Jessica shoved her way between me and Alisa. Even if Jessica hadn’t been able to hear what we were saying because of Sound Isolation, it wasn’t a physical barrier, and she could still see us.
“Don’t get so worked up,” Alisa replied calmly. “I was just telling him a secret. Although it is true that I have my sights set on him.”
“Arius, is that true?” Jessica spun around to look at me.
“Alisa wants to team up with me. Don’t say things that could easily be misunderstood.”
“Exactly. I want to be your partner. Both publicly…and privately.”
At this point, Alisa was just messing around with Jessica.
“Alisa, cut it out,” I warned.
“I may have teased a little too much. Forgive me.” She stuck her tongue out and let down Sound Isolation. “I’ll be heading out then. You lot, we’re leaving.”
Having finished, Alisa paid their tab and then left with her companions in tow. She also paid for everyone there, as well as gave money to the Guild for repairs and as an apology. In all, she’d left quite a lot of cash.
“What is it they wanted anyway?” Jessica asked me after they left. I was sitting across from Jessica and Marcia, eating dinner.
“Same as Chris. They came to ask me to join the hero’s party. I said no, of course.”
“That wasn’t everything, was it? What did you talk to that woman about? I was watching from the corner of my eye, and you two seemed to be getting along pretty well,” Marcia prodded.
“And she did say she wants to be your partner both publicly and privately…” Jessica muttered, looking down with a pout.
“Huh, but the only partner for Arius is you, Jessica,” Marcia ribbed, her eyes fixed on me. “She might look like a cute little animal, but she has a black heart. You’d better be careful with her, Arius.”
“I’m aware of that much. And she might have said it weirdly, but she just wants to team up with me. I don’t know what’s going on in her head, and I have no intention of teaming up with someone like that.”
I felt I had a responsibility to explain the situation to everyone because of what happened with Chris, but the current conversation was missing the main point.
“By the way, you don’t come to the Guild here in Carnell these days unless it has something to do with the hero’s party. You must be busy,” Jessica commented.
“Yeah, I’m focusing on dungeons right now and haven’t had much time.”
“Dungeons? You’re solo right now, yeah? If you’re not coming here, that means you’re not taking on Guney’s Great Labyrinth. You’re going solo into an even more difficult dungeon?” asked Marcia. She definitely hadn’t assumed I was going into extreme-difficulty dungeons on my own.
“Yeah, basically.”
“I know you’re strong, but make sure you don’t take on more than you can handle,” warned Jessica with a concerned look. And I’d only just caused her to worry with the whole Chris incident.
“I know. I don’t plan to.”
“Well, that’s good. You just have a different perception of things from most people.” She looked upset.
“Hey, Arius, I’m not saying the incident is your fault, but Jessica did do a lot when it happened. You need to give a little something, don’t you think?”
“Marcia! What are you on about now?!”
“I was just thinking that once he’s done with his current dungeon dive, the two of you could go out somewhere.”
I don’t think going out somewhere with me is a very good reward for anything, but I guess I could go shopping with her and buy her a present.
“I don’t mind, if that’s what you want, Jessica,” I directed at her.
“What? Seriously? You’re okay with that?”
“Yeah. But I think it’ll still take a few weeks at least for me to finish off this dungeon. Do you mind waiting until then?”
“Not at all! Thank you, Arius!”
Jessica’s mood improved, and she looked really happy. Marcia grinned slyly, but all I was going to do was go shopping with Jessica.
✦ ✦ ✦
I shared my intel on Alisa and the other members of the hero’s party with Eric via Message. Then, in the middle of the night, I went to the Ishtobal court.
It wasn’t that I trusted the information drawn on those floor plans that Alisa had given me. If the hero’s party was going to come at me again, I wanted to make a move first.
I cast Perception Block and Invisibility, then I Teleported to a place I’d been before, as close to Ishtobal as I could get, then used Fly the rest of the way. Once I was above the Ishtobal castle, I used Scan, which was effective up to about a three-mile radius around me. I was able to see everyone’s mana pings in the castle.
I’d memorized everything in those drawings of the castle. The soldiers’ numbers and locations roughly matched the intel. Still hidden, I cast Short Teleport to an empty area and slipped into the castle and rapidly accelerated inside.
The floor plans also showed the magic items used for security and traps. I confirmed their locations using Detect Magic for the magic ones and Detect Trap for the physical ones. And in the places I passed through, the magic items and traps were set up in the same locations as noted on the floor plans. If I had time, I would’ve checked the location of every trap and magic item, but I had other priorities right now—the person with the largest ping of mana in my Scan.
They were on the top floor of the castle behind a set of double doors guarded by two soldiers with spears. My Scan had told me there were other guards on standby in nearby rooms. After making sure no one had noticed me, I used Short Teleport to jump into the room.
In the center of the opulent bedroom was a canopied bed. In the bed sleeping was a green-haired man in his mid-twenties. Guess that was Abel Lionhart, the awakened hero.
He had no idea I was there. Detect Magic told me there were traps laid into the floor around the bed, just like the floor plan indicated. Not that it mattered; I’d cast Fly.
If I were an assassin, Abel would be dead. It was a bit of a letdown at how easy it was to infiltrate the castle, but then I noticed a barrier of mana around Abel. I didn’t know if it was a skill or a spell, but it looked like they weren’t that lax on security after all.
Well, it wasn’t like my goal was to take Abel out anyway, even if I had considered it as retaliation since Alisa and her group had used force, but all Abel had done so far was invite me to join the hero’s party.
I activated Evaluate, but wasn’t able to see Abel’s level. Was he at a higher level than me? His mana ping in Scan wasn’t really that strong, though. There was a possibility he was concealing his mana. I focused my attention on that.
The other possibility was that he had special skills like Heart of the Hero, but I had no way of finding that out since Evaluate wasn’t working.
“Hey, who’s there?” Abel sat up with a sudden shout. Was my Perception Block not effective against him?
I didn’t have time to find out. I instantly activated Short Teleport to escape from the castle, where I was able to cast Teleport back to the dorm in the Academy.
So, they found out I’d infiltrated the castle, but I’d cast Invisibility. Even if he could see through my invisibility, I doubted Abel realized who I was. I’d suspected there was a possibility Abel was a higher level than me, so I’d taken another precaution.
But the fact of the matter was that I couldn’t use Evaluate on Abel. I needed to come up with some countermeasures before I encountered him again.