Chapter 105

Alvin looked at the wreckage. It did not appear to have been a Beyonder incident. There were no patterns to the fire and explosion and there was no unexplainable path the fire travelled by. There was a rather deep crater in the middle of the path to the shop, and it did look like what would be left behind if a barrel of gunpowder exploded.

Alvin went inside the shop and started looking around. There were broken and melted pieces of glass, and a bunch of other half burnt items.

"Thankfully, my customers usually stop coming after 7. So I packed up my shop, with the more important wines and the money in the safe inside. Otherwise, I would have lost much more than a 1000 pounds" said Marvin.

After taking another look at the entire thing, Alvin concluded that there probably were not any Beyonder elements included.

"You should follow up in the police station. Anyway, with your shop gone, you should be free. Stay there for a while, and keep bugging them for updates. If they do not seem to be proactively investigating, or there is no progress, you should come by my bar in the evening. I will introduce some bounty hunters to you" said Alvin.

Marvin agreed and went on his way.

Alvin went back to his bar, and asked Riccardo to find any information regarding the incident he could, and see if any gangs in the East Borough needed or were purchasing arms.

After that, Alvin went to the Nighthawks office.

"Alvin, how come you are here? The unit has a holiday for another week" said Gordon, when Alvin walked into his office.

"I am aware. But I have nothing else to do, and was wondering if there was something you could assign me to. I cashed out all of my contribution for the Lifesaver, and business at the bar has been slow. Hence, I am also low on money" said Alvin.

While he had a good amount of funds stored up, ever since he started madly buying all kinds of Beyonder ingredients, he was beginning to get low on money. He still had a few thousand pounds left, but it was all tired up in the various activities he had assigned to the intelligence unit under his command.

His best source of funds currently was to sell a few mystical items or Extraordinary characteristics to Kevin, but he probably wouldn't get the best price for them, as Kevin bought low and sold at a premium. Unless he was planning to sell something truly valuable, like the Lifesaver or the Lucky Necklace. But the Lifesaver was an important mystical item, that increased his combat power and lifesaving means and he wanted to save the Lucky Necklace for a rainy day.

Hence, he wanted some kind of work, where he could earn money, or contributions, which could be redeemed for money. If he managed to get a mission some rich person, he could sneakily claim some spoils of war from the safe of that person.

"Well, there is no major case in Backlund that requires a lot of manpower now. And for those smaller cases, more often than not, no one would want someone else coming along to share contributions. However, there are several requests from Nighthawks in the other parts of Loen for support. If you are open to going to a different place, I can see if some other unit or persons is going to some place to give support and talk to them, and see if I can have you accompanying them" said Gordon.

Alvin nodded and thanked Gordon.

"Well, I will send the news to you if there is something" said Gordon, after which Alvin left.

It had been 5 days since he showed off at the Pritz Harbour, and sniffed out Peter. He now knew the address and details of Peter, and a bunch of names from Baron Bramis. He couldn't investigate nobles for now, and he didn't want to contact Glaint and Audrey who could for some more time. So he was heavily focusing on Peter for now.

On the surface, Peter seemed to be a groom working for Baron Bramis, who had a reputation of being an unassuming noble, with little to no political power, who mostly minded his own business.

But from the conversation he overheard, he seemed to be doing some shady work for Baron Rudolf. And he was apparently the illegitimate son of Viscount Redfellow, one of the more influential noble who owned several ships, and had several businesses in Balam. Also, Bramis was having Peter do something for him this week, which on the surface would be exposing some flaws of Baron Bramis, but in reality, it was Bramis who was feeding him false clues, and probably getting him into a lot of trouble with the military or the churches. And to this end, Redfellow who was unaware that Peter was his illegeminate son, would later discover that Rudolf was the one who employed Peter to do the stuff that got him into trouble. He would inevitably be bothered by whoever was investigating Peter, and would thus rage on Rudolf who got him into trouble. And Bramis, who was totally 'unaware' of all this would get off scot-free. No attention would be placed on him.

Bramis had this well thought out plan in the works. He readily told Alvin about Peter having someone else backing him to prevent Alvin from going after him, as a clash that Alvin might cause targeting him would inevitably would draw attention to him, and even might expose the fact that he was a Beyonder.

Thus, Bramis elected to deflect Alvin by informing him that Peter had a backer. He was probably banking on Alvin taking at least a week figuring out that Rudolf was backing Peter. After a week, when whatever trap he had to implicate Peter was sprung, he could care less about what happened to Peter, and may even expose the backer Rudolf to Alvin on his own initiative.

It was a neat little conspiracy, but Alvin had no desire to just stand at the side. He wanted to actively participate in it.