News from the market and a new opportunity

The city's outer defensive array was restored in the afternoon of the next day, and the day after that food delivery started again. After eating breakfast Collin began practicing alchemy till noon. Today he was going to the market, he needed to know what happened during the attack and buy supplies before he checked in with Valeria.

Wearing his faceless servant costume, he stepped out of his front gate for the first time in months. The first thing Collin noticed was the thick smell of smoke in the air, the second thing he noticed was the cultivators flying in the air. Some were flying by themselves while others were using flying tools like swords, platforms, or boats. Normally flying inside the cities is prohibited, only during times of emergency is the rule suspended.

Collin wanted to see the damage the first ward had taken so he followed the main road to a spot where he could see all the way to the outer wall. Where there should have been small buildings as far as he could see, there were smoldering carters. Depending on how many could evacuate between the first and second alarms the death toll would be in the thousands or maybe over ten thousand.

He didn't want to linger on these thoughts, so he resumed his journey to the market while thinking of what to get from the food stalls. Entering the market Collin began to listen to the people around him talk about the attack. He was learning everything from where the devil worshipers breached the defensive arrays to the fact that they were led by two Nascent Soul ranked devil worshipers.

He also learned that it was Drew Tyler people saw before the attack. He was now Core Formation rank and he had led hundreds of other devil worshipers to exterminate his own family. After a moment of shock, the people began talking about what kind of devil he was turning into and how many people he must have murdered to get so powerful so fast.

After a while he had his fill of gossip and began to start shopping for food stuffs, before he headed to the cultivator section of the market. Throughout the market the squads of security guards were no longer marching in groups of four, but their presence was still strong. Wanted posters were pasted on walls, they showed the monstrous faces of the devil worshippers. Drew Tyler's poster was also there, half his face was covered in boney protrusions and a short horn above one of his eyes with a mouth full of shark like teeth. He was becoming a bone eater devil. Of the known types of devils, bone eaters rank in the middle for power and strength but towards the top for defense.

There were bounties for killing these devil worshipers, but Collin was so weak compared to them that he wasn't even sure he could kill them in his own dreams. Even if he was strong enough to fight them, most people who hunt for devils die horribly.

Walking into the inscription shop, the man with the short brown hair was gone, in his place was an older woman with long bright red hair. She was far nicer than her predecessor, but she told him all the gossip he had heard outside but in a third of the time. After getting his supplies he left and headed to several other shops and purchased the things he needed and a few that he wanted.

The inside of the alchemy shop was the same as it was before, Valeria was glad that he survived the attack. They talked about his progress in alchemy, and he showed her some of the pills he made. They still had a slight brown tint to them, but they were able to give her an idea on what he needed to focus on to improve. They also talked about his cultivation, and she made a guess of six months or so till he was at the 5th layer of Qi Condensation and maybe a couple of months after that to learn all to make all the pills necessary to take the guild test. After an hour of talking about things, Collin left the shop.

The last things that Collin bought in the market were some meat pies, while he was walking back to his villa, he was thinking about them and about Alex Tyler. Alex was Drew Tyler's younger brother, and while he wasn't in Collin's main circle of friends they did meet often. In fact, it was Alex showing off the villa that his family was going to give him when he became a talent that inspired Collin to buy his villa. With Alex and the rest of the Tyler family being exterminated that villa would sit unused for fifty years before the city took ownership of it and sold it off again.

A simple thought occurred to Collin as he started down the street his villa was on. If they didn't change the gate code of that villa in the past six months, he could claim it as his own. Five minutes of walking later, he stood in front of Alex's villa. Tapping the gate, an array panel with nine dots in three lines of three appeared in front of him. He tapped the dots in the same pattern Alex did as he proudly showed off what was going to be his new villa. 3,7,1,9,2,8,4,6,5.

The villa gate opened; he quickly entered the gate and closed it behind him. Collin had been here before, but he was still amazed at the size of this villa. It was five times the size of his villa, it had a massive main house with two smaller houses the size of his villas main house for the owner's mistresses. The most impressive part was the view, you could see the city harbor and the ocean behind it.

Pullig out his sword, Collin began to search the buildings. He would look for any recent human activity with his eyes and then give a scan with his divine sense for anyone hiding inside. Collin had tried to be as quick and quite as possible when he was checking the guardhouse, storehouse, and both male and female servant quarters. The only thing that made him concerned was if there was someone here, which of the three buildings would they be in?

While none of the buildings he checked showed any sign that people had been in them in the past several months, it's not like you expect someone to sleep in the smaller buildings like the guardhouse, when you have the choice of the large luxurious buildings. If he checked the building on the right and someone was in the center or left building, they could run to the guardhouse and hide till he left and change the gate lock array.

He decided to check the left building first, so headed to the building on the right. He walked to the door and placed an empty pill bottle on the handle of the door, then did the same to the middle building. If there were people in these buildings, then when they opened the door, the bottle would fall and shatter, and he would know.

It didn't take much time to check the building on the left, it was exactly the same as the main house of his villa. The building on the right was the same, both of them looked like no one had entered them. Now only the main building was left to check, after entering the building he felt a sense of ease. The drink cups that he and the others used six months ago were sitting on a table in the entryway. If anyone from the Tyler family had been here since that day, those cups would have been cleaned and put away.

A quick look through the building confirmed that these was no one in this villa, and with the Tyler family being exterminated this villa was ownerless. Until now, the moment he changed the gate lock array he will be the only one to be able to enter this villa. Making it his new villa.