: Task

Right after Kaz reminds us once again that he doesn't care for common sense or decorum, leaping a twenty-five-meter-high wall in a casual step, we do as suggested and head into town like normal travelers, looking for an inn.

Sleeping in real beds is something I can easily come to terms with, and it's probably the only good thing traveling with this drunk has brought me so far.

What I can't reconcile is: why he doesn't take any steps to avoid being known, no masks, false names or false trails to throw off stalkers.

Nothing but constant movement and confidence in your own power.

This same Kaz, referred to something as urgent, and that's causing the year and a half as a fugitive to paint every small gesture with unhealthy paranoia.

"Do you know where you're going, Mingten?" Baha asks as he follows me into the city.

"No, but I know what to look for." I answer.

"What would it be?" He asks again, while I feel eyes on the back of my head and I have to hold back not to check if someone is watching me every ten seconds.

"Any inn, in other words we're not going to look for the best place in town and obviously we're going to avoid the worst. Basically we're going to stay somewhere so average that even the residents here don't know the difference between one establishment and another." I respond, consciously controlling my breathing and my steps.

"It's ridiculously easy to tell if someone is running from something by how much a person checks and reacts to every shadow around them." I can almost hear Yanan, scolding me for being half a step away from throwing his training out the window.

It's just as hard to fake casualness when you have reason to fear the shadows, Yanan. Especially when I'm getting used to having a cruel sun to ward them off.

With these daydreams to distract me, we arrive at a featureless inn before Baha manages to ask me another question.

I stop at the entrance and take in the place, three stories high, similar to most commercial buildings in town, the same cheap whitewashed stuff I've seen on half the houses around here.

Will serve.

We entered the building, wooden floors, two sofas in the corners against the walls, and a counter that must have been repurposed from a bankrupt tavern, well, a passable place, just what I wanted.

Ignoring the manager's 'I don't want to waste my time with you, I'll just do the least that my role requires' look, amazing what people can convey with subtle behavior, and unfortunately I can't ignore these subtleties anymore.

Despite the hostile attitude, I go to the counter and Baha, with some common sense, walks away, staying a good ten paces behind. Has he realized that surrounding an old citizen can be intimidating?

"Excuse me do you have three rooms free?" I ask the manager, ignoring the discomfort his slightly irritated look causes me.

"Hahh, second floor, pay half the amount of your stay today."

Yep, he sure as hell doesn't mind being hospitable.

"Okay." I reply, resigning myself to the owner's terms.

We go up to our rooms after giving Mr. Antipathy the money, yes he also gets a silly nickname that I just use to sarcastically refer to someone in my mind, this time it's not even a kind of irony just a literal description.

The room is not much different from the last time we stayed at an inn.

Baha has already gone to his room, which is probably the same as this one.

"Now I must face my third greatest enemy after the traitors of the Order and my paranoia: boredom." I mumble this nonsense to myself because as I said, I'm bored.

Okay, free time and boredom, the universe telling me to be productive. Probably.

How to be productive then? Training would be the most obvious answer, but that raises another question: training what?

Obviously I'm not going to train anything flashy or destructive in this limited space... swordsmanship.

The basics are also important after all, I train for half an hour until I hear someone approach the door, Baha and Kaz, the latter could interfere with my perception to arrive unnoticed so is this his way of saying he has something serious to talk about?

Baha knocks on the door, I open it and gesture for them to enter.

"Have you solved your problem?" I ask the self-proclaimed blacksmith.

"No, it turned out not to be as urgent as I feared, so I decided to make this 'problem' a task for you." He responds by sounding a little more serious than usual without the sadistic smile but relaxed enough not to sound like something we should be afraid of.

"What would it be?" I ask him.

"There is a cult of fanatics originating from the Eternal Dawn world, Cult of the Gray Flame, preaching in this town with the little help of narcotics."

"What does this have to do with us?" My voice interrupts him.

"Honestly, nothing. It's just a consequence of me being asked to train you." Does he respond without showing any irritation, has he been practicing his poker face or is he just calmer?

"Which also means I'm not asking whether or not you want to do this, you will, simple as that." He responds with an authoritative tone.

"Okay, what are we going to do with this cult?" I ask again.

"You're going to steal some pebbles from them." The sadistic smile almost returned to his lips.

"Lapis?"

"Exactly."

Now I must be the one with the silly smile.

"How?"

"So you're going to pretend to be another couple of curious civilians doing this just to be intriguing, and you're going to...

****

The next day I insisted that the two brats start the day following the training routine, without the exercises this time, I don't want them exhausted and possibly surrounded, just one or the other, never both.

The brats will take a while to find the cultists, after all I didn't give them the location, so we have to wait for some idiot cultists to try to spread his beloved gospel.

With that information in my mind I head to the tavern, same as last time, I need some alcohol for the trip.

"Excuse me." I say as I open the door without waiting for an answer.

The door was already open, I didn't break into the place, the owner probably leaves the place open for occasional customers like me.

Unlike the day before, this time the man who served me is dusting the counter and shelves that would normally be filled with bottles of liquor.

"I was pretty confident I was never going to serve you a drink again" He replies a little after I walk in "What brings you back?"

"I didn't think I was going to come back here either, but I and my companions have a task to complete before we leave, I thought I'd take the extra time to stock up on some liquor for the trip."

"Stressful trip?" he asks with the same perpetual calm tone he has every time I've heard him speak.

"Not exactly, I just wanted to delay the confrontation it might bring me a little longer." I reply, "But there's also a part of me that knows I'm tempted to put off this confrontation until the end of time."

"I can't say that I understand you, the closest I must have felt is when I procrastinated on some tasks." It's similar, really.

"No, it's exactly like that." I reply "Now to the reason that brought me here, what drink do you recommend for the trip?" Two more weeks without something to muffle the noise and I'll probably do genocide.

"How about rum, since it's a drink associated with travel, maritime, but still." Is the logic of this recommendation thematic? Maybe I should rent a boat.

"Good sugestion." I think.

"Here it is." He places two bottles of rum on the table, one crystal clear and the other golden brown.

"Difference in storage?" I ask seeing the difference in colors.

"Yes, the transparent one is the normal result, the other one was kept in oak barrels, hence the color."

"Well, as long as there's alcohol I think it's fine." I reply as I pay for the two bottles of pirates' distilled courage.

As soon as I leave the tavern I start moving to the less populated parts of town.

CLANG, CLANG.

The sound of clashing metal, inaudible to the general population at this distance, not second-stage Synchroners or greater.

After ten minutes of walking through the remote areas of the city I start to notice more and more people walking in the opposite direction of mine.

The party's started, brats.

**************

As arranged with the gallon drinker, I dragged Baha with me through the city's most suspicious streets.

"Mingten, is that a good idea?"

"No, but being hostile to the emperor-killing drunk is probably worse."

"Damn it." That didn't sound like despair, more like resignation.

As we approach the poorer areas, which are consequently less guarded, I can hear someone yelling to passers-by.

"This world is impure, only fire purifies, let everything return to ashes to be reborn!"

I think it's our cult, bunch of freaks.

"We found one of them, now what?" Baha asks me, forcing himself to calm down.

"Let's ask what the nonsense he is talking about" I answer "only politely." I add to my answer.

"That simple?" he asks again.

"Did you end up here because of some complicated scheme?" I return the question.

"No." He replies dissatisfied "I'm here because a certain Synchroner decided to use Synchro tricks against someone normal."

"See, simple, I just changed the game so I sure win." You can't lose if you take this option out of the game.

"Basically cheating."

"It wasn't against the rules." I'm not making excuses, it just wasn't.

"But against common sense." He sighs, he's probably realized that I'm not going to admit a mistake, that I don't even see it as one "can we just move on to the part where we stole the cultist, please."

"Baha, you don't have any subtlety when you want to change the subject" Not that I'm much better, just better than Baha in this matter.

"I know." What a dry answer.

We approach the cultist and I ask:

"Excuse me, what are you talking about?" Obviously I took all the sneer out of my voice and expression and switched it to curiosity.

"At least one person has eyes to see that this world is headed for destruction." He responds, with dramatic gestures. Uncomfortable, and weren't you the one who just told everyone to burn?

"I'm sorry the world doesn't seem to want to end anytime soon, as the people who live in it are case by case." Take the bait, please.

"I see you still see the world with the worldly eye" No I have already awakened my sixth sense "Come with me and I'll show you how this world is rotting."

Cultist hooked, so far so good.

He starts walking towards one of the alleys more isolated from the rest of the streets, almost stepping on a beggar meanwhile, I hadn't even seen him, I thought it was part of the landscape.

Anyway, we followed the cultist through the alley, where on the other side two more cultists were heading our way.

Second stage, all three, this can be tricky. Kaz, you'd better fulfill your part of the plan.

"Excuse me," Baha asks, doing his best to hide the discomfort that being surrounded by higher stage Synchroners is causing "how does being in an alley prove the world has rotted exactly?"

"The alley itself doesn't prove anything, we just wanted a place isolated from the disbelievers... some of them might react with... unnecessary drama to what we're going to do." The cultist who led us down the alley responds, carefully choosing his words.

One of the two cultists heading our way passes by and stands behind us.

They are obviously not naive.

"Now we will purify you" the cultist who guided us says "and then you will see how the world must be." A flame in three shades of gray appears over the cultist's ring, lapis stone, when he has finished speaking, and in sequence the other two light their rings one at a time with the same gray flame.

"Fire" Baha says, annoyed? Probably. "Again!?"