Chapter 202: Let’s Set The Stage For Kisho
Kisho Hikaru’s estate sat at the northern end of Old Shinkotsu’s merchant district, where the streets widened enough for three carriages to pass without incident.
The estate itself was traditional in every sense the word could carry.
The outer wall was old stone topped with curved tile, and the main gate was open but attended by two guards in the house livery.
Beyond the gate, a gravel path ran between carefully maintained garden sections, the lanterns along its length already lit as the evening came in, each one a mana lamp enclosed in rice paper that threw warm gold light across the stones.
The main building was timber, wide and low, with a sloping layered roof and sliding paper screens along the exterior corridors. The gardens visible between the interior corridors were quiet, with a small reflecting pool at the center.
Unlike most estates in Old Shinkotsu, the servants here did not consist only of the Beast-Folk.
Servants moved through the interior corridors in pairs, unhurried and without clustering: a human woman carrying a lacquered tray, a demon-folk man with a folded cloth over his arm, and an elven girl who moved between the garden-facing corridor.
isho Hikaru himself was in the receiving room adjacent to the main lounge, seated on a floor cushion with a ceramic cup balanced in both hands, speaking to his head of household about the evening’s arrangements in the calm, unhurried way of a man who was confident in his own preparation and simply verifying the details.
He was a fox beast-folk man in his middle years, with deep red hair that had begun showing threads of grey at the temples, and he wore a well-made dark kimono with no house emblem on it.
His ears were alert but not elevated while his tail, a deep auburn, was resting quietly against the cushion beside him.
The household found him easy to work for. He remembered names and preferred schedules, and when something was not to his preference, he did not fly into a rage. Which was more than most nobles could say.
The guest lounge on the east side of the main building was currently occupied by five people who had not come as guests in the conventional sense, but as envoys of the gods who made Kisho who he is today.
Luke was on the sofa nearest the window, tossing the Axe of the Void’s Edge between his hands, end over end, catching it without looking at it.
The Axe itself looked completely unremarkable, akin to a weapon that a moderately successful adventurer might carry without anyone giving it a second glance.
A bearded axe head looking as though it was made of run-of-the-mill iron with a functional grip, no ornamentation, no visible runes.
The only indication that it was not what it appeared to be was the fact that Luke was handling it, and smiling every time his eyes drifted to it.
Irhaal sat at the low table with three reports spread across its surface, her elven ears twitching ever so often as she read the reports with her utmost attention, occasionally moving one to cross-reference against another.
The reports covered Nico, Nom-Nom, and Peko’s known activities in Shinkotsu since their arrival, compiled from what Kisho had been able to gather.
Naya was drinking tea, sitting with her back correctly straight, wearing the civilian clothes that constituted her cover rather than the priestess robes Lady Stretlizia had issued her, which she had folded and stored.
Gorran’s presence occupied roughly a third of the room simply by existing in it, and he was working through a bowl of fruit salad Kisho’s kitchen had produced at his request.
Naf was in the corner chair with a sketchbook open on his knees, and his feet did not quite reach the floor.
After ensuring everything was in order, Kisho came in through the sliding screen door, bowed before Luke and settled onto the sofa across from the table.
"Young master, they should be in transit now..." he said, addressing. "The Chief will almost certainly be accompanying him."
"Together?" Luke asked, not looking up as he caught the axe one final time, set it on the cushion beside him, and looked at Naf.
"Naf," he said. "You’re up."
Naf set the sketchbook down on the chair arm, stood, and went to his pack against the wall and retrieved the helmet Lady Strelitzia had issued.
It was a smooth construction in pale metal, fitted precisely to his head with the adjustment collar at the base.
It had no eye slots, no mouth opening, or even any visible means by which the person wearing it was supposed to even breathe.
Naf put it on.
The moment it settled onto his head, the atmosphere in the room shifted. Every person present became faintly aware of something impossible to point at, as though a gentle hand had briefly brushed across the surface of their thoughts before moving on.
"Here is what we know," Luke started, crossing one leg over the other, "He has a System. We don’t know which one. So his mind is off limits. Same goes for B-41."
"Because of the Familiar Bond," Irhaal said, not looking up from the reports.
"Yep, thanks to that bond..." Luke said. "It probably has just as much access to the System as our target."
He looked at Naf’s helmet. "Find X-97 if you can. But our primary target is the Chief. We’re not looking for anything specific. We’re looking for anything."
Noding, Naf closed his eyes, and his awareness left the room.
It spread the way air spreads, outward from a center without resistance, moving through the estate walls, the garden, the outer walls, and into the street beyond, and then further, into Old Shinkotsu’s evening before going even past that into New Shinkotsu’s noise and mass, and then past that to the city walls, the gate checkpoints to the road the forest beyond that.
The entirety of the Capital was under his eye.
Each person in his range was a point with qualities attached to it: emotional temperature, physical condition, the frequency of their mana, the clarity or turbulence of their general mental state.
He could not read thoughts... yet.
But he could read signatures.
A merchant anxious about inventory. A guard bored and cold. A child excited about something ahead. A woman crying quietly in a room she thought was private.
Even the Emperor himself was not spared. Nor was a cat sitting on top of the western wall, grooming itself.
Close to a million of these, spread across the city, each one distinct, each one Naf’s.
And he found the Chief without much searching.
The Chief was not difficult to find. He was a point of compressed power behind it, someone who had been operating at a very high level of controlled power for a very long time, and that had a texture that was immediately identifiable.
"Found the Chief..." Naf said, his voice unchanged from the voice he used to describe everything else. "He is in a carriage not too far... he’s in New Shinkotsu."
"And the target?" Luke asked.
"Same carriage... They’re together."
"X-97?" Luke asked. "Or Peko as it calls itself now. And who the hell names a Phoenix Chimera Peko?"
"I can’t find X-97," he said.
"Try again," Irhaal said, leaning forward.
And he did.
"I don’t think X-97 is in my range," he said. "Nothing matching the frequency anywhere in the city."
"According to the report, B-41 should be in a dungeon," Irhaal said, looking at the reports in front of her.
"And X-97?" Gorran asked.
"Should be in the grand library...." Irhaal looked at the line twice more. "Nothing suggests she’d be outside Naf’s range."
"Leave it," Luke said, waving a hand. "Keep the focus on our two guests."
Meanwhile, inside the carriage moving south through New Shinkotsu, Nico was watching the street through the window, lost in his thoughts, running scenarios in his head about the shape of the evening.
Then-
-Ding!
{Warning: External observation detected... Observation Passed.}
[Come again?] Nico straightened immediately.
-Ding!
{A sensory ability was used in this area. It passed over you without establishing a direct lock. Cloaking protocols have been activated as a precaution.}
The System had not waited to be asked.
Nico looked at the Chief, who was still watching the opposite street pass by with no indication that he had registered anything.
[What kind of sensory ability?]
-Ding!
{Remains unidentified. The pass was brief, and the coverage was consistent with a scan rather than a targeted search.}
[Entropy?]
-Ding!
{Unlikely. The Chief’s presence makes open surveillance from Entropy operatives impractical.
The more probable explanation is a cultivator or mage training their ability, or someone performing a search sweep for an unrelated purpose.}
[Or someone who just wanted to confirm I was in this carriage...] Nico narrowed his eye.
-Ding!
{Also possible.}
He looked at the street for a moment.
[Send Nom and Peko a message. Stay alert. Possible surveillance.]
-Ding!
{Sent.}
The carriage continued moving, the driver holding to the smooth pace he had committed to when the second pouch of silver had landed in his hands.
Back in the guest lounge at Kisho’s estate, Naf suddenly straightened. "Target disappeared."
And the room immediately went quiet.
"What do you mean disappeared?" Naya softly asked.
"His signature is gone... Completely. Like he was never there. The carriage is still moving. The Chief is still in it. Target’s point just went out."
Luke leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
"System," he said.
No one in the room disagreed with the conclusion.
"Still can’t confirm which one," Gorran said.
"Doesn’t matter which one..." Luke said. "It means touching him is completely off the table regardless."
He then looked at Naf. "Infiltrate the Chief."
Naf turned his awareness back to the carriage, to the singular remaining point inside it, and this time he did not simply observe.
He reached.
It was nothing like the open scan he had performed across the city.
This was inserting a hand into still water without disturbing the surface.
The Chief’s mind had been hardened through a great deal of use over a great deal of time, and Naf knew how to push into minds that pushed back without meaning to.
Several minutes passed in complete silence.
Gorran picked his bowl back up, ate two more bites, and set it down again.
Naya refilled her cup.
Irhaal closed the reports and folded them together.
Luke watched the helmet and did not move.
Then Naf’s posture changed, a settling rather than a tension as he said, "Done."
He extended the link outward from himself, and one by one, Luke, Naya, Gorran, Irhaal, and Kisho received it.
What arrived was the Chief’s current experience, the carriage interior, the faint sound of wheels on the road, the smell of streets, his attention as it tracked the street outside, and underneath all of that, running as a baseline note, his general assessment of the evening ahead, which was watchful and fully prepared for several different versions of how the meeting could go.
Naya set her cup down quietly.
Irhaal’s eyes moved to the window and stayed there.
Luke settled deeper into the sofa, one ankle crossed over his knee, while a grin spread across his face the way it comes when a plan just got into motion.
He could feel the carriage moving. He could hear what the Chief heard. He could feel what the Chief felt at the edges of his mind.
And Naf, sitting quietly in his chair with his feet that did not quite reach the floor, gave Luke the power to make a thought of his choosing seep so deep in the mind of the strongest Adventurer in Fugen that he would not be able to resist asking Nico.
He could not put thoughts into someone’s head that are too contradictory to the person’s psyche.
Thoughts that were already there, as intrusive as they may be, but he could give them weight to curiosity that must be satiated.
Kisho refilled his tea across the table with a hand that shook slightly as he witnessed first-hand the capabilities of the smallest member of Pantheon’s young master’s team.
"Okay..." Luke said, the carriage’s motion running through his awareness like a current. "Let’s set the stage for Kisho."
