On a winter night in Misty Bay Harbor, a cold wind blew off the sea, carrying a bone-chilling dampness. Occasionally a late-returning passerby tightened their thin clothes and hurried on with their necks hunched; their breath puffed white and was imdiately scattered by the wind.
Most windows on the streets were tightly shut, only a few leaking dim, warm light.
At least in this trade capital, coal and kerosene from the south were not a luxury every commoner could afford; their steep prices made people frugal.
Nilly led three people trailing far behind the chaos worshiper, her silhouette perfectly masked by shadow stealth, like four ghosts rged into the night, almost impossible to detect.
“Finally caught these little rats hiding in the dark,” Nilly whispered, a trace of excitent for having finally found her prey in her voice. “Not wasting the few days I stayed here, although I barely got a decent sleep... This damn place is cold and damp, and the bedboards are hard.”
She complained, stretching and yawning. As a Stone Descendant used to the dry climate of the Dark Realm, she couldn’t bring herself to like the coastal winter weather of Misty Bay Harbor.
“Wait, sothing’s off.” She suddenly stopped stretching, her body tensing like a vigilant feline.
Her keen perception caught movent on another street: around the warm yellow light seeping through the half-open tavern door, the shadows were fluctuating oddly.
That was the telltale trace left when soone used shadow stealth, the unavoidable disturbance to ambient light that betrays them.
As the Belmont Family’s—and indeed the Stone Descendant race’s—most sensitive Shadow Perception “Assassin Master,” Nilly could even detect the faint traces left by so Extraordinary assassins when they moved stealthily.
Such crude stealth couldn’t possibly escape her perception.
Nilly narrowed her eyes slightly. “Weird. This isn’t the Shadow Mountains, why so many shadow practitioners? And they’re from the sa faction.”
“Tonight’s pretty lively.”
Leon, Elara, and Max tightened their focus and sensed the surroundings more carefully, and sure enough.
They saw it too: about twenty ters behind the chaos worshiper holding Henry, two shadows almost indistinguishable from the building shadows were trailing at an unhurried pace.
These two assassins seed to be up to the sa plan as them.
And from the occasional silhouette the shadows ford as they moved, it looked like they wore so religious-symbolic attire, like mbers of a certain church.
But the reason Leon and the others could freely observe them without being noticed was purely because of the Shadow Sli.
In terms of assassin skills and experience, let alone compared to Auntie, these three youngsters probably weren’t even as skilled as the two trailing church assassins.
Elara, a little dazed, asked, “So what’s their relationship? Chaos worshipers kidnapped a waiter, then church people are tailing the chaos worshipers... and we’re tailing everyone?”
“Let’s follow and find out.” The gel doppelganger shook its gel body calmly.
“All right, my Majesty.” Nilly chuckled and stopped hesitating, leading the three to trail at a safe distance, ensuring they wouldn’t lose sight but also wouldn’t be detected.
Soon the chaos worshiper, clutching a terrified Henry and twisting through alleys, arrived in an ordinary residential area.
The houses outside varied in height; walls were peeling, streets narrow and filthy, and the air slled of burning kerosene.
Long ago, this area had been one of the most desirable residential districts of Misty Bay Harbor, but the houses aged with ti and were eventually abandoned, becoming symbols of cheap tenents.
The chaos worshiper clumsily climbed over a rusty iron rail and shoved the struggling Henry toward the exterior of an unremarkable-looking house.
But in that house’s overgrown yard, piled with old barrels and discarded furniture, there were actually two “audience groups” secretly watching every move.
The chaos worshiper didn’t bother to hide his identity. Before retreating into the relatively dangerous interior, he pulled back his hood and revealed his face, speaking with a nasty tone to the man sitting on the ground, still trembling, “He already knows. If you’d co a bit later, he would’ve died at the hands of the New Sun followers.”
“Huh?” Henry looked bewildered.
His mind was still reeling from the fear of being kidnapped by human traffickers; he hadn’t reacted properly yet.
There were shady elents among those who worked on ships; the Seagull’s sailors were a mixed bunch, and when he chatted with them he’d heard stories of dock gangs involved in human trafficking.
Those dock gangs mostly ford as unions of dockworkers initially to bargain with rchants, but eventually degenerated into unscrupulous gangs obsessed with money.
These gangs were notorious; on the way here Henry had even imagined being sold off to southern mines as a slave to dig for those mage masters.
But people fear the unknown more than reality.
When the chaos worshiper uncovered his hood, Henry actually felt sowhat relieved. At least the kidnapper didn’t look like a dressed-up dockworker.
The chaos worshiper glared at him. “Why are you dazed? Get inside first.”
He pulled the hood back on, peered out to check the surroundings, then shut the door.
Inside was warr than outside but the air was more stagnant, mixed with dust. The fireplace was unlit; only a dim oil lamp flickered.
“You were going to the Whale Hunter Tavern, right? Those New Sun followers already picked up your trail and set an ambush. If you died, they’d pin the Blackwater Guild incident on us to cause trouble.”
Only then did Henry realize he’d been swept into so deep undercurrent. Cold sweat broke out again, and he clutched the worshiper’s arm, voice trembling, “Sir... you wouldn’t leave to die, would you?”
“Shh, don’t talk. Co with , there are tails behind us. We need to move.”
The gel doppelganger relayed the conversation inside the house to Nilly’s private gel network for four people. Max whispered, “He knows soone’s outside.”
Leon shook his head. “He probably hasn’t noticed us. But the two church assassins have given themselves away.”
The gel doppelganger hopped on Nilly’s shoulder. “Follow them. They left through a secret tunnel.”
“But I suspect those two church mbers might be the cult followers we’re looking for. We should leave soone to follow them,” it added.
After a brief discussion, Nilly decided to have Leon, Elara, and Max stake out the two church assassins, instructing them to prioritize safety and not reveal themselves.
She, however, would continue tracking the chaos worshiper and Henry with Little Majesty.
The two church assassins hadn’t noticed that the chaos worshiper and Henry had already slipped away through a secret passage; they were still guarding outside.
After the gel doppelganger and Nilly left, the assassins belatedly realized the house inside had gone quiet. They climbed over the railing and burst in, discovering the trail was cold.
Following the secret passage to another street, they searched but found no trace and left.
What they didn’t know was that Leon’s three were quietly shadowing them from behind.
...
anwhile, Nilly and the gel doppelganger followed the chaos worshiper across several streets until they slipped into an underground tavern through the back door of an unremarkable grocery shop.
The gel doppelganger rembered that the chaos worshiper from the Storm Territory had also chosen an underground tavern as his base.
Do chaos worshipers favor underground taverns?
Maybe because subterranean spaces are easier to hide in, their complex layouts make escape simpler, and taverns are natural hubs for information.
But when its little divine sense swept the tavern and penetrated the crude warning magic formations, the gel shivered, as if it had discovered sothing.
“What is it?” Nilly noticed the change and turned to ask.
“It’s soone familiar,” the gel doppelganger said happily.
...
Inside the underground tavern, Henry followed the chaos worshiper down a dim, low corridor.
Despite the winter cold outside, the closed underground space and a few rusted stoves burning poor-quality coal made it warr—oppressively so.
The fright and running, combined with the stifling heat, made sweat bead down Henry’s back, soaking his shirt lining and sticking unpleasantly to his skin.
Just as he began spiraling into fearful thoughts again, a hoarse, calm male voice ca from behind a slightly ajar wooden door at the corridor’s end:
“Alec, bring Mr. Henry in. I want to speak with him face to face.”
“All right.” Alec replied and pushed the wooden door open.
At Alec’s motion, Henry nervously stepped into the innermost room.
The room was small and simply furnished: an old wooden table, a few chairs, and a cold fireplace. The only light ca from a plainly made brass oil lamp on the table, its fla steady and casting wavering shadows.
He saw the owner of the voice: a man who looked contradictory.
Young in appearance, perhaps around thirty, his face marred with shallow and deep scars, his eyes weary as if they had settled decades of hardship; his gaze held a heavy burden.
The man wasted no words and pointed to the chair opposite, inviting Henry to sit, then went straight to the point:
“Let introduce myself. I am Kane Noah Connolly, a chaos worshiper, and also a rcenary from the Sli Kingdom.”
His tone was calm, but the content stunned Henry.
“Mr. Henry, I apologize for eting you this way.” Kane continued, looking at Henry candidly. “In fact, we an you no harm. We just want to use you to deliver so necessary information to those adventurers from the Sli Kingdom.”
...
Outside the tavern, Nilly’s face twisted as she asked, “You an... when you drove the goblins out of the dungeon mining area, you accidentally cultivated so chaos worshipers and let them return to the rchant Alliance?”
The gel doppelganger shook happily. “Sothing like that. Didn’t expect Kane to grow so fast.”
It hadn’t expected to see him here either.
Kane, once the leader among the goblin-slave chaos worshipers, had revolted against the Goblin Army together with the main body and Anvil.
Later he returned to the rchant Alliance via the trading route from the Dark Realm, to send Little John back and to find his lover’s body.
Unexpectedly, Nilly now ran into him here.
“Let’s go in.” the gel doppelganger suggested.
Inside, Henry asked confusedly, “Mr. Kane, the Adventurer’s Guild isn’t far from here. Why...”
He ant: why not go directly to the guild to find those Sli adventurers instead of finding a simple waiter to pass along the news?
Kane shook his head. “People like us, forced to live in the gray zone, are treated like street rats, not only by the New Sun followers but also by the council nobles. It’s hard to get close to the adventurers.”
He paused, “And we’ve been on the run, tracked by those New Sun followers for days. Hearing about you was just a coincidence.”
Hearing that, Henry relaxed sowhat. At least the woman outside hadn’t planned to sell him south as a slave.
“Mr. Kane, tell whatever you need. I’ll pass it on,” Henry said, trying to puff his chest out to seem more reliable.
Of course he wanted to ask for paynt, anything to get away from this place and return to the guild sooner.
Truthfully, whether Kane believed him or not, having his fate in soone else’s hands felt uncomfortable.
Kane produced a letter he had prepared earlier, sealed on thick parchnt with a unique wax seal—a broken pickaxe over a twisted fla.
“Please deliver this letter to a trustworthy Sli adventurer,” Kane said solemnly. “They’ll know what to do once they see it.”
At that, nostalgia flickered across his eyes and his voice softened. “If His Majesty the Sli Majesty could see it, all the better...”
Henry glanced at the letter, unable to decipher the wax insignia’s aning. He tucked it into his inner pocket and curiously asked, “Do you know His Majesty of the Sli Kingdom? What kind of being is he?”
A faint smile tugged at Kane’s mouth. “He is a ruler of humility, courage, integrity, and strength... countless admirable qualities. Soone worth following.”
No sooner had he finished when shadows in the room’s dark corner seed to coalesce as if alive. Nilly stepped out silently from among them.
“New Sun followers?!” Kane’s expression hardened, his body tensing instantly, a hand already pressing the haft of a short-handled battle axe at his waist.
But before he could move, he saw the greenish sli perched on Nilly’s shoulder.
“Huh? Majesty?!”
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