Reysha finally managed to break out of the city’s sewers. After her successful breakout, she had made the mistake of sleeping in one of the many smuggler’s corners she knew about. This had given the city guard the time to formulate a response to her. After the ease with which she had been able to escape the prison, she had honestly underestimated them.

Once the higher ups took over and put some more intense resources on the case, however, she found all of the gates, publicly known or smuggler preferred, guarded in some capacity. While the tiger girl liked her tactics with a dash of recklessness, she preferred to still be able to win. Just not as clean, quickly and unadventurous as more rigid people wanted engagements to go.

While she was pretty confident that she could take out most if not all adventurers that still saw this leaf as a challenge, the instructors were a different matter entirely, as were the higher ups in the guard. Luckily for Reysha, they were few in numbers, so they couldn’t both guard all the exits and search the quite vast system of tunnels.

For an entire week, she had been dodging the few scout parties that existed and subsiding off rats and whatever little clean water she could find. Another lucky break for her was that her condition was something the enemy was barely informed about. If they had taken the time to read up on it, they would have found out that Reysha would eventually turn into a pretty apathetic character that would basically not care about being spotted.

Instead, after a week of not finding her, the people trying to find her, instructors and promoted guardsmen that had many more interesting, safer and better paying things to do, the first of them just decided that this wasn’t worth their time. Just a few, many more were committed to finding the murderer, but enough that Reysha found a gap in the security and went for it.

And just like that, she escaped into the wilderness.

‘What now though?’ she asked herself as she hid inside that cave in a cliffside that, months ago now, Apexus and Aclysia had inhabited before they all went to the Birchia dungeon. It seemed like a good hideout and, more importantly, it had a natural source of water. Cold or not, she could at least drink it and then scrub the filth off her while she was thinking.

Noir was still laying low. Surprisingly so, since it had been about two weeks now since her last dining on monster flesh. At least some dulling of the senses should have occurred by now. While she had episodes where she felt a bit of grey creeping in, generally she was doing fine. For all she knew, that was because Noir continued to evolve her.

‘I obviously won’t be able to leave for a few months at least,’ she thought, realizing full well that the city would keep extremely close eyes on the Stem. She would maybe be able to infiltrate the city again, but that was a big maybe with how easily she was distinguishable from other people. Doubly so now that she didn’t have her robe.

Indeed, she had none of her former equipment. Against all reason, she had hoped to maybe find it in the armoury, but all she had found there were standard guard equipment. Not that that was too big of a detriment. She had stolen a complete plate armour, used it to disguise herself, making it much easier to leave the city guard’s building complex, and then ditched all of the heavy metal bits in some alleyway.

That the guard was equipped with serialized armour that was supposed to make all of them look like equal, shining enforcers of the law once the heavy visor was down, was pretty useful in situations like that. Even without the armour, the brown leather undergarment was pretty good protection, if basic and not as stretchy as she preferred.

Same went for the weapons, the short sword she had gotten was longer than the daggers she usually used, and certainly heavier than the stiletto she had used for so long, but it was of stellar quality. She had gotten off with only one of those and a knife that was more for cutting ropes then people. There had also been spears and shields, but Reysha was largely unused to those. She still would have taken some, if she had an adventurer’s bag with her.

‘With Noir, I basically have to get to a dungeon,’ the tiger girl thought when she had rinsed herself off and got dressed again. Her cat ears turned constantly, scanning for the tiniest noise of human feet. She still was rather close to the city, so caution was key to her survival. Nothing unusual reached her, however.

By the end of the day, she would hopefully be so far away that nobody save the Inquisition or the Sharpshooter, should the Hunter’s Mark be on her, be able to find her. “If the trio zealot, dumb and dumber tries to find me, I’ll stab them all,” she giggled to herself in a grim manner, a giggle that vanished pretty quickly, as Reysha tightened her belt.

Done putting on her new garb, she stood there, uncharacteristically quiet and with a completely neutral expression. Then, with a sudden shriek, she ripped the short sword out of its sheath and began banging it against the wall of the cave. Again and again, metal clashed against rock, singular sparks flying off, vanishing as quickly as they appeared.

“WHY DO YOU HAVE TO KEEP RUINING MY LIFE?!” the redhead screamed, imagining Mehily’s face against that grey surface. Her ears were turned backwards, laying flat against her head. Every hair on her tail was standing on end, the relatively short limb itself curved in a question mark like shape. “YOU ABSOLUTE CUNT!”

Reysha stopped as suddenly as she had started, looking briefly at the sword in her hand, now bent out of shape. Without a second thought, she threw it into the pond she had bathed in and the sheath soon followed. More out of reflex than anything, she moved a hand up to her face and wiped a way a drop that was running down her cheeks. That it was a tear didn’t cross her mind until she realized that she had her claws out, accidentally cutting herself over the cheekbone.

“Piece of shit,” she growled, sniffing. She didn’t even remember the last time she cried. Then she began laughing again, loud and at an unnervingly shrill tone that made some birds outside the cave decide that there were better trees around. ‘I’m gonna murder her,’ Reysha decided, climbing out of the cave and going into the forest. Running at full speed, she only cared about one thing.

Not the surroundings, not the trees or stones in her way. Not the up and down of the surroundings or the ever more dense-growing forest. Not even the Forester Dragon that stomped with its massive body close to her, ripping out entire trees with its massive maw.

She needed power. The power to kill every last member of the Inquisition. Then the power to kill Gabrame. To free Aclysia and get off this deep-root damned ‘Safe Leaf’. ‘I don’t fucking care how I get,’ the already somewhat insane and grief-driven Rogue thought. ‘Years of grinding inside that fucking dungeon, a cursed weapon, a pact with some dark power, I’ll take whatever the fuck I must to get my revenge.’

And just as she had finished that thought, a house suddenly appeared in front of her.