Godfather's System 227

I stayed in my concealed nook for a full day, from morning to morning. Sitting in the shadows for that long, carefully watching and cataloging the daily lives of four thousand people wasn’t particularly entertaining, but contrary to what my constant running around implied as I enjoyed my stat-provided second wind, I was still an old man.

I didn’t lack that little bit of patience.

I observed the group for twenty-four uninterrupted hours, not even communicating with my Party members unless they had urgent queries.

It paid off.

The first important finding was the composition of the force. Of the four thousand, about one and a half thousand belonged to eight groups, each contributing roughly equal numbers. There was no explicit mention of their previous allegiance, but the way their higher-ranking members treated each other suggested that two of them came from ducal families, while six came from lower-ranking noble families.

However, that was not the end. The direct members of the dukedoms were clearly in conflict with each other. Their leaders, in particular, were very hostile. It took their members drifting closer for me to realize the reason.

One of those two groups was from Ralum.

Not only that, but out of the six minor noble houses, one of them was also from Ralum, marking them as a significant minority, about one-fourth from the noble houses.

That left about two and a half thousand people unaccounted for. The roots of those people were harder to define, though not because my abilities suddenly frazzled when it came to assessing them. No, it was harder, because they were in much smaller groups. Their sizes varied, but at most, there were a dozen of them, but groups of three were far more common. Though, the number of solo attendees, walking around tense and stressed was not that low either.

Some seemed to have noble roots, but if they did, they were either knights, or came from weaker baronies. While others, I was more inclined to believe that they were from guilds.

Individually, they were not weak. I might even go and say that, most of them had better classes than the contributors of the noble families, but that didn’t prevent them from being treated as inferior, and assigned to the worst tasks and equipment.

It was an interesting mixture that gave me a lot of opportunities to infiltrate, poke around; and, if necessary, unravel the whole thing. Yet, I didn’t start acting immediately.

Because of the existence of the third group.

Unlike the first two groups, it took a while for me to catch on to the existence of the third group. Unlike the other two, they weren’t easily identified by their casual attitude and mixed with the first two groups, going in and out like they were a part of them, doing nothing but observing.

I doubted their numbers even reached fifty.

They didn’t feel like some kind of undercover security, that much was obvious based on some subtle clues … yet I wasn’t entirely sure that their presence was unknown to the leadership. It added another line to the complicated puzzle.

It was their presence that dissuaded me from my usual plan. Instead of just swiping a set of clothes that was most commonly worn by the logistic personnel — the military equivalent of servants — before I mixed with the crowd, I started searching for a viable candidate that I could replace directly with some makeup.

That required a more careful search, but soon enough, I found a good candidate. One of the older operators with a wound covering half of his face, and a noticeable limp. Whatever injured him was clearly magical in nature to leave such permanent damage, enough to impede his combat potential.

Our body types were almost the same, and with some cosmetics, I had carried around for this express purpose, I could take his identity easily for a walk around the camp.

He was the best candidate, because he had just walked into a tent on the outskirts of the cave, easy to infiltrate. I sneaked in, which was easy to the point of trivial. Since they had been regulating the mana usage to the point of neglecting air filters, they certainly didn’t have the luxury of using the permanent detection wards that cities used to track their occupants for security, which required a very dedicated effort to crack.

I just needed to stay Concealed while I slipped into the tent, and found him sleeping. A spell and a pill made sure that he would stay sleeping for a while. I put on a disguise, changed into his clothing, and left the tent.

The next mission; try to understand who the third group was working for.

It was important. There was a chance that they were some kind of internal security. They were certainly too ubiquitous to be spies, but their actions didn’t perfectly align with undercover policing as well. They didn’t care about people stealing from each other, or the occasional fights even when they ended up in death.

The fights weren’t exactly rare, which wasn’t surprising. Gathering thousands of warriors from different roots into one place with poor conditions, stuffing them with master skills, and letting them operate based on their previous loyalties, was inevitable. Deaths were rare, but not because that third group had interfered.

At least, not in a way that I could see from a distance.

I wondered if they would interfere if there was a bigger problem. With my new identity, I mixed in the crowd confidently, and started searching for a hot spot that I might inflame even further.

“I told you to show me your pocket. You stole my skill stone!” a shout came from not too far away, and I moved there. I found fifteen people, eleven of them surrounding four.

“The same trick again. Do you think we’ll let you?” the leader of the four-spoke, raising his great sword. Disguised as a lowly supply runner, a slouch defining my posture, I mixed with the rest of the crowd easily. I didn’t do anything but observe.

The group of four were seasoned veterans. Even facing a group that was thrice their size, they moved with a practiced ease, a deadly economy of motion that kept them protected against the more crowded team. They weren’t enthusiastic about a potential fight, but they weren’t afraid of it either, their subtle shift in posture suggesting that if they were pushed slightly more, they would attack first for advantage.

The other group was too arrogant to realize that. Their attitude showed that they came from a barony, from the other side of Somaton based on their accent. They must have been too used to bullying commoners, their arrogance preventing them from realizing the risk they were in.

I didn’t pay much attention to them for long. Instead, I paid attention to the people who belonged to the third group, most of their faces I had memorized during my long observation session. Three of them were around us.

Perfect.

I watched the argument heat up with the rest of the crowd, and, just as the guild veterans were about to act, I hit three people from the barony with a subtle blast of anger. It wasn’t intense, as I needed to keep it hidden. If they were walking around, it would do nothing, maybe trigger a nasty glare at best.

When the pot was full, a drop might cause it to overflow.

The three I had targeted snarled in anger as they pulled their swords and attacked, while the other seven waited, caught flat-footed by their actions. The smaller group of four was equally surprised, but they were too experienced to miss such an opportunity. Their leader made a gesture, and charged forward to meet the attacking three.

Four against three, especially when the group of four was both stronger and more experienced, ended painfully. When the other eight reacted, the three were already lying on the ground, bloody and helpless, slowly recovering from their multitude of wounds.

They would live, but a painful recovery awaited them. The rest of the battle, four against eight, was far more balanced thanks to the smaller group’s incredible coordination, but at this point, I brought my full attention to the third group.

They had been alerted by the fight itself, but what they had done next surprised me. Rather than watching the fight itself, they started paying attention to the exact opposite. Some watched the people that had been watching the fight, and some moved to check the various high-value locations, locations that were suspiciously less guarded than they were supposed to be.

As I watched them, I felt a chill in my heart. It started to feel more and more like the whole thing was a bait. Suddenly, I was glad that I didn’t send Dahmut here.

It wasn’t that the third group had been more skilled than the spies in the capital, but still, the difference was enormous. At the capital, the spies had hundreds of different things that they needed to pay attention to, which would allow Dahmut the chance to operate freely.

If I asked Dahmut to infiltrate here, he would have already been caught.

Suddenly, I had a new mission: Figuring out who this trap was targeting, and more importantly, who was responsible for it.

Learning who that mysterious group was would be easy. All I needed was to kidnap one of them and interrogate him until they spilled their secrets.

Unfortunately, that would also alert them. I was reluctant to do so for one reason. Well, to be more accurate, I was reluctant to do so for many reasons, but one of them was far more important.

I was starting to suspect that I was the target.