Not knowing how long wars were supposed to take, Chidi could only say it felt like it was taking forever. Years kept passing and he was almost an Essence Collection cultivator now. He just needed another year at most… and to figure out what essence fit him. After that, he should be strong enough to step onto the battlefield. He just didn’t think he would be allowed to.

And though Chidi knew people might consider him young and stupid for choosing to go into danger, he wasn’t that stupid. First, just hanging around the Gardens with a guardian constantly watching him and Aconite wasn’t exactly great for his growth. He’d long overcome his inexperience in combat, and he wouldn’t make rookie mistakes. But he felt his growth should be faster. All the expense taken to train him hardly seemed worth it otherwise.

But his first real battle had made him understand that he could die, so he was going to pick out somewhere reasonable. Which meant knowing about the war. Nobody was going to just to tell a young man like Chidi important information about the war, regardless of who his parents were. Or maybe specifically because of it, because he wasn’t supposed to get involved. At best, he heard which planets they were holding, but that didn’t help. He didn’t want to sneak onto a ship heading for somewhere that was going to get attacked by a saint. Or honestly, anywhere with Integration cultivators running about frequently.

Chidi knew where the spies met in the capital. His parents met with them rather frequently to get information about the war. It was all contained in an area that Chidi was allowed to walk around in, which saved him the difficulty of the initial approach. He couldn’t go in the front, obviously- there were guards there. The building was small enough that in theory their senses covered the whole thing. In practice, however, there were holes. Some people called them blind spots, which was some sort of reference to sight… not seeing things sometimes.

Entering a window was too obvious. Plus, there could be people on the other side. Chidi wouldn’t know without hearing them, and this particular building did a good job of insulating energy. He might open a window and step right into someone. He didn’t want to have to deal with the consequences of that.

An air vent on the roof would probably be best. It would be protected by formations, most likely, but he would deal with that when he got there. First he had to scale the wall. He felt it with his energy, being very careful to not intrude into the building with it. The roughness told him the shape of it and how he should climb. An easy task for anyone who had completed Body Tempering and had hands. Which was half the reason Aconite was not with him.

He easily lifted himself up to the roof, feeling the vent he wanted to enter through. It would be a tight fit- he wasn’t a little kid anymore- but he was flexible enough. As expected, he felt the altered flow of energy due to a formation. Chidi had studied formations for over a decade… technically. His mother had started teaching him about formations the time normal kids would learn to read. He had to admit that he hadn’t been particularly good at the topic, either because he was young or just not that interested, until the last year or two. Now, he took the occasional opportunities his mother was around to dive into those things.

Overall, his experience with formations put him somewhere around two centuries behind his mother. Give or take a couple decades. Not exactly the sort of thing that made him confident sneaking into a secure area, but the most important formations covered Xankeshan as a whole. Then there were some around the city, and this district. Dealing with the formations on one vent on a particular building, they were probably not put in place by his mother. Which was bad, because he would be less familiar with the style- but good, because familiarity didn’t do him much good when he could only stare in awe.

His fingers roamed around the edge of the vent, not touching anything. He was just taking the passive sensory input. A little cold here, a little hot there. Intense energy, though that was most formations from Chidi’s perspective. They were all powered by upper energy, while Chidi himself still focused on training lower energy. Wrestling with the more powerful energy might have given him a boost, but he was still developing his foundation. He was constantly reminded that taking shortcuts would let him advance more quickly… with consequences later.

But going into battle was not a shortcut. It was well known to be one of the best ways to accelerate training. He just had to also not die. Which meant getting some of this information.

Chidi couldn’t think of a method to get through this formation without someone knowing. Unless, perhaps, he destroyed it in just the right way. If he disrupted the part that would pass along the alarm, nobody should notice. Though it would have to be repaired later. He didn’t want to leave a weak point. If he caused a bit more damage, he would actually be safer now and it would be more obvious something was wrong later. That would mean he wouldn’t have to figure out a way to tell someone about the damage. Yes, that was best.

He took out his sword, carefully cutting a pair of new runes before scratching through several others, ruining their potency. Then he sheathed it, slipping into the vent.

Chidi was aware that some people didn’t like tight spaces, but he found it comforting to be fully aware of the limits of his surroundings. In an open room, things could be anywhere, lurking in front of his knees or his fragile nose. He hadn’t actually bumped into much since he’d developed proper extensions of his senses, but the threat was always there.

Scooting towards an opening, Chidi kept his energy restrained. There were slits for air to flow through, and Chidi was slightly concerned about disrupting the flow, but his presence would do that anyway. And he had to hear the conversation below.

“... Rakiya … Chikere’s arm …”

He couldn’t hear much, but that name had been what first sparked his attention. He was named after Chikere, more or less. There had also been some connection between her not recovering from an injury and his birth, though he hadn’t found out what.

“... on Yaitis?” the second voice asked.

“Unclear.”

Chidi had to agree. The whole conversation was very unclear. He wished he could augment his ears or press up against the grate without making things more obvious somehow.

Eventually the conversation moved away, and Chidi was left with a choice. He could continue through the vents, or try to find more information in different ways. He was aware of an important and annoying thing, specifically that key information was probably written down, but if he had to he would struggle through the process. He just hoped it wasn’t on any of those ‘computer’ things, because they didn’t have any ink that stood out. There weren’t a lot of computers in common use away from Engineer Uzun and the technological area, but there were still some.

He popped out of the vent, taking care to make sure it was closed as he dropped down. Almost directly into a huge net of sensory energy. Chidi held his breath, as if that would help somehow. He was lucky, to have just barely avoided it. It moved around like a pit of snakes, he had to avoid, and he found his way over to a wall. He darted back and forth in the hallway, doing his best to hide behind pillars and other bits sticking out. He kept his senses passive, so as to not alert anyone.

He managed to avoid the energy all the way to the end of the hall, where things opened up somewhat- a branch? Then a hand came down on his shoulder. “What are you doing here, young man?”

Chidi froze up.A sense of terror and panic flowed through him. But then he recognized the voice. “Uh… spymaster. I didn’t know you were back.” He calmed down, because while he was caught and his sneaking days were over, at least he knew what the consequences would be.

“Nobody is ever supposed to know if I am ‘back’,” Spymaster Velvet’s voice said. “That’s the whole point.”

“... Can I just ask how you caught me?” Chidi frowned. “I thought I avoided all of the alarms and sensory sweeps.”

Sense he was already caught, he had extended his senses. He could feel her face shifting into a smile, for some reason. “You did a good job avoiding several things. We will have to review our security… and training. But if you want to know how I spotted you… well…”

-----

Velvet was walking down the hallway. Her steps were quiet more out of habit than active need. Then she saw Chidi drop down into the hallway from a vent. She watched him darting back and forth across the hall, and for a moment she wondered what he thought he was doing. Then she realized that was exactly the sort of behavior that made sense for someone who didn’t actually know how vision worked. He’d only ever had it explained to him.

“What are you doing here, young man?”

-----

“... That usually works, I swear!” Chidi complained.

“If someone is looking down a hallway, even casually, they will see you. Unless you take special steps to conceal yourself through means you clearly have no training in.”

Chidi grimaced. “I guess you’re telling my parents?”

“Probably,” Velvet said. “You’re lucky I know them, or you’d be in very serious trouble. Or dead. Someone could have taken you out as an intruder before recognizing you.”

“I… didn’t think of that,” Chidi admitted.

Velvet clicked her tongue. “You’ll never get anywhere as a spy like this.”

“I know,” Chidi hung his head.

“That’s why you’re going to focus on training with me,” Velvet said.

“I kn- what?” Chidi twisted around, confused.

“You’ve got really good basics, but I can tell you’re self-taught,” Velvet explained. “And new. Pretty good for your age, but there are so many things you need to know. I do have one question though. How did you erase your presence like that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I was looking at you but I didn’t see you with my senses.”

“I just avoided where they were.”

“But they covered the whole hallway.”

Chidi frowned, “You… think they cover the energy senses cover the whole area?”

“At this scale? Obviously.”

“That’s just… not true,” Chidi said. “Here, look.” He had to contort himself slightly to fit in the blind spot, but there he was.

“Hmm. Hold still, would you?” Velvet slightly shifted her senses, just touching Chidi’s ankle. “And suddenly I can see all of you.”

“Is that how that works?” Chidi asked. “Because your senses are only really contacting my ankle.”

“How have I not noticed this before?”

Chidi shrugged. “I don’t know. But people won’t generally avoid senses by accident. Unless someone is just not paying attention to a room. It’s like walking through a tangle of branches without touching any of them.”

“I knew that I was missing things at longer ranges,” Velvet said slowly. “I hadn’t realized that something would apply like this close up. But you learn something new every day. Now I definitely have to train you. First step: not standing where people can see you.”

“I usually hear everyone,” Chidi shook his head. “How did you end up behind me?”

“Practice. And I was there the whole time. Oh right, you never answered why you were here.”

“I just wanted… to know about how the war was going…” Chidi lied.

“Look, kid. I don’t want to be the one to teach you how to lie proficiently. But you gotta be more convincing than that. Or never get into a position where people ask you questions. Which means never getting caught.” Velvet stepped closer. “Or you can use the best technique. Don’t hide at all and don’t look important enough to pay attention to. You’d be surprised how often that works. And that’s probably a good one for you since you’re really obvious when trying to avoid being looked at.”