Several days later in the arena, there was a match against yet another person wanting to fight Kaden. Kaden had noticed his pay had increased. More people were betting on his fights now. After he had been to the market and the temple of Stefinos, he had noticed lot of things he could use. More money could be used.

“You are pretty tough, aren’t you?” Asked Kaden’s opponent. He was extremely quick sword user and Kaden had trouble reaching him. Still, the opponent was only quick, but his attack power wasn’t much.

“Like you could kill me with that sword that is about as sharp as a hammer!” Kaden mocked him back.

In fact, Kaden had noticed these fights were extremely useful to him. He could fight many different opponents with different skill sets and learn. The swordman was, in his opinion, extremely low tier opponent, but he was fast. That was only reason the fight had not ended yet. This made him notice that there were problems with his fighting style.

While not exactly entirely due to power, but not able to win. In this case he felt he would have to resort to tricks. Kaden knew that he would have to truly solve these problems later for good. This was the first time he ran into someone or something that he could not directly defeat.

*Foosh*

After avoiding a sword strike, Kaden released some flames, but directly at ground, dust, sand and rock fragments flew at the swordman. Being so sudden and being much more difficult to avoid than a predictable strike, the trick did work. Kaden managed to land a hit on the strugling opponent. Still, such trick at this level was barely more than a distraction. He was lucky.

The man slammed against arena edge and suffered injuries. He quickly activated his give up token and the fight ended.

Kaden was happy that worked. He had bleeding wounds all over, but he had avoided all critical hits. Not that it had been hard.

Kaden walked out of the arena and skipped healing since he didn’t care to wait Ulrin’s healing since the healer was busy fixing up the swordman.

He went straight for Sidon, still bleeding.

“That guy was only barely acceptable opponent, Sidon”, Kaden started to complain. “He was only fast, but out there he could just be ignored. Does your arena only offer trash opponents?”

Sidon had got used to Kaden walking straight to him after the fights. Kaden always had something to say afterwards.

“If you plan on bleeding all over the floor as you are, you should not be complaining about difficulty”, Sidon pointed out.

“Barely scratches. These wounds aren’t deep. They should barely bleed anymore”, Kaden refuted and continued. “Your arena is a low tier at best.”

“LOW TIER?” Sidon looked exasperated. “You call my arena low tier?! I am well known and have maintained this arena for years! Even wealthy Condensation stage suporters have arranged their special fights on my arena! Have you ever seen a lower cari like a gryphon? We have had beasts like that battling in the arena! Low tier! LOW TIER!”

“I don’t see any gryphon in the arena”, Kaden pointed out and looked down. “Look, there is one stupid trying to punch that loser in the face, but is failing at it.”

Sidon fumed. “Get the fuck out of there as you usually do!”

Kaden agreed with Sidon. He had said what he wanted to say and he had plans for rest of the night. It was time to go out hunt. With him he took something he had worked on last few days. It was kind of a gauntlet made from the metals he had gathered. It was not completely finished yet and he had only managed to craft preliminary formation on it, technically seals. He was learning good deal from the book he had bought so he expected to finish it soon. He still wanted to test before finishing it to see, if his understanding was correct.

It was item that allowed him to hide his claws and make people think it was something the gauntlet did. Once completed, he hoped to increase the mana flow and increase claw power too. He had also been annoyed that people with swords could often strike hard enough to penetrate his claws a bit. A metal gauntlet would help with that too.

He had no idea where to find his quarry, but from the information he had, the ones he was going after were working for the criminal gangs around the city, largest of them being the Blood Hand he had already met. Therefore, he would just start messing up people and ask questions. If he found targets and remembered any of them from the bounty lists he had, he would just kill them.

Kaden leaped around the rooftops of the city. He went to the shadier areas and started to look and listen. His last few scouting trips, he had not had to wait for too long.

Soon he heard noise.

“Gimme all yer money, girlie!”

“Eeek!”

Kaden leaped towards the source. He saw this guy with too many tatoos holding a knife at woman. The mugger wasn’t even at Channel Opening so there was really no danger. Kaden wondered, if it was even useful to beat him and ask questions.

Kaden landed just behind the mugger and slammed his face against a wall. The woman screamed, but Kaden ignored her. Then the woman ran away while Kaden prepared to ask questions.

“Do you work for some gang?” Kaden asked.

“Fuggin’… AUUUUGH!” The mugger tried to resist so Kaden crushed his femur.

“Answer the quastion and you will feel less pain”, Kaden calmly said. He wasn’t expert at interrogation, but he thought it would be good to practice it.

The mugger was basically crying and unable to really say anything. Kaden snapped his arm.

“Talk. If you wait too long, I will assume you are resisting.”

“Blo...blo..blood hand!” Answered the mugger.

That was indeed what he was looking for. Lucky!

“Where are your higher ranked members?” Kaden asked and started to list names.

“I… I don. GAAAH!”

Kaden crushed some more bones.

“ALL I KNOW WHERE I HAND OUT MY LOOT AND GET A CUT!” Cried the mugger. “I SWEAR I DONT KNOW ANYTHING MORE!”

“Tell me where? Who is the strongest there? How many people?” Kaden questioned.

He listened the quick directions and information from the still barely functional mugger. Once done, Kaden made sure the pathetic man was not going anywhere.

“Now, if you just lied to me, I will come back and I will kill you”, Kaden said calmly. It was best to let these people live. If he did not find what he was looking for, he would ask more and as number of these weaklings rise, the more he would be noticed and higher ranked people would come after him. Besides, as long as they had not been judged, killing them might even bring trouble. Kaden wanted the stronger ones that were known to the authorities and could be killed.

Supposedly the strongest one at the location was still at Channel Opening so he expected to still have a fight, but not one where could not run away from. He was pretty sure there would be no one at Formation stage at this low level place. From the information he had, even the targets he looked for, that should be highest ones in the area, were still not at Formation stage.

He went to look for the so called drop off point. It was somewhat hidden squalor inn, which was probably run by criminals as a front.

Kaden watched for a while. Weaklings went in and out occassionally, but he could not see inside and determine the number of people. Still, he planned on going inside. If it was trouble, he would run.

There was dirty door with lot of stains. Some seemed to be even blood. Kaden walked in calmly.

“Whose the kid?”

“What ya doin’ here? Git home suck ye mom’s tits.”

“Wanna work kid?”

“Are you all members of Blood Hand?” Kaden asked them. He had not noticed more than two people at Channel Opening at the back. The rest were weaklings that he did not need to care about. “If not, get out of here.”

“What ye on kid? Waste him!”

Kaden burst with power and he set in flame most the area he was at and charged directly at the two stronger people. He wanted to test his new gauntlet against one of them with a shitty looking sword. These people had to be the lowest tier trash of the Blood Hand.

Kaden’s new gauntlet basically cut into the sword, leaving behind glowing hot claw marks. He was happy to see his creation work and be able to enchance his fire mana enhanced claw strike. Still, he expected it to be the case since the criminal’s weapon was not very high grade.

He took advantage of the shock and struck the man hard enough to debilitate him.

The second one had already noticed things were not going well and tried to run without even a fight. Since Kaden handled the first one so quickly, the second one was caught before he could escape.

The whole thing had been easier than Kaden had expected. These criminals were cowards and weaklings. In fact, the biggest problem seemed to be the fire he had set. Sure he could control it quite a bit, but not entirely. It was far easier to set things on fire than put them out.

That problem solved itself, though. Kaden realized his idea on burning the city some day required extra planning. Formations that were all over the city, automatically detected a starting fire once it got large enough and directly snuffed it out. If large portion of the populace could generate balls of fire at will, it was a good idea to have ways to stop those fires.

Kaden shrugged and started to iterrogate the two. He doubted they knew too much, but if they were running some kind of fence, the things they acquired would go somewhere higher.

He did get some information and that would be his next target. Otherwise the two were useless. Whatever fencing service they provided, it was most likely not too extensive. They didn’t even have much money.

Kaden really wanted to kill them, but these guys were not on the actual bounty list. The fire and commotion seemed to have gathered attention and city guards were likely to pick them up soon. Therefore Kaden decided it was time to leave and plan his next move.

------------

At that time in the guard house.

“I wish to report a crime!” Said a woman as she ran inside the building. “I was almost robbed! Why are there no guards stopping the criminals in the first layer?”

“Ma’am, you should be careful at this time in the first layer”, replied a guard calmly.

“Don’t try to shift the blame to me!” Continued the woman angrily. “Had there not been a wondrous hero that came to save me, I might even be dead!”

“A hero, you say?” Guard questioned the woman.

“Like angel from the heavens, he defeated the horrible criminal that was threatening me! If you guards wont do your job, someone else will deliver justice! Hmph!”

The woman left after reporting such a crime.

“Great, we might have another vigilante”, told the guard to another. “Remember that last one? Hehe.”

“We had to collect the parts for far too long...”

The first guard laughed and continued with his work as usual.