“We will consider letting you find us, if you let go.”
The answer by the blue-eyed ninja left John puzzled. He was still thinking about it after he had handed Levro and his den off to the authorities. The two authorities, to be more exact. There was the local oversight and then there were watchn from Lydia’s loyalist faction of the nobles. One had existed for a while, the other was there to root out corruption.
John wasn’t too bothered about Rex Germaniae’s layered political issues. Lydia’s occasional insights were enough to keep him entertained – because he wasn’t involved. Where she asked for it, he was happy to provide advice, otherwise he just tried his best to be supportive of her. Failing that, he tried to look supportive.
In this matter, he had his own worries.
‘Claire?’ he reached out.
‘Already arranging the necessary motions,’ the vampire maid answered ntally. ‘An assassin for hire nad ‘Kage’ was not on any of the usual registers. Scarlett hasn’t heard of her either.’
John sucked his cheeks against his teeth, then released the vacuum with a wet smack. The gesture got him a few short glances from people around. They were too busy to wonder about why this passerby had made that noise out of nowhere. The maid behind him assured he wasn’t approached.
“You should head back to the others.”
“I will as soon as I feel appeased,” Aclysia answered
To hasten that process, and because it was what he wanted to do anyway, John put an arm around the maid. She let out a pleased, elegant hum and put her arm around his waist in turn. Together, they headed back to the palace.
“She hurt you,” the weaponized maid quietly uttered.
“She did,” John answered. He could speculate on the reasons why. Maybe she wanted to make a point or maybe she just wanted to test her own combat ability relative to another Latebloor.
John had to assu that Kage was a Latebloor. The variety of abilities she wielded indicated either a long life or the spread of abilities often coming along with the powerful Innate Ability that Latebloors could creatively expand upon.
The ninja had shown at least three different abilities. One was a teleportation ability, another her usage of needles to activate pressure points, and the third the quickdraw technique of her sword. John assud that the teleportation and the shadow clones she had made, sothing he called them because they had risen from shadows much like Undine’s clones did, were related to each other. This was further strengthened by her disappearing into streaks of blackness.
Those abilities all pointed towards powerful shadow elental magic. The needles were a Martial Art, he had gotten a Status Window to prove that much. Even if the debuff from having his ridians exploited hadn’t popped up, his new Chi Reader Class granted him enough knowledge to recognize its likeness. The quick draw was likely another Martial Art.
Most interestingly, it had been powerful enough to slice apart a level 140 golem like it was nothing. Yet, it was nowhere near the power required to slice open a World Turtle from a distance.
‘She said ‘we’,’ John thought. ‘Which ans she was either pulling my leg or she has allies, and considering what else we know about the Japanese situation, the latter has a higher probability.’
That was the reason why he had let her go. If he had believed she alone was the one to stir things up in Japan, then he would have contained her right then and there and tried to formulate a plan with her. That she was aware of his agents’ attempts to find them ant that they were avoiding him on purpose. She appeared to even have carefully entered the assassin registry to avoid getting hired by him.
Which made it quite confusing that she had taken a job that put them on collision course. Given the scene he had entered the room to and the open wooden box he had discovered, it stood to reason that her interest in the sword had been big enough to risk discovery.
A sword that she had nad ‘Sahtu’. A word that John was familiar with.
______________________________________________________________________________
“And you are absolutely certain that she called it that?” Ehtra asked.
John nodded and the First of Hatred fell back on her couch. tra was next to her. The two tracana were in brooding silence.
“Ya wanna tell us what’s so important about that na?” Rave asked.
“It’s Akkadian,” John answered for them. “It ans a great many things. Imagine if you put the words ‘rend’, ‘sword’, and ‘undo’ into one word. That is Sahtu.”
“The aning of the word strikes as less important than its origin,” Lydia stated. The entirety of the harem, save Lu Zhi, was present back in the living room at ho. Their explorations of the city had concluded and the teleporter gave them a place to privately discuss these things. “If it happened as you say and this Japanese assassin treated the blade like an old friend, then her identity is clear, is it not?”
“Serestra,” Ehtra mumbled. “It doesn’t make sense though…”
“No, the pieces do indeed not fit neatly,” John agreed with the First of Hatred. “Does the summary of her abilities fit what her tracana ability covered?”
“The First of Shadow is capable of penetrating even the most intricate defensive asures,” Ehtra stated.
“Your weakened Particle Skin would certainly fall under that,” tra added. “Beyond that, however, I am puzzled. Serestra was not capable of shadow magic. That could be explained by her having a particular contract at this ti. It is her using Martial Arts that has confused.”
Martial Arts were a set of combat abilities specifically developed with the human magical circuits in mind. While there was a tracana reportedly capable of using them, the One of Nothing was a rare exception and had apparently suffered great losses in ability otherwise.
“Serestra was strong, but she couldn’t hold a candle to Master either,” Ehtra mumbled. As First of Hatred, first among three, her power would have been about equal to Serestra, also first among three. That was, if John’s general read on tracana hierarchy was correct.
“I do have a theory that works,” John stated. Eyes wandered to him.
The Gar grabbed one of the bowls of snacks on the table, cookies in this case, and placed them on the table one after another. “Here is what we know for certain. 1. Serestra and Peranthis moved to Japan. 2. They stirred the locals into civil war, sothing that is rarely appreciated by the locals. 3. They disappeared. 4. It is, as far as we know, impossible to kill a tracana. Granted, we here could likely find a way to work that miracle.” He gestured at Nia. “In general, however, people do not have those ans, not even the rich and powerful. 5. A person surfaces, partly with knowledge and abilities fitting one of the Twilight Twins. 6. She speaks of ‘we’.”
John stopped placing cookies on the table for a mont. Via careful application of Arcana Rays, he cut the crumbly sweets. “Question: Is the creation of crumbs on the polished glass table necessary?” Beatrice had to ask.
“I like visual demonstrations,” John answered, “and you like cleaning.” No counterpoint was made and John placed six eighths of the cut cookie in an incomplete circle. “Here are the speculations,” he made two more slices and pushed them in one after the other. “1. There is another, even more powerful user of quickdraws in Japan. 2. Japan is the only Abyssal country in existence that uses the specific magic of binding curses to bloodlines.” He gestured at the now complete cookie on the table – complete if ignoring the gaps.
The idea was t with pondering silence. Ehtra sneered. “You suggest the Twilight Twins were defeated and then bound to a mortal bloodline?”
“Sealed in it,” John corrected. “It’s far from unusual in Japanese mythology that a bloodline carries a curse or boon.” He picked out the last piece from the cookie circle and threw it in his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, then continued. “Granted, this is speculating on a magic that is not understood. What I suspect happened is that the Twilight Twins were made the curse of a bloodline 300 to 600 years ago. Whoever they were sealed in proceeded to keep that fact a secret for fear that either the inheritors themselves or soone else would co to crave their power. Then, in the current generation, they happened to be born as either powerful Abyssals or Latebloors outright.” One after another, he ate the other pieces of the cookie. “That’s how I would square that circle. Granted, it’s just a theory.”
“You going to eat those?” Eliana asked, pointing at the pile of cookies he had cut pieces out of. One dismissive gesture later, she was throwing them down her throat.
“Given the situation as presented and the circumstances involved, this could be the case,” Lydia supported.
“I don’t know if that string of circumstances is more or less likely than having a Latebloor version of an Art Eater,” Delicia stated. “Gobbled up wherever they stored up the Twilight Twins and got power boosts because of it.”
“Could also be just a set of coincidences.” John shrugged. “Reality is often stranger than fiction, after all. All of this could just be a set of separate events. It would be easier if the Observe went through, but she had scrying protection from the Purest Front.” His passive Reveal had managed to cut through a lot of the distortional layers, letting him get a pretty good look at the woman.
1,64 tres tall, black hair, high ponytail, striking blue eyes and a fair, attractive, Japanese face. Her figure had been nothing special, by John’s standards, which just ant she was attractive by all objective standards.
Already, John felt his mory on her exact details slipping, however. He knew what she was supposed to look like, but not exactly what she looked like. Na, Stats, Level, all of those things had remained hidden. Other anti-scrying enchantnts were capable of this, it typically was easier to obscure intel than it was to decipher it, but only the Purest Front had this level of mory obfuscation.
“Putting aside that theory on whether I was dealing with Serestra or so kind of reincarnation of hers,” John moved on, “it seems that our Japanese troublemakers are gathering their power by taking jobs all over the world.”
“Why aren’t they coming to us?” Nightingale wondered. “They are aware of our agents. Aid has been offered implicitly.”
“Many reasons.” John leaned back and put his arms around Aclysia and Rave, the typical duo to have his sides. As he spoke, Beatrice got up to get a rag. “Most likely, they do not want to rely on a foreign power. They probably suspect that we would want to vassalize Japan if they take our hand – and they would be correct. Alternatively, if my theory is correct, and if the Twilight Twins are more influential regarding the mindset of their current incarnations, they might have no interest in an actual solution. It could be that they are shaking up the East Asian balance of power just to see what falls out.”
“What are we doing next?” Claire asked. As one of the two lead organizers of Nightfall, the vampire maid was effectively asking for a change of approach for the entirety of the field operation.
“Keep a contact in the area, otherwise refocus all our agents elsewhere,” John stated. “There’s no sense in going on a wild goose chase. They are aware of us. They’ll contact us when the ti cos or when we push our own designs on Japan.”
“If they wish for an independent island, then…” Lydia let the sentence trail off to see how he completed it.
“Then Fusion will simply have to assert its superior position,” the Gar stated. “In the current political climate, a vassal state of another Divided Gate state is the only way for Japan to exist next to Korea. Since we haven’t learned how to take an island and push it sowhere else yet, that’s what they get. We already got Lulu on board for this plan, it’d be idiotic to throw it out the window because locals want self-determination so badly.”
Not a particularly nice thing to say, but the fact of the world was that the powerful made the rules. As long as the Dangun Clan maintained a level of aggression, Japan could not form its own state and just propping up a new Japanese Abyssal state without control over them could very easily lead to the past decades of raiding to lead to a vengeful entity. The last thing John needed was for the Koreans to be proven correct in their fear. The consequence would be, without question, a complete genocide of the Japanese Abyss.
Raids and ransom money were humane compared to what the Dangun Clan could do if given reason for a full crackdown.
“Speaking of Lulu, should I give her the news?” Rave asked. “’Cause I was about to head over there for… charity work.”
“Is that what we call 69 these days?” John wondered.
“Mhmmmaybe.”
“Well, if your tongue isn’t too busy with charity work, you can tell her about this covertly. Do make it very clear that it’s just a theory though.”
“Will do.”
“What happened with Suel?” Lydia suddenly turned the topic around.
They had lost themselves in the weeds of the future implications for a bit. The largest reason for that was that John had little to report on the matter. “After he guided to the entrance, he took his leave.”
“Not a big fan of you telling him where we’re going,” Momo complained. “The last thing I need is a warzone in my archaeological site!”
“What was my alternative?”
“Literally just let the assassination attempt happen.” John glared at the sassy support and she rolled her eyes. “Please, can we not pretend like this was ever an actual threat? Romulus will be there. Ro-mu-lus! That’s ignoring all of us and Lydia’s own imnse capabilities.”
“Fortunate as the intel we have acquired in this affair is, I do concur with Momo’s analysis,” Lydia stated. “You should have let this attempt at my life pass. This intel in Suel’s hand is… dangerous.”
“What is he going to do that could be so harmful? He only knows where we are going, not exactly when or why. I was exceptionally vague.”
“You are rationalizing, my love, and you know it,” Lydia stated. “As for what he might do…” She trailed off and closed her eyes. “I’m at no liberty to spill the details, but Suel has friends in higher places than you might imagine. Assu, for example, your theory that he is the Horned Rat is correct.”
John clicked his tongue, with no rebuttal behind it. If Suel was the Horned Rat, then the Horned Rat could use his Suel persona to throw sothing in John’s path without the Gar knowing for certain it was the rodent scurrying about. Not that the Lord of Pontis was a badly connected man taken in isolation.
“I believe you have done everything correctly, Master… except not calling to the battlefield.” Aclysia added a tone of adorable pouting to the end of that sentence. She had teleported over when the status hit John. At that point, he probably would have called her anyway, she just appeared before he could decide whether he could work through the debuff or not.
“In my defence, who would have thought soone capable of hurting was down there?”
“Your safety should never be subject to anything except the most rigorous standards.” Aclysia scratched the back of his head. “You should understand. The emotions that drove to intervene are the sa that made you move in the first place. All of the world must be certain in the fact that opposition to you is a violation of the natural order.”
John agreed with the sentint, even if she pushed it a bit too far.
“Objectively, we’d have less of a pain in our side if he just let it happen,” Momo insisted.
“Irrelevant.” Beatrice was back with the rag and polished the table. “A ssage had to be sent. Addendum: letting an assassination attempt occur during Maximillian’s wedding would have threatened the good mood.”
“That… is a much better argunt,” Momo conceded that one with a sigh. “If she even would have gone through with it… I really think she was just there for the sword…”
“You have been played, darling,” Nia suddenly said.
“Yes, yes,” John admitted. “He pushed my buttons and got what he wanted. I regret nothing and I would do it exactly the sa way again.”
“You say that now, but wait until this bites us in the ass.” Salamander cackled.
John hoped that wouldn’t happen.
He did not like being on the receiving end of ‘I told you so’s.
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