94. Paranoid Old People (Patreon)

Ike’s core grew to eighty percent full. He eyed the progress, taking another big waft of the mana to speed it along. Just a little more. A little more, and then he could do whatever he needed to. He just needed to stall for another few minutes.

“So? What are you doing with those things? I knew the city lord wouldn’t plot against us,” the old man said, looking down at Ike with disgust.

“These are the city lord’s,” Ike said, as if it was obvious.

“If they are, then what are you doing with them?” the old man demanded.

Ike looked around him. He grinned. “Taking advantage of them?”

“They’re the city lord’s property, and you dare ‘take advantage’ of them?” the old man asked.

Ike shrugged. “What can I say? He hasn’t stopped me yet.”

To be honest, it did confuse him a little. He would have been surprised if the city lord was sensitive enough to sense one puppet being tapped, but he’d tapped dozens by now. He’d also activated the tree that protected the puppets. He’d definitely expected that to trigger the city lord, and for him to come out and inspect the puppets at some point. If it had shut down his exploit, it was unfortunate, but he could always get by with Rosamund. But none of that had happened. The defenses were activated. He tapped dozens of puppets. And still no sign of the city lord.

Did he not set any traps that would trigger his attention? Does he not care? He didn’t know the answer. The first one seemed grossly inattentive, but then, he wasn’t a high-level mage. Maybe it was incredibly difficult to create a trap that alarmed when it was set off. Maybe there was something about the Abyss that prevented the alarm from escaping.

Not caring was truly the worse of the two option. It meant one of two things, each equally frightening. One, that the city lord had some extensive plan for him. This was all within the city lord’s purview. It was less likely, but absolutely horrifying. For a second, Ike let himself consider it: that everything he’d done was within the city lord’s plans for him. That all his actions were no more than dancing in the palm of the city lord’s hand.

Still, I doubt the city lord planned this deeply for some random slumrat who found one of his skills.

More likely, the city lord didn’t have a plan for him, and didn’t care to the fullest extent. Not about Ike, not about the puppets, not about the Abyss—nothing. But why would he not care, unless… this army, that seemed so vast to Ike and the citizens of Abyssal, was but one tiny portion of the city lord’s true army. Unless it was a miniscule fraction of the puppets the city lord could call to his whim. So small relative to his true power, that it didn’t matter if Ike tapped one, a dozen, all of them, because the city lord had so many that these barely even reflected in his eyes.

Ike licked his lips. Oh. Yeah. That’s not good.

“I find that hard to believe,” the old man harrumphed.

“I wish I did,” Ike muttered. He took another breath, eyeing his core again. Eighty-five. Climbing toward ninety.

“What are we waiting for? Get him out of there. We should interrogate him. And if it is the city lord’s property, we should give him to the city lord! Who cares if the city lord stores property down here? The Abyss is technically within his territory, and it’s not like he’s taking any important land. Let’s just pretend we saw nothing,” one of the men suggested.

“What about the soul-draining array?” Tana pointed out.

The man waved his hand. “So what? If he wants to soul drain all the beasts down here, why stop him?”

“What if he wants to soul drain Abyssal?” Ike asked.

An old woman laughed. “Alarmist propaganda. Why would he do that?”

Ike stared at her. He squinted a little bit. “What?”

Tana shook her head at him. “They won’t listen. They dismiss everything I have to say.”

He shrugged up at her. Ninety percent. “So what? Let them die, then. Me, you, and Ket, we can escape together. Leave the dumb fucks to their fate.”

There was dead silence from atop the cliff. “Excuse me?” one of the old men asked.

“Yeah, you heard me. You dumb fucks can go die, while we’ll get out of here. We fuckin’ tried, Tana. If they don’t want to listen, they can go ahead and get soul drained right into these puppets,” Ike said firmly. Ninety-five percent.

One of the old women turned to Tana. “Who is that?”

“Just a shitty little slumrat from the city. A shitty little slumrat, who’s smarter than all of you assholes. Yeah, I fuckin’ said it. Come down here and fight me if you disagree, cowards!”

One hundred percent.

Light blasted up from around Ike. Purple lightning crackled all around him. He gazed the men and women in the eye defiantly, as a single number changed in his status menu:

Rank 1

…

Rank 2.