Kaden did not act immediately. It would look strange, if Erral just happened to die just after he was brought into the secret arrangement.

Instead, Kaden seemingly dutifully played his part. In fact, he enjoyed watching Erral struggle. Some days he was calm and collected and some other days extremely depressed and even showed that anger burning inside him a few times.

As for the city search for Erral and other supposed cultists. That was not progressing very well. Some had already started to talk that Erral was already long gone and that perhaps his family had been just a front.

Kaden enjoyed informing Erral of these rumors. This seemed to enrage Erral and Kaden just loved watching his futile rage.

Erral seemed to trust Kaden too. At least enough to not feel wary. He even talked with Kaden a few times. It seemed he had indeed long since noticed him among Nelsen’s people and had been relatively impressed.

Kaden brushed off these compliments saying that it was probably due to his mutations. He didn’t feel like taking Erral’s compliments. He was going to kill him after all and didn’t really care what he thought about him.

“How ludicrous”, Kaden thought to himself as he left the hiding place discreetly. “What would his words be, if he were to know I was behind everything. Hehe.”

Kaden still felt he needed more time until he could kill Erral and not be immediately noticed to be behind it.

While Erral was hiding, the search had basically turned into a cultist hunt. Someone had decided that all of them should be purged this time.

Kaden was not surprised as time passed several cultists hideouts were found.

“Its not just me, but a lot of people have noticed gods are liars”, Kaden thought to himself as he made his way towards a place where he would be joining in for a purge. “Its just funny that they worship another god that is apparently the biggest liar. They should just stop worshipping anything entirely!”

At any rate, Kaden was actually happy that he was able to take part into the purge missions. Along the rest of his studies, he had tried to inspect the black fragments he had. He still had not idea of their purpose, but clearly there had to be something. So far he had only found them at altars to God of Lies, so having the chance to have a look at other altars was something he would make use of.

Once the attacks started, he tried to be near the front so no one else would take anything before he had the chance to. He let other people take the first volleys of attacks from the cultists, but right after them he was the first one to start tearing apart people.

His fragments had no reaction, though. He assumed this meant there were none more to be found. To begin with, the thing seemed like a puzzle. Perhaps there didn’t even exist too many pieces? First one he had found by chance, second with first one leading him to it. It seemed like it was a matter of luck until he knew enough to narrow search. Yet since he didn’t even know what they were or did, wasting resources on it was not a good idea. Yet at least.

“Bah… even so, I can still gain contribution points that are otherwise hard to get due to supression”, Kaden muttered to himself as he tore out entrails of a weakling cultist.

Luckily noble’s reach seemed to not extend to the church, which made very much sense. This was a church led matter.

Kaden did notice that the hiding place lacked higher ranked cultists. He assumed they had gone hiding already a long time ago and just left some fools behind as cannon fodder to sate the church’s blood lust. Despite that, Kaden enjoyed the chance to kill some people.

Later when he was delivering supplies again to Erral, he asked Kaden if he had heard or noticed anything useful. Obviously Kaden said no. That was actually the truth and was going to stay that way. There were very few things that could prove Erral innocent and such things would not be found from cultist hideouts since Erral’s situation was arranged by Kaden himself and the demon.

During next few days Kaden took part in a few other purges of cultist hideouts that had been identified. Nothing interesting was found.

With that, at least for the time being, there was a lull in the search. Yet, Erral was still not found. Apparently quite a few people wanted to concentrate on him since he was believed to be a high ranked member.

Kaden was not able to learn more of what was planned, but he wondered, if he should make his move soon. Erral’s hiding place was pretty good, but it wouldn’t hide him forever.

“Maybe it isn’t too soon”, Kaden muttered to himself. “If I was someone who wanted Erral’s death, which I am, and want to end him personally, if he will be the main target from now on, I’d be making my move before anyone else.”

That was a relatively acceptable scenario. Kaden had been planning on waiting for a bit longer, but he would have to make his move soon.

“Even in the worst case, I’ll just lose my support from Nelsen”, Kaden thought. “It is acceptable. If I take too long, I will lose my chance.”

It was unlikely Nelsen would reveal that he arranged Erral support for his hiding. That would bring him a lot of trouble. He would rather be out and free to act to help his friend. Even in that case, Kaden decided he would say he had been supporting Erral because he obeyed orders of his superior and was afraid of betraying his trust! It wouldn’t clear blame entirely, but if he was the one to have revealed Erral, Kaden expected to avoid any harsher punishments.

At any rate, that possibility was low unless Nelsen wanted to crash down along with Erral. It wasn’t a good choice, but it was still possible due to Nelsen’s overgrown sense of justice and being worshipper of Jorn.

As for how to take care of Erral.

It would be easy to get next to him. He wouldn’t suspect anything until the moment until Kaden struck. That is where the problems started.

Kaden could not be certain Erral would go down right away. Sidon had been able to struggle a bit even with Vengeance buried in his back. Then again Erral would have much greater reaction, but he was also stronger than Sidon. Kaden did not know how well Vengeance worked against stronger opponents. Its not like he had many targets to experiment with.

For a while Kaden wondered, if he should get some poison to ensure Erral’s weakness. That sort of stuff was not Kaden’s usual way of doing things so he decided to not try anything. Erral might even notice such things and become wary just before Kaden was supposed to strike.

“I’ll have to distract him”, Kaden decided. “Once he concentrates elsewhere for a moment, I can act.”

Even if Kaden was hoping that he would succeed in ambush, he still figured he should arrange backup plans. Not that he feared for his life, but he didn’t want to fail after such a good stoke of luck. He wouldn’t underestimate Erral.

Kaden returned to his house to prepare. Next time he was going to meet Erral was next morning. He doubted any search would find Erral, even if he did wait a few more days, but Kaden was now planning on acting as soon as possible.

After making sure his gear was in perfect condition, he wondered what else he would need. He rummaged through a box where he had tossed some his formation experiments. He had tried a lot of things as he was trying to understand formation crafting past his own level. Kaden didn’t wish to always rely on pre-existing known formations that he could learn from books.

Kaden wanted to become more flexible with his formations. He could already make slight adjustments, but he wanted to truly understand the construction from nothing to fully functioning formation. Yet, this required a bit greater understanding than merely being able to craft something already known.

The particular one he was looking for was one of his experiments about better bombs. While the formation was entirely usable, its effect was not something Kaden had looked for. Instead of exploding, it merely fizzled and let out some flames and smoke.

Kaden was not aware how strong Erral was, but the formation would serve as a smoke bomb and perhaps the flames would also distract Erral if he had to run away.

Once that was done Kaden thought up an acceptable story. People would be asking ‘who killed Erral?’ Kaden did not wish to be connected to anything as long as he could manage it. Besides, there would be some questionable things to be found, if he did manage to succesfully murder Erral.

If fact, Kaden was planning on acting as innocent bystander with nothing to hide! That was the best scenario.

Should he succeed in that, Kaden believed nothing more would come up. This would allow him to stay with the saints for a long time and grow. Next targets on the saints side might not be anything achievable perhaps for many many years. Decades… perhaps centuries? His existing support structure would aid him over that time.

“I will need to arrange myself back to Sacronan somehow at some point”, Kaden thought as he pondered the future. “As for saints… while they aren’t direct targets, I still can’t drop the idea that someone ordered Erral. Some higher officers? Who gave them orders? Emperor? Then there are those True Magi that dared harm Anuu.”

Kaden stopped thinking such things. With exception of the targets in Sacronan like Juren and Marwen, the rest he had though of we exactly the sort of people he wouldn’t be able to touch.

“I better concentrate on what I can do right now and not think too far”, Kaden decided. “Any more and I weaken myself. There is no need to rush. I’ll handle Erral first and observe consequences. As for getting to Sacronan in the future, it means I’ll have to detach myself from the supression and get the right missions. I’ll probably have to also wait for the war to heat up again. Thats nothing I can handle right now. There is no need to be impatient! I have waited this far already and made my first kill. Second will be tomorrow!”

Kaden took a deep breath and tried to calm his mind. Everything should be ready! Kaden spent rest of the time cultivating. The next morning Erral would die.