Chapter 456: Chapter 436 – Undercover

“... types of Lord. The one you’re probably the most familiar with is the involved Lord. The involved Lord knows what’s going on and works with people to deal with things. This structure works well for Cities and Kingdoms where the Lord may or may not be the most powerful individual; instead, it is the work of many.”

Serenity tried to pay attention to the lecture. This was stuff he actually needed to know. He might find it boring, but that didn’t mean he didn’t need to know it. All of that made it the perfect place to spend time during the Tutorials where he was trying to seem ordinary; he had to actually pay attention and try to care.

It wasn’t like he could follow in the footsteps of the people who were kidnapped. The Voice didn’t usually keep track of information in that level of detail; yes, it was always there, but it was really only keeping track of anything that was Noticed. It could tell him that every single one of the people who was kidnapped had at least one very strong Affinity (apparently 40% or higher, which was fairly strong for Tier Zero) and even what they were, but not which classes they attended.

He’d asked it to try, but it could apparently only watch a handful of people in that sort of detail, and so far it had only gotten lucky and picked a kidnapped person three times. He’d already tried following in their footsteps as best he could on three prior Tutorials, but he hadn’t noticed anything odd.

This was his sixth Tutorial and his sixth disguise, and he’d already worked through Asura, Godling, Child of Time, and both Elementals. Rather than take the time to gather more Potential, he’d decided to go ahead and use Dhampir; he’d have to make the decision again before sticking himself with any of the undead bloodlines for a month, but Dhampir wasn’t undead.

Dhampir had pushed him closer to the man he’d once been than most of the others, with ordinary brown hair instead of a strong color, though strangely it had given him heterochromia. One eye was the purple of his now-normal eye color, while the other was the clear, deep green he’d had as Thomas. In some ways, the sheer noticeability made it a good disguise, because people would pay less attention to other things.

Serenity was pretty sure that most dhampir weren’t heterochromatic, but then again, he was the only one of the now three Children of Time he knew that went blind. So it wasn’t really that surprising.

This time he’d decided to allow two “strong” Affinities to show instead of one in the hope that it would attract attention and whoever it was would find him. He’d picked Energy and Nihility since they were both in the right range; it meant that all he had to do was let them through while blocking everything else. He hadn’t completely succeeded, but nothing else had bled through as a strong Affinity.

Serenity found it intensely amusing when he was told that he had “excellent Fire and Darkness Affinities, it’s too bad that they don’t work very well together.” There was everything wrong with the statement. Even if they were actually Fire and Darkness, there were all sorts of things that they could do when combined; not just darkfire, which was very useful for a spellcaster who didn’t want his spells seen or a trapmaker to use to hide some rather nasty traps, but Darkness could (at least by some) be used for things like Frightening Flame, if the Darkness had elements of something other than the lack of light.

Serenity shook off his woolgathering and turned back to the lecture. “... common type of Lord is a defender. They are far stronger than those they rule, and that changes everything. They often have a City Manager or even several to handle everything a more involved Lord would. Some go out and face threats, while others live quietly and are simply there when needed. Some use their power, while others seem to be figureheads. Either way, if they are acknowledged as the official City Lord, they can override the City Manager whenever they use any City Node.”

The instructor looked around the class and shook his head. “That’s all for this session; I’ll be talking about City Nodes and basic City Management tomorrow. If you’re not interested in that, I’ll be covering governmental structures for multi-city polities for the next few days; recognized organizations that cross City boundaries will be after that.”

Serenity stared after the man, annoyed. Half an hour? That was it? He’d only just gotten to the idea of something interesting, too. Serenity wanted to know what the general options were for a normal city; he wasn’t certain that Tzintkra was normal, and Serenity Settlement was almost certainly missing some things. Some of the other topics he’d mentioned were also interesting, but Serenity suspected that all he’d get was the high-level overview.

“Hey, are you coming?”

Serenity turned towards the unknown voice. He expected to see the woman waiting on someone else, but she was looking directly at him. “Me?”

She was short and a little heavy, still dressed in the rumpled business suit she must have been wearing before the Tutorial started. Serenity noticed that she was wearing sneakers instead of shoes that matched the outfit; had she used the time before the Tutorial started to change shoes, but not had a change of clothes available? That was smart; he’d seen women try to manage the tutorial in heels. “Yeah, you. We’re headed over to the mage area next; there’s supposed to be a talk on basic non-Skill spellcasting. Unless you’re not interested in magic?”

Serenity doubted he’d learn anything, but that did sound like the sort of thing he should be interested in. “Who’s not interested in magic? Also, who’s “we”?” He got up and headed towards the woman, intending to follow her.

“I’m Mindy and this is Mina. Yeah, we know, it’s how we got to know each other.” Mindy was a brunette, while Mina was a blonde, but they otherwise seemed pretty similar physically.

“Aaaactually, Mindy thought you were hot and looked lonely so I pushed her to come invite you.” Mina grinned while Mindy gasped and looked horrified and embarrassed. “So, are you single? If you’re not, I promise we won’t hit on you. Unless you ask, anyway.”

“Mina!” Mindy’s cheeks were flushed, and she seemed frozen in place.

Mina stuck her tongue out at her friend. “This is why you never get dates, you have to ask.” She turned back towards Serenity. “So! What’s your name?”

Serenity blinked and answered the questions because he wasn’t certain what else to do. “Thomas, and yeah, I’m taken. I have a fiancee. She’s expecting.”

He just knew there was a silly grin on his face.

“Too bad, she’s a lucky woman.” Mina turned back towards her friend, who was still standing there, unmoving. “Come on, Mindy. We still want to get to that talk, right? You should be comfortable, you actually can’t have him instead of just assuming you can’t have him.”

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After the lecture, which was generally accurate if very simple and only discussing the most basic forms of spellcasting, Mindy caught Serenity before he left and apologized for her friend. Serenity told her not to worry about it; it was nice to be told he was hot, as long as they didn’t repeat it.

Mina and Mindy ended up following Serenity around (or sometimes dragging him to the things they wanted to do). Serenity went along with it for several reasons, but the primary one was that he’d done the last five Tutorials essentially alone, and he felt very lonely. Any connection, even a temporary one, was worthwhile.

The hardest part, at first, was not showing Curio to the friendly pair. Having a pet would give away the game, after all, so he sent the kitten off to play with Blaze the same way he’d done during his earlier undercover adventures. Curio showed up every evening, but at least he seemed to know that Serenity wanted him to stay unseen.

Serenity made sure to do one Trial dungeon every three days. That was more or less what he’d noticed the noncombatants had settled on over the past few months, including most of the mages. He carried a staff, as did many people wanting to be mages, and tried to look incompetent with it.

It was surprisingly difficult to pretend to be incompetent, so he ended up admitting that he’d had some martial arts training “back when I was a kid”. Mindy accepted it, but Mina offered to spar.

Serenity carefully “barely won”. He was far, far stronger than Mina, and she wasn’t skilled enough to overcome that even with Serenity disguising his actual skill level and strength.

Serenity wasn’t initially overly bothered when Mina brought another man into the group, but unlike the person Serenity was pretending to be and (at this point) most of the people in any Tutorial, he was intending to pursue a straightforward melee combat role. He was one of the people helping escort people through Trials; he was strong and willing to help but unfortunately seened to fit the “big and dumb” stereotype.

The problem came when Thad challenged Serenity to “fight for his women.”

It probably shouldn’t have been such a surprise, but Serenity was firmly back in Thomas’s mindset and he simply couldn’t imagine anyone from modern-day America making that challenge. It took him a moment to respond. “They’re not my women; they’re their own women. They make their own decisions.”

“Fight me if you want to keep them. If you don’t, they’re mine.” Thad stepped forward, challenging “Thomas”.

“They’re not mine to give away, and they’re not yours to take.” Serenity didn’t give an inch, but he also didn’t step forward or shift into a combat stance. He knew he should be taking this seriously, but it was difficult; not only was the situation ridiculous, but Thad wasn’t even remotely a challenge.

Not that he knew that. Serenity wasn’t quite certain how to act as if he thought Thad were a challenge, so he just went with not really reacting. It was probably okay? Maybe they’d think he just wasn’t taking it seriously because people didn’t actually do that?

Serenity could see this going bad quickly, so he started pulling together a spell to carefully channel a bit of Energy as lightning. It would look just like a Lightning Mage’s Basic Lightning Bolt Skill if he did it right. His version was far more adjustable, so he could avoid killing the idiot, but that shouldn’t be obvious to most people. He could probably get away with it; he hadn’t made any secret of the fact that he was planning to take a Mage Path.

Thad stepped forward again; he seemed confused when Serenity didn’t react, but he turned to Mina and Mindy instead. “Come on you two. It’s time for me to have my reward since your coward of a boyfriend won’t fight for you.”

By now, there was a fairly significant crowd watching the altercation, including several instructors. They’d been in the Mage’s area when Thad started his move, and there were a lot of people around.

Mindy was staring, apparently in about as much shock as Serenity was, but Mina’s mouth didn’t desert her. “No.”

“What?” Thad seemed absolutely perplexed by her response.

“We’re not prizes. Go fuck yourself, you won’t be fucking us.” Mina even pulled out the knife she usually carried and pointed it at Thad.

Thad’s reaction was to turn and charge towards Mina.

Serenity suddenly wished he’d prepared something to trip Thad instead, but lightning would work and Thad had been indecisive long enough for Serenity to finish building the very simple spell. Lightning arced out from Serenity’s right hand and impacted the back of Thad’s right knee as he lifted it off the ground. It wasn’t enough to do significant damage, but it was enough to make things not quite work right for a moment. When Thad went to put weight on it, it didn’t straighten quickly enough and he fell roughly.

Serenity smiled. Maybe he had prepared something to trip Thad, even though that wasn’t the normal method.

Most of the crowd didn’t catch Serenity’s action and simply thought Thad tripped, including Thad himself, but one of the watching instructors caught the slight glint of lightning on Serenity’s hand before he was certain Thad was taken care of and dismissed the spellform.