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So, since the announcement in town was meant to be a few hours after noon, that was when he decided he should probably be up.

A part of him was tempted to skip the meeting and simply hole up down in his base, continuing to draw Empowerment Rituals until he used up the entirety of his blood supply, but there was a high probability that at least a portion of the announcement would be dedicated to his own actions, so he figured he’d better not miss it. So, after spending some time doing daily maintenance for his base—primarily redrawing the lost upkeep times on his circles—he headed into town, carrying a couple Hellfire Rituals in his pockets for safety.

After using one of his typical routes to slip into town unseen from the outskirts of the forest, he walked through the streets over to the town hall, which was housed on the other side from the attacked area. The announcement hadn’t begun yet, but already a sizable crowd had formed—larger than Zeth had ever seen from any other announcement that’d been held. Even the times that a new mayor had been chosen by the leadership council hadn’t drawn as many people. But mayors swapped out at a fixed interval, so they wouldn’t be seeing a new one for a while. He supposed everyone just wanted to know what was next, after the several disasters that had occurred in so little time.

As he joined up with the crowd, he spotted the familiar sheen of silver armor. It was Rosalie, and next to her was Erza. She glanced over and spotted him, lifting up a hand to wave him over.

“Zeth,” she said, nodding as he walked up to them, “it’s good to see you here. Protecting the people while they’re grouped up here, vulnerable to attack, is an important duty.”

“Hey,” he said. “Where’s Alfon?”

“He’s checking the perimeter. There’s a Skill he has which makes detecting nearby people easy, even through stealth.”

As they spoke, Erza eyed Zeth warily. “So you’re sticking with your story that you’re not the Blood Mage, eh?”

Rosalie sent him a sharp look. “Don’t talk like that when we’re in public. You’ll spread rumors.”

“Might be a good thing if the people learn to be on their toes around a potentially dangerous man.”

“I’m not,” Zeth said. “I won\'t hold it against you if you suspect me, but I ask you to trust me enough that you at least don’t go around talking like that. You could put my family in danger.”

“Not sure if it’s a good idea to trust someone who’s lied to me in the past,” Erza said, “but fine. On one condition: you keep working for me.”

Zeth blinked in surprise. “Really? I mean, sure—I was kind of preparing to ask you for the same thing—but why are you interested in working with someone you distrust so much?”

“They way I see it,” Erza said, “there are two possibilities here. Either you’re telling the truth, and you really were capable of figuring out how to repair mana fields on the fly, in which case you have a lot of potential as a talented caster, or you’re lying, and you’ve got some special version of…that Class…that gives you the ability to work around its restrictions. Either way, you seem like a powerful ally to make.”

“I…see,” Zeth said. Ironically, both of those possibilities were true, in a way. “As long as you continue paying me as much as we agreed on before, I’m okay with that.”

“You both seem surprisingly okay with this arrangement,” Rosalie muttered. “If I genuinely suspected someone of such a thing, I would gut them on the spot.”

“Sounds good to me,” Erza said to Zeth, then turned to Rosalie. “So you’re saying I should kill him, then?”

“Absolutely not—I said if I suspected someone,” she responded. Then she looked at Zeth. “And if someone suspected me

of such a thing, I feel that I would vomit on the spot. I certainly wouldn’t do business with them.”

Zeth reached out and shook Erza’s hand. “I guess we’re both just results-oriented people. Even if the methods are messy, if they get stuff done, who cares, right?”

Erza gave Zeth a half smile. “Right.”

Just then, Zeth heard someone call his name from behind. He turned around to see Sophie running at him, their mom trailing behind.

“Hey!” she said, coming to a stop in front of him. “Have you been working all night?”

“Uh, no, no, I got some sleep,” Zeth said with a chuckle.

“You shouldn’t stay out so much,” his mom said. “With you not on the farm, our finances can’t—“

“Oh, yeah,” he interrupted, “here.”

He held out his hand, full of the leftover coins from after buying those books.

She stared at the sum of money. “That’s…You already made that much?”

“Yep,” he said, deciding not to mention that he not only made even more than that, counting the amount he spent at the library, or that he’d made this much just from a few hours of work, or that he’d set aside a portion of it as personal funds for his illicit activities. “Should be enough to keep yourselves afloat.”

“Hi,” Erza said, stepping forward with his hand out, “I take it you’re Zeth’s mother? I don’t believe we’ve met; I’m his employer.”

“Oh, it’s so good to meet you!” she said, looking between him and Rosalie. Even when seen through the eye of someone without any Shaping, it was obvious they were both equipped top to bottom with expensive, magical equipment—Erza especially. Upon noticing that, she squinted. “So…what exactly does Zeth do for you?”

Zeth wasn’t sure if he liked these two people speaking with each other.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“General labor,” Erza said. “I’ve been training him to handle my magic items.”

He stepped between them. “Uh, yeah. Anyway, it looks like the announcement’s about to start soon, so—”

“You have magic items?” Sophie asked Erza, stepping forward. “What do they do? Where did you get them?”

He chuckled. “I bought them.”

“Woah…” she said. Then she turned to their mom. “Can we buy some magic items?”

“N-no,” she responded, still looking confused at the gear Erza and Rosalie were equipped with. “I’m sorry, who are you people?”

“...We’re bodyguards,” Rosalie said. “Though, Zeth isn’t hired as a bodyguard—he’s hired to help us catch the Blood Mage terrorizing this town.”

“He’s what?!” she asked.

Zeth sighed. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I absolutely am going to worry about it! You’re going out playing hero, and—”

“I’m earning the money you’re relying on,” Zeth said. “Not sure you’re in any place to criticize that.”

“It doesn’t matter who’s relying on what—I don’t care about the money,” she argued. “That’s irrelevant when compared to your safety. There’s no way I’m letting you go out and try to fight some madman with an illegal Class.”

“Do what you can to stop me, then,” He’d finally gotten a job to sustain himself, a base of operations that he owned, and a genuine plan for the future. Riding on that feeling of power, he finally felt capable of shutting her shit down. “You don’t care about money because I’ve been taking care of you for this long. I promise, the moment you no longer get a free cash infusion every week, you’ll suddenly start caring a whole lot more about avoiding death by starvation. So sure, if you don’t wanna accept the money, don’t. And when you inevitably can’t provide for your daughter anymore, I will gladly take her in. But you do not get to order me around when I am the one paying for you to live.”

She stared at him with wide eyes, unable to respond for a moment. Eventually, though, she took a deep breath, preparing to speak. “You—”

But just as she spoke her first word, a loud, high-pitched noise echoed out from the top of the town hall steps, where everyone was gathered around. They all looked over to see what had made it, finding the mayor of their town standing on the stage, holding a voice amplification box.

Zeth had seen the mayor a few times during other announcements like these—he was an older man, mostly bald on his head with a few stray hairs sticking out in random directions. His voice was gruff but not overly serious—more just sounding bored and tired. Today, though, he looked strange—like he’d been losing sleep. His eyes were a bit more sunken, his posture smaller and more hunched, like he was eager to get out of there.

“Excuse me.” His words echoed from the box, across the entire square, and the crowd of chatting citizens silenced. He paused for a moment, then continued, “Hello everyone. I—I know I normally start things off with some lighter talk, but I suppose I should get right into the thick of things. Gods above know what you people need right now is not some old man wasting your time.”

He chuckled, but nobody else made any sound.

“R-right,” he said. “So, as you all know, there have been some…unfortunate events occurring throughout our lovely town in the past few days. The fleshtaker attack and subsequent fire, the prison break a few days after that, and now, just yesterday, a pack of mannitors trampled over an entire portion of our commercial district. In total, thirty-one lives have been lost to that most recent disaster. However, our guard is committed to preventing such a disaster from ever happening again. We have—”

“Was the Blood Mage connected to the mannitor attack?” a shout from a member of the crowd asked. Murmurs rose up wondering the same thing.

“W-we have no evidence to suggest such a thing,” he said. “Currently, all signs point to it simply being an unfortunately-timed accident. In addition, we have very fortunate news for you. The town guard has caught the Blood Mage.”

At that, the confused murmurs intensified, and Zeth was right there with them. They’d caught the Blood Mage? Had he missed something?

“Y-yes, it is indeed exciting news,” the mayor said. “About one week ago, one of our town’s members valiantly volunteered their residence to house a trap that would attempt to catch this Blood Mage. And soon after, it worked—we caught a Wicked thrall woman in the trap. And, after taking her in for questioning and testing, the guard has determined that she is the Blood Mage responsible for everything that has happened in this town.”

The murmurs grew louder. Someone shouted out, “But what about the prison break?”

Someone else yelled, “Yeah, didn’t the Blood Mage do that?”

“Th-that has been determined to be an unrelated incident,” the mayor stammered, but even he didn’t sound like he believed it.

“There was a demon!” someone shouted.

“I saw it!” said another.

“Rumors of demons have not been confirmed,” he said. “And if there was one, it is possible that the demon was simply acting on old orders from before the Mage was captured. Currently, it is believed that there are no more Blood Mages residing in this town.”

“What?” Zeth heard Rosalie say from beside him. He looked over to see her baffled face. “What is this man talking about? We personally reported what we saw to the guard. Erza, you watched them write that report, right?”

“They certainly wrote it down,” he responded. “Doesn’t seem like they listened, though.”

“The Blood Mage was right there, next to the demon the whole time,” she continued. “And it was a man, not a woman. This is blatant falsehood.”

Zeth agreed. It seemed clear that, whether or not the leadership of the town actually believed that the Blood Mage was captured, they were using that woman they’d caught in his mom’s shed as a scapegoat to quell peoples’ worries.

“Quiet, please,” the mayor said over the various chatter. “Quiet. Now, we have contacted empire leadership to ask them to send over a squadron of Inquisitors to confirm this woman’s Class and to perform an execution. And, as we are so painfully aware of the suffering this Blood Mage has caused our beautiful town, we will be holding a public execution, so that everyone may witness as this rot is cut from our people.”

As a halfhearted cheer arose from the still confused crowd, Zeth’s face drained. Inquisitors coming? How soon? He’d never had an up-close encounter with one, but from everything he knew about them, those guys were very bad news. For more reasons than just their ability to read a person’s Status. They made up the empire’s top squadron of soldiers for a reason—the Inquisitor Class was illegal to own for any normal citizen, likely because of the extreme power it offered. And if they came here and figured out the Blood Mage was still around…

Before he could continue that thought, though, Zeth spotted movement at the back of the stage the mayor stood on. It was raised tall enough that Zeth couldn’t quite tell what was going on at the back—his view was blocked—but he saw the top of someone’s head walking over, toward the mayor. It was just the person’s hair, but Zeth recognized it.

He squinted, staring at the person as they moved across the back of the stage. No way that was actually him, right?

“Additionally,” the mayor said, “I have one more announcement—this one on a more somber note. Because of these disasters…Because of these disasters, I have made the executive decision to step down as mayor of this town, effective immediately.”

The crowd’s murmur immediately exploded into a barrage of exclamations and questions, but the mayor kept speaking.

“The town’s leadership committee has chosen my replacement. I thank you all. It has been a great honor serving each and every one of you in the great office of—”

“Yeah, yeah,” a new voice said—once again, one Zeth recognized. His stomach dropped more and more as this scene continued on. From the back, that person walked up to the front of the stage, fighting the mayor away from the voice amplification box and pushing himself to the center as the mayor stumbled away. “Hey there everyone.”

Zeth stared at the man’s face, white hot anger rising through his entire body.

Holy shit, he thought. That motherfucker wasn’t lying about becoming the new mayor?!

Garon smiled a toothy grin, waving at the crowd of people below him. He looked far too pleased with himself, like a child who had just gotten away with cheating their way to victory in a game.

Zeth was going to kill him. This was it. Zeth was going to cave this fucker’s skull in. It took all he could to avoid climbing right up onto the stage and beating the man to death.

“So,” Garon said, his ugly voice being distorted into an even worse sound by the imperfect amplification of the magic object. “My name is Garon Orteenaz, one of the overseers of the great Otis and Roul’s Mining Guild that has given this town everything it has. And basically, what’s happening is, I’m taking over.”