Days passed.
Reports continued to flow to Lucien in asured intervals. Each one was sorted, filtered, and delivered with the increasingly terrifying efficiency of Lootwell’s recorder corps.
Most of them were ordinary.
rchant disputes. Minor price manipulation. Private insults disguised as formal communication.
Those Lucien ignored.
Then Elias ca personally.
"Young Lord, we found sothing more serious," Elias said.
Lucien leaned back slightly.
"How serious?"
Elias placed the records down.
"Serious enough to be irritating. Not serious enough to be imdiate."
Lucien smiled faintly.
"That is a useful category."
Elias did not smile back.
He opened the records, and threadlike projections of tagged communications rose into the air above the table.
Several sect groups.
Several private channels.
Several nas already flagged by the recorders for pattern clustering, influence attempts, and suspicious rhetorical synchronization.
Lucien read.
And then he laughed.
Elias looked at him with curiosity.
"Young Lord, you find this amusing?"
"I do."
Because so of them had guessed.
A few sharper minds from several factions had begun wondering whether the communication devices were more than they appeared. Their argunts had grown from caution into conspiracy, then into coordinated probing.
If Lootwell could send announcents to every device, then perhaps Lootwell could do more than rely announce. If Lootwell could update devices, then perhaps Lootwell could also monitor. If Lootwell could expel people the instant they violated token-law, then perhaps the city’s entire system was more aware than outsiders should have liked.
The guesses were not stupid.
But the records that followed those suspicions were even better.
So sect voices had started stirring fear in the wider chats.
Lootwell might be planning sothing dangerous. Lootwell might not rely be a city but an enclosing force. Lootwell might be too orderly. Too rich. Too guarded. Too eager to welco.
One man in a sect channel wrote, with the full confidence of soone proud of his own paranoia,
[If they can send words into our hands, what else can they send?]
Another answered,
[Influence.]
A third, clearly determined not to be outdone in theatrical caution, wrote,
[Perhaps even commands.]
Lucien put a hand over his mouth.
Then the records worsened.
Or improved, depending on one’s relationship with irony.
The sa voices that had been trying to spread suspicion about Lootwell began coordinating more directly in smaller channels.
So wanted to "test" the city. So wanted to plant dangerous objects in the public districts to create panic and bla failures in Lootwell’s order. So spoke of sending provocateurs. So wanted to stir public unrest between factions already visiting Lootwell. One particularly tireso elder proposed that a loose coalition be ford "for mutual continental stability."
Lucien read that twice.
Then he laughed harder.
"Continental stability," he repeated. "That is always what frightened people call their own ambition when they want witnesses."
Elias said, "Should we restrict their access?"
Lucien looked at the records again and thought.
That was the obvious response.
It was also the wrong one.
If Lootwell suddenly blocked them, restricted them, or punished them rely for speaking in suspicious ways through their devices, then the accusation would beco proof.
They would know they were being monitored.
Worse, everyone else would begin testing the sa theory more aggressively.
No.
Better to let clever n feel clever.
Better to let them think their probing had found nothing.
Lucien tapped one projected thread lightly.
"You guessed it alright, right? This is bait."
Elias smile then nodded.
Lucien continued, "The first wave of those ssages is too clean and too eager to ask the sa question from different mouths."
He smiled.
"They wanted to see whether we would react. If we had, their suspicion would have hardened into certainty."
Elias glanced back at the threads and slowly nodded.
"So we do nothing?"
"Not exactly."
Lucien flicked the records. He sent several threads to one side and isolated a smaller cluster that erged only after the anti-Lootwell probing had died down.
This cluster was uglier.
More honest.
Now that the suspected surveillance theory had produced no response, the sa factions had relaxed and started scheming more openly through the devices.
There it was.
The old face beneath the probing face.
They were planning alliances.
Against the possibility that Lootwell might grow too large for comfort and eventually absorb lesser powers into its orbit whether by law, wealth, or relevance.
One elder wrote,
[If we remain divided while it grows, we will one day wake up and find that our choices have been replaced by their systems.]
Another answered,
[Then we group before that day cos.]
A third added,
[Lootwell is not yet attacking. That is precisely why it is dangerous. It is making itself indispensable.]
Lucien sat in satisfied silence for a mont.
Then he nodded.
"A good choice."
Because he had not acted when they baited him.
And now, because he had remained still, they had shown their real hands.
Old sect elders were old sect elders everywhere.
Give them enough quiet and enough confidence, and they eventually started plotting out loud.
Lucien’s smile widened.
Lootwell had not threatened them.
It had only existed too successfully.
That alone had made them afraid.
He did not care.
Fear, after all, was not always a bad judge of reality.
Lucien sighed.
He can’t act yet.
If he acted too soon, he risked breaking the larger spread of the communication network before it rooted itself deeply enough into habit. The devices needed to keep moving. They needed to remain useful, desirable, and normal. If the world started seeing them primarily as tools of pressure too early, Lootwell would lose sothing more valuable than a few frightened sects.
So he would not strike first.
He did, however, begin making quieter decisions.
He pointed to the cluster.
"These people."
Elias nodded once.
"Assign recorder attention."
Lucien thought for half a breath.
"Enough to know what they eat, who they hate, what they fear, where they lie, and which weakness they would kill to keep unnad."
That earned him the smallest shadow of a smile from Elias.
"I’ll arrange it."
Lucien leaned back again.
"As long as they do not move directly against Lootwell, let them gather. Let them speak. Let them write their own future vulnerabilities into our records."
Because they would.
Powerful people always did.
Enough chat records and one no longer rely knew what they planned.
One learned who resented whom, which alliance was brittle, which caravan route mattered too much, which supplier could be pressured, and which family hated another enough to beco useful at the wrong ti
Lootwell would watch.
And later, if needed, it would exploit.
That was enough for now.
Outside of that cluster, the records remained tolerable.
Minor skirmishes. Petty rivalries. Small humiliations. No true threat yet.
Not one worth lifting a hand for.
That, too, pleased Lucien.
•••
A few more days passed.
Kael and the others sent regular reports through their administrative links.
They were moving toward Maereth.
The first formal external branch of Lootwell would be established there, and not just anywhere in the region.
It would stand near the Liberator branch under Shadow’s authority.
Lucien approved of that.
It was a good arrangent.
A Lootwell branch beside a Liberator branch made coordination easier. Lucien also liked the idea of familiar people in faraway places.
...
Then another communication ca.
It ca through the communication artifact Seran had given him.
Lucien felt it activate, and he answered.
"I found one." Those are the first words the ca out of Seran’s mouth.
Lucien sat up at once.
The air in the room changed.
"A goblin’s hidden world?"
Seran nodded.
"It took longer than I wanted. Their concealnt is better than I hoped and worse than I feared."
That answer alone told Lucien much.
His eyes had already begun to gleam.
He asked, "What kind of world?"
Seran’s expression shifted slightly.
"A weird one."
That single word made Lucien want to go imdiately.
There was a real chance it contained another bark of the Tree of Creation.
If so, then Lucien’s power could rise again.
"When should we go?"
Seran answered without hesitation.
"Whenever you’re free."
Lucien nodded.
"I’ll co as soon as possible."
They fixed the ti quickly.
Once the communication ended, Lucien stayed seated for a mont, smiling to himself.
He rose and went to Vivian imdiately.
She looked up from a dense spread of reports as he entered and, to her credit, understood at once that this was not a casual visit.
"You’re leaving?"
Lucien smiled.
"For a few days."
Vivian set down the reports and exhaled through her nose.
"That sentence used to worry more."
"And now?"
"Now it worries in a more organized way."
That made him laugh.
He gave her full authority before leaving.
Vivian accepted it without drama.
"I’ll leave everything to you first, sis."
Vivian nodded.
"Be careful, brother."
Soon, Lucien departed.
He took the Void Disc from the chapel, then leapt toward the Liberator Headquarters.
Lootwell behind him continued to breathe, trade, watch, teach, and spread.
And ahead of him—
another hidden world waited.
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