Sarah's Story Chapter 054 - The Chase and The Catch

Nine months later.

The Assassin was fleeing for his life.

Everything had been going great for the last two years.

The work was easy, the pay was good, and his levels had increased steadily.

Signing up with the Horn Clan had been more profitable than he could have possibly imagined.

He had started small: eliminating mainly low-level investigators and guards who refused bribes. Then it was guard captains and Detectives working for the Grand Duke. Ultimately, he had even assassinated a Count, ensuring that his son who was a friend of the Horn Clan would inherit the County.

Smuggling, extortion, bribery, racketeering, even human trafficking. He never dirtied his hands with any of that directly. He wasn’t the hulking muscle men who intimidated shop owners to pay protection money. No, he was the silent shadow who removed any obstacles to the Horn Clan’s business interests.

So he didn’t know all the Horn Clan’s business.

And he liked it that way.

One might think that kidnapping and trafficking children might have given him pause.

But after seeing a widow’s shop burn down because she refused to pay protection money?

After bloodying his hands slaying a Guard Captain who refused to accept bribes and look the other way? Seeing his widow and children lose their home?

A few sniveling brats were nothing.

There was, of course, the risk of Avengers.

But that was the Assassin’s bread and butter.

When an Avenger Class was Chosen, he was there, snuffing them out like a newly lit candle flame.

He had entered what some people called a virtuous cycle.

The more he killed, the more his levels rose, and the more targets for assassination he had.

And with the Horn Clan’s support and backing, everything was perfectly under control.

Until last week.

Last week, a shipment of children had been intercepted. They had been destined for a special training camp, to… encourage them to choose Classes beneficial to the Horn Clan’s business interests.

It had been a large loss for the Clan.

And then days later, the mage-catching unit had been wiped out entirely.

The mage catchers worked to find newly Chosen Mages, before they developed any useful combat Skills.

With the imported magic-blocking shackles, it was trivial to keep them in line.

But the unit was discovered and wiped out, and somehow, the locations of every Horn Clan hideout and even the headquarters itself was leaked.

An hour ago, all the Horn Clan leadership was killed or caught.

The Assassin had fled as soon as the fighting had started, and thought he had gotten away.

Sure, he hadn’t put as much focus on his stealth Skills as his killing Skills, but he was still an Assassin.

Nobody should have been able to follow him. Not with that kind of head start.

And yet, a demon pursued him. Some kind of wrathful, vengeful spirit.

It was a young blonde woman wearing black-dyed, tight-fitting clothes, glowing faintly green and gold.

His [Evasion] was level eleven.

His [Stealth] was level thirteen.

But nothing was working.

And the woman was closing in on him.

All he could do was flee, as fast as he could.

And it wasn’t enough.

He diverted, leaving the relatively empty and dark back alleys and burst onto the main street, lit by street lamps and shop windows and full of people.

Full of witnesses.

He stopped and turned, to check how close his pursuer was, see if he had time to take a hostage—

And there was a foot inches from his face.

WHAM

The man went flying, spinning through the air.

Smack!

He collided with a stone wall between two shop windows, having threaded the needle between people walking along the street.

A scream. People started running away.

“Help! Guards! Guards!”

But the blonde woman didn’t hesitate.

This was the last one.

The last person involved in the kidnapping ring she’d been tracking for the last few months.

The hardest part had been cooperating with the local authorities. Half of them had been taking bribes, and the other half hadn’t wanted to work with her for various reasons. Being young. Being a woman. Being a foreigner.

Things had only turned around when, fed up with the lack of results, she had broken into the royal palace and threatened the Grand Duke directly.

Sure, he was mad about being threatened, but he had come around in the end.

Especially when some other guy had offered to take over as Grand Duke and do what she wanted.

Sarah didn’t much care about the politics of it all; she just wanted help with the interrogations after she caught all the kidnappers.

She didn’t want to accidentally lose any possible leads to finding James.

So she was precise as she captured the Assassin.

[Technique: Brick Breaker]

Crunch crunch crunch crunch.

Both shoulders, both knees.

Then she stripped him naked, checking for hidden weapons—she found quite a few—and threw him over her shoulder like a sack of grain.

The guards finally arrived.

“Oh, it’s you, Mistress Sarah. Would you like us to take him?” the senior guard asked deferentially.

“Nah, let’s just go, I want to catch as much of the interrogations as I can.”

“No need to worry, Mistress,” the younger guard said, looking fresh from his Choosing Day. “They’re just softening them up right now. They didn’t want to start before you arrived, either.”

Sarah nodded sternly, a grim expression on her face. “Good. Let’s go.” She dashed off as though the unconscious and crippled man on her shoulder weighed nothing, and the guards soon gave up following.

They couldn’t keep up.

So they focused on settling down the people who had witnessed the takedown, restoring order on the warm summer night.

That night, the Grand Duchy of Rolland was freed from the clutches of the Horn Clan’s organized crime.

That night, Sarah got the lead she needed. Though, not the one she had wanted or expected.

“Yesh, that’sh righ’” the boss slurred through a mouth of broken and missing teeth. “We got ‘em from the Iberteriansh. Dey were de onesh who told ush to go aftuh magesh.”

Sarah looked to the investigator standing next to her, observing the interrogation. “Iberteriansh??”

The investigator narrowed his eyes. “Iberterians, from the Kingdom of Iberteria. Far to the west, on the peninsula.”

Sarah looked at the table next to them, bearing a pile of magic-blocking shackles.

It was Sarah’s only lead, as well. The Horn Clan was remarkably insular, and their criminal activities had been strictly focused within Rolland itself.

Sarah suspected that the Rollandish people were just xenophobic. Even their criminals didn’t like foreigners.

Sarah investigated on her own for one more week. The Magician’s Guild of Rolland was able to tell her more about the shackles, though the precise distinction between ensorcellment and enchantment escaped her. The important thing was that such an ensorcellment was unheard of, as far as the Magician’s Guild knew.

That the spell was cast on shackles made the Magicians there understandably wary.

But that was as far as Sarah got.

On Sarah’s last night in Rolland, she attended a party in her honor, thrown by the families of the children she had recovered.

She sniffed her glass of wine, sampling the bouquet, and her [Poison Detection] Skill alerted her to the Deathsap Glaze smeared almost imperceptibly along the rim.

She drank anyway.

Brawler Class Skill [Poison Resistance] has reached level 13.

She sighed in satisfaction. It was always good to increase her resistance Skills.

Still, best to clean up any poison lying around before there was collateral damage.

She inhaled deeply, channeling her mana into her Synergy Skills [Scent Detection] and [Enhanced Perception].

The air around her flowed, bringing her the information she sought.

Her Air affinity had proven quite useful for her Finder Class.

Smiling and chatting with other party guests, she unerringly gathered up all the poisoned food and drinks and glasses and disposed of them.

Given that she had completely wiped out the Horn Clan, this was likely the Grand Duke trying to tie up loose ends.

Some people just lack gratitude.

And anyway, he should know that she had already made plans to escort a caravan back to Asufal through the Adventurer’s Guild.

What were his spies even doing?

The Grand Duke’s information gathering system was a complete joke, in Sarah’s opinion.

She spent the rest of the night conversing with the ecstatic families she had reunited. It had taken some doing, given her almost complete lack of Skills when she arrived Rolland, but eventually her Finder Class had solidified somewhat.

“Thank you so much, Mistress Sarah!”

“Thank you, Auntie Sarah.”

“Oi oi, come on now, I’m only seventeen! I’m not old enough for you to be calling me Auntie yet!” Sarah insisted despite, in fact, having a niece and several nephews already, from her older brothers.

At first, she had had to track the Horn Clan manually. Learn the streets of Pahree, learn the people, memorize every face she saw, really focus on how everything fit together. It was only when she caught a mother turned away from the Adventurer’s Guild for trying to put in an emergency request to find her lost child that she realized her [Family Tracing] Skill didn’t only work on her own family.

It was still the work of weeks to catch a trace of that one kidnapped boy and track him to the hideout in the outskirts of the city.

Once found, it only took Sarah several hours to stage an escape and retrieve the boy, and by the next morning, he had been returned to his family.

But Sarah had identified the men and women involved in holding him. And everyone they associated with. And all their associates.

And that had led to her second useful Finder Skill: [Association Link].

Mothers and sons. Coworkers. Merchants and their customers.

Everyone was linked.

Even now, looking around the party, Sarah could identify who was linked to whom, and even visualize it, if she wished.

The reunited families. The children who had been kept together in captivity. The waitstaff who bore links to various nobles within Rolland.

With Sarah’s training as a Scout, it was easy to remain hidden as she observed what turned out to be the Horn Clan and all their members and associates.

With Sarah’s training as a Bounty Hunter, it was easy to memorize their faces for later identification and tracking.

[Mark Target].

At first, she could only mark one person, and then track them wherever they went. At first, this was similar to [Hot and Cold], the Skill Avenger had promised would tell her if she was getting closer to or farther from her brother, James. As it improved, she could mark more people.

[Exploration].

This Finder Skill turned out to be similar to a Scout Skill, [Mapping]. But with less of a focus on actually producing maps, and more on working with Sarah’s other Finder Skills.

Now, she had an accurate grasp in her mind of everywhere she had explored. Pahree, the surrounding outskirts, the road she had taken from Asufal, Asufal itself…

And that had led to yet another Skill.

[Tracking]. That let her track how her marks had moved within her explored territory.

Once all the Skills were in place, wrapping up the Horn Clan had been simple. Sarah identified all the members and associates, tracked down their hideouts, planned her attack, and then moved in like a hurricane. And with the uncorrupted guards identified and assisting her, no one had managed to get away.

“Mistress Sarah, try zis brew! It’s ze best we’ve made this year!”

Sarah sipped, and it was quite good.

“Ooh, this is really good! I’ll buy a small barrel from you, to take home.”

“Buy? Non non non, zat is unthinkable! It iz a gift!”

Sarah accepted it magnanimously.

The Rollandish people generally didn’t like outsiders, yes. But once they decided they liked you?

You were basically family. They raised hospitality to an artform. And after the first gift was accepted, she found herself loaded down with pastries, small barrels of beers, wines, wheels of cheese, and even an enchanted icebox of fish, once the giver figured out Sarah had the mana to supply the enchantment.

The celebration continued long into the night, and after the first poisoning attempt was deftly handled, there were no more.

Early the next morning, Sarah arrived at staging center on the western outskirts of Pahree, where warehouses stored merchant goods and caravans loaded and unloaded. She was, once again, escorting one such caravan. This time, in the opposite direction, from Pahree to Asufal. From there, Sarah would head to Iberteria, the source of the ensorcelled shackles and the likely location of another kidnapping ring, but along the way she would stop and visit her family.

It wound up cutting into her payment for the quest to load so much of her gifts onto the caravan, but Sarah didn’t mind.

It wasn’t about the money.

It was more about the connections to traveling merchants.

Bit by bit, Sarah was expanding her network, and putting it out there that she was looking for a Smith named James, and any unusual forged or enchanted items.

She figured it was likely that James was being put to work by some crime syndicate somewhere, producing goods for sale or use by those criminals. Much as the Horn Clan had been attempting to do with the children they kidnapped.

If so, those items would spread, or at least word of those items.

During the month of travel, the equinox passed, and the weather cooled. As was typical in Asufal, the sky quickly turned overcast and rainy. Monster attacks increased, though none could threaten the caravan with Sarah on overwatch.

Brawler Class has reached level 15.

Finder Class has reached level 8.

The bonuses she received more than covered the costs of hauling her own goods to the capital, and on arrival she paid to have them stored for several days in one of the warehouses by the city gates.

Nostalgia gripped Sarah as she walked the familiar streets. The bars she remembered visiting; the plaza where she had fought Svalbard with her aunt Nadine and her Bounty Hunter instructor, Sven; even the boutique she had promised to revisit with Tiffany, Liz, and Jess.

The plan was to take a few days, check for new information, catch up with friends and family, and then continue on to Mortimer Barony. Her mother had told her in a letter that the Baron would send a carriage for her, so she didn’t have to worry about transportation.

Sarah decided to swing by the Adventurer’s Guild first, even before booking a room at an inn, just in case there was any news of her brother.

What she found was utter pandemonium.