Chapter 58: Songbird

The moment Weaver left his cell, exhaustion overtook Sol as he slumped to the ground. Four hours of intense training where a single mistake led to a hard beating wore him down. It wasn't just physically intensive but also mentally as he had to learn to read his opponent and differentiate a real attack from a weak one or a feint.

Feints overall were the worst if he committed himself to using [Counter] on them as it would not connect and he would be left completely open to a solid jab in his stomach or a kick to his sides.

By the end of the session, Sol did not win once against the dummy, though that was taking into account that he didn't use any non-sword related skills. While Sol did want to win to gain answers he doubted Weaver would accept that loss if he didn't use what he was taught to win. The man would likely have a fit and go harder on him. On the bright side before Weaver left he did leave Sol with some food.

Sol was starving from his training and excitedly opened the box he received to finally eat a nice meal. His expectant expression was destroyed the moment he saw what was in the box. There was a hard piece of bread and broth, not even meat or vegetables but the leftover broth.

Sol rarely cursed but upon seeing this he wanted to shout every expletive in the book at whoever made this meal and ban him from entering a kitchen ever again.

'What the fuck is this? I don't even know if it's safe to eat!'

Even though Sol had [Iron Stomach], a skill that reinforced his digestive system to handle more and worse food he really didn't want to eat the food provided and luckily he didn't have to. After retrieving the hidden spatial ring Sol took out more dried jerky and a pouch of water. Even though it tasted bland it was infinitely more preferable than eating that poor excuse of a meal.

While eating Sol decided to take this chance to contact the Guildmaster and inform them of what he knew so far. From the spatial ring Sol took out the communication gem and he wanted to examine it more but the room was too dark to do so. But luckily Sol remembered of a fire spell he knew and decided it was better now than never to try it.

"Summon a small wisp to light the dark, [Candlelight]."

A small red wisp of fire came into existence gently illuminating the surroundings. The fire hovered over Sol's shoulder as he further inspected the communication gem. It wasn't a raw gem but processed with almost invisible lines traced across. While Sol wasn't an expert in magical items he had heard from others that when mana is inserted into the gem it resonates with its identical twin and essentially echoes whatever is said from one to the other.

That's as much as Sol knew and he just wanted to look at it out of curiosity as he had never seen a communication gem before. Once he had seen enough Sol inserted a small amount of mana. The gem vibrated softly as if linked with its twin on the other side of the city.

…

In the Adventurers Guild Trevor was leaning against his counter bored at the lack of people approaching him for assistance. Just as he contemplated taking a break a gem under his counter started vibrating. Surprised at the timing he stumbled to grab it but luckily did so before it fell to the ground.

Trevor inserted a bit of mana to complete the resonance connection and answered.

"Songbird here, what do you need Molerat?"

A voice emanated from the crystal.

"Songbird? Molerat? Is that you Trevor?"

"Shhh we aren't supposed to use our real names."

"What? Why?"

"Umm, I actually don't know… My girlfriend said that's what spies normally do."

The voice didn't respond as they tried to find the logic in what he said.

"I guess I am spying on these people but where did she hear that from?"

"A book..." Upon reflection, Trevor realized that he maybe shouldn't have taken her advice.

"...I see. Anyways, I found out a few things."

"Oh really? Let me write it down."

Sol, speaking from the small gem, narrated his findings of the auction room and how he believed they were sold. He put a greater emphasis on the transmission orb he found thinking it could maybe be used to track down the buyers in the auction. Trevor did have some knowledge of how these types of magic objects worked and knew it could not be done.

"Hate to break it to you Sol but that item sounds like it is modified for open transmission. Which means anyone who gets an orb with that frequency will be able to watch and send messages back. While it can't be tracked directly, there is a limit to how far the transmission reaches. If we get the orb we can figure out how far it goes and narrow our search, I doubt it reaches to the far ends of the kingdom."

"Well, at least that's something… That's all I have for now, I'll try sneaking around again later and hopefully find something else."

"I wish you the best of luck, stay safe."

The other party seemed to have cut off the connection as the communication gem stopped vibrating. Trevor put the gem back where it was and put away the report he wrote to turn in later. It wasn't urgent and the Guildmaster wasn't in the building so he decided to wait till later.

…

Back in the dark stone cell Sol deactivated the communication crystal and put it away. He doubted anyone would check in on him until tomorrow so he was free to snoop around. After hiding away the ring Sol once again used [Burrow] to leave his cell and continue exploring the underground base.