Point-of-View: Les Jeule
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"No, why should I come with you?"
"Because I said so! Don't put up a fuss, you'll make a scene and attract attention!"
"...I hate you."
"Hehe, I know you love me, lil bro!"
I sighed and gave up...I can't be bothered to waste energy arguing with her right now. It had been a few minutes since we went through the outermost gate. Misen Ragiu had the right idea, jumping off immediately. I was too late in attempting to follow his example, my sister grabbing my arm before I could leap off.
And now she was insisting on me going in with her to through the next outermost gate, into the Lapdog Tier area. Why? I don't know. Surely it couldn't be something stupid, she was generally reliable in situations like this...but I couldn't help but feel skeptical...
...
First, she headed into the Research Tier building by herself, in order to deliver those plants the people we were posing as had collected by that stream, coming out about half an hour later. She then wanted to go find her living quarters. It took a while, but we finally found the building she was staying in, before heading in and looking for her room.
We passed by a couple of open rooms, noticing that some of the residents appeared to have a slave in their rooms with them. They were most likely pawns. I was more than a little uneasy, slavery was common in Silvland as well, but it was something I disliked about my country. That was thanks to Selesa, when I was younger, she helped me understand just how messed up a system of humans enslaving other humans was. Whatever her faults, her morals were in the right place, and I was proud of her for that. Not that I would ever say that to her, just picturing her reaction annoyed me.
"Perhaps I should head back to the outer area, sister, I feel a bit unsettled here-."
"Oh, relax, little bro! I'll let you go soon enough, but we should first discuss things a bit more."
"...alright, fine."
"Hm, I wonder if I have a slave in my room too...that Retya woman didn't mention anything like that, but to be fair, I didn't exactly ask either. I hope I don't, that would be kinda awkward."
We soon found her room and walked in, I looked around it as I entered. It was fairly well maintained and tidy, though it wasn't very big. There were two doors inside, one led into a bathroom and the other into a tiny space.
"Woah, this looks kinda like a prison cell! Do you think this is like a room for a slave? Well, it looks vacant, so I guess this woman didn't have a slave. Good, we can talk freely."
As it turned out, she did most of the talking, and it wasn't anything too important, just minor precautions and warnings. She told me to be careful, avoid drawing suspicious, be caution while investigating and things like that. In other words, everything she said went without saying, but since she was just being concerned, I didn't say anything, instead patiently listening to her worried advice.
"Don't worry, I won't take any unnecessary risks, you know I'm capable of handling myself," I replied reassuringly.
"Well, that's true...sorry if I'm being kinda naggy, I'm just worried is all. So, hey, I was thinking...we should leave on the evening of the fourteenth day instead of the morning of the fifteenth."
"Is there any particular reason you say that?"
"Yeah, it's sort of a feeling...Kuro will probably take more risks in his investigations during the last few days, and any number of things could happen as a result. If his exit gets messy, it'll make it harder for us to leave, he has that Vampire Mode thing up his sleeve to get out of jail, so to speak, but we don't have any convenient power boosts like that," She explained.
Hm, that was very hypothetical, but...in the past, her hunches often turned out to be accurate, so it may not be a bad idea to follow her advice.
"Alright, I am okay with that. Do we leave separately or together?"
"Hm...let's go together, how about...you get a horse and cart and wait for me near the gates leading into the Lapdog Tier area around 6 PM on the fourteenth day. There were a lot of people in that camp and they looked pretty engrossed in their tasks, so maybe this place has Quests for the pawns and lapdogs, we'll have to look into all that over the next two weeks."
"That sounds good to me."
"Oh, and let's meet up every other day to exchange notes," She suggested.
"Is that really necessary? I doubt the others plan to do so."
"Yeah, we'll leave them be. Kuro clearly knows what he's doing and seems like the type that would do well solo, and as for Misen...I have a feeling he's going to be more focused on maintaining his cover and playing it safe than on the mission itself. I'll come over to the Pawn Tier every other night to a spot we can agree on, it'll be easier to sneak around and talk in the dark. If we regularly exchange what we've learnt, then it might give us a new perspective if our own investigation isn't going well, and let's say we're both investigating something similar, one of us could switch over to a different lead if we find that out, instead of both of us wasting time on the same thing. What do you say?"
"Well, I suppose that would be alright. However, if the first time we rendezvous turns out to be risky, we should reconsider."
"Yup, sounds good, you're so smart, little bro!" She grinning, attempting to pull me into a tight hug, which I narrowly avoided.
That was close, I almost let my guard down since she was in her serious mode, but I forgot that she could switch back to her idiot mode in the blink of an eye.
"Well, I should get going n-."
"Wait, I just got a great idea! This could be a game changer!"
"...I might regret asking, but...what is it?" I inquired hesitantly.
She glanced at the vacant slave room attached to the room.
"Hear me out for a sec...what if you played the role of my slave, and-?"
"Okay, see you later, sister," I quickly got up, heading for the door, abruptly halting as she suddenly grabbed my arm before I could escape.
"H-hold on, if that doesn't work for you, uh...I could be you slave...?" She suggested, pulling me towards her and hugging me.
I...can't breathe, she's suffocating me with her chest. Not good, I could usually ignore it when she acted like this, but right now...her appearance was different, as far as my eyes were concerned, a woman who was not related to me was embracing me. And what was even harder to ignore was...the size of her breasts, they were rather distracting, to say the least.
This is bad, I must end this before I lose my will to resist! I quickly poked two of my fingers into her nostrils and fired small shots of water straight into them, surprising her and breaking free. She sputtered and coughed, as I opened the door and slipped out.
"W-wait a sec...!"
I stopped before I fully closed the door, her voice sounded rather pained, perhaps that had been a bit too much-?
"Heh, looks like you wanted to get me wet, after al-."
I swiftly slammed the door and walked away with a sigh of exasperation...why was she like that? When we were younger, she had been a very doting older sister, and as a child, I had liked receiving her affection, and was quite attached to her. But as I grew older, her doting and coddling slowly starting to become more and more...what it was now. We were still relatively close, but I had no choice but to distance myself a bit as I grew older in order to spare myself of her...enthusiastic attacks on me.
Anyway, I should now head back to the Pawn Tier area and find my own living quarters.
...
This is...rather disgusting.
Not only was the room filthy, but also hot, there was no ventilation whatsoever. Well, I suppose it is preferable to playing the role of my sister's slave, though just barely. I let out a sigh and left the room, opting to explore the area.
Unfortunately, there wasn't much to see, it was quite likely that my role in this mission would not be very significant. My sister and Kuro were likely to play the more important roles over the next two weeks. I shall focus on maintaining my cover and obtaining as much information as I possibly could.
I found out that this place does indeed have a Quest-like system, they called the assignments as tasks, and had a point system in place. The person I was posing as had over seven hundred points. The required amount to get promoted to the Lapdog Tier was five thousand points. Lapdogs had access to tasks with higher amounts of points upon completion, and once they reach ten thousand points, they can volunteer to work as assistants to the Research Tier, where they could get more recognition and potentially get recommended for a promotion to Research Tier by the researcher they assist.
Once they reach twenty thousand points, they were allowed to audition for something called the Lapdog Elite Squad. However, if someone from the Retribution Tier took interest in their skills, they could audition for it without the twenty thousand points.
Another aspect of the system was penalties, you lose double the number of points for failing a task, and if you did not complete a task for more than a week, you would lose five points.
...
Two nights later, I met with my sister, and told her what I had found out, which was not much. She then informed me of what had happened over the past two days to her. She had been working under a man named Dr Balat Guyen, helping his create various toxins and poisons.
"He's pretty smart, but he's, uh...kinda grabby with his hands," She sighed irritably.
"So, what? It's a taste of your own medicine," I muttered quietly.
"What, did you say something?"
"Nothing, just...I would assume that you would enjoy that," I responded with a shrug.
"Huh, of course not! You know I'm into younger guys!"
...wait, so she'd be fine with it if he was younger than she was?
"Forget it," I shook my head with a sigh, "Is there anything else you found out?"
"Nah, but I'll be moved to a different assignment after this one is complete, that'll be tomorrow or the day after. I'll be able to find out more when that happens."
...
Over the next two days, I spent time taking on tasks in the different surrounding areas outside The Empire. I spent half a day in the campsite in the grassland area, which was to the east of The Empire, watching how they operated. The tasks in this area ranged from mining and collecting minerals to gathering food, there were various wild animals, vegetables and fruits in the area. Most of the pawns and lapdogs I saw in that area killed and ate a lot of meat. After finishing their tasks, instead of heading back to The Empire right away, they would catch, kill and cook a wild animal to eat before going back.
This was because inside The Empire walls, pawns and lapdogs were limited to vegetables for food, three packs a day. The meats and fruits that were gathered only went to the Research Tier and the two Tiers above it. I had tried the food packs available inside The Empire, and while it was filling and edible, it was quite poorly made, overcooked to the point where the vegetables were practically a paste.
I had heard that the food packs in the Lapdog Tier were similar in terms of ingredients, but were prepared better. I suppose it was because there were far more pawns than lapdogs, and cooking for a larger group was always going to take more effort. Not that boiling vegetables really counted as cooking...
After I spent around six hours in the grassland area campsite, I headed back and took another task in the rocky area, to the south-southeast of The Empire, which leads to the Rustlands if you were to travel through it at a brisk pace for a couple of weeks or so.
There weren't many tasks in this area, as the resources available in it were a range of gems and crystals, but The Empire did not seem to have much interest in or use for those. There was a campsite set up there as well, but there were barely any people there, I saw less than half a dozen white-robes in that area.
I did not spend much time there, opting to return to The Empire after a couple of hours.
The next day, I headed to the west of The Empire, the area in that direction was a vast savanna. It was quite hot and humid here, and the main resources that The Empire collected from there were different types of grass, herbs and plants, particularly a plant that was labeled 'Marijuana', which was unfamiliar to me.
There were also tasks that required capture of certain animals, surprisingly mostly carnivores such as lions, tigers, bears, hyenas, crocodiles and other aggressive animals. Interesting...there are edible animals in the savanna, but there were hardly any tasks relating to gathering meat, the animal-capture missions all specified capturing the animals alive.
There were also tasks to gather elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns, but I could not imagine why, were there some use for those appendages that I was unaware of?
In the past, when Goldway still existed, the savanna was rarely used, it was considered to be a similar but inferior area for resources in comparison to the grassland area between The Empire and Silvland, where we had traveled through to get here. But now, it appears that The Empire must have discovered ways to utilize the savanna area that Goldway had been unaware of.
There were seven types of monsters in the savanna, they were, from weakest to strongest, Devilrats, which were exactly what they sounded like, Unicorns, which were like Pegasuses without wings, Werehyenas, which were to hyenas what Werewolves were to wolves, Lindworms, which were snake-like monsters with two arms and similar heights to humans, Chimeras, which looked similar to lions at first glance but had a snake for a tail and long goat-like horns on their heads, Hydras, highly venemous and aquatic serpents that were large in size, and the strongest monster in this area was the Two-Headed Alligator, a large monster that grew to about three times the size of humans, had longer limbs than normal crocodiles and alligators, and could stand on its hind legs.
If you were to keep headed west through the savanna, it would stretch on for a while before running into a spread of Death Zones, and if you were to get past that, you would find yourself in a volcanic mountain range to the east of Bronztan, the only resources to be found in that area were diamonds, but nothing else, and was the most heavily monster-infested area outside of the Death Zones and Forbidden Zones.
I spent the whole day in the savanna, keeping an eye on the white-robes roaming it. They had set up a campsite here as well, and it was bigger than the camp in the grassland area. They used a paralysis spell and large metal cages to incapacitate and capture the wild animals the tasks specified, but it was the way they activated the spell that particularly caught my interest. They did not use Spell Scrolls, instead using a square card-like object to activate it.
The mission aside, I was also quite fascinated by the animals, there were a number of species I had never seen before, except in sketches in textbooks. Admittedly, I got rather distracted and forgot about the mission multiple times, I had always been rather fascinated by wildlife.
I returned to The Empire as it began to get dark, meeting with my sister at a rendezvous point we had agreed on two nights ago. I informed her of what I had learnt while surveiling the surrounding areas, she listened with a thoughtful expression and furrowed eyebrows.
"Huh, I wonder why they're collecting weed? Maybe it's just fot the higher Tier members to get lit af and kick back?" She muttered, more to herself than me.
What was she talking about?
"Hm, I did not say anything about weeds, did you mishear something I said, sister?"
"O-oh, uh...never mind. Hey, you also mentioned that they had posted tasks for poaching elephant tusks and rhino horns? Hm...that probably means that someone in their higher ups has their old-...so, anyway! You spent the entire day in the savanna today right, did anything else happen while you were there?"
"Er, no...I suppose I simply got distracted and spent more time there than I ideally should-."
"Ohh, I get it...you've always been a sucker for animals, haven't you, baby brother?" She grinned, ruffling my hair, before I pushed away her hand and stepped back.
"Please don't risk blowing your cover, sister," I sighed in reply.
I had hoped that my current appearance would make her less handsy, but it appears as though it doesn't even phase her.
"Booooo, you're no fun! Oh, and I'll look into the spell thing you mentioned...what exactly did it look like?"
"It appeared to be a metal square, each side around seven or eight centimeters, and perhaps about a centimeter in thickness. I believe it was labeled, as well. And if I'm not mistaken, one of the edges had a slit in it. I can't be certain though, I did not actually see one up close, only from a distance as I observed others using it."
"Huh, so it's a lot more compact than Spell Scrolls...alright, leave it to me, I'll find out more about it!"
...
After the day I spent at the savanna, I spent most of the next day in the area to the north of The Empire, which was a large beach. On the way to it from The Empire, I noticed that the ground sloped downwards the closer I got to it, it was at a much lower altitude compared to the other areas.
There were only two monsters to really worry about here, Devilcrabs and Killer Turtles, and they were not much of a threat. All the other monsters in this area were purely aquatic and like fish, could not survive outside of water for long. Crossing this ocean and heading north-northeast on a ship would lead you to Platinberg after a week or so of sailing, though you would need a rather sturdy ship to fend off the marine monsters below.
The resources they gathered in this area were mainly salt and seafood, although the latter was not as heavily utilized as Goldway did. The camp set up here was rather small, though they did have a number of ships docked on the shore, I suppose that made sense, they were allied with Platinberg, after all.
After I observed for a while and completed a simple task that I had chosen, I headed back to The Empire.
...
The next day, I decided to take it easier and rest a bit, the past three days had been rather tiring, heading in and out of The Empire for several hours at a time consumed a fair amount of stamina. The following night, I met with my sister again.
"Hey, bro, I don't think we can rendezvous like this again. The guards seemed to have noticed me heading into the Pawn Tier area and looked at me kinda suspiciously today...I don't think it's normal for lapdogs to go to the pawn area unless it's for a task or something like that. So, after tonight, the next time we meet will be on the fourteenth day at night, when we leave," She started with a serious tone, before relaying her current situation.
The researcher she was working under had completed his assignment, and she was sent to assist with a different assignment.
"I'm working with these two junior researchers right now, they're both pretty young, and they're absolutely awful! You wouldn't believe what-!"
"Sister, we don't have time for you to complain, just tell me what you learnt!"
"...why you gotta be so cold, lil bro?"
I decided to go first and inform her of what I had been upto over the past two days. I did not have much to add, I had not discovered anything new.
She then told me more about what she was upto. The two researchers she was currently assisting under were working on some type of human experimentation, she said she had not been able to pay attention to what exactly it was about since she had been struggling to put on a calm face and act indifferent, and said she would try to do better tomorrow.
Hm, this was clearly quite difficult for her, witnessing human experimentation was bound to be an unpleasant experience.
...maybe a little encouragement would help. I hate to do this, but it would not do for her to blow her cover or perform her role in this mission poorly. I reluctantly walked towards her after making sure no one else was around and awkwardly embraced her and patted her back.
"You, er...can do it, sister, I believe in you," I mumbled as encouragingly as I could, quickly letting her go and backing away before she could trap me.
"..."
"..."
"...alright, I can do this!" She exclaimed confidently with a giddy expression, after an initial look of surprise.
I was not sure how to feel about this method being so effective...
...
As we had agreed, that was the last night that we met up in order to exchange information, there was no point in doing so if it would put our covers at risk. I decided to keep performing my role as I had been doing, regularly going out to the campsites in the surrounding areas and observing.
There was nothing else I could do in my situation, I could not access the areas further in, and there was no information to be found in the Pawn Tier area. And the pawns themselves did not know much, certainly no important or confidential information. Some of them had not even seen the faces of all the Retribution Tier members, let alone the face of their leader, Tirayze Valaque.
The most difficult part of my role was the room I was in, I was unable to get any comfortable sleep in it. Not only was the room hot and stuffy, it also had a faint unpleasant odor. I had cleaned it to the best of my ability, but I could only do so much.
It was quite a relief when the fourteenth day of the mission rolled around, the day that my sister and I were to leave. There was no much I had to do to prepare, I did not have anything to pack. I simply had to count down the hours...
Around 5:30 PM, I got myself a cart and a horse to pull it, parking it ahead of the gates leading to the Lapdog Tier area, off to the side.
6 PM arrived, but there was no sign of her...6:15 PM, still nothing...6:30 PM, I'm starting to feel rather uneasy...6:45 PM, what should I do, perhaps I should go in? No, that would be a foolish move. I will continue to wait for a while longer before making a decision...
I let out a sigh of relief as she finally appeared, a few minutes before 7 PM. She spotted the cart and walked over, quickly hopping onto it.
"You're late, sister, I was-."
"Quick, let's hurry up and leave already," She interrupted, not even listening to what I had to say.
"Hm, what is-?" I began, trailing off as I turned around to face her.
Woah, I hadn't ever seen her like this before. The look in her eyes, and her expression...she was at her mental limit, no, she was already well past it.
"Please, Les...let's just go already," She whispered, hugging her knees up to her chest and burying her face with a sigh.
"Alright, then, let's go," I replied, taking the reins of the cart.
As I drove the cart out of The Empire, through the grassland area and passing through the campsite, I couldn't help but wonder...just what had she seen over the last week or so?
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