A New Star Chapter 123 (Patreon)

Cutting down the other four guards happened swiftly; I didn’t want to toot my own horn too much in such a situation, but I was rather strong, and undead weren’t known to be particularly resilient to magics like lightning and fire. Gungnir amplified that even further, the lightning cast through it being even more destructive towards anything of an evil or foul nature, though my own lightning was already very strong against such things. Gorge had managed to clear up the hallway in the meantime and I commanded him to maintain his position while I made sure the office was clear. The mayor, predictably, tried to scramble from around his desk and run, still wailing something essentially incoherent the whole time. I tripped him the haft of Gungnir as he tried to pass, locking his hands and feet in ice after he fell. Normally, one might worry about frost bite being left in such a situation, but I cared little for the mayor, and I predicted he had an expiration date coming up very, very soon.

I quickly checked the office, finding the undead now dead again, and nothing else was hiding anywhere I could detect, though Alex’s senses did give me readings on more than one artifact hidden in the room. It wasn’t as if the mayor had carefully stashed things that he was intent on using, or even selling, at a later date, but more like there had been things placed in areas around the office to be stored there temporarily. Even the cult treated the mayor like a disposable lackey, and given the man’s disposition and intelligence, or lack thereof, I wasn’t really surprised.

The important thing to get to was the paperwork, and I quickly gathered up everything on the desk and emptied the drawers into a large box that looked like it had bottles of alcohol in at one point. Whatever the case, it was a document storage container now, and I grabbed just about everything that wasn’t nailed down. I use the communicator to call the team to collapse into the city hall; they had kept the place surrounded and swept up any who had tried to run. Now, they made their way in from all sides and gathered up everyone else; separating the good from the bad was going to take a lot of time and effort. Not time and effort that I had to spend, fortunately, and I let them round everyone up and clear the building as I continued to investigate the office.

The obvious thing to look at was the desk, which had eight drawers on the front part. The thing was a massive edifice of wood, polished to a sheen, and had to weigh close to half a ton. The thing was way too gaudy and ostentatious and far too massive for the desk of a simple mayor, even if that mayor was in control of an important city. Hell, I didn’t think the current king had a desk this massive or ornately gilt, and he was a bit of a sucker for gold and glint, from what I had heard. The size of the thing also made it hard to determine just how deep the drawers should be, but I had never had bad proprioception and was able to figure out that one of the drawers was obviously shorter than it should be. It was so obvious, in fact, that it made me nervous the thing was intentionally trapped, but I decided to still proceed, just with caution.

There were all kinds of traps that could be in such a place, especially considering the owner of the desk was working with a death cult that practiced necromancy, but I found a rather ordinary and boring poison trap when I attempted to remove the back panel. I had seen this kind of thing before in my last life, though I wasn’t exactly a master of espionage then, but dealing with poison traps was something I had become familiar with to a large extent. Even without my equipment and body from my previous life, and factoring in the greater extent that external affinities could change things, getting the false door off and getting the documents out without getting poisoned wasn’t all that hard. The thing to be more careful of was some way to destroy the documents, but I guess either the mayor didn’t think of that or didn’t want them destroyed in the case of a crisis. I had never understood people who couldn’t keep the simple details of a single agreement in their heads, but it was always useful that such rubes kept the details of their nefarious dealings laying about.

“Wrap it up, Gorge. We’re done here,” I said, putting everything in the crate and handing it to him as I left the office.

“What about the mayor?” Gorge asked as he followed after me.

“What about?” I replied, giving Gorge a confused look.

“Shouldn’t we bring him?” Gorge asked.

“Gorge!” there was a shout then, coming from Miriam, who ran up ahead of several others before seeming to remember herself and slowing to a fast walk. “Are you unharmed?”

“I’m fine, Mir,” he said, shifting the crate so he could set a comforting hand on her arm when she approached.

“The man is bound in his office. He’s all yours,” I said to the same woman Milton had brought to the underground room.

“Understood,” she said, directing people to fan out down the hallway and check other rooms before she went into the mayor’s office.

“Let’s go,” I said, leading the way down the stairs.

“To where?” Gorge asked, falling in step behind me with Miriam beside him.

“To where? Well, you’re going back to the count’s residence and dropping off those documents. I have another stop,” I said.

“We can go with you-“ Gorge began.

“Gorge. I wasn’t asking for input. I was issuing orders. Best leave the next part to me,” I said, holding up a hand. “You did well against the undead in there. Go back and help with the cleanup, after dropping that crate off. That will have all the justification Milton and your father need for their following actions. I have a second stop to make.”

Gorge nodded before turning and walking off. I could hear Miriam trailing him, asking about the undead and what I meant about the fight, but I dismissed it as I turned down the street and strode off. I had two more stops to make, actually, if not three, but I wasn’t going to tell the kids…uh, rather, the young fighters that. The first was just down the way, so I had to do a bit of a route so they didn’t see me just walk to it, but I also wasn’t concerned with doing everything in a proper manner. The law still landed very heavily in favor of nobles in this world and I was at the top of that pyramid right now and intended to take advantage of that to a large degree. I had more than enough grounds for what I was about to do, which was already sufficient, but even if I didn’t, I had justification from another source.

Anyway, I was visiting our young baron, which I had planned to do after the raid, and thus had my people positioned around his manse. I slipped in through the back and faded into The Dark, moving so his handful of security personnel wouldn’t see me moving across the grounds and into the manor. He had far more servants inside, and I was sure some of them were plants, especially considering the way a few of the servants moved and acted. There was some passable acting happening, but a few of these people were trained warriors, and now it was just about determining which ones were tainted by death and necromancy and which were just the regular spies from other wealthy households. There were more than one might think, but the young baron had made some waves recently, and all eyes in the area had turned to him, so much so that word had spread back to the capital that something was happening, but that had been a minor stir so far.

It was easy for me, even in The Dark, to make determinations, as Alex’s power was so strong that death and necromancy stood out, the second in particular, no matter the thin veil of another reality separating me from the people I was passing. There were only two people that I clocked inside the house itself as being plants from the cult, but those people were easy to handle. The first was a maid that looked fairly normal, if a bit pale, but she was easy to grab and drag into The Dark. I had not actually pulled another conscious human into The Dark against their will so far, and the reaction was interesting, to say the least. The made first acted like a puppet with its strings cut, though the presence of necromancy didn’t decrease, but increased instead.

I assume that what was to happen next was to be her becoming infused with necromantic energy and turning into an abomination or the like, but The Dark certainly had some other ideas. As she started building up energy and transforming, there was a stirring, and a wave of pure midnight black power slammed into her. She bent back like she was under enormous pressure and made to scream, but no sound escaped her lips as her body twisted and broke. I had seen enough, and Gungnir was in my hand as if it had always been there, thrusting straight and true. What was left of her heart after the conversion process was obliterated by the spear and lightning magic, and the remains of the corpse dissolved into dust and particles and disappeared into The Dark. For just a moment, it felt as if a great eye had opened somewhere and was watching, but then the impression disappeared as if it had never happened.

‘That was…unsettling,’ Alex said in my mind.

‘Something to note and keep track of, but it doesn’t appear to be a worry for this moment,’ I replied, moving back to a more surface level of The Dark and continuing.

Finding the second corrupt servant was just a bit harder, as they blended in better. In fact, what gave them away wasn’t themselves, as strange as that sounds, but was some kind of artifact they had on them that reeked of death and necromancy. Whatever it was, they had it in a small belt pouch, which wasn’t something unusual for even servants to have equipped during the day. As the man walked the manor, nobody else paid him any mind or had any kind of strong reaction to him, so either it was shielded from others or people just couldn’t sense the kind of energy that was coming from it. It did give him away in a very strong way, however, which made me a bit suspicious. It was why I followed him for a time before acting, as I wanted to be sure that he really knew what was going on. When he pulled the dastardly object from his belt pouch when he was alone and used it to check something in an empty bedroom, his involvement became all too clear.

It was just as easy to grab him unawares and pull him into The Dark, though part of it was certainly that I was much stronger than these people. Hiding one’s rank wasn’t impossible, or even all that difficult, but there were plenty of ways to see through it. It was tough to have someone at S-rank pretend to be a C-ranker for any length of time without getting caught, and C-ranks were way more abundant that S-ranks to begin with. Easier to find and train a few C-rankers and have them perform the task then sneak in a powerhouse, and that showed here.

The man didn’t last any longer than the woman, and a similar but different process attempted to fire off when he was trapped with The Dark. He had some kind of energy course through him to reinforce his body, not transform it, and it looked like he would have had a dramatic increase in speed for a short time. So the lady was meant to create a distraction or battle anyone that found them out or some such reasoning while this man was meant to run off and tell the cult their cover had been blown, likely sending in a few of the corrupt guards at the same time. He didn’t fare any better than the woman, though, and I dispatched just a few seconds later, having observed much of the realignment of energy in his body. Again, there was a sense of something far off but near at hand shifting, and I had the vague impression of a massive eye opening for a brief moment, but it passed just as quickly.

I didn’t know whether it was from the killing, the necromantic energies, killing someone with undead traits, or something else, but I was going to have to be more careful in The Dark from now on. The Count had relayed some stories to me of…things that lived in The Dark, or more like, legends of things hidden in The Dark, but I had never seen or encountered everything within. Well, that had changed today, though I hadn’t exactly seen anything, just gotten an impression, and I was not much impressed, to be honest. Still, caution was warranted, though I was also going to study this phenomenon going forward and see if I could find any answers.

That wasn’t for today, however, as I had a meeting with the young baron. Now that his staff was mostly taken care of, at least the ones that would be the biggest problem and that could be removed the easiest, I made to look for the young fellow. It took a few twists and turns through the large manor he had bought with his mysterious funds, but I found him half-dressed, lounging on a balcony on the side of the third and topmost floor, wearing pants and a loose robe that he had draped open in the front. From his bloodshot eyes and the smell of him, he had had quite the bender the night before, which I hear was the norm for the young man, and was looking like he was still recovering in the middle of the afternoon. Well, he was about to have that recovery sped up considerably, as a good shot of adrenaline and maybe a little ice-cold dread across the heart was liable to get him sobered up and focused better than just about anything else. I just had to make sure not to crack that delicate, booze soaked heart with too much fear before I got what I needed out of the man, and his full status of a noble meant I would need to try to not just kill him outright, regardless of what I discovered, though I had quite some leeway.

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