Chương 26: Chapter 25: Dasten Dagwel (2)

"Plan until there is nothing left to chance—except what the enemy thinks he has chosen freely." – Seiran Farritz, the Second Vazaag of Korsivir The guards had no mana in their bodies, which matched what he had expected. If a pair of manaweavers had been guarding the gates of a small farming town like this one, he would have started wondering whether his mission had already been compromised.

As he stepped forward, Dasten sent a tiny pulse of mana into an ordinary looking ring on his little finger without moving his hand overtly. The ring looked old, and it had no gemstone.

Anything flashy would have looked ridiculous on the hand of a poor farmer, but a relic rarely needed to look showy. It only needed to work. It did. The ring answered immediately, waking with the mana he fed into it, drinking it greedily without any outward change to its appearance. Only then did Dasten lift his hand and gently fiddle with the ring, drawing the guards' attention to it. They only needed to look at it once. They did.

The relic slid a tiny whisper of suggestion into their minds the moment their eyes went to it. It didn't control their thoughts; it only did enough to make the sight of him feel familiar. They would think they had seen this dark-skinned farmer enter the town every evening for months. Just one more tired laborer returning from the fields. Nothing worth a closer look.

After more than a decade of experience in covert operations, influencing a couple of civilian guards to let him in would have been easy enough even without assistance. With the relic ring, it was almost an insult to his skills. Dasten didn't care. His pride mattered far less than making sure the mission succeeded. Besides, a normal illusion would have required hand signs, and going through that sequence in front of gate guards would have defeated the purpose before the technique even formed.

The relic ring worked differently. The effect was already built into the ring itself, needing mana to activate it, but no hand signs at all. Like most relics, it consumed far more mana than an ordinary technique, but Dasten had enough to spare.

"Name?" the standing guard drawled, leaning comfortably against the wooden palisade wall.

"Mellick," Dasten replied. It was a common enough name in this region for men of the age he was pretending to be. He had heard it before, years ago, during another mission in this duchy. The sitting guard scratched the name down.

"Reason for entering Firza?" Mellick tilted his head and gave the man a look.

"Come on, man... Gave ya the same answer yesterday! I jus' want t'go home t'ma fam'ly. I go ou' every damn day ta work the farms ou' there." The guard shrugged.

"Just doing our jobs, old man." Mellick huffed and crossed his arms.

"I'm hardly ol'. Barely seen forty w'nters m'self!"

"Then you're older than us for sure," the sitting guard said with a grin.

"That makes ya an old man!" Mellick guffawed loudly.

"Can't argue wit' that, can I?"

"Off you go, then." The standing guard jerked his thumb toward the town.

"Thank ya kindly," Mellick said, giving them a nod before trudging through the gate. The sun had already set, and Firza was sinking into a near darkness as he completed the first phase of his mission. Infiltration successful. Dasten almost laughed. Sending a veteran SABLE captain on this kind of simple mission would have made him think the SABLE commander was amusing himself at Dasten's expense, if he didn't know better. But the order had come from the Vazaag himself, and that meant there was more behind it.

Whether he liked the mission or not, the job had to be done. As usual, he would follow the mission parameters and do it cleanly. He could have entered the town far more easily by climbing the palisade after dark, or slipping past the guards at speed, and he would have been inside before anyone knew a manaweaver had come within a hundred paces of the wall. He wouldn't even have needed two days of observation for that. But this was a false flag operation. That meant Mellick had to exist. A Vamiri laborer.

A hard worker. A man who had recently migrated into Sartrene and found work in the paddy fields. Someone who looked like an ordinary farmer on the surface, but had just enough mana training hidden underneath to be dangerous. After tonight's events, the first question would be who this Mellick person was. The answer would come easily enough.

The town guards would remember admitting him regularly through Firza's gates, and the farmers working across the river would know him as just another Vamiri man trying to settle into life in a new country. Quiet. Useful. Hardworking enough that no one had any reason to question him. That was the part investigators were supposed to discover. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

For the past two days, Dasten had worn Mellick's face and spoken to the farmers on the eastern bank while pretending to take a break from work, using the relic ring where needed to make the disguise settle more comfortably in their minds. Not too much. Just enough that when people were asked about Mellick later, they would remember him as a real person. The guards would remember him too. Dark skin like most Vamiri people. Vamiri accent. Just a tired farmer coming back from the fields after a hard day's work.

No plausible connection to Korsivir. Any overly curious investigator would still ask how a simple paddy farmer had managed to do so much damage. That was when they would dig deeper and find Mellick hadn't been a simple farmer after all. A failed Mana Academy student from Vamir, perhaps, going by his appearance and accent. A man with enough mana training to use it—estimated to be a D-rank threat—but not enough talent or standing to belong among Vamir's real manaweavers.

Someone who had hidden what he was while waiting for the right moment to strike. That would be the hidden truth they found. Because it would feel like a hard-earned answer, the investigators would stop looking any deeper. After tonight, they would not think of Korsivir or Varrenia. They would think of Vamir.

They would think of all the poor Vamiri laborers inside Sartrene, and of the numerous such men working the barges, docks, transshipment ports, and paddy fields all along the Rubarin River for low wages in miserable working conditions. Mellick would turn out to be just another migrant among them, dissatisfied with the life he had found in Sartrene. Just an unstable man with violent ideals. No one special. No one worth remembering after the investigation files were closed.

Despite all the commotion tonight's events would cause, Sartrene could not afford to throw out every Vamiri laborer in the duchy, even if it wanted to—not with its persistent labor shortage. Any sudden increase in security along the riverside towns would only be temporary, leaving the door open for other similar missions in this region in the future. No trail leading back to Korsivir. No records of a blond-haired infiltrator from that city.

That was probably why the Vazaag had assigned Dasten to a mission that seemed this simple on paper. He didn't just have to finish the job—he had to make sure every suspicion turned toward Vamir and stayed there. And Dasten had more than enough experience doing that kind of work. He grinned. If it also worsened tensions between Sartrene and Vamir, all the better for his homeland. Dasten kept walking through the packed dirt streets with the slow-moving crowd of returning farmers.

Firza was poor, and it showed in the patched up wooden buildings, the oil lamps burning in windows and above shopfronts, and the dark streets where richer towns would have had electric lights. He knew from a past mission that Sartrene City, the capital of this duchy, did have electrical bulbs in its better districts, but a small town like this could not afford a power plant nearby. Not with the cost of mana cores being what it was these days. Here, people still relied on oil lamps, candles, and habit.

That was one of the reasons Firza had been chosen. Most of the shops he passed served farmers and dock workers. Farming tools and dock gear hung from hooks outside one store. A cobbler was closing his shutters. A tailor had already put away most of his wares. Nearby, a blacksmith cleaned up for the night while two carpenters urgently worked to repair an old cart under candle light as its owner hurled complaints at them. Farther down, a cooper hammered a loose iron hoop back around a barrel.

Then Dasten smelled fresh bread. He slowed. A bakery stood near the corner on the street, its windows glowing warm from an oven inside. A few loaves had been set out near the front, along with buns filled with smoked meat. After a week of dry SABLE rations, the smell hit harder than it should have. Can I? After a moment of thought, he decided that a tired farmer buying something warm on his way home wouldn't look out of place.

Dasten stepped inside and bought two pieces of sweet bread, along with a few meat buns wrapped in a scrap of clean cloth. The extras would go into a storage rune later, once he was away from prying eyes. For now, he ate as he walked. The bread was still warm, and that alone made the detour worth it. He kept moving through the town, studying the layout while making it look as if he was only trudging home.

Before long, he found a wider path turning to the right, and when he followed it, he saw a three-story wooden building at the end of the street, set behind its own palisade and gate. Four guards stood outside with spears and swords. It was the same building he had observed from his perch across the river, the only structure in Firza tall enough to rise above most of the rooftops. That had to be the baron's manor. Perfect. A moment of focus confirmed that none of the gate guards had any noticeable amount of mana.

Civilian guards again. Still, he was expecting at least one rogue mana user among the baron's personal protection, even if someone like that wouldn't be wasted standing at the gate. He would be kept closer to the baron himself. Dasten wasn't a true sensor, so from here, he couldn't tell if anyone inside the manor had mana reserves worth noting.

But even minor nobles liked to hire the best security they could afford, and Firza's tolls would be earning its baron enough that he was unlikely to sleep without stronger protection nearby. Dasten kept eating as he turned left without going too close to the gates and began to circle around the compound. He moved through side streets and narrow alleys, studying the building from every angle he could. The manor house itself stood in the middle of the fenced compound.

Most of its windows were ordinary in size, but one of them on the top floor was much wider than the others and faced east, where it would have offered a sweeping view of the Rubarin River and the paddy fields beyond. Knowing nobles and their love of comfort, that was almost certainly the baron's room. Sadly, the window was barred with wooden shutters right now. Perhaps the baron had already retired for the night? Dasten could break it open easily enough, but that would draw immediate attention.

Mellick was not supposed to have the mana control to cling to walls, break through a locked window, and fend off guards at the same time. His mission required him to remain within the limits of the identity he had built. So that option was out. Once he had a good idea of the layout, Dasten turned into a darker alley beside a closed shop and finished the last of the bread. It was time to start.

With a small push of mana, he stored the remaining meat buns in a storage rune on his bicep, where they would last for a few days without going bad. They would wait until he began the nearly week-long journey back to Korsivir, serving as his reward for completing his last mission as a SABLE captain. Finally, he formed a few quick hand signs and modified the mirage of Mellick he was wearing. A short sword appeared on his back. The sword had been there all along, hidden beneath the illusion.

Now it would be visible if anyone saw him. When the weapon was noticed by the guards, Mellick's story would still hold together: either he had stolen it inside Firza, or he had kept it hidden somewhere in town and retrieved it for tonight. From this point on, what Dasten was about to do would be too difficult for an ordinary laborer, but that was part of the deception too.

Mellick was not supposed to be harmless, only weak enough that the lie still made sense—someone who had failed to earn a proper place among Vamir's manaweavers and drifted into Sartrene for work, while still carrying old loyalties. It always felt strange to handicap himself for a mission, though this was hardly the first time. It probably would not be the last either. Dasten took a deep breath, bent his knees, and jumped.