I arrived in the previous timeline later than I had in the past, since so much more time had passed before I died this go-round. This time, I’d already explained everything to Erani and Ainash, and had agreed with Sylvie for her to help pay adventurers to help us fight Jon. I knew we wouldn’t need to swap away from that plan, at least. Jon had revealed he had even more people with him than we’d thought; that only proved more than ever that we needed the extra firepower. Once I got back, I silently explained all I could to Ainash and asked her to pass it all along to Erani.
“You do not have any more time travel ability?” Ainash asked me as we walked down the road.
“No, I used it all up. I’ll transfer my memories to you and Erani as soon as possible, once Sylvie is gone.”
“Mother wants to know if we will die. I do not think we will. Bad guys always lose.”
“I don’t think we’ll die. At least, we won’t end up dead for good.”
“Okay!”
“Do I really need to find Aliss and Boy?” Sylvie asked. “Or should I just look around for, like, five minutes before giving up.”
I remembered this conversation from the last timeline. I’d asked her to look as much as she could, since we needed all the help we could get, and she agreed. This time, I responded differently. “Try, at the very least. But if you can’t find them, don’t worry about it. We can always just use hired help in their place, right?”
“Hey, I know I said I’d fund this since it seems like you’re desperate or whatever, but I’m not made of money, okay? I technically have to get all my expenditures reviewed by my family so they don’t take my assets away, and writing this off to make it look like necessary expenses is hard work.”
I grimaced. “Ew, paperwork.”“I know, right?! It’s awful. So, unless you want me to force you to help me do it, do try to keep in mind that I don’t like losing money. Only spend what’s necessary.”
“Well, thanks again for the assistance. I will do my best to keep your finances in mind. But, uh, can I ask you to do one more thing for me?”
“Depends on what that thing is.”
I went over my mental construction of the timeline in my mind, making sure I had everything straight. Jon didn’t know what Sylvie looked like, he’d be in town alongside those two others at least a few hours after we got there… “Okay, so, at around ten at night, can you go to the guild lobby and wait there? Just act natural, get a drink or whatever, and wait until these two people, a Rogue and an Archer, come in. I’ll describe what they look like later, but they may not enter at the same time. After they get there, there’s a chance another man will enter, a Cleric. If he does, just keep an eye on him, and if he leaves, tail him. If that man never comes in, then tail the Rogue and the Archer when they leave, and hopefully they’ll lead you to the Cleric.”
“This sounds more and more like you’re trying to get my help in assassinating someone.”
“No, it’s—”
“Not that I’d mind that, by the way.”
I frowned. “I don’t…Okay. Well, no, it’s not assassination. Think of it like…I don’t know, advanced self-defense.”
“Now it really sounds like assassination.”
“I’m not asking you to assassinate anyone. This guy that I’m asking you to tail, he’s the assassin, if you wanna throw labels at people. Besides, you definitely should not be attacking anyone. They’ll kill you if they find out you’re tailing them. Just find where the guy’s staying—or, if he’s leaving town, what road he’s going down—and find me.”
She frowned, then shrugged. “Okay. If it seems too dangerous, just know I’m aborting immediately, by the way.”
We kept walking for a few seconds, then Sylvie turned to me again, looking confused.
“Wait, didn’t you say you would be at the guild lobby?”
“Plans have changed. I’ll be out of town by ten, hiding out up the northern road.”
“What? When did plans change? We talked about this, like, two hours ago! When have you had the opportunity to decide to change your oh-so-nebulous plan?”
“Just…it’s complicated. New information comes in pretty quick. We’re still doing most of everything the same—still recruiting more people to help fight and all that—but the timetable of the fight is probably going to be moved up a decent bit.”
“So, what, we’re just gonna find the guy and kill him in the middle of the city? That sounds like it’s going to have some legal problems.”
“He’ll attack first.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“He will.”
Sylvie rolled her eyes. “You know, I really hate being kept in the dark with all this stuff. And not just the dark that literally surrounds your creepy armor. I also hate the metaphorical, ‘Oh I’m waaaay too cool and important to tell you what’s actually going on because I’m just soooo mysterious stuff. It’s annoying.”
“I’m sure it is. You’ll probably figure some if it out eventually, though.”
She broke out into a toothy grin. “Yeah, I will. It’s actually pretty fun. I think I already put a little bit of it together.”
“I thought it was frustrating, not fun.”
“Well, maybe I’m just too cool and important to tell you how I really feel about it,” she said, turning her nose up in a well-practiced snobby voice.
I rolled my eyes, and we kept walking.
Once we got to town, Sylvie set off inside while I stuck back with Ainash and Erani so we could share memories. I’d told them the basic plan and my reasoning behind it, but it would still definitely be best if they knew everything I knew. Once we did that, Erani and I went into town just like last time, and Ainash circled around to the other side of town to find a place we could hide out near the walls.
In town, we also went about our recruiting relatively similarly to how we did before. Only, this time, we weren’t asking people for help in a fight the next morning out in the fields, but rather we were asking them for help in a bodyguarding job during a confrontation that’d take place later that night. Stand around and look dangerous, and in case a fight broke out, they’d help us. Of course, we emphasized the point that a fight would, in fact, almost certainly break out, so hopefully not many people would be surprised when that inevitably happened.
I was able to go through it all much more efficiently now, since I’d already spoken to most of these people and knew which were interested and which weren’t. Though, of course, we were asking them for something slightly different this time around, so it wasn’t the exact same. Still, there were some people that had given us a one hundred percent no answer, so I could just avoid them altogether, and for most others, I knew what aspect of the job was most intriguing to them so I could hook them into the conversation, what pay they were willing to settle on, and a lot more. If I knew someone was more interested in money, I’d lead with that. If another was more curious about the circumstances with the job and their personal safety during it, I could lead with how many people would be helping alongside them.
That efficiency in speeding along negotiations was very much appreciated, though, since we needed to be out of town well before Jon got here. We’d been left with a very limited amount of time to get as much help as we could.
However, most of that time went over without a hitch. By the time it was around a quarter past nine, we hurried out of the lobby and left town, going up north and out of the town walls, where we soon met up with Ainash and found a spot to wait by the side of the road.
In the end, we were able to recruit a total of about a dozen people who were assuredly going to help us. We’d given them the place to meet, exchanged everything, even gotten an official contract written up with the guild so they were sure we’d pay them as long as they completed the job correctly. That was all set.
Now that we were in private by the isolated road, I checked, then double-checked that nobody was around, and nodded to Erani. She disabled Distortion Strike, something she typically did when we were alone so she could save Mana. Then, with a thought, I dismissed Dark Plate, leaving me standing in my normal day clothes. I almost felt naked like this, considering how I pretty much always had one or the other form of my armor on—Dark Plate during the day, and Light Plate at night, so I could train Noxious Grasp while I slept.
“Gods,” Erani muttered, idly poking my chest with her finger, “I only see you like this when we…”
“When we’re taking off the rest of our clothes?” I asked with a chuckle. “Yeah, I guess that’s true. Maybe I should just go completely naked under my armor, to save some time in the future.”
Her face went red. I missed seeing it; Distortion Strike normally hid her blush. “That’s wildly inappropriate. Especially when we’re about to fight for our lives in just a few hours.”
I raised my hands in mock surrender. “Well, screw me for trying to lighten the mood, I guess.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You worded it like that on purpose, didn’t you?”
“Absolutely.”
She rolled her eyes, and I thought I could hear her mutter something about me being “completely shameless.” But I also saw her smile in the light of the moon, so I was still happy with myself.
“Father, if you are going to be fighting bad guys in Human settlement, will I have to stay outside?” Ainash spoke up in the silence, sounding worried she’d miss the spectacle.
I almost replied and told her she’d have to stay back, but then I frowned and thought for a moment. Technically, it might be possible.
I looked over at Erani. “You think we’d be able to sneak her in?”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“She’s a big kid, she can handle breaking into a place. Besides, it’d be good life experience. And, I mean, it feels kind of unfair to let her miss a big fight like this, right?”
“Really want to kill the bad guy!”
“See?” I nodded to Erani.
She frowned. “We could use the help, I guess. Just…Ainash, baby, make sure you have a way you know you can get out if something goes wrong. That Jon guy is really dangerous, and we don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Will not be me getting hurt, will be him!”
“Do you think you can get in without being seen?” I asked.
“Can jump over big wall!”
I shrugged. That worked. “Well, we’ll have some time to make sure it’s all perfectly safe. Sylvie isn’t arriving for another hour at the earliest, and then we’ll have a while after that before we move in.”
Sylvie ended up arriving after around two and a half hours. At a certain point, I’d started getting worried she wouldn’t be showing up at all, but eventually we spotted her trekking down the nearby dirt path. We hadn’t ever told her exactly where we’d be, but instead what road we’d be on, so she was just walking along and waiting for us to come stop her when she was in our sight. So, when I spotted her on the path, I took a nervous breath and got ready to call out to her, casting Ethereal Armor again and hurriedly equipping my gear. Not Dark Plate like usual, but Light Plate.
“You ready?” I muttered to Erani. “Time to flex our acting skills.”
“Technically, we were doing all the flexing of our acting skills before. Now, we’re just telling the truth.”
I frowned. “Huh. Yeah, I guess that is the case. Well, regardless, this is still our do-or-die moment.”
“I highly doubt we’re going to die if we mess it up.”
“Just…let me be dramatic for a minute, alright? This is a big moment for me.”
She smirked in the way that let me know she considered this payback for all the times I’d teased her. “Fine, fine. Yes, this is all very dramatic. The bards will write about this very conversation for centuries to come.”
All the while, during our hushed conversation, Sylvie continued wandering down the path.
“Ahem, Sylvie!” I called, waving my hand in the air. If my voice didn’t catch her attention, the glow from my armor would have. I saw her turn to me in confusion, then hesitantly start approaching.
“Annor?” she called back.
“Uh, no,” I said. “I’m a friend of Annor’s. My name is Arlan. Arlan Nota. You may have heard of me?”