Jack leaned back into a stretch with a grunt. The others regarded him as he seemed to come to a decision. “Alright, we’ll meet back here at dusk,” he began, motioning around at the cramped room. “Take a communication totem and remember to use it before it’s too late and you die from something.” He pulled a few rods out of his inventory and tossed them around the group. The totems were all the shape of a relay baton and made from dark wood extensively etched with runes.

Phantom chittered softly from his spot on top of Allen’s head as he caught his totem.

“Y’all should split into groups of two or three,” Jack added.

“I’ll go with Nora and Phantom,” Allen said without hesitation. Neither Nora nor the spider protested. As her mentor, he had a few things talk about with her.

Jack grunted in response and turned his head toward the other four. They shifted a little before Camila shrugged and motioned at Ty with a nod. “I’ll go with him, which leaves…”

“Yeah, I’ll go with you two,” he said to Christopher and Amelia. “You’ll be safe if anything happens, which it probably will if experience tells.” He scratched his stubble for a moment as he looked back over at Ty and Camila. “That leaves the two of you. Out of the summons I have right now, Silver Fang, Stormchaser, and Trevor probably fit the best, take your choice.”

Ty hummed absentmindedly, “I think Silver F—”

“Trevor, haha, we want Trevor!” Camila interrupted, grinning ear to ear like a child.

Ty cursed under his breath while Nora giggled quietly, even Amelia cracked a small smile. On the other hand, Allen was confused and, frankly, a little bit alarmed.

“Okay then.” Jack’s shadow darkened and stretched out from his feet across the hotel floor. It reached about a meter away from him before it started to squirm unnervingly. In less than a second, a form began to rise out from the pitch-black mass of moving darkness. It reached up to around Allen’s mid-thigh in height before the shadows swiftly retreated to their normal shape, revealing a… golden retriever.

Name: Trevor

Dog – Animal – Level 10

Amelia was already petting Trevor before the dog had even made his introductory bark.

“Oh shit, it’s a dog.” Camila laughed, stating the obvious. Ty cursed under his breath again.

“Um, don’t you think Trevor is kinda overkill, I mean…” Allen stopped when he got strange looks from the others as they crowded around the golden retriever. He waved his hands placatingly and backed off. “Okay, fine. It’s your funeral.”

“They’ll be fine,” Jack replied, grinning.

Allen snorted, but didn’t bother disputing him. He didn’t miss the strange and unsettled looks from Ty and Christopher either. It was like they were expecting something to immediately go wrong.

Allen couldn’t blame them, not when Trevor was involved.

The group changed into casual clothes before splitting apart and picking separate directions to begin their search. There were only a few hundred villagers, so the nine of them should be more than enough to get through the whole town by the end of the day.

A few minutes later, Allen found himself walking through the streets with Nora at a leisurely pace. She was clearly a little bit uncomfortable, but Allen knew she just needed some time. He wasn’t going to be the kind of mentor who tried for force everything. As Doc had said to him: “You can read someone’s mind with Dusk magic, but you can’t get inside their head.”

“And I don’t even have mind magic until a job worth the points shows up.”

Phantom was invisible and difficult to sense, even for people over level one thousand. He was somewhere though; he could still have been sitting on Allen’s head and he wouldn’t have known. The spider was looking for suspicious people around town, and he would report anything he found.

The town wasn’t too busy, and most of the locals were at work, but there were still quite a few merchants and small-time traders setting up in the central plaza. Allen had bought mystery meat skewers and drinks from a local vendor for all three of them, including Phantom of course. The spider had quickly devoured his snack in an instant before vanishing again.

For the moment, the two of them just sat together on a wall near the edge of the plaza, but it wasn’t until after her food was finished that Nora broke the silence.

“I apologize for my recklessness and negligence,” she started suddenly. She was holding on tightly to her bottle of beer and looking straight ahead. “I ruined the formation and nearly got myself killed, forcing you to step in… Sorry, uhm, it won’t happen again, master.”

Allen audibly slurped the remains of his milkshake through the straw. He settled on his apprentice with a raised eyebrow and a blank look. “What?”

Nora turned to him with an expression somewhere between confusion and despair.

Then Allen’s memory kicked into gear. “Oh, the thing in the dungeon.” He slurped his milkshake again before continuing. “Yeah, that was pretty lame, but it doesn’t matter since that was just training. It wasn’t even a mock battle or a test or something, so just learn from it and move on. I’m not disappointed or anything, shit happens when you’re fighting groups of monsters that are more than twice your level.”

Nora swallowed dryly. “…but—”

“Also, don’t call me master, it’s awkward. Just Allen or Jerr, Specter when the mask is on, and White Wraith when we’re trying to tout my reputation in the East.”

“Um, okay.” Nora’s dark brown eyes were locked onto Allen’s as if she were in a state of minor shock.

“Lastly, it probably will happen again. You’ll mess up and a teammate, a friend, or an innocent person will die. It’s not a matter of if, because nobody’s perfect.” Allen finished his drink and looked at Nora. “I’m already getting flashbacks of Doc mentoring me. I only hope I can come close to the kind of teacher he was… except I’m definitely not prepared to teach her anything.”

Nora looked down and the two of them were quiet for a few seconds. “You don’t need to coddle me,” she said after a deep breath.

“Yeah, that’s how I thought it was too,” Allen thought to himself. “I figured Doc was being easy on me for that year, but he just had no need to be a hard-ass; life as a Spade assassin trainee did that for him. Doc taught me through experience. Looking back, he was far more brutal of a teacher than the Shadow Guard drill instructors.” He thought about what he should say to Nora for a moment before remembering one of the first things Doc had told him many years ago.

“Your first challenge will be to forgive yourself for being weak, inadequate, and prone to frequent failure,” Allen began with little emotion in his voice, yet a smile tugged at his lips. “It’s not that I’m coddling you, I just don’t have any expectations for you.”

Nora tried to hide her expression of dismay, but Allen easily saw through her.

“Ugh, fuck. I’m not wise or old enough for this wise old master shit.” Allen put on a smile and tried to recover. “Okay, that came out wrong. I meant to say that you haven’t done anything to warrant my expectations yet, and killing a few high leveled monsters isn’t enough, so don’t worry about it.”

Nora just returned his expectant look.

“As you’ll quickly realize, being a Spade is enough suffering as it is. You don’t need me to beat you even more on top of that.” Allen said. “Although I don’t have the insane power that Doc could just casually throw around. At least not yet… I should ask her what her background is a some point, that’s important I think.” Nora had dropped her gaze back to her feet, so Allen considered their conversation over for the moment. He got up and stretched his back again with a groan. “Alright, we should get to work.”

His apprentice followed Allen to his feet and down the street. Allen would have tried out a bar first, but there was only, like, one pub in the whole town and Ty and Camila were probably already there.

Instead, the two of them walked around a little, starting in the plaza. It was later in the morning, maybe around ten, and there were more people walking around. Allen pinged around with Expanded Awareness, mostly using it to eavesdrop on conversations. Most of his snooping led nowhere, but some of it revealed that people were talking about the recent disappearances here and there. Still, nobody seemed to have any other ideas as to the cause besides the Razorcats.

Allen only heard mention of the Lanthinus company once when somebody had said they’re prices for yams, an imported crop in the ESF, were a fraction of the price compared to what the trader he was trying to haggle had on display. The random stranger was probably right, the Lanthinus company had great prices.

Allen scanned the through the crowds of people in the market plaza one last time before leaving. That was when he saw a familiar face looking over a trader’s stand.

“You son of a bitch,” Allen muttered, grinning like an idiot. “What are you doing here?”

He immediately changed directions to go after the first real lead he had found. Nora hesitantly followed off to his side while Phantom was probably somewhere nearby.

“Hey, lovely morning isn’t it?” Allen asked the familiar young man.

Name: Kenneth

Human – Mage – Level 23

Kenneth turned around and whatever smile he had immediately died on his face. He looked like he was about to make a break for it, but Allen’s had was already on his shoulder. He calmly led the poor young man away from the market and into a nearby alley and out of the public eye. Kenneth, however, was far from calm.

“Well, here’s a face I wasn’t expecting to see again. What would a vulture like yourself be doing in a small town like this?” Allen began, punctuating his question with a short whistle. Phantom immediately appeared on his shoulder and hissed at Kenneth, causing the poor guy to turn an even paler shade of grey.

“Uh-um-I-I-I was—”

“Hur durr-durr,” Allen mimed, cutting in and slapping Kenneth lightly on the jaw a few times. “Sorry Kenny, but I don’t speak dumbass.”

“I l-live here,” he managed to say with his back pinned against the alley wall. “I’m not lying.”

Allen raised an eyebrow, letting the silence trail on for a few beats.

“I-If you want money, I d-don’t have much since—”

“—Since you tried to get me and my team killed in that dungeon and got your ass shredded for it,” Allen finished.

Kenneth’s mouth flapped open and closed a few times before he managed to speak. “Look, I’m sorry, but I didn’t have a choice. I can’t go back to being a fucking farm boy eating stale bread every gods damned day,” he began, starting to get a little red in the face. “The local lords are bunch of dickheaded cocksuckers and I don’t have any fucking money! You know the Guild won’t let me register without a recommendation or a huge fee! Adventuring is my only way out of this shithole country!” Kenneth trailed off into heavy breathing as he slumped down onto the cobblestone.

Allen’s eyebrows pinched together as he barked out a laugh. “Wait… so all that horseshit about being a farmer that you told us was true?”

Kenneth looked up Allen with a miserable expression. “If you’re going to kill me again, make it quicker this time, please. I can’t go back to jail. It was six months for stealing an enhancement item that I gave back. I don’t want to know what it’ll be for murder.”

Allen sighed and gave Nora an amused look. The girl had just been watching off to the side and she seemed more than comfortable to do so. Her mind must have been spinning as well because she looked a little pale herself. “Not to self: Get Nora started on interrogation lessons.”

Allen knelt down and patted Kenneth on the shoulder. “First of all,” he began, still using the same calm business tone as before, “if I were going to kill you, I would make it slow and emotionally degrading. Secondly, it would be ten years for serial murder assuming your victims respawned, and probably another five for all the shit you stole. Then the Guild would come after you too for being a vulture.”

Kenneth groaned in dismay and looked down.

“But you seem to have come to a misunderstanding,” Allen continued. “You see, I’m not with the Guild, the Guard, the Watch, or anything. I survived the dungeon and got all your stuff, and you died, so we’re even as far as I’m concerned. Now, morally I feel obligated to insist that you find other more respectable means of acquiring money, but really I don’t give a gods damn.”

Kenneth looked up again with a confusion written across his face. He still flinched away from Phantom’s unblinking gaze, but he actually appeared relieved for a second.

Then Allen’s grip on Kenneth’s shoulder tightened. “The part I am concerned about, though, is why you’d think slave smuggling should be your next big career choice.”

Kenneth went white as a ghost again. He quickly stammered out a response, but only because Allen was starting to crush his shoulder. “I-I-I have no idea what you’re t-talking about! I’m not a slave trafficker, what the fuck?!”

“The Lanthinus trading company is smuggling slaves across the Fharran Ocean. I saw you loading a carriage with crates that each had five to six little kids in them.”

Kenneth and Allen stared at each other for a few seconds. Kenneth started trembling and shaking his head. “I had no idea,” he mumbled. “I only worked at their camp for two fucking days because I needed the money. They-they hired tons of locals, bandits even, no questions asked. Almost all of the people who were working there were just from around here. Sure, I knew they were selling some shady shit in the back, like monster eggs or whatever, but not people!”

Allen regarded the “farm boy” for a moment. Over the years, he had gotten pretty good at telling when somebody was a lying bitch, especially when they had no skills to hide their lyingness. Allen even considered himself just as good, or even better, than lie detector spells.

This case was no exception: Kenneth was definitely telling the truth, as he knew it at least.

“I see,” Allen said, releasing Kenneth’s shoulder and standing up again. “How about a deal then? If you tell me everything you know about the Lanthinus company, I’ll pretend we’ve never met, and if your information is particularly salient, I might even give you these,” he said, summoning three dark gems from his inventory and setting them on the ground between him and Kenneth.

Kenneth took one look at the gems before fixing Allen with a hollow glare. His breathing was still ragged, and his face was covered in sweat, but he was calmer than before.

“Okay,” he said.