their ability became a Skill, albeit a main Skill. Skills could be taught and learned, and certain Skills with narrow usage but impressive and interesting results were considered spells.

I had no idea what made something a spell, but I knew magic users could learn a lot of them, and from a variety of useful disciplines. Technically anyone could, but the Job system made learning and advancing Skills easier in some ways. Especially Skills related to your job, which made magic users complicated but sometimes very effective combatants.

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Several of my DS Mastery subskills were probably considered spells, but I now had that as an ability, which meant they would automatically rise when I ranked up, a useful part of heroic cultivation Job system cultivators had to give up in exchange for protection from recursion and some other useful tricks. I was pretty happy with the direction I'd gone, all things considered, but it was damned impressive seeing what a magic user could do.

Weston turned, blue eyes searching the crowd until they fell on a sallow man with dark hair and a waxed mustache. "Clairdon." He intoned coldly. "Might you wish for assistance disposing of these...interlopers?" He technically asked a question, but his tone made it clear that 'no' wasn't an answer that was on the table for the Baron.

Clairdon's face was getting even paler, but I didn't have time to react to that before I was tapped on the arm. "Excuse me." Said a familiar voice. "Might I trouble you for a moment of your time." Turning around, I froze in shock as I looked into the eyes of a formally dressed Anna, who smiled patiently as she took both my arm and Callie's and led us further up the stairs, pulling us into an alcove at the top. "What are you doing here?" She hissed when we were alone.

I raised a brow at her, before remembering she couldn't see my eyebrow behind my mask. "What are YOU doing here?" I chuckled as I gestured to our outfits. "We were invited. You didn't exactly seem friendly with Clairdon when you mentioned him."

"Because I'm not." She spat. "But I do know most of his private business dealings now. I was able to suss out where he keeps one of his emergency stockpiles of chits by crossreferencing information I had on his movements with the dates and times in the ledgers. I sent the Shadow Troupe to distract everyone while I lifted the money, but I had to pull out last minute because Weston is here. Clairdon is a nobody, but fighting the Magister would be a death sentence for me."

Which implied that guy was at least D-rank. Why the hell was he HERE? Anna couldn't see my face, but she obviously picked up my curiosity from my body language. I could feel the telltale stuffiness in the air of a stealth Skill in use, and I was pretty sure Anna was doing it. So at the very least we didn't need to worry about being overheard. Still, she looked around furtively and lowered her voice.

"I don't know why Weston is here." She said worriedly. "He shouldn't be anywhere near this backwater. He's not a Viscount, but he works closely with the Earl at times. He's something of a stabilizing influence on Stratholme." She cursed quietly. "This was supposed to be an effortless job. I'd probably have still tried it, given my skillset, but you're the goose that laid the golden egg. Can't let you get caught up in this nonsense. Which is part of why I pulled you away. Weston CANNOT find out you're a Wyndham."

That sounded ominous. "Why, does he have a problem with the WCP?" He was D-rank, so Zeke wouldn't let him act against me personally, but still, that only lasted until I hit E-rank myself. While he wasn't as restricted as he had pretended at the start (Zeke had let me believe 'protection from anyone two ranks higher' didn't include the rank I was at when I was starting out so I'd be more careful) once I hit E-rank, people like Weston would be able to do whatever they wanted to me.

Once I hit D-rank, the protection would end completely, but I wasn't ready to think about what that might mean. Anna brought my thoughts back to her with a rapid head shake. "No, but you're a strategic resource. He can and would use you. More than that...his being here seems odd, like I said." She glanced down the steps worriedly. "You're here with Tolbert right? How tied up are you with his settlement attempt so far."

"Very." I said firmly. "You think Weston is here for Camden? Why would he even bother with that?"

She shrugged. "Lots of reasons. Could be doing a favor for one of Tolberts off world enemies, hell, the Earl could be involved. Just be careful, if Weston is here, someone big is making moves, and there's no way he's their only card. Something else is happening and I somehow doubt it's going to be pleasant for Tolbert or anyone involved with him."

Which was really something I could have used information on before I signed a binding contract with him and got heavily invested in his business. While it was nice not to be the active TARGET of the insidious plot this time, being sucked into it by accident was almost as annoying. worse really because this time it was entirely my damned fault, and I just knew my fucking fate sense had influenced this nonsense.

Anna sighed and shook her head. "Anyway, I need to go. I'm going to try to spring my people before Weston gets them back to his estate. He's an unpleasant bastard, and chances are good he'll take them home for experiments. I can't take him in a fight, but my skillset is suited to prison breaks and disappearing into the forest. Be careful." She nodded and then turned and strolled casually down the steps, before LITERALLY vanishing into the crowd. One second she was there the next she was gone.

I looked at Callie worriedly, but without Anna's stealth we couldn't really talk too openly. Callie's own Skill wasn't anything to scoff at, but with a D-ranker here the chances of us being overheard were too high by far.

Offering her my arm, I gestured back down to the party, and she nodded solemnly. We needed to blend. Once this night was over we could talk to Camden about all this. Hopefully he'd have some idea what was going on and what to do about it, because I was thoroughly out of my depth.

We rejoined the milling throngs of nobles, smiling and flattering and being noncommital about everything as we killed time. As we did I considered how Camden might get out of this. Someone was clearly acting against him in a less than straightforward way, based on what Anna said, and that might give us a chance. After all, they didn't know about me or the wishes I'd signed over to Camden. Part of me was looking forward to seeing how that would tip the scales. After all, my other enemies had mostly known about my powers and been prepared for them. This time, THEY would be the ones in the dark.