30

It was time for me to return. These few minutes among my bonded, and the lovely carnage I'd caused yesterday had put me in a rather chipper mood. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't reluctant to leave, but I wasn't going to stop here. I opened the portal back to the empty cavern before blinking around a few times. Then I moved to the hotel room once again.

Appearing before a very exhausted, and irritated Sekka a moment later. I flopped on the bed next to him as I returned my clothes back to their normal plain black slave look. He wasn't the only one that was tired. I didn't have much mana to suppress at the moment. I'd pretty much exhausted all of my mana over the course of the night.

There was very little stopping me from passing out right then, and there. I forced myself to sit back up.

"You sleep first," I cracked my neck to get rid of the tense crick, "Looking exhausted tomorrow will support our alibi."

"You want to be exhausted when we go out tomorrow?" Sekka's face contorted in confusion.

"I want to look like I'm recovering from a beating," I moved over to the chair by the door, "It will be more suspicious for me to look healthy, and happy tomorrow then it will for me to be miserable, and exhausted. Considering how fast I heal I won't be able to show off any bruises so deep bags under my eyes will have to do."

Sekka nodded. He laid back into the bed, and settled now that he was alone in the bed. I stood up quietly extinguishing the rune that lit the room. I could see without the light so I wasn't too worried about it. Sekka wouldn't need the light if he was sleeping.

Besides I didn't have any plans of staying in the room tonight anyway. I jumped down from the window silently. My swords appeared on my belt a split second later. It was time to do some serious looking around. My muscles tensed as I looked around the dark alleyway.

They'd given us quite the crappy room due to Sekka having an unusual slave. The room was small, and we'd been overcharged, but the number of cores we were selling meant we were doing way better then we were pretending to. The amount of money we were sending to Ethan, and group was buying up a large number of slaves in our name through a proxy. If anyone asked we could easily play the missing funds off as a necessary expense. They didn't know that I was creating all of our cores.

It made sense for us to have a small workforce taking care of Sekka's crystal operation. I rushed along the street silently for a few blocks before moving up to the roofs where I was unlikely to be noticed. I was nimble, and quick. That made me smirk a bit. My mana was completely suppressed.

To the elves I was completely invisible. A ghost of a shadow that moved through the city with dangerous purpose. My stealth had leveled up several times over the last few months. I was doing a lot of sneaking around. I didn't plan to go far.

Patrolling the city blocks around the hotel would be the normal thing for a body guard to do after an attack. I'd made sure me, and Sekka were seen together at the same time the fox had been seen. It was a good alibi, but it wasn't airtight. There were several flaws that I was certain the elves might see through eventually. We weren't going to stay in the city longer then tonight.

I needed to finish planting the spatial crystals. I'd been cautious before because of the space blocking array. I would run into this problem a few more times in the near future. This would not be the only city that had an array to protect it, and soon we wouldn't be able to buy up anymore healthy slaves. Our contribution to the market would slowly drive slave prices up.

More people would be willing to sell because they could get more money for it. Others would be less willing to sell because they still needed the slave workforce. Pretty soon the only slaves we would be able to buy would be the sick, and dying. Granted we wanted the sick, and dying more then the healthy, but it would be suspicious if we only bought sick slaves while the prices on the healthy ones were so low. Getting a few sick ones with a good number of healthy ones was the best way to go about it.

Add on the fact that our experimentation with the poison crystals had made it so we could treat the mana poisoning to a certain degree. It wouldn't take me long to finish up with these little crystals. Small bursts of mana were going off all over the city as the city guards tried to find the missing slaves, and the fox. The angry nobles in particular would be out for blood. I'd stolen the entirety of their lower workforce, and all their toys.

I doubt they'd even noticed that I'd emptied the brothel as well. The sunlight peeked over the wall, and bathed the city in light. The shadows that I was using to hide vanished. I approached the guild last. Allowing a small glimpse of my mana out to draw the guild leader to me.

I needed to make sure he was on board with the plan, and I wanted more then his word on it. He knew I was planning on destroying the city so I had some good leverage on him. Especially since the city lord was caught completely off guard when I appeared before him in his banquet hall. I dashed off to the hotel. Swinging into the open window quickly, and quietly.

Leaving behind an almost imperceptible trial of mana that would be difficult to follow even for a talented tracker. The guild leader was a lot stronger then he pretended to be. He didn't try to use any magic against me when we fought. I knew he could use spells, but I also knew he preferred swordsmanship. I didn't blame him.