"Not interested," Zephyr replied curtly.
"No? You’re sure?" She asked with a teasing tone that suggested he was going to regret it.
"I need you to stop following ," he said with a deadly voice, pressing the knife on her neck with more force, and drawing so blood. He seed to be weighing his options, debating whether or not to just kill her here and now. She seed confident despite the threat, like she knew he wasn’t going to do anything.
Who was she? Soone sent after them? Soone with influence? He didn’t know. And he wasn’t willing to risk offending another party by killing her here.
With a slight twitch of his eye he pushed off of her, releasing her and putting a distance between them.
"Sheesh. You have a temper there." She said as she wiped the blood from the thin cut on her neck with her palm. "But at least you’re logical. I would have been disappointed if you’d actually gone ahead with it."
Zephyr snorted and walked away without any response to her statent, heading back into the lively streets and disappearing from the lady’s view.
’I should’ve done it.’ He thought to himself as he walked the remaining way to the tavern. He hated feeling like he was being toyed with, and the woman gave him exactly that feeling. Like he was a kid acting out and she was tolerantly watching him.
Earlier, he had felt an intense sense of danger the more he pressed the knife to her neck. Like death was right behind him, breathing down his neck, and any further action would have him killed instantly.
It had taken so willpower not to look back throughout the short encounter. He didn’t want to show any sign of weakness in front of her in an act of defiance.
He arrived at the tavern, pushing open the doors and hushing the ongoing chatter like he always did. He paused for a bit before walking towards the counter where Rita stood, staring at him in surprise.
"You’re here so soon?" She asked just as he sat at a stool, confusion coloring her voice. "Have you run out of supplies so quickly?" She asked.
"No, I was in town. So I simply decided to take the supplies now," Zephyr gruffly replied.
"Oh. But you’ll have to wait. I don’t have it prepared yet." She replied, dropping the hand towel in her hand and walking away from behind the counter. She’d just taken a few steps when the door opened again, cutting the dull chatter short as everyone turned to look at the newcor.
"Ma—Madam Veronica!" A person yelled in surprise, prompting the sound of chairs scraping against the hard wooden floor to fill the room as people stood to greet. Even Rita stood rigid, giving the regular bartender who now manned the counter a stare that only he understood. He nodded lightly and disappeared into the back rooms.
Zephyr sat still where he was, straining his ears to pick up the pattern of Madam Veronica’s light footsteps as she walked closer without a word.
Zephyr bowed his head down slightly in frustration, knowing who it was as he felt a gaze focused on him. "Rita, dear. Where’s your father?" She asked while still focused on Zephyr’s cloaked figure hunched on the table.
"Soone has gone to get him, madam," Rita replied respectfully, her gaze flitting between Zephyr and the woman.
"Fancy eting you here again, cloaked mister." Madam Veronica said, taking a seat right next to Zephyr.
Zephyr turned his head slightly, his hooded eyes eting hers, before standing up and turning to leave.
"What about your supplies—?" Rita hesitantly asked him.
"Leave him be." Madam Veronica said with finality, shutting Rita up. She watched Zephyr walk out the tavern with a mysterious and thoughtful look before turning as soone else entered the tavern from the back door.
"Frederick." Madam Veronica nodded her head in greeting as a huge, well-built middle-aged man sat next to her, returning the greeting with a deep baritone voice. "Veronica." He nodded.
His appearance was also striking. He had the sa chestnut-colored hair as his daughter Rita, with a five o’clock shadow on the sides of his face. He had scales that covered his whole arms up to his wrists before fading on his hands. He had the sa vertical-looking reptilian eyes as everyone else, but his were an electric blue color. They were the first thing that drew your attention aside from his large, well-built fra, and his imposing aura that seed to take over the whole room, only matched by Madam Veronica, who released her aura to suppress his.
The mana waves pulsing from their small clash distorted the air around them visibly, causing cracks to form on the counter next to them. It was an exchange of might. A greeting of a sort between the strong.
The man— Frederick— furrowed his brows slightly as he started to get pushed back, before raising his hands up in mock surrender.
"Ha... You’ve gotten more powerful than before, Veronica," he chuckled. "You’re leaving us old foggies in the dust."
Veronica snorted, "Old? You? You’re not even forty-five!"
Frederick chuckled in response, before getting down to business. "So why are you here." He asked with a serious tone.
But she simply turned her head to the crowd of people still standing respectfully with their heads bowed. "You’re not going to dismiss them?"
Frederick raised his hand, giving them the signal to leave, and as if their asses were on fire, they all scuttled out of the tavern, leaving only Rita with them.
"You too Rita." Frederick said, dismissing his daughter. She left promptly with a curt nod, so trace of unwillingness in her eyes as she cast a last glance at Madam Veronica.
Her father chuckled after she left. "She idolizes you." He said. "A lot of girls do. Not just anyone can achieve what you have at the sa age."
Veronica reached for two mugs and an open pitcher of beer, pouring a drink for both of them before she answered. "Well, she’s still not qualified to be my disciple. I can only take her as a student with her talent." She gulped a mouthful of beer.
Frederick tsked. "Still sharp-mouthed as always."
"What did you co here for...?"
After Zephyr left the tavern, thoughts started to run through his head at blistering speeds. ’So she was soone important.’ He thought back to how people stood up in respect and the earlier feeling of death he’d felt when he threatened her.
Had he just poked the hornet’s nest with that one move? Why was she interested in him in the first place? Who was she exactly?
He could not return to the cave tonight, that was for sure. There was no way he would risk exposing their hideout. He’d be here in this town for as long as she was. Smiling Devil could take care of himself for the rest of the week. The supplies remaining could last him through the next week too since Zephyr wasn’t there to take the majority of it. And if he ended up staying here longer, he’d find a way to get sothing to the man... sohow. Though he hoped it wouldn’t co to that.
For now, he’d do what he could. He needed a room before night fell, so he could get started with analyzing the nurous spell models he’d gotten from the old man.
A gust of wind blew past him, billowing his cloak, nearly removing his heavy hood, but he was quick enough to prevent it from opening up.
’I need to get a better disguise.’ He thought. Since he hadn’t gotten the hang of the spell models, he wanted to resort to sothing else, even if it was so sort of body painting.
Zephyr found a fairly decent inn and settled in early, before the sun set.
He brought out the stack of papers from inside his cloak and laid them on the ground individually. The whole stack took up the entire space of the small room. About fifty individual sheets of paper, all with different spell models on them... Though the woman had said earlier that they wouldn’t work...
Zephyr didn’t mind that though. ’Aegis. Let’s get started.’
Comncing analysis... Aegis replied promptly, scanning all the individual sheets with their beautiful array of various geotric shapes and logic gates.
He’d left the analysis entirely to Aegis because, frankly, he had no idea what he was looking at aside from the logic gates Aegis had explained to him, and vague inferences from comparing the geotric glyph patterns.
Aegis was doing the sa— inferring purpose from patterns after cross-referencing, but it was exponentially more capable than he was at it.
Hence, he left the job to the AGI, but he also studied what he could because of his own curiousity.
The analysis went deep into the night, with Aegis and Zephyr still at it. He’d made so observations and would get excited at his hypothesis, throwing a question at Aegis, but so far, Aegis had responded only once. And not to affirm or deny his deduction, but rather, it was a prompt to alert him that it was running at full processing capacity, cycling through thousands of possibilities based on the data— thousands because of Zephyr’s Level 1 privilege status.
Zephyr leaned back in his kneeling position on the ground, yawning and rubbing his eyes, before standing up to stretch, careful not to step on the parchnts spread all over the ground.
As he watched his steps, he suddenly stilled and his ears twitched.
He felt like he was being watched.
He had covered the windows with an opaque cloth and barricaded the door so he could move around without freely without the heavy cloak, but sohow, despite those being the only two places one could see into the room, he felt like he was being watched.
’Where—?! From where?!’ His eyes flitted about... before locking onto a corner of the room. There was nothing there, but that was where the feeling of being watched from was the strongest.
"Co out." He called.
...
It was dead silent. Only the sound of his breathing remained in the room.
He doubted himself for a second, "Was I mistaken?"
Again, the feeling overca him. He was definitely not wrong. Soone was here. He moved rapidly across the short span of the room, grabbed his dual battleaxes from where they leaned against the wall, and spun into a wide swing towards the corner.
CLANG!
The sound of tal hitting tal resounded through the small room as a figure slowly materialized into existence as if being drawn in like a sketch.
"I was right. You really have extrely sharp senses."
Zephyr’s eyes narrowed. "You!" It was Madam Veronica.
She looked him over from head to toe as his expression turned dangerous. She had seen his face. He had to kill her now!
With a swing that contained his full might, he swung the dual battleaxes, aiming for her neck and her chest.
Suddenly a spell model materialized from thin air in physical form, the arcane glyphs and symbols glowing with a vibrant orange hue, nullifying Zephyr’s attack that had just landed.
It devoured every bit of the force in his swing, the suddenness of it throwing him off balance instantly. It was an extrely weird feeling.
He rolled and jumped back to his feet instantly, ready to attack her again when the sa feeling of death he had felt earlier pervaded him wholly as he saw so visible dust in the air that filled the whole room.
"STAY YOUR HAND!" She snapped. "If your senses are as sharp as I think, then you must have felt it... I can kill you at anyti now!"
"I just want to talk to you," she said, looking over Zephyr’s scaleless body without a hint of shock in her eyes.
"I know what you are."
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