It was a little bit before sunrise.
Zig got up from bed as the rest of the town was still asleep. He rubbed his face, chasing away the fog of slumber.
“Haven’t seen that one in a while.”
He wasn’t usually a dreamer. It had been ten years since his last dream.
Getting stronger was his sole intention when the mercenary group adopted him. He didn’t have the time or interest to think about other things, much to the exasperation of the others around him, but it compelled them to help him too.
“Heh.” The old memories made a rare self-deprecating smile appear on Zig’s face.
A time when he was much more immature. A time when he was a little bit more serious than he was today.
He would never see those days again.
Crossing that dreaded ocean to return to his homeland would be difficult. More to the point, his situation now was far different.
“I guess it’s unavoidable with the path I’ve chosen.”
He didn’t regret it, but he had no choice but to put those thoughts aside.
“…I should get going.”
Remembering the old days had put a slight burden on his shoulders.
Zig ran through the quiet morning of the city.
Although he already sprinted a lot the day before, he had no intention of slacking off. He needed to get some training in unless he was injured. He would feel restless otherwise.
“All right, looks like I’m good to go.”
All a mercenary needed was a lot of food and a lot of rest to be prepared for work the next day. His legs were still sore, but he didn’t work them to the extent that his movement was affected.
“That thing yesterday really did a number on me.”
He always ended up going a little easy on himself when he trained alone. Running full sprint with two people on your back wasn’t something you would do regularly if you were sane.
However, given the predicament they had been in, it was well worth the effort.
“Maybe I should put on some weights…”
Zig’s equipment could not be considered light.
There was his twinblade, obviously, but his gauntlets and other pieces of armor, along with his consumables, made for a lot of weight. He thought about increasing his pace, but focusing on endurance rather than speed better suited his strengths.
“I guess I can increase my speed while wearing weights.”
In the end, Zig decided on a slapdash solution to his woes. He hadn’t changed much, if at all.
“Ryell would laugh…”
Zig thought about those times again, probably because of the dream he had. He smiled bitterly, remembering Ryell’s smug and exasperated grin.
Zig finally stopped, but that didn’t mean he was finished with his run.
“I swear I was just here yesterday.”
He looked at the building in front of him. The place where he had fought the remitter Yaesar Burlon to the death—the Claritist church.
He smiled wryly.
The church had a tranquil atmosphere in the quiet morning sun. The doors Siasha had wrecked, and Zig subsequently had kicked in, weren’t fixed. Rather, they had been replaced with new ones. The speed was impressive considering not much time had passed.
He wasn’t looking to fight today, so he went to the back door. Doing his best to avoid being seen, he knocked.
Although it wouldn’t be strange that no one would answer since it was early in the morning, the door opened.
“How may I help you?” a middle-aged man gently asked.
Beneath his seemingly mild and innocent demeanor was an air of unmistakable violence.
His peaceful expression faded when he saw Zig, replaced with a cold smirk.
“Oh my… Please, come right in.”
Zig promptly accepted the invitation.
The remitter of the Claritist Church was gone, and with him, the fanatics. The faithful in attendance were now only made up of ordinary members—perfectly normal adherents who prayed if they had the time and consulted their priest every now and then. Though not extreme enough to hunt down heathens and demi-humans, their suspicion and hatred of them remained. They would devolve into chaos if they walked into their church one day to find it empty.
That was why the Bazarta decided to send one of their men here. He was knowledgeable about the Claritist sect and looked decent enough to pass off as a priest.
The mafia was pretty much running the church at this point. The faithful would probably consider it a bad joke, but no one had any intention of telling them.
“Looks like things are going well,” Zig said to the man who was preparing tea with expert finesse.
“This is much easier than deceiving fools into taking out unbelievable loans,” the mobster in priest’s clothing said without a hint of mockery. “Why, these fools come to us to be deceived.”
“Thought you were supposed to be guiding them?”
“Only if you think guidance is taking their eyes away from reality,” the man sneered sarcastically.
Zig didn’t care much about semantics. Deception, guidance, it didn’t make much of a difference if the people were satisfied.
“There’s something I want you to look into.”
The man placed Zig’s tea in front of him and scoffed when he brought up the purpose of his visit.
“Vanno said to make arrangements for you. It will cost you, however. What do you want me to do?”
“I want a list of all the adventurers with connections to the mafia or the underworld.”
The man paused, tapping his fingers on his desk as he gave it some thought.
“There’s a lot of those. Can you be more specific?”
“Someone who can use wind magic and has clearance into the forest with blade bees.”
Zig should’ve been able to narrow down the prime suspect once he cross-checked it with Kirk’s list. There were no guarantees, of course, but it was more efficient than going through the list one name at a time.
The man nodded knowingly, understanding Zig’s position. “Blade bees… Ah, so the guild asked you to investigate yesterday’s incident.” He took his tea and slurped it, the cup covering his mouth. “So, you’re a dog for the guild now. Busy times, Mr. Mercenary.”
“I can be your dog too, at the right price.”
The man shrugged at Zig’s comeback.
“I’ll pass. I don’t make a habit of dealing with rabid dogs.”
“I’m always loyal to my clients.”
Zig left several coins on the desk and left. He never once touched his tea.
Zig exited the church and ran through the back streets away from the downtown area instead of returning to the inn. This was the red-light district. It wasn’t teeming with shady characters but wasn’t the most straitlaced part of town either. The sun was already rising on the district, and prostitutes could be seen smoking, tired from a hard night’s work.
He called out to one of them—an escort with chestnut hair and bright but baggy eyes.
“Busy night?”
“Oh, hello, Zig.” The prostitute smiled, fluttering her eyes lazily at him. “So early and so full of energy. How about we find a nice cozy corner and I suck some of that energy out of you?”
Her words were dirty, but they were exactly the kind that turned a man on. Her eyes looked lustfully at Zig. Zig wasn’t immune to the gaze of a woman of the night whose profession it was to suck men dry, but he had work to do.
“Maybe next time. There’s something I want you to look into.”
“I can’t believe you. Who in his right mind would come here to buy information instead of a woman? I can give you info on the side if you spend a night with me.”
She pouted, her pride as a woman taking a hit.
“Please. If a punk like me slept with you, you’d take everything I own.”
“Hmph. It won’t be cheap.”
Although she sulked, she agreed to help Zig regardless. He had good standing with her. Prostitutes were always looked down on as cautionary tales, but Zig’s impartiality made him well-liked in the community.
As far as Zig was concerned, it was a more honest job than killing people.
In addition to that, he also helped carry crates of empty wine bottles for them from time to time, increasing his reputation. Ryell and the other senior mercenaries had once taught him that “being rude to prostitutes is a sign of a third-rate mercenary.” He was glad to have received this wonderful lesson.
“Thanks.”
Zig started running again, leaving the prostitute behind.
“You better buy something next time.”
He returned to the inn, sometimes greeting the prostitutes he came across.
“I guess this is what I have for now.”
Cossack used to say that “information is eaten up by those in a hurry,” but this was the best Zig, who was not a professional info broker, could do. He had time, and he was going to do this the right way.
As he ran, he remembered what Balto said the day before: “I can only guess, since we didn’t see it happen with our own eyes…but I think it was done on purpose.”
His reasoning was that there were no “sounds of a conflict” from where the spell was fired. If that were the case, it would be a stretch to call it a stray spell that someone happened to cast during a battle with the monstrosities.
Zig didn’t know how much better demi-human hearing was. However, Isana and her long-eared people had enhanced hearing, so he had little reason to assume that a wolf’s ears were worse than a human’s.
“This is beginning to stink.”
Zig sensed trouble brewing in the distance as he finished training and knocked on the door to wake up Siasha.