Chapter 216

Harrowing Bells (III)

The group recuperated inside the small shack for nearly three days, mostly exchanging information and brainstorming on potential ways they could play the game as well. Ever so often, Daniel would get back into the heart of the city and stealthily gather up any new information that he could, keeping the track of the events as they unfolded.

Luckily, their shack was inconspicuous enough that they hadn’t drawn any attention to themselves since, just like most of the people living here, they stayed inside, insinuating they were just as afraid as everyone else to peek out.

Not a lot of new developments occurred over the course of the three days; like Kramer suspected, every power settled for a bit and consolidated their regions, absorbing both the wealth and the manpower that came with conquering the minor ones during the initial outburst.

The most important discovery Daniel made had nothing to do with the current powers of the Kingdom, actually, but with the situation of Anna’s younger sister, Sera. Apparently, there were rumors circulating that one of the most distinguished merchants of the Kingdom had managed to take her in and is planning on using her to make a legitimate claim for the throne, and perhaps even pool together others with him for the same goal.

“Sera doesn’t care for the throne,” Anna immediately said when Daniel related the info. “If he’s making those claims, it’s likely against her wishes. How did he find her, though? I taught her how to hide and made sure to tell her hundreds of times not to draw attention to herself...”

“Should we try and rescue her?” Senna proposed; from what they gathered, Sera was around her age, and the former couldn’t help but sympathize with the latter’s situation. Cain glanced at her and smiled stealthily, with only Senna noticing it, causing her to blush.

“Of course!” he exclaimed quickly, heaving his fist up into the air. “We are warriors of justice, after all! We conquer mountains, travel seas, and liberate the maidens! It is our mission to collect--I mean free everyone unjustly held!”

“...” while Anna, Izirdul, Sebas, and even Mina looked at Cain with a certain sense of awe, feeling his really, really short speech was magnificent, others merely sighed and ignored him, already used to his antics.

“You are a brave warrior, Sir Cain.” Anna stood up suddenly and bowed. “Thank you.”

“I’m not a warrior though -- I’m a mage.”

“Pardon me?”

“He’s just making silly jokes,” Emma glanced at Cain sternly as she drove the conversation in another direction. “The question now becomes, then, how to save her. What did you learn about the merchant, Danny?”

“Do you have a nickname for everyone?” Daniel asked her, his gaze slightly embarrassed.

“Of course!” Emma replied in almost the exact same tone as Cain before, her cheeks quickly flushing red as she realized it, glaring at him again. “You’re rubbing too much on me.”

“... you didn’t complain--”

“There are kids and guests here, dammit!!” Daniel interrupted the two as he saw where the conversation was going. “Anyway,” he quickly shuffled the conversation again. “I didn’t learn much; apparently, he’s earned his wealth by importing goods from the surface, mostly cotton and wool goods. He has a few contacts in the City of Mirrors, or at least he brags that he does, which means that he occasionally has a ‘rare’ and ‘exquisite’ items for sale in his shop. He lives in the ‘pompous’ District and has a roughly three-feet-thick wall surrounding his entire estate, the prick.”

“Aah, I sense a lot of resentment inside that voice,” Cain teased. “Do we have an anti-establishment kid on our hands?!”

“Can’t we just ram down the gates and get the kid out?” Kramer proposed the most straightforward way, realizing that the conversation’s current was extremely unstable.

On the side, Izirdul found it especially funny how everyone kept both derailing and returning the conversation on point. It was a tightly-knit group, he realized, and one in which everyone was equally respected.

“Leave it to a soldier to just go ‘ey, let’s blow shit up’,” Daniel scoffed.

“Let’s just get Cain one’o’one with the merchant,” Jamal said. “I’m positive he’d somehow, someway find a way to talk the guy into just giving us the Princess. No harm no foul.”

“While I’m sure there’s at least one more person in the room who’d attest that my tongue is magic,” Cain said with a playful smile, causing Emma to sigh audibly and quite a few cheeks to flush red. “It’s not that magical. Why not just use the situation?”

“Use the situation?”

“Hm-- make it seem like some other group did it,” Cain said. “And reap the profits while they claw at each other endlessly.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad...”

“Yup, for once he says something smart...”

“Ah, who knew he also had a brain in that head...”

Cain helplessly glanced at Emma, causing the latter to merely smile at him; however, her smile was beyond sweet and soothing, disarming him entirely and alighting the slightly dim room around them.

Sighing, he leaned back while others continued to chat, plotting along how exactly they were going to rescue Sera. Cain had little to add as he fully believed the others had it under control. After all, save for the knowledge of the future that he possessed and some twenty years of experience, he had little in the ways of advantages over others -- especially so when it came to intellect.

He was never a particularly clever man; most of what he ever obtained didn’t come through wit but through effort. This was doubly so the case in the Tower; he never so much outsmarted either other people or the Tower’s monsters as it was mostly the case of him simply putting in far more effort. When it came to scheming, brilliant ideas didn’t suddenly appear in his head; he’d think and think until his head was splitting open, imagining hundreds of scenarios before finally deciding upon one.

As such, ever since returning, he never tried taking charge, so to say, in these matters and would usually, if possible, have others do it; after all, even with his twenty something years of experience in the Tower, Kramer, for instance, was far more suited when it came to planning how to infiltrate a compound and such than he was.

Similarly, he realized that he’d surrounded himself with a bunch of obnoxiously smart people, with the only reason him ever beating them in the ‘battle of wits’ being that he was quite a few degrees more shameless than them.

The group continued chattering and planning, taking breaks often, with Daniel, Kramer, and Sigmund occasionally leaving to scout out the compound.

Two days later, the group settled on a plan: five people would pose as ‘merchants from the surface’ while Daniel and Cain snuck in among the goods. While the five discussed ‘the deal’ with the merchant, Daniel and Cain would go into opposite parts of the compound in search of the Princess. As for the escape, Kramer identified several weak spots that could be breached; at the same time, someone would be covering all those breaches form the other side, waiting.

The entire plan needed to be executed smoothly and swiftly, leaving little room for errors.

“... why me, though?” Cain quizzed with a strange look in his eyes. “Wouldn’t you be better?” he asked Kramer.

“The group discussed,” Kramer said with a faint smile. “And we decided we trust you far more.”

“Ah. Yes. The group discussed.”

“Hm, hm.” Kramer nodded.

“What a marvelous discussion that must have been,” Cain said. “Since, I’m assuming, it happened telepathically as I was HERE the entire way through.”

“Sure did,” Kramer nodded without a hint of hesitation. “We merely glanced at each other and then you before nodding.”

“... wait.” Cain seemed to genuinely recall such a moment happening yesterday. “That... weird shit you did? That was actual planning?”

“Yup.”

“Tsk, this group is doomed.”

As for how they’d make it seem some other group did it, it had everything to do with the five posing as merchants; there was no doubt in Kramer’s mind they would be immediately suspected when the merchant realizes the Princess is gone, and, as such, he settled on ‘accidentally’ dropping a few identification medallions that would, mysteriously, point the merchant toward his greatest rival in business.

The plan wasn’t exactly foolproof, but considering how tight they were on time, it was more than enough. The main point of the mission, in Cain’s eyes at least, wasn’t rescuing the Princess as much as it was refining the group’s teamwork as well as acting proactively. In addition, since was going inside, he was silently praying that the Princess wasn’t on his side of the ‘castle’ since he wanted to take a quick peek at the merchant’s goods to see whether there was anything worthwhile in there. Aah, I’m too corrupt; what would my poor chil--I mean friends think if they could hear my thoughts? Aah...