Frei swirled his tentacles and his muscles tensed. His form had shifted more to the plan-attribute and he no longer looked like a demon when transformed. His fingers had elongated into short, thick tentacles with his skin completely losing its red color, turning into a mix of purple and green. His yellow-eyed head sat on an unnaturally thick neck, following every Crow's move. His arms were more robust than before and his overall bigger size reflected his greater strength. Frei lowered his center and prepared to jump at his opponent.

As quickly as he gave his order, Crow began laughing, an action that was totally inappropriate for the situation. Frei watched him with suspicion, but there was no attack coming his way.

"Ok, the important part is behind us, now let's just go kill Kronias and wrap this up." Crow said and Frei could not make sense of his words.

"Well, you will probably be a bit angry, but a very important part of The Sigil's agent is his loyalty. Do you get it now? We do not need people who sell their comrades for profit, and be assured that others will come to offer you riches and profit for betrayal of your friends and colleagues. We do not need those who yield to greed or fear and become traitors."

"You little shit, this was just a test?!" Frei was not happy to be toyed with like this at all and resisted with effort his urge to strangle the man.

"Yep, a very important one. Welcome to The Sigil of Meridor, well, if you are still interested." Crow spread out his arms wide in a gesture of warm welcome.

"You can go and vent on Kronias, I am sure that you do not need my help. We will wait here as there is naturally no escape tunnel." Crow nodded in the direction of Nitarja.

But he did not need to go anywhere, because a tall man had just appeared in the entrance of the cave. Judging by his bearing, he had to be Kronias himself.

"Who dares to come to my lair? I will show you the might of a great . . " Frei conjured [Black Bullet] - 30 and Kronias' head exploded like a watermelon when a ray of black light passed through it.

He was dead before he had a chance to do anything.

"Wait, is that it?" Frei quickly looked around, expecting his easy victory to be some kind of an illusion or a trap. Did Kronias have a shadowclone technique or an illusion spell?

"What did you expect? Morons like him spend most of their time doing research, gathering slaves and trying to hide from the world. Their battle experience is zero, or only with opponents like ordinary people or children. How many Mages do you think this leech has fought? At most one or two." Crow just waved it off as something that happened all the time.

"We will return to our base now, I mean one of our real bases, not the stinking hole in the slums." He stepped closer to the entrance of the cave and began drawing something on its wall, his finger enveloped in an ominous black glow engraving some sort of a symbol into the rock. It was probably a signature meaning that The Sigil had raided the place.

Frei had not expected them to be finished without even entering the cave, but Crow apparently considered all what might have been inside no more than useless junk. He still felt angry about Crow's games, but attacking him in any way would be counterproductive.

They turned back immediately, yet had not managed to exit the forest before dusk and ended up spending another night in the Black Forest. Frei sat on tall grass while on watch when Nitarja sat next to him, joining him in looking at the stars above.

"Go sleep, it is my turn." She said after they gazed at the stars for a moment and Frei nodded in response. He was about to stand up when she grabbed his hand to stop him for a second.

"Frei I . . . I do not know what to say." She whispered, but he could guess what was on her mind.

"Then don't say anything." He smiled and lifted his butt off the ground and walked to catch some sleep. It felt strange, they knew each other only for days, but due to the intense circumstances he felt like they knew one another for years. It might be that going through a single extreme experience with someone resulted in a stronger bond compared to just drinking bear in a pub for years.

That night, he could not sleep well, as he was too restless before their arrival at his new temporary home.

The next day, they headed back to the city, this time not coming from the ugly side of the slums. Walking through the city gates, the residential area had been seen by them when they had run through previously, the houses several floors tall were crammed close to each other. Frei stared at an odd construction site that they walked past, it looked like they were repairing pipe system that ran under the city, but the few workers were using earth magic instead of manual labour to dig.

"So many people without jobs, terrible." Frei could not but consider it from the viewpoint of a modern politician.

Their destination was not far, still in the city's residential area. They ascended the stairs of an ordinary apartment building and stopped at the second floor. Crow swiftly entered one of the apartments after unlocking its door.

"Aaagh, finally home." Crow began throwing some of his clothes around along with his wig, revealing his blond hair.

"What? You wear a wig?" At this point, Frei would not have been surprised if Crow was in fact a reptile wearing artificial skin.

"What what? It is not anything unusual while on recruiting missions like this. Welcome to our palace!" Crow sat down on a black sofa of a pretty regular large apartment, considering the standards of the city and began explaining more about their future work.

This was one of the cells of The Sigil of Meridor, there were two kinds of cells, tactical cells and strategic cells which further divided based on the frequency of communication with the central and specializations of their members. Tactical cells were quick response teams tasked with emergencies and usually had more intense communication with their superiors, while strategic cells followed their goals and their communication with the command of The Sigil was usually very limited. It had been done like this to prevent leaks, the group Crow was in charge of being a strategic cell. The cells themselves did not know of each other and their non-interference was being assured by the scope of their goals and places where they operated.

"Still, your recruitment process is quite lousy, what if I was a spy?" Frei had expected a more sophisticated procedure given the scale of the organization.

"And what? That is the beauty of a strategic cell. I have a lot of freedom in what I do and if something really goes to shit. .. there are more than enough cells to try and do a better job in my place."

"I can still sabotage critical operations." Frei was not to be waved off with such an important question, staring at Crow, unmoving.

"And how are you gonna do that, if even I do not know which ones are critical?" Crow smirked at him. "The thing is there are no critical operations on this scale, it is the battle of systems and probabilities. There are no big hits, only thousands of small nibblings that end up killing a giant, or not. A double agent who was to focus on a single operation would find it impossible to pick that one moment and with a flood of agents . . . Everything boils down to average quality of staff. If your organization's ideas attract dumb people, then it is only a matter of time before you bleed out, running out of resources and vice versa." Crow had a tendency to rock in the sofa probably forgetting that it was not a rocking chair and at some point he realized and stopped abruptly.

"Just look at the church!" He snorted with contempt in his voice. "Their worldviews appeal to fanatics, drug dealers or slavers and as a result, their agents are and forever will be terrible, trying to outdo others by their numbers."

While listening to Crow, Frei and Nitarja walked through the apartment to look at the place where they would most likely spend a lot of time. The place was relatively clean, if they ignored the freshly taken off Crow's clothes. There was a kitchen, a living room with the big sofa, a storeroom that was locked and a bathroom. The other rooms had beds, but were unoccupied, giving off the feeling of a hostel that sorely lacked customers.

"Where are other roommates? You are not the sole member of this grand operation?" Frei returned to the big sofa and Crow's expression stiffened.

"Right now, you are the only ones beside me because . . . " His mood suddenly darkened.

"Oh." Frei did not insist on receiving an answer, it was surely the main reason for the hasty recruitment, as the status of the former members was probably KIA. It did not add much credibility to how Crow operated and Frei started to feel restless.

"Do not tell me that you were the leader. Why do you even continue, if you are not up for the task?" Frei asked, realizing the answer a second later, even before he received Crow's heated response.

"I am not selling ice cream here, do you think that I can just quit?" He spat out and stood up, facing Frei face to face.

"Marvelous, so you just drag us in as well to sink together!" Frei's sarcastic remark poured even more oil into the fire.

"Drag you in? You have decided for yourselves, so shut it! We just need to be more careful this time." Crow started pacing nervously back and forth.

"Yeah, we agreed, but you have not told us that we are boarding the ship of captain failure." Frei walked out of the apartment and slammed the door behind him, he needed to take a walk and sort out the situation in his head. Unfortunately, there was little he could do, Gabri'El would surely not let him leave the organization, even if he could. He was stuck with this man, Crow, who was hardly someone competent based on his results.

He did a few circles around the block and returned to the apartment, finding Crow and Nitarja sitting on the sofa with sour faces.

"Well?" He looked at Nitarja, expecting her to know more about the situation.

"He was in a hurry because he has not reported it yet." She looked at Crow sideways.

"What do you mean?" Frei looked at him as well, like watching a prisoner during interrogation.

"He reports to the superiors every two months, they do not yet know that the cell has been basically annihilated. We have fourteen days to make a comeback. Otherwise, they will most probably disband this cell and transfer us to front lines, or someone will come for . . cleaning." Nitarja looked back at Frei.

"What is our goal?"

"To sabotage people behind Antares." Crow answered.

"What?!" Frei felt the whole scheme was getting more and more complicated. Was it not Gabri'El's goal to sabotage the Antares project of The Sigil? Why would they try to undo their own endeavor?

"The Antares project is a research project about space and dimensions, they are researching ways to join parts of different universes. The intent behind it is obviously to find a weak universe and join it with our own permanently, not with just small, temporary portals." Crow presented his conjectures.

"I still do not see the reason for sabotaging your own work." Frei folded his arms on his chest.

"That makes two of us, but my hunch is that too many key personnel have been converted, because we are obviously intruding on Galacron's territory with this research." Crow said, while searching for something in a black bag on his knees.

"Ah, but why not simply cancel it?" Frei felt The Sigil was acting in an overly roundabout way.

"I do not know, there has to be a lot of pressure on the headquarters not to scrap it, but enough with general ideas, our method will be to target these three researchers." Crow laid down photos of three men on a table. "I do not care about the general picture, we just need results good enough to stay afloat with this sinking ship of a cell."

"Are we going to kill them?" Frei lifted his eyebrows, asking an obvious question.