The moment Marcus returned to his room on the resort, he found that Mrazivy was no longer in the room.
Almost immediately panic gripped him and he thought that the worst might have happened.
'Mraz, are you there?!' Marcus shouted in his mind sending her a telepathic signal.
For a moment all was quiet and he was getting ready to tear the entire resort apart to find her when she responded.
'Yes, I am here. Why are you so panicked? I am just in the bath. If you had calmed down and focused, I am sure you would have noticed that I am here.' She said with her telepathy and having an exacerbated tone.
Hearing this, the tension left Marcus immediately and as he listened, he could distinctly hear that Mrazivy was not far away and in the bath.
With a sigh of relief, he sat down on the bed and calmed down.
A few minutes later Mrazivy came out of the bathroom with a bath robe on and using a towel to dry her hair.
"Sorry, I did not think that taking a bath would be such a cause for concern. I suppose you were afraid that I might burn myself with the hot water or possibly even drown in the deep tub." Mrazivy said with a teasing smile.
"Okay, I should not have panicked so quickly when I did not immediately see you. I was just afraid that while I was gone whatever entity we are investigating might have attacked you." Marcus said.
At this Mrazivy just laughed a bit before saying, "No all was quiet. I imagine that with this being such a large operation as it is, the tiny waves we have made have gone unnoticed so far. But enough about that, how did your meeting with Boreas go?"
Seeing that Mrazivy was curious Marcus told her that he had secured Boreas' aid and that he was going to ask some friends of his to collect information and had given them an emergency way to summon him should they be faced with something they could not handle.
"Sounds like pretty good insurance to me. Now we can really get to the bottom of this without and restraint." Mrazivy said as he slammed her right first into her left hand.
It was obvious that she was still angry about getting infected with the pseudo soul fragment surveillance device without even knowing about it.
"Yeah, well that can wait till tomorrow. Even if we have not garnered any suspicion yet, if we go out at night and start poking our noses around, we very well could find more trouble than we want. I think we should take it slow and investigate a few more things before we start really delving deep into what is going on. We are going to want as much information as we can get to avoid ending up in a situation we cannot handle. Boreas' backup will not come immediately even if we do call him. We need to make sure not to walk into any traps." Marcus said, urging them to be cautious.
Mrazivy on the other hand had been planning to get a bit more reckless now that they had secured Boreas' aid but relented to Marcus who wanted to go slow and steady.
"What is our next step then?" Mrazivy asked him.
She had figured that capturing one of the resort's staff and integrating them would be a good plan, but Marcus rejected that idea.
"No, I think that they might actually be some kind of hive mind or at least have some way to transmit information to each other. It is also possible that they simply cannot tell us anything no matter how hard we push. They were made by someone so we do not know what kind of programming they might have. We should leave directly involving ourselves with the homunculi staff as a last resort."
Nodding her head, Mrazivy could understand Marcus' valid worries, and instead asked him what he planned to do.
"First there are a few things that we are only able to speculate on right now. For one we do not know if every other guest is infected. The criteria could be specific or perhaps they just infect a certain number of people at random. We need to find out the exact scale before anything else."
"Yeah, I suppose that is important. If they are only infecting certain people, it would be best for us to find out the criteria they are using to choose people. Still, I think that it is more likely they are infecting everyone." Mrazivy said, shrugging her shoulders.
"I do to, but we only have a small sample size right now. Currently we can only confirm that the two of us were infected. We are only assuming that everyone on the resort is getting infected."
It was possible that only select people were being targeted and that there were more eyes on them than they thought. If they managed to confirm that only they or a select few individuals were infected, they would need to change their approach and be even more cautious.
"Okay, I understand, but how are we going to check everyone else? You already said it is difficult for you to deal with other people." Mrazivy said, wanting to know the specifics of Marcus' plan.
"You are right that no one else is going to let me interact with their soul without resistance and that I would be hard pressed to remove the pseudo soul fragment, but I should be able to confirm if anyone is infected. All I need to do is possess them and search for the abnormality attached to their soul. Removing it might be difficult without causing permanent damage, but I should be able to confirm its existence easily enough. Some people might feel sick for a while afterwards or maybe go into a short day or two comas if they are especially weak, but I should not cause any lasting damage." Marcus explained.
"Sure, that sounds like a good first step, but we also need to find out how they are adding these things to the drinks and where they are stored."
"I agree, that is important as well. Once we have confirmed whether or not everyone or only select people are infected, we can decide how we are going to pursue that thread. Now it is already pretty late so why don't you get some sleep. I will keep watch through the night just in case." Marcus said, with a reassuring smile.
However, Mrazivy just shook her head.
"No, there is no way I am going to be able to get any sleep tonight with all that is going on. If you were going to stay up anyway, let us brainstorm some more things to investigate and what we are going to approach tomorrow."
Seeing the enthusiastic expression on his wife's face, Marcus realized that they were going to be having a busy night.
Until dawn, the two of them created theories and went back and forth on how they were going to investigate.
At one-point Mrazivy had suggested that they split up to cover more ground, but Marcus was heavily against this.
They needed to stick together to be able to respond to any trouble that might show up.
Luckily Mrazivy gave in and agreed that they should not split up.
"Okay, but let me just make sure that what we are going to do first is check out the adventurers guild on the resort?" Mrazivy said, wanting to confirm they were on the same page.
They had made dozens of revisions to their plan, and it was possible they were not on the same page.
"Yeah, that is what we agreed on. We need to find out if they have been infected and if the guild is in any way involved. If we find that they are, we will need to stop immediately. We are not equipped to take on the entire guild and if this is how they want to gather their information then we are best letting them do as they please."
They had already decided to completely back off if they found that what was going on was being backed by the adventurers guild. As an organization it was one of the strongest in the world and even if they were infecting people will surveillance devices, there was little they could do about it.
To that end they were going to head to the adventurers guild first.
Mrazivy would enter the guild hall and ask the adventurers there some questions, pretending to be interested in signing on with the resort, while Marcus would use his ghostly abilities to stealthily infiltrate the place and do some investigation of his own.
"Now I suppose we should go and have breakfast like normal and go about our day for a bit as we make our way over to the adventurers guild to begin our investigation."
This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺