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Chapter 221: The Dramatic Buildup

“That’s me,” I said with a nod. “Annor is a friend of mine, and the man we’re fighting is someone who’s trying to kill me.”

“Who’s the chick?”

“My name’s Erani.” Erani held out a hand to shake. “It’s a pleasure meeting you.”

“So the two of you are, like, what, trying to overthrow the Koinkar kingdom or something? Is that why you’re being hunted?”

“That’s a long story,” I said. “But the short version is that we’re being hunted for no good reason, and are just trying to stay alive. Now, I understand it might come as a shock that you’re being asked to help an outlaw, but—”

“Wait, wait, you can’t leave it at that!”

I blinked. “At what?”

“You can’t just say ‘it’s a long story’ and then move on without telling me the long story. At least give me, like, the highlights! What’re the bad guys\' secret plans? Any cool stuff happened? Have you blown up any buildings? Or, wait, cities? Killed any Dragons? I’ll have you know, I’ve killed a Dragon, so if you haven’t done that then I’ve got one up on you. And, by the way, for a pair of outlaws, the two of you don’t look nearly gruff and scary enough. If you at least had—”

I put my hands out. “Woah, let’s cool it for a second. We have a little bit of time, so if you want, I can answer your questions one by one. But first, we need you to tell us about the man you were tailing, Jon. Where is he now?”

“I’ll tell you, but first you have to at least tell me if you’ve blown anything up.”

“No, I haven’t…Well, okay, maybe I’ve blown a building up. Or, I guess, depending on your definition of what a single building is, then it’s been dozens? But with one explosion. …And, I guess, depending on your definition of ‘blown up’ then I’ve done one more? More like ‘demolished,’ really, though it was a really big building. Though, it wasn’t really me who did it, more like bargained with someone else to—”

“Okay, if all of your answers are gonna be that complicated, then forget I asked about anything.”

“Like I said, I can give you the short version if you like. But first, you did find out where Jon is, right?”

“Yeah, I did. Those two people Annor told me about basically just hung out at the guild lobby for hours on end waiting around for nothing, until eventually they left and I followed them to this old cheap inn where they met the main guy and went in to stay the night. Those two made themselves really hard to follow, by the way. Good thing you had I,” she placed a hand on her chest proudly, “the great, amazing Archer and tracker and doer-of-other-things extraordinaire, Sylvie, to rely on.”

“Right. Well, good work.”

“You’re damn right it was. I don’t know if Annor told you this, but I’m actually basically the leader of my adventurer group. Which, I guess is mainly because the rest of everyone just kinda wandered off so I’m the only one left, but being leader still means being leader. And as leader, I’ll go ahead and be the one to do negotiations with you.”

“Negotiations?”

“Well, yeah. You’re trying to get us to join you in your little band of outlaws or whatever, right? I don’t know why else you’d reveal yourself to us. Unless you just wanted to be super dramatic or something. Anyway, joining up with you guys sounds like something that’s gonna need some negotiations.”

“Nothing like that. I’m ‘revealing myself’ to you because we need help against Jon and the people he has with him, and he won’t leave us alone until either he or I is dead. And if I tried to fight him with my identity hidden in some way, he’d just shout out who I was in the middle of the town and reveal me anyway. I’m just getting ahead of the game, this way.”

“Okay, sure. But when I first agreed to this, I didn’t think I’d be helping a fugitive.” She said the word with a mock gasp, as though from the start she fully expected she’d be breaking the law. Which, knowing her, she probably saw it as an upside. “I think I need some compensation in exchange for the extremely dangerous—not to mention immoral—things I’ll be doing. Things I’ve already done, without my knowledge!”

I thought of the immense fortune she already held. “What would you even want from us in compensation? We’re running on limited funds.”

“I want…” She rubbed her chin, as though in deep thought. Honestly, I had no idea if she was just making a joke or if she actually was trying hard to think of something we could give her. I sure as hells had no idea what she could want from us. Eventually, she nodded and threw her hand out, holding a single finger up. “I want one adventure per week.”

I frowned, and looked at Erani, who was in turn staring straight over at me, confused. “...What?”

“This can count for our adventure this week. But clearly, you’re the type of people to go and do interesting things. I mean, the entire kingdom of Koinkar is after you, and no offense, but if you’re not strong enough to beat some random guy who just wandered into town, then you’re not strong enough to beat a whole kingdom. Which means you’re probably gonna go and get stronger, right? Well, if you’re going out to Level up, find special Enchanted items, all that stuff, then I wanna come along. So, I demand to be brought along on a minimum of one adventure per week.”

“That sounds…logistically difficult. I mean, if we’re ever in different towns or cities, it’ll be hard to notify you, much less actually get you over to where we are. And also, though I feel like this goes without saying, I do not think you actually want to tag along with us. Most of what we do isn’t exactly by choice. It’s a lot of danger without much reward.”

“Oh, I’m sure that most of what you do absolutely sucks ass. That’s why I only want one per week. My choice, of course.”

“Once again, that doesn’t sound like it would be easy to facilitate. Just on a basic level, what if we don’t do anything interesting over the course of a week?”

Sylvie sighed and rolled her eyes. “Fine. In that case, just keep me notified about the adventures you do go on, and I’ll tag along when I want to. Does that work with you?”

“Are you just gonna drop everything like that? Leave everything behind to go tag along on random shit that has nothing to do with you?”

“What part of ‘one per week’ do you not understand? I just want a nice, relaxing day of killing vicious monsters every now and then. It’s not gonna be my whole life, you know? But if the two of you are going to be looking for quick paths to power already, then I don’t see why I wouldn’t want to be kept in the know about anything you end up finding. So, in exchange for me helping you out with this stuff, as well as stuff in the future, I would like to think that telling me about that stuff would be a small price to pay.”

“I mean, sure, I guess. Not like I’d be personally opposed to it. I just don’t think you know what you’re getting yourself into.”

“Well, I reserve the right to terminate this agreement at any time.”

I looked back over at Erani, who had been watching this entire interaction with skeptical eyes.

“Anything I need to know?” I muttered to her. Sylvie would definitely be able to hear whatever we said with her enhanced senses, of course.

“Nothing urgent,” Erani muttered back. “But we can talk about it later, when we’re free of prying ears.”

“So,” Sylvie said, “when are we gonna get this show on the road, eh? Walk into town and start handing these people their own asses back to them?”

“Give us…around twenty minutes,” I said.

“What, do you gotta prepare? Waiting for Annor and Eita to come back?”

“They won’t be participating.”

Sylvie frowned. “Why? Don’t you need all the help you can get? I don’t know if you’re aware, but those two are strong. And, like, kind of insane when they fight. I mean, I guess it kinda makes sense why they’d sit this one out, if the fight’s gonna be in the middle of town, since they’re kind of…explode-y, but still. Where even are they?”

We were approaching a topic that I couldn’t exactly speak on, so I tried to think of a way to change the topic. Honestly, Sylvie wasn’t the main person I was worried about finding out about my identity; she was at least somewhat trustworthy, and quite frankly, it was most likely a matter of time before she figured it out. Erani and I may have been able to change our appearances, but that was pretty much it. Speaking from inside a helmet somewhat changed my voice, and Erani’s voice was masked pretty thoroughly, but our heights and builds, fighting abilities, and pretty much everything else stayed exactly the same. If someone interacted enough with Annor, and then interacted with Arlan, there wasn’t much of a possibility of keeping things secret for long.

That said, I still definitely didn’t want to just outright tell her. Completely ignoring the fact that it was an unnecessary risk to give someone information they didn’t need, it was also extremely dangerous because of Truth Stones. Regardless of whether or not Sylvie had deduced that Annor and Arlan were probably the same person, if she was interrogated under Truth Stone, she would still be capable of saying “I don’t know” and technically falling under the truth. But if I told her, or gave her actual evidence that it was the case, I’d be putting her in a really tough spot if it came to that.

Effectively, the way things were, I just didn’t want to tell her much about anything. Not that she was the type to let me keep her in the dark, so I had to resort to some slight conversational gymnastics.

“Now, the thing is, while Erani and I would love to live our quiet lives out in the countryside—kill this Jon guy and get on with imagining we have no further problems brewing out of our sight—we don’t have the option to do that. We’ve ended up getting quite a bit on our plate. Everyone who works too closely with us eventually does. So, Annor and Eita are in the hole with us, and even if we can keep it from getting deeper, we still do have to eventually dig ourselves out. What that means is that, while we’ve got to solve smaller, more immediate problems as they show up around here, we also have to go out and do our own thing from time to time, handling problems before they become problems. Annor and Eita are doing that. Very important, very secret stuff, you see.”

Looking skeptical, Sylvie opened her mouth to speak, but Erani cut in before she could. “These things can get kind of high-up, I hope you understand. Speaking with the right people, cutting deals under the table, that sort of thing. Annor and Eita are currently doing some of that. Naturally, it leads to us not being able to talk much about it explicitly. But later on, I’m sure we’ll be able to.”

At that, Sylvie began to relax some. I wasn’t entirely sure what it was about Erani’s words that did it, but it worked regardless, and Sylvie seemed to decide to stop pursuing that line of questioning. She paused for a moment, thinking, before just shrugging. “Okay, sure. So what’s the plan for now, then?”

“Like I said before, we’ve got a few minutes before we move. So let’s just rest for some time. I’d say we give it around eighteen and a half minutes.”

“That’s a suspiciously specific time.”

“It sure is.”

At precisely midnight, I smiled and took a deep breath, then stood. We’d successfully stalled for enough time to get on to my next day’s worth of Time Loop uses. I had three more, now that it was a new day. Though, getting any more than that would likely be an impossibility. I had the three I could use during today, but the only way to get any past these would be to wait another full twenty-four hours for the day after. With Jon so actively on our tail, I doubted that would happen.

But, even if these were our last uses of Time Loop to get the fight right, I was confident in our chances. Jon had fucked up; locked himself in a room, in a town, in a timeline that I knew and controlled.

“Were you really counting out exactly eighteen minutes and thirty seconds?” Sylvie asked as I stretched, gazing at the distant town walls.

“Yep.”

“Uh huh.” She stood, too. “So are all Koinkarians a little bit insane, or is that just the four of you? Also, did you go insane because you’re getting chased? Or are you being chased because you went insane?”

“I would like to think I’m sane,” Erani said as we started walking down the road.

“Nah, you’re differently insane from Arlan over here, but you’ve got this quiet intensity in your eyes that definitely makes me think you’re about to, like, commit a terrorist attack or something. Kinda reminds me of Eita. Are you two friends? Or, like, sisters? Also, Arlan, I’ve been meaning to ask, is your armor attached to you too, like the way Annor’s is? If it is, then you’ve got to answer some sex questions that Annor rudely refused to answer when I asked him.”

I just stared at Sylvie.

“...You think I’m a terrorist?” Erani asked.

“Yeah, I dunno. You’ve just got the feel to you.”

“Do you know a lot of terrorists?” I asked.

“Well, apparently I know at least four.”

“I don’t think we qualify as terrorists. It’s not like we’re bombing cities or whatever.”

“Didn’t you say you’ve blown up some number of buildings?”

“Well, yeah, but that was necessary.”

“I’m sure plenty of terrorists believe that.”

“Listen, are you on our side or not?”

“Yeah, I’m just messing with you,” Sylvie said, glancing at me with an impish grin on her face.

“So,” Erani said, “moving past terrorist accusations. We’ll be going into town using a different entrance from you. You go through the eastern one, and we’ll use the west.”

“Why’s that?”

“Our method of entrance is classified,” Erani replied.

Sylvie scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Okay, sure. Classified. What, some secret shadow government?”

I shrugged. “If you’d like to pretend, we can say we’re a secret shadow government. We’re just governing a body of an extremely small number of citizens.”

“Man, you people always like to throw around big words like ‘classified’ like you can just pretend they mean what you want them to mean. ‘Classified’ doesn’t just mean ‘secret,’ it means it’s being held secret by a governing body. Just because you don’t want to tell me doesn’t make your super duper special method of entrance ‘classified.’”

“Never took you as a stickler for word choice.”

“Ugh. I deal with Entismo too much to not notice when people use words wrong.”

“Also, what do you mean by ‘you people?’”

Sylvie waved a hand dismissively. “You know, peasants.”

I stared at her with thin lips, but she didn’t seem to realize she’d even said anything wrong. Sometimes I forgot she did have a noble upbringing.

“Oh, the road’s splitting up ahead,” Sylvie said. “I guess that means you two are going to do your extra secret entrance into town? You know, you don’t have to hide it from me. I’m sure you’re just, like, climbing over the walls or something stupid.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I replied. “We’ll meet with you in town.”

She gave a sarcastic salute. “Aye aye, captain.”

Getting into town was as easy as donning our Annor and Eita disguises and just asking to be let back in. Utterly uncomplicated, unlike Ainash’s entrance. She’d gone ahead of us, and through mental communication, it seemed like she had, after some difficulty, managed to vault over the walls and snuck along on the rooftops to our destination. Erani and I were left to walk through the streets like normal people.

Once we were getting close, we ducked into a side alley and changed back out of our alternate personas, going back to Light Plate for me and normal appearance for Erani. Technically, we’d be strolling through the streets openly as fugitives, but it would take some time before people recognized us, so we were free to walk around for a little bit first. And all we really needed were another five minutes before we got to the inn Sylvie had said she’d saw Jon at.

So, we got back onto the main road and began heading there. I even spotted some of the adventurers we’d hired on their own way to our destination, all getting ready for the scheduled job we’d set for half past midnight. About a dozen of them, as planned. I hoped what I’d brought was overkill; enough to end the fight in a matter of seconds, before things could get too out of hand. At least it was late enough that nobody was around here to get hurt in the collateral damage.

In the distance, I saw the decrepit building set up on the side of the road. It was a shabby old thing, barely left standing after what had clearly been years of neglect. Jon would be inside, presumably with his gang of soldiers, all hopefully sleeping soundly and unaware that they were currently surrounded by a small army of Classers.

“Alright,” I muttered to Erani, staring at the shack. “Let’s blow up a building.”