Gleam - Chapter 133 (Patreon)

Chance slept late into the next morning, not waking up until it was nearing midday. He wasn’t sure if he dreamed of anything that night, but if he did, it had been wiped clean by the time his eyes opened.

By the time he made it out of his room and headed down the stairs, Bella and Yeo were already at the dining table. There was no sign of Pete, but plates had been set out for all of them and there were several upturned metal bowls in the center of the table.

One of them had already been moved to the side to reveal a plate full of fluffy eggs which Yeo was currently in the process of helping himself to. He glanced up at Chance as he stepped down the stairs and waggled his eyebrows in greeting.

“Decided to wake up?”

“It’s not that late,” Chance said defensively as he pulled a chair out and sat down. “You’re only getting to breakfast now, so you couldn’t have woken up that much earlier than I did.”

“What matters,” Yeo said, pausing to point a spoon at Chance, “is that I woke up first.”

“And that only happened because I stubbed my toe on the door as I was leaving my room,” Bella said, rolling her eyes. “He was sleeping like a baby until then.”

“I was in deep cultivation. Your bumbling broke me out of it.”

“If you were cultivating, then you wouldn’t have gotten woken up,” Bella pointed out. She put some eggs onto her own plate and Chance followed her lead, suddenly remembering how hungry he was.

“Where’d Pete go? Did he make this for us?” Chance asked.

“Yeah, he made it. He headed out just a bit ago,” Yeo said. “He’s going on a mission, I think. And, speaking of those, we need to decide on ours.”

“Don’t we need to get–”

Yeo held three scrolls aloft, causing Chance to cut his sentence off before he could finish it. Chance settled for filling his open mouth with a spoonful of eggs.

“I’m surprised we got anything this quickly,” Bella said. “I would have thought it would take people a bit longer to warm up to us, given the whole thing where the Shikari were trying to murder us.”

“They might just be assigned to any group that fits the criteria,” Chance offered. He finished off the rest of his plate, then served himself a second portion. “Did you look at them yet?”

Yeo sent Chance an aghast look. “Open them? Without you? I would–”

“Definitely do it,” Chance finished with a laugh. “Unless someone replaced you since we last met.”

“Okay, yeah. I looked.”

“Wait, you did?” Bella lowered her spoon and sent a surprised glance at Yeo. “When? I’ve been here this whole time, and I never saw you open the scrolls.”

“I am a man of great mystery,” Yeo said. That earned him a glare from Bella. He let out an annoyed sigh. “I snuck a glance under the table while you were sitting down.”

“Just get out with it,” Bella said. “Is it anything interesting?”

“None of them are too crazy. One is just a complete joke – it’s a fetch quest for someone’s runaway pet. We’ll never find the damn thing, the city is too big.”

“What kind of pet?” Chance asked curiously.

Like a cat or something?

“A Soothound.”

Chance grimaced. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope.” Yeo held one of the scrolls out to Chance and he took it, unfurling the paper to look over it.

Sure enough, it was rather barebones. A woman was asking for someone to find her Soothound named Puddles. The monster’s description was rather useless, as it just described what every single Soothound looked like.

“We could just kidnap a random Soothound and bring it to her,” Yeo offered with a snicker.

“We’re not doing that,” Chance said with a shake of his head. “I didn’t realize people tamed Soothounds. There are so many of them in the city that I figured they were more like pests.”

“They are,” Bella said. “But there are exceptions for everything. What are the other two quests, Yeo?”

“Missing person and some sightings of Greater Imps. If we want the interesting stuff, we should really try and get ourselves officially acknowledged as Knight ranked.”

“Hold on. A missing person seems pretty important,” Chance said. “Not that I disagree on getting to Rank 3, but what was the information on that?”

Yeo tossed him another scroll. “Unfortunately, not much more than the first one. I think they mostly want Squires on the quest so they can have more eyes on it. The missing guy is someone called Acen. He’s a Knight Ranked Shikari.”

“They put out a whole missing person hunt for a single Knight Ranked Shikari?” Bella’s eyebrows rose. “That’s a lot of resources. Not that I’m complaining, but it seems oddly… magnanimous of them.”

“He stole an artifact from his team before he disappeared,” Chance said, scanning over the note. “It doesn’t say what the artifact was, though.”

“Ah. That explains it.” Benna shook her head and finished the rest of her eggs off before stretching her arms above her head. “Well, we did want to take it easy for our first job back. Doing a bit of a hunt around the city seems like a pretty good way to do that.”

“Probably less stressful than going out and taking a ranking exam,” Yeo said with a nod. “I’m fine with going for the missing bloke. With Chance’s luck, I’d be willing to bet that we just stumble into him on accident.”

“Not entirely impossible,” Chance admitted sheepishly. “But now that you’ve said it, I can’t help but feel like our chances of finding him have dropped.”

Yeo started to nod, then paused and narrowed his eyes. “Did you just make a pun? With your own name?”

“I – ah, goddamn it.” Chance winced. “Not intentionally. It just slipped out.”

“Yeah, yeah. We’ll see. I’m keeping an eye on you,” Yeo threatened. He pushed back from the table and rose to his feet, his clothes shifting as he pointed at Chance. As he did so, Chance caught a flicker of something… odd.

The hilt of a black sword rested in Yeo’s belt. He’d seen it briefly before, but had never gotten a good look at it. Even though he only got a brief glance at it, something plucked at his Essence.

“By the way, what is that thing you’ve got at your belt?” Chance asked. “It feels… odd. Not in a good way.”

Yeo blinked and looked down, following Chance’s gaze to the sword hilt. He let out a laugh and patted it. “Oh, this? It’s just an old artifact. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“Are you sure? I don’t like using my Third Eye to look at people without permission, but I just picked up some weird energy coming off it,” Chance said hesitantly. “Not quite bad Karma – I don’t know if I can actually sense bad Karma – but certainly not good.”

“It’s a weapon.” Yeo shrugged. “It’s killed people. I’ve killed people with it. I can’t imagine it’s got anything all that great about it, and the person who wielded it before me was a pretty big piece of scum. He’s dead now, though. No reason not to put it to good use.”

“Fair enough,” Chance said. It wasn’t like he could claim he was any better – he’d killed a number of people after leaving Gleam. He hadn’t wanted to kill most of them, but he’d killed them, nonetheless. The weapon they used to kill didn’t matter.

“Did that scroll say where we’re meant to start our search?” Bella asked. “Gleam is a bit big to just wander around aimlessly.”

“Unfortunately not.” Chance held it out to Bella so she could take a glance herself. “It just said that Acen went missing after a mission. I can see why they’re giving it out to everyone if the only lead they’ve got is that he was last seen somewhere in Gleam.”

“If we didn’t have you, I’d say this was a terrible idea.” Bella set the scroll down and rolled her neck before nodding to the door. “We do have you, though, so maybe this isn’t a complete waste of time. It’s three of us versus one, but don’t forget that Acen has probably been a Knight for a lot longer than we have.”

“You think we’re going to have to fight him?” Chance frowned. “What if he just gives the artifact up and comes back with us peacefully? Or worse – what if he got framed or something?”

Bella blinked. She opened her mouth, paused before swearing under her breath. “Damn. I didn’t even pause for a second to consider he might be innocent. That line of thinking is probably what people went through when they saw the Shikari were looking for us.”

“Probably,” Yeo said with a nod. “But that doesn’t mean this guy’s innocent either.”

“If we do find him, we’ll need to make sure,” Bella said, still looking a little taken aback by her realization. “I can’t believe I didn’t even think about that. People probably jumped to conclusions about us in the exact same way that I did about Acen.”

“Probably,” Chance agreed. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, to be honest. I want to give Acen a chance, but we shouldn’t believe that he’s in the same situation that we were either. There was a saying back on earth. Speak softly but–”

“Carry a big stick,” Yeo finished, his eyes lighting up. “I love that guy! He’s one of my favorites. If he was on Centurion, I know for a fact that he would have been even more of a badass. Could you imagine what he could have done if he had access to cultivation?”

Chance laughed. “I think Teddy Rosevelt was enough of a badass on Earth. He might have been too dangerous if he had access to Essence.”

“Agree to disagree. There’s no such thing as too dangerous. Or too cool.” Yeo grinned and shrugged. “Either way, you’re right. We should probably make sure this bloke is actually deserving of the hunt, but let’s not get ourselves killed in the process.”

“We’ll play things by ear,” Bella said. “If it seems like we can talk to him safely, then we should. But if he doesn’t give us an opportunity to, then we act appropriately.”

“Works for me,” Chance said. He stood up and the others did the same.

“Shall we go, then?” Yeo asked, an eager glint in his eyes. “It’s been so long since we’ve gone on a job together. This is going to be fun.”

“Don’t forget we still need to figure out where to start looking,” Bella pointed out. “We have nothing. No leads. No hints. Just a name. I wouldn’t be that surprised if we never find the guy.”

And I wouldn’t be surprised if Acen was unfortunate enough to wander into the Old City. If he did, he’s gone. It’s probably already eaten him. If I could still speak with Ocie, it would make everything a lot easier. Unfortunately, she’s still silent. I hope she’s okay.

“Something wrong?” Yeo asked.

Chance blinked, then shook his head. “Sorry. Was just thinking about something else. We might not have a lead, but the only way to make progress is to try, right?”

“It’ll be fun either way,” Yeo said. “Dinner at Hound’s, assuming they haven’t banned me?” They all started toward the door.

“Sure – but why would they have banned you?” Chance paused as he pulled the door open and turned to look back at Yeo.

“Let’s not talk about that,” Yeo said. He thrust a finger forward. “Onward! We’ve got a bloke to find.”

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Hey guys! It's been a pretty difficult week. Lots of stuff happening just about everywhere on top of some finger pains and the like - nothing serious, but since I have to prioritize Runebound chapters, I was just getting constantly delayed. Either way, I've decided that the $15 tier for Gleam isn't getting as much bonus content as I want it to have.

Starting today, (end of the month) I will be making it so that you can read *all* chapters of Gleam if you're in the $10 tier. However, the other bonus content in this tier (access to sneak peeks of other projects, comics, voting privileges for arcs and the like) will all remain as $15 only. Thanks so much for your continued support, and I'll still be putting in effort to try and increase rate of writing Gleam chapters. Cheers!