Thief

Cyrus was relaxing with Visne underneath the tree as morning came. He summoned one of the fruits in his inventory enjoying the meal for breakfast. Feeding Visne as well he then proceeded to stand up and stretch. It was a new day and even in the Rift his daily quest still retained. He devoured a couple of his Gamma crystals allowing the side quest to become completed. When he saw the rewards screen he raised his eyebrows.

[Side Quest completed!]

[Rewards: +2 SP, Title: Crystal Eater]

[New title acquired: Crystal Eater]

[Crystal Eater: Using the Devour Skill on crystals grants you 25% more CP of the value of the Crystal. Alternatively, Crystals can now be used as a source of temporary power. Each tier granting the user 2 points per tier in a all Stats of their choice for 5 minutes. Only one Crystal can be used at a time, useable again after 12 hours.]

Cyrus looked at the title with a big smile on his face. He didn't expect to see titles at all or even grant boons or abilities. With the idea of using crystals as a boost of power it made sense to grind out lower tier chaos beasts to have more crystals at his disposal. The time between the boost of power though wasn't his favorite though. But for something that could add stats for just using a single Crystal was expected to have a draw back like that.

But now he felt like it was a good thing to have when he needed more stats for something much more difficult to fight. He started doing his basic warmups, meditation, CQC which he had Fenrir be summoned in werewolf form so he could have a partner to practice with. Which he found that Fenrir had some combat prowess when it came to CQC combat. Almost like he was mimicking his attacks with some difficulty.

[Training your partner: 0%]

[Complete training to give Fenrir new skills.]

This message popped up when he began practicing with Fenrir. It was an unexpected turnout than he thought as Fenrir struggled to keep up as he was only able to mimic his attacks. It was a slow process, but he managed to bump it up by 0.5% for his 2 hours of training. It was going to take a long time to unlock more skills for Fenrir, but it was something to work towards. He just wondered why he didn't try this sooner.

As he returned Fenrir to his shackle and switched it back to Fafnir's Shackle, he heard someone calling for the Renegade. Visne craned her head over to see 10 people walking towards Cyrus. She immediately felt like her master was in danger. Peeling herself from the ground she quickly hopped over to his side and covered him with her wings. The sound of creaking wood as she started to petrify and become heavily defensive. Her normal light brown body now a darkened gray almost shiny black. As if she were polished obsidian.

"Renegade!" Urik called out, "I have some questions for you!" Cyrus could tell by the tone in his voice that he was becoming slightly more aggressive as he got closer. As Urik stood 10 yards from Cyrus with Hilda beside him and 9 others with weapons ready. Cyrus felt like he was in a bad situation.

"Did our deal change? Please explain why you have weapons trained on me." Cyrus demanded, he didn't move his hands or body an inch. As sudden movements could turn this whole situation south. Urik stepped forward and slammed the head of his warhammer into the ground, his voice commanding and carrying authority in every word.

"Did you steal anything from our camp?" Cyrus said he didn't, "Did you move from this spot at all during the night?" Again he denied the accusation. "Did you see anyone leave the settlement last night?" Cyrus felt the question was more aimed as to see if he had seen a suspicious individual the night before.

"No, I didn't, I was talking with Hilda before she left to sleep for the night. I hadn't left from that tree until this morning." Urik squinted his eyes looking at Cyrus closely. It was hard to tell if he was lying as Urik couldn't see his face. But what Cyrus didn't know was that he had cast a spell on his warhammer that anyone with 10 yards would be unable to lie to him.

Cyrus slowly raised his hand and placed it on Visne, "Easy, I have no intention of harming anyone here." Visne let her bark like skin revert back to normal as she then vanished back into Cyrus' shackle. "Captain, I really hope you aren't suspecting me of theft. Cause I can swear anything to say I didn't do anything but stay here and train in the morning. But it's up to you to decide if I am lying. I will hopefully offer my assistance in finding the thief for I have no intention of robbing or hurting anyone here."

Hilda looked at Cyrus then when she saw him standing there with no defensive support, it was as if he was laying his trust out to bare for everyone to see. Hilda then stepped forward and faced the crowd, "If he says he didn't do it, then we have to take it by his word." Urik was about to interrupt, but Hilda kept going. "Yes I treasure my stuff greatly, but to lose an ally like the Renegade, we could never hope to defeat the boss." The others looked at each other then to Urik.

The man stood there with his hammer still within reach, then said, "Then what do you suggest we do? How are we supposed to figure out who had taken it." That is when Cyrus cleared his throat loud enough for everyone to hear.

"If you'd permit me, I can have one of my summons locate the object in question." Urik looked at him and asked him how he planned to find it. "I can use these guys to help Hilda and I locate her lost property." Cyrus then summoned six large wolves who howled as they spawned in with bursts of flames. The group of people readied their weapons but Urik raised his hand.

[CEP: 81/107]

"You should have said something about summoning your creatures." Urik lowered some of his men's weapons and looked at Cyrus. "So you intend to use the wolves' senses to find who did it." Urik looked back towards his mean and made a few gestures and the men separated allowing the wolves to trot on through. "You better not be planning anything." Urik said, which made Cyrus feel like he got stabbed with a hot iron.

"I will not betray my word, if one does not uphold their word, they have no right to live." Cyrus said as the echoing voice over made it sound sinister and intense then he meant for it to be. He looked to Hilda who bowed her head and led them to her tent. Cyrus had the wolves surround the group as they would sniff the air. Their fur seemed to be in constant motion as if they were living flames as each strand has a purple tint to them.

Hilda had stopped in front of a fairly large tent which was more or less in the center of their camp. For she was their researcher and long range mage. Pulling back the tarp the wolves entered with a nod from Cyrus. They began sniffing about trying to get the smell of her as accurate as they could get.

"Should I offer something to help?" But Cyrus just shook his head which made Hilda turn to look at the six large dogs in her tent. "I just hope they don't leave hair behind, would be a nightmare to clean." Some of the men outside chuckled but Urik gave one of them a slap upside the head. As they returned to being quiet one of the wolves barked as the other wolves turned their heads to the sound of the bark.

Just then the wolves began running out of the tent towards the western entrance. "Seems like they found something," Cyrus said giving chase to his wolves. The others followed but were losing distance on Cyrus as he was much faster than most of them. The only one to keep up was Urik and Dan, a man who had the power of super speed. Well, one could consider it super speed, as him moving fast enough to vanish from sight.

Dan was right next to Cyrus who turned to see the man running rather quickly to stay at pace. It almost looked like he was a stop motion animation the way his movements overlapped in such a way. While Urik was a wide striding giant. Ever four steps Cyrus took, was one of Urik's long strides. Even in full plate armor, he could keep up.

'If I can convince this guy to join me, he would be an incredible force to be reckoned with.' However, the problem was he didn't know what each of the followers would get as a benefit for following him. He still hasn't even spoken to Malinda from the Castle yet. He needed to understand what having followers meant in the long run. He guessed Fenrir would tell him if he knew it benefited the old dog.

As the three men now stood at the gate with the wolves, Urik looked towards Cyrus. "Is the trail leading outside?" Cyrus swapped his shackles and his senses became sharpened greatly. He was now smelling something sweet like mangos and flowers as the wolves were smelling the same thing. But the problem with the scent, it was dirty. Like the scent was being smothered and covered to prevent it from being tracked easily.

Though, the person likely didn't expect Cyrus to have such senses or wolves to trace it. Which gave him an idea as to who it could be. But he didn't want to jump to conclusions just yet. 'Innocent till proven guilty and all that,' Cyrus thought as he pushed open the doors. The large doors swung open with dust and the loud creaking sound of stone grinding against stone. Urik and Dan saw this and didn't expect to see someone push open almost 10 tons worth of weight with relative ease. However, they didn't see Cyrus' face as he struggled to push the door open. As it only partially opened and was slow in doing so. But that didn't matter as the feat alone made the two wonder just who was this man.

'How can he push the doors open by himself?' Urik watched as the Renegade seemed to almost restrict himself as he had eyes on him. 'They were made with condensed rock and metal to add to its durability and weight.' Urik was astonished and now worried. 'What mage has the strength to do this?'

Cyrus felt like he made a mistake opening the door, but nothing can be done about it now. As the wolves were now on the move. However, they didn't go West, they instead went North. Seeing this, Cyrus stopped and turned to the group, knowing what awaited them that way.

"Our thief ran in the direction of the boss..."