Sarah's Story Chapter 047 - Bounty Hunter Sven

“No, no, is all wrong. Do not be invisible, be unnoticeable.”

“What’s the difference?” Sarah pouted.

The first thing they had done for her training was go to the busiest street in the city and practice stealth. Or at least, that was what Sarah had thought they were doing.

Part of being a Scout is avoiding detection.

So she did that.

“Is no good, target will be looking for that, Skills can see through invisible. You must hide in plain sight. Watch me.”

Sven walked into the middle of the street, where he would be in the way of the most people possible, and then…

Nobody spared him a second glance.

Everyone just moved around him, like river water around a rock.

Sarah was watching him like a hawk but everyone else? It wasn’t as though he wasn’t there. People saw him and walked around him. But they didn’t care that he was there.

Sven even started moving, intentionally getting in peoples’ way.

And to Sarah’s surprise, although people started grumbling, still nobody really paid attention.

There was a large, strange looking man blocking traffic and nobody seemed to care at all.

He came back to Sarah. “See? Is like that.”

Sarah folded her arms across her chest and looked up at him. “Okay, I see the difference, but I don’t know how you did it.”

Sven rubbed his jaw and looked down at the slender young Brawler. “Hmm, is like, this. Stand like me.”

Sarah observed intently as Sven shifted his posture slightly in twenty different ways, and suddenly he was staring at some nearby storefront, oblivious to the world. And the world became oblivious to him.

Thanks to Sarah’s training as a Scout, she could see what he was doing. Thanks to her training as a Brawler, she could imitate his posture.

“Yes, like that!”

Bit by bit, Sarah started to understand how to move about unnoticed. How to be boring. How to blend in with a crowd. How to sit on a bench in plain sight for hours at a time and have nobody take any notice. How to move through a crowd, even against a crowd, without drawing attention.

“You do well, for not having a Class or Skills. Very good.”

And Sven explained how Sarah could practice on her own, what to look out for, how to judge her own ability to remain unnoticed in plain sight, and he showed her how to leave once spotted and return.

They practiced this for two days.

“Aren’t you worried you’ll be spotted in the city?” Sarah asked. They had been all over the city, and wouldn’t their target, Svalbard, spot them and run away?

“Is okay, Svalbard doesn’t know I’m tailing him. He doesn’t know who I am. Is another part of being a Bounty Hunter, famous Bounty Hunters are bad Bounty Hunters.”

“How do you get jobs and recommendations, then?”

Sven shrugged. “Word of mouth, friend of a friend, want ads. Is usually not hard to find someone who’s mad enough to hire someone to chase down whoever wronged him. They often yell.”

Sarah made a face, not believing him, and Sven noticed.

“Even you, Brawler girl, you post want ad, no? To find your brother? Is it not posted in the Adventurer’s Guild right now?”

“Well, yeah, but that’s different…” Sarah started, but Sven raised a hand. “Is not. You may feel discouraged, nobody comes to talk to you about your request. Don’t. People see it. People remember it. Word spreads. Maybe someday soon, someone brings your brother to you. Is how best Bounty Hunters work.”

Sarah gave him an intense look. “And would you be able to find James?”

Sven shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid, no. Trail is too cold.”

Sarah was crestfallen. “But,” Sven continued, “I have memorized the drawing. If I see him, I will catch him. This is another part of Bounty Hunter, come, I will teach you faces.”

And so Sarah learned to remember faces and names. It was a lot of memorization and practice. For a week, Sven would take her somewhere in the morning, and they would simply people watch the crowds. Then, at lunch, he would describe someone to her and tell her to find them.

The first day, she failed.

The next day, Sven pointed the person out in the morning, and at lunchtime gave her two new targets.

She found one of them that evening.

It was slow, at first, but eventually, she got used to it. Quickly scanning a face, memorizing it, and keeping track of where she saw them and what direction they were heading in.

There were other markers, too. A distinctive hat often worn. Shoes: people often wore the same shoes every day. The way people walked, their height, their build, and so on.

Sven also taught her ways to remember names, and tie them to faces. To remember hundreds, thousands of faces and names.

“Is important part of being Bounty Hunter. Never know who will be next target. Job is much easier if you seen them before.”

They didn’t spend all day training. Sven often left in the evenings to conduct his own investigations, as did Nadine. Sarah, however, continued training on her own.

After the first day, Bounty Hunter showed up in the world of her soul. But Bounty Hunter admitted it couldn’t find James.

After the third day, there were multiple specializations. But they couldn’t find James either. Sure, if she took the Class and then stumbled upon him one day, it would help, but she was certain if that happened she’d recognize him anyway, Class or no Class.

And on it went. After two weeks of training, Sarah could hide in plain sight, completely change her appearance through the use of disguises, alter her voice, extract information from a witness without detection, and had memorized the names and faces of what felt like half the city.

The Bounty Hunter and Scout options in her soul had started to merge, producing hybrid Classes that could do most of both, and the specializations were intriguing.

But still, among the hundreds, nearing a thousand, still none declared they could find James.

Finally, one evening, Sven, Sarah, and Nadine met up in a private room in one of the seedier bars in the city. Sarah hadn’t even known it had private rooms. But she knew the name and face of almost everyone in the bar, and where half of them lived.

“Is time, tomorrow afternoon.”

“You found our man?” Sarah asked, careful not to name their target, or even use the word target.

“Found him second day here. Not hard.”

Nadine narrowed her eyes but remained silent.

“Is important for Bounty Hunter to prepare for takedown carefully. Where it goes down, who is present, environment for fight. Brawlers understand, yes? Is not so important for finding part,” Sven explained.

Sarah nodded. It made sense.

Sven laid out their plan for the arrest.

Svalbard would be going from his hideout to an underground gambling parlor tomorrow afternoon, passing through a particular small plaza.

Sarah would distract him by calling him out.

Nadine would place the seal on his back. Then the three of them together would take him down. Svalbard had a potion that he could use to keep Svalbard unconscious without harm for weeks at a time: long enough to transport him all the way back to the Rhingian city of Kern, where most of his lenders were waiting.

“Is good? No questions? Training satisfactory?”

Nadine looked at Sarah, and Sarah nodded, and then Nadine nodded as well. “Yes, very satisfactory. Thank you, Sven.”

“No, thank you, Brawler Nadine. I could not capture Svalbard without your assistance. And Sarah will help too, is very very good.”

The weather the next day was wet and overcast. A drizzle continued all morning, just enough to wet every surface, ending just after lunchtime. The lighting was flat and shadows were hard to come by, though those that did remain were darker than normal.

Ominous weather that did little to deter the people of Asufal: they were used to it. It was just normal to them.

Sarah was sitting on a low wall in a corner of the plaza. Nadine and Sven were concealed elsewhere. Very few people were passing through at this time of day, but those that did didn’t spare a second glance for the daydreaming young woman looking up at the clouds.

Sarah instantly noticed when Svalbard entered the plaza.

He had shaved his head, ditching his distinctive long hair and beard, but he had left his eyebrows, streaks of silvery-white above his pale blue eyes. His distinctive broken hooked nose, the scar on his cheek that extended into his lip, and even the shape of his ears. She clocked it all in a second.

From the way he walked, steady and secure even on the slippery cobblestones, she knew he was a skilled fighter.

And yet, her [Danger Sense] and [Threat Awareness] Skills were entirely unresponsive.

Which she found odd, and in that moment she recognized Sven’s Bounty Hunter wisdom. It was odd and memorable that her Skills reacted so little to someone she could see knew his way around a fight. At the very least, there should have been something.

Invisible.

Not unnoticeable.

He was wearing a cloak covering most of his body, though given the rain had stopped he had dropped the hood, like everyone else walking around.

He was a giant of a man.

Tall. Bulky. Neck as thick as his head. And judging from the way he was walking, armored and likely armed. Small to medium-sized clubs were easy enough to conceal under a cloak, and… yes, judging from the way the cloak shifted as he walked, he had a round shield as well.

He walked directly into the point Sven had predicted he would, and Sarah leapt up from her waiting position, now blocking the exit Svalbard had planned to take to leave the plaza.

“Ah, it’s you!” she shouted and pointed directly at him.

Focusing his attention on her.

For just a moment, he stopped.

And in that moment, Nadine was upon him. With a burst of speed, she dashed in low, and jumped up behind him, flipping his cloak up and slapping the seal directly on the center of his back, where it would be hard for him to remove himself.

Svalbard somehow immediately had his club in hand and whirled around, swinging blindly at the older Brawler woman.

But Nadine nimbly avoided it with a back handspring.

Only to find ice-slicked cobblestones beneath her feet as she attempted to land.

She slipped.

She lost her posture.

For a long moment, she was stuck in place, unable to move.

And Svalbard wasted no time.

He had predicted this would happen, from long experience.

He was already moving, stepping forward strongly, bringing his foe within reach of his club.

The ice beneath his feet did nothing to hinder his movement.

Rather, his feet seemed to grip the ice even better than it had the wet cobblestones.

A stone whizzed through the air, and collided with the back of Svalbard’s head.

[Tough]

[Steady]

[Unbreakable Poise]

Despite the accurate throw, and the cut on the back of the large man’s head, he didn’t stop, didn’t flinch.

His club continued moving unerringly towards Nadine’s head.

It was going to hit.

Sarah started screaming.

It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

They had placed the seal.

There shouldn’t have been any ice.

Crack!

A whip lashed out, faster than sound, and wrapped around the club, pulling it to a stop just before it struck Nadine. The Brawler fell, regained contact with the ground, adjusted to the slippery ice, and in just another instant, was dashing back, out of the range of the club.

Sven grunted, holding the whip with both hands as it took all his strength to hold back the strike for even just a moment.

Snap!

And then the whip broke, and the club was free again.

Nadine was backing up.

Sarah was lunging forward, desperate to help her Aunt.

Sven was just slightly off-balance from the recoil of his whip breaking.

Svalbard inhaled and demonstrated why he was an A Rank adventurer, and the power of a dual combat Classer.

[Anchor Howl]

[Howling Blizzard]

[Sapping Cold]

[Intimidating Aura]

[Discord]

[Fortify]

[Arena Trap]

[Chilling Fright]

[Roaring Challenge]

Skills stacked on Skills stacked on Skills.

All with a single shout.

The footing turned treacherous. A wave of cold spread throughout the plaza. Sarah stumbled slightly.

But the worst of it?

Her [Danger Sense] and [Threat Awareness] Skills were going crazy. It was unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. For months now, since Choosing her Brawler Class, she’d been relying on the Skills to track threats and potential enemies as a kind of sixth sense. It was like having eyes in the back of her head.

Now that sixth sense was being used against her.

All of her focus was locked on Svalbard. She lost track of her allies. She lost track of her environment.

There was only her doom, and it was Svalbard.