Chapter Forty-Six

Duck Blind

The duck was either on to him or was not impressed by his lures. Dev considered doing random duck calls around Goulcrest to arouse the beast’s curiosity but decided against it for fear of causing a panic in the local populace. If they even had a hint that there was a duck in town people would flee in droves. Which was odd, considering that the people stayed with an impending raid that spelled almost certain death for the majority of the town’s populace.

Maybe it was the difference in how they would be killed. It was one thing to be killed by the sword, but there was a reason the saying, “Put it on my bill,” was considered an ultimate threat. Duckbills beat broad swords any day. It was a shame that artisans and blacksmiths had never been able to replicate the deadliness of a duckbill. Dev was going to try his best to make a weapon that equaled the killing power of that fowl instrument of death. Nature was not only vicious and cruel, but it was unparalleled in the more murderous pursuits.

The upside of his failure to find the duck meant that he was able to maintain his focus on his other projects that included completing the Weapon of Choice and eating the rest of the town buildings. He was covering the latter up by having a minion walk around and throw a handful of grey powder onto each building that had joined Tooth’s compact. As soon as the shadowy dust hit the building Dev gulped it down and left the haze of particles floating in the air to obscure the fact that the building was gone. Once he had imprinted every item, article, and object inside and out, including the houseplants, right down to the crumbs on the floor he rebuilt the structure exactly as it was before. The entire process took him three minutes per edifice, and he could juggle three buildings at a time; one being hidden, one absorbed, and one restored to existence simultaneously. He wouldn’t have an issue completing his job if he maintained that pace, and Dev saw no reason why he couldn’t keep it going with nothing to distract him.

He had no idea where Tooth and Nix had gone, but her shop was empty when he got there. He had told everyone to stay out of their buildings, he was simply surprised that everyone had listened. Every home and shop he’d taken had been completely empty. No one had knowingly left so much as a mouse inside. That wasn’t to say that there hadn’t been rodents. Some homes had roaches, some had mice, and some had squirrels. The market shops had a host of rodents including some rather large rats.

The vermin weren’t an issue. The only reason that Dev had wanted everyone out was so no one got hurt when he snacked on an upper floor. People falling from the second or third floor could potentially get hurt when they hit the ground and Dev didn’t want to have Tooth explain where their building had gone or have to heal up a lot of civilians. It was best to avoid those issues altogether.

The collectors were providing him enough juice to pull this off. Without them, he would have never been able to do all of this in one night. Otherwise, it would have taken him at least a week to accomplish everything on his to-do list. He mentally gave himself a congratulatory pat on the back for his innovation. Granted, he wasn’t storing any energy, but he was mainlining the mana directly from the harvesters which was better than having to take it from mana gems after they filled up. It was a smooth process; which was a first for him. Up until this point, nothing had been what one might consider to be easy for various reasons.

The harvesters had been accepted as an invention from the Empire. His weapon store was nearly finished. Most of the town was now protected from being razed to the ground by the raiders because Tooth had garnered enough trust and goodwill from the people of Goulcrest. Given more time he was sure that the two of them would be able to operate in the open with no one suspecting a thing, not that he ever intended for them to do anything in the range of the prying eyes of the public. That would be like asking for trouble and for the first time Dev had the feeling that things were finally going their way. It was all sunshine and lollipops so far.

Things were going so well, that Dev decided to recall his lures. At this point, he would only be asking for trouble, and if he found the fowl it might disrupt his schedule. He saw no point in tempting fate. Dev made sure that his Ripper and Victim lures were alone and out of sight before he reabsorbed them. The mayor might have seen some things that he shouldn’t have, but they were gaslighting him with Chozen enough that it wouldn’t be long before he really would be crazy.

The one thing that had escaped Dev’s attention was the feathered form that sat in the corner of his core room. The creature was immobile but stared daggers at Dev’s core through slitted yellow eyes. It barely breathed and did not make a sound, and if an outside observer saw it, they might have compared its body language to that of a cat that was about to pounce on an unsuspecting mouse.

White froth formed at the corners of the bird’s bill, and it waggled its tailfeathers in anticipation of the attack. There was no mercy nor any quarter in its eyes. It meant business, and its line of work was mutilation, murder, and mayhem. Dev was its only client, and although he didn’t know it the core had a meeting scheduled to take place in the next couple of seconds.