Chương 111: Chapter 110: Cold Trail

The loot of the Broodmother looked promising. We halved the three gold coins between us first, then went on to check the items. [Skill Rune] Skill: Acid Spit (Rare) Restriction: Rogue It was a good skill for zoning, with decent DoT damage and range, but the restriction meant neither of us could use it.

"Let's check all the items first, then we distribute them, okay?" Alice asked.

"Sure thing." [Webspinner Dagger] Rare Level 25 Attack Power: 94 Agility: +7 Dexterity: +7 Attack speed: 10% 8% chance to apply Poison on hit. Restriction: Rogue A dagger with 94 attack power was no joke, but the real value lay in the 14 total attributes and the staggering 8% chance to poison. This one's a menace.

[Ironwood Spear] Uncommon Level 25 Attack Power: 105 Strength: +5 Restriction: Spearfighter The spear was a standard weapon, it would only be a level 25 placeholder for most lancers, but it didn't mean it was bad. The last item made me pause. [Shadowthread Armor] Rare Level 25 Medium Armor Defense: 72 Agility: +8 Dexterity: +6 Vitality: +4 10% resistance to Poison Restriction: Art of Finesse The defense was incomparable to my Black Warg Breastplate.

From the looks of it, with most items, level 20 was a threshold of some kind. Items above that gave attribute points more often than not. Of course, there were exceptions. Still, this piece of armor would make me much stronger; I'd lose my last set bonus, but the stats from the Shadowthread Armor and the Unique cloak more than made up for it. And if I was being honest, I couldn't wear level 15 armor clearing level 25+ content for too long.

"I need that chest piece," I stated.

"It's a really strong drop, King's Glade would love to have it, too." Alice pondered for a moment.

"But it's obviously meant for someone like you." With that, she traded me the breastplate.

"Wait, I can pay for it!"

"How about I keep the rune and the spear for the guild in exchange of the Armor?" It was a fair trade; skills would be useful well into late game, while items had their expiration date, however this piece of equipment would skyrocket my efficiency.

"Deal."

"And I would like to keep the dagger, too. It's worth about 20 gold if I had to guess, so here," she handed me 10 gold coins. I didn't complain.

"Too bad you didn't get anything useful for yourself."

"The skill rune and the dagger will go to good hands. Trust me." She sheathed her sword and stretched her arms above her head.

"Shall we head back?"

The walk out of the mine was quieter than the walk in. The chambers we'd cleared were empty now, the webbing burned away or collapsed, and we could hear our footsteps echoing off the walls. We didn't talk much until we hit the surface. It was getting late; the air was cool and clean after the dank tunnels, and the sun was already low, painting the Greenveil's canopy in shades of orange and gold.

"So," Alice said as we started down the road toward the city.

"The Black Ranger of Carpa, Tidemark's Champion, winner of the Oakenlight tournament, and apparently, part-time sniper for strangers in distress. What brings you to Serendine?" I didn't know how much to share about my quest.

"Personal business."

"That's vague."

"It's about Tidemark's civil war." She didn't push it, which I appreciated. Instead, she asked the question I'd been expecting since we'd partied up.

"Why no guild?"

"I've been asked that a lot."

"Stone mentioned you'd turned us down, too."

"I turned down everyone's invitation," I said.

"It's nothing personal. I'm just not ready to commit to a guild yet. There are things I want to figure out on my own first." She walked beside me in silence for a moment. Lune trotted between us, sniffing at wildflowers along the roadside, unbothered by the conversation.

"I get it," Alice said eventually.

"More than you'd think. Contrary to most other officers, I didn't come to Godsrealm with King's Glade. Or any guild. I didn't want anyone slowing me down. But Phantom made a compelling case." Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"What convinced you?"

"Honestly? He didn't try to recruit me. He just asked what I wanted to achieve, listened, and then told me he'd build a space where I could do exactly that." She glanced at me.

"He's not the kind of leader who tells you what to do. He's the kind who figures out what you're already doing and makes sure you have the resources to do it better." That tracked with what I'd read about Phantom. The forum post, the way he'd been building King's Glade across multiple counties in the region, the divisions… It was a smart approach. Less authoritarian than Crimson Court, more structured than Second Wind.

"How many do you have in Serendine?" I asked.

"About fifty confirmed. Another twenty who are interested but haven't committed. We're the second largest group in the county behind Vanguard, and honestly, we're stronger despite the smaller roster."

"Vanguard giving you trouble?"

"Gaul's not a bad leader. He's just territorial. He sees any organized group in Serendine as competition, even if we're not competing for the same things." She shrugged.

"We'll sort it out. Crimson Court is the real headache."

"They jumped you with ten people."

"Not the first time. Won't be the last." Her jaw tightened briefly.

"They've been targeting my people for a week. Ganking lower-level members on the roads, trying to choke our farming routes. It's not about Serendine. It's about Skull sending a message to Phantom through me." She looked around before continuing, as if she was anticipating them right now, too.

"They don't have powerhouses in Serendine, so I can handle myself. But not all of our members can, and some are getting discouraged. That's why Phantom wants most of us to get to Silverwing as soon as we wrap things up. We're unbeatable there."

"For what it's worth," I said, "you handled ten of them. That message goes both ways." She smiled at that; it was brief, but genuine, and this was the first time I actually looked at her without the chaos of battle obstructing. She was effortlessly beautiful, with blonde hair and blue eyes, a confident posture and a determined but kind expression always sitting on her face. By all means, she looked like a lead character in a movie. We reached the city gates as the last of the daylight was fading.

The guards let us through without a second glance, and we walked in comfortable silence through the lamplit streets until we reached the market district.

"This is where we part ways," Alice said, stopping at the bridge.

"I need to check in with my team. We've got a big day tomorrow."

"How so?" She gave me a look that was somewhere between amused and secretive.

"You'll hear about it."

"Mystery suits you," I said.

"You'd be surprised." She turned to leave, then paused.

"Orion. For what it's worth, that was the cleanest elite clear I've had since the game started. If you ever want to party up again, you know where to find me."

"Likewise." A powerful ally in Serendine was not something anyone would refuse, especially if it meant keeping King's Glade on my good side. She walked across the bridge and disappeared into the crowd on the other side. Lune watched her go, then looked up at me.

"Yeah," I said.

"I know."

The sun had set by the time I reached the grove northeast of the city. The temperature had dropped with the light, and the countryside that had looked so idyllic during the day was now filled with a sort of tension that had not been present during the day. The farmhouses were closed now, their windows glowing with candlelight. The road was empty. I found Tatiana in the same spot as before, sitting on her fallen trunk. She didn't move all day at all?

She was eating again, something wrapped in cloth that she tucked away when she heard my approach.

"Orion," she said.

"You are late."

"Got held up. Anything new?"

"Smoke from chimney, four hours ago. Then it stopped. Candle appeared after. Same as yesterday." Same pattern as every other night, according to Igor. The man went about his routine and stayed put. Something felt off. I couldn't place it immediately, but as I studied the shack from our vantage point, I realized what it was. The candles in the farmhouses were different. As people inside moved around, they flickered. They responded to someone walking past them. This light was steady.

"The candle," I said.

"It's not flickering." Tatiana looked. She squinted through the darkness at the faint glow coming from the window.

"It does not."

"I'm going in," I said. Tatiana raised an eyebrow.

"The man could be dangerous." On one hand she was right. On the other, the quest notification hadn't changed, so I needed to do something. Besides…

"If that candle isn't flickering, that man could mean no problem whatsoever." She understood immediately. Her expression didn't change, but she closed her notebook and stood.

"I will watch door from here. If someone comes, I whistle." I nodded and moved through the trees, circling toward the shack from the east, where the door was. Lune stayed close, her body low to the ground, her ears flat, and I could tell that her curiosity was replaced by caution. I reached the door and pressed my back against the wall beside it. I listened. Nothing. No breathing, no movement, no creaking of floorboards. I tried the handle. It opened without resistance. The smell hit me first.

It wasn't overwhelming yet, but it was unmistakable: the stale, sour odor of a body that had been sitting in a closed room for too long. In the real world, it would have been far worse, but the game's systems seemed to handle decay differently, muting the worst of it while keeping just enough to tell you something had died. The shack was a single room; a table with two chairs, a crude fireplace with cold ashes.

And on the table, a small device I'd never seen before: a glass orb mounted on a brass stand, emitting a soft, steady light. A magic-powered lamp, designed to look like candlelight from outside. And on the cot, the man. He was on his back, eyes closed, arms at his sides. He could have been sleeping if not for the color of his skin and the thin line across his throat. I looked at his face. A scar ran diagonally over his left eye, exactly as Igor had described. The room had been cleaned.

No signs of struggle, no blood on the floor except for a dark stain beneath the cot that had been partially covered by a blanket. Whoever had done this had taken their time. They'd killed him, cleaned up, set the lamp, and left the shack looking exactly as it had when the man was alive. Three days of Tatiana watching a dead man's decoy. I stood in the doorway for a moment, processing. The trail was already cold before I got here, but now it seemed like it was frozen.

I was about to leave when something caught my eye. It was faint, barely visible, a shimmer near the base of the wall. I stepped closer and knelt. The shimmer intensified, resolving into the outline of a small iron box, roughly the size of a thick book, embedded in the wall. I could have sworn it hadn't been there a moment ago. A system notification appeared. Enchantment dissolved: Adventurer detected! Owner deceased. This object was concealed by a personal ward.

With the ward's caster no longer alive, the enchantment has expired. A safe! The man must have had it enchanted so that only he could see it. Whoever killed him couldn't have known it was there. I slid the box out. It was heavier than it looked, and the lock on the front was unusual: a small panel with an inscription I could read. Only those who walk between worlds may open this. Adventurer-locked. The same mechanism as the dungeon gates in Tidemark, the ones that had kept the Count's knights from entering.

Whatever this spy was, he'd designed his safe so that only a player could access it. I pressed my hand against the panel. The lock clicked, and the lid swung open. Inside was a single item: a leather-bound journal, small enough to fit in one hand. The text was written in a cipher. Every word, every line, was a series of symbols I didn't recognize: geometric shapes interlocking with what might have been letters from an alphabet I'd never seen.

Some pages had small diagrams, maps perhaps, but even those were annotated in the same unknown script. A few entries had dates written in standard numerals, which told me this was a chronological record, but the content was entirely locked behind whatever encoding system the spy had used. I flipped through the pages. There were dozens of entries, spanning what looked like weeks of observations. Whatever this man had been tracking, he'd been thorough about it. I couldn't read a word of it.

Quest updated: The Ghost of Tidemark The trail has gone cold. Calian's contact in Serendine has been found dead, and the conspirator himself has vanished. However, a coded journal was recovered from the scene. Find someone capable of deciphering the journal! I placed the book in my inventory and took one last look around the shack. There was nothing else here. No other hidden compartments, no documents, no evidence of what the spy had been doing in Serendine beyond this single, unreadable book.

I closed the door behind me and walked back to the treeline. Tatiana was waiting, her notebook open, her pen still.

"The man is dead," I said.

"Has been for days. Someone killed him and set up the lamp as a decoy. You've been watching a corpse." She closed her notebook slowly. If she was surprised, she didn't show it.

"The man you are looking for. He did this?"

"Most likely."

"Dangerous."

"He is." I looked at the shack one more time. The false candlelight still glowed in the window.

"Tell Igor the lead is dead, in every sense. And tell Tarrick I'll make sure the Count knows what the Flock did here. You've all earned your pay." She nodded once, tucked her notebook under her arm, and disappeared into the darkness without another word. I stood alone at the edge of the grove, Lune pressed against my leg, and stared at the shack for a long time. Calian had been here. He'd met with his allies, probably killed the one person who could have had answers, set a decoy to buy himself time, and vanished.

He knew someone would come looking. But he hadn't found the journal. That was something. I turned and started walking back toward the city. The night was cold, the road was empty, and somewhere in my inventory, a dead man's secrets were waiting to be read. I just had to find someone who could read them.