Chapter 18 (part 2/2) - Unwanted Attention

  Shortly after, Lily arrived at his room. She looked pleased to have been summoned, unaware of what Vincent wanted to discuss, but her expression shifted to concern the moment she saw his face.

  “Why that look? What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Have you been followed? Have you noticed anything strange?” Vincent asked a confused Lily, who didn’t understand either the context or the reason for his worry. “What am I saying… you wouldn’t have any way of knowing. We need a better way to communicate.”

  “Followed? Is someone following you?” Lily asked. “This is about the vaporizer, isn’t it?”

  Vincent nodded. Lily was sharp; she connected the dots immediately. She had known something like this would cause trouble. Every time he moved forward, something new would surface.

  “Yes. I tried to lose them on the way here, but I couldn’t. I think they’re using magic.”

  Without dwelling on the obvious, Lily took her staff and began moving it around Vincent, as if trying to detect spiritual energy emanating from him.

  “I don’t sense any magical tether bound to you. You’re not linked to anything…” Lily concluded, pulling over a chair and motioning for Vincent to sit. “Come, sit here. I want to try something.”

  Vincent sat on the small stool by his desk, and Lily positioned herself behind him. She gripped her staff and began chanting an unfamiliar mantra. It sounded even stranger than the previous ones; she never seemed to be speaking the same language twice.

  Who knows how many languages this girl knows, Vincent thought.

  “Owo unjok luv auf ow y duh…”

  As the spell concluded, a cascade of colors began to emanate from Vincent, like rainbow-hued smoke evaporating from his skin and clothes.

  “Lily? What is this?” Vincent asked, hiding the concern in his voice, trying to sound calm despite how unsettling it was.

  “Don’t worry, Vin. Those are just your scents,” Lily reassured him. “This is to detect any foreign traces. It’s a synesthetic spell.”

  She was right. Looking more closely, the particles drifting off his body followed a logic similar to smells. Each time he breathed, their translucence shifted; different scents seemed to rise from his hands, from things he had touched, from his skin, from his armpits.

  “There’s something strange here… look.”

  Vincent turned his head and, glancing over his shoulder, noticed something on his back: a more intense spot, iridescent in color. It was far brighter than the rest, and because it was concentrated in a single place, it looked as if something were seeping out from his body itself.

  “What is that?” Vincent asked as he tried to smell his shoulder. “I don’t feel anything unusual.”

  “You wouldn’t feel it. Look at those colors, the structure of the particles. See how they move? It’s something undetectable to humans.” Lily brought her staff closer, as if examining the source. “It’s a cocktail of imperceptible scents, mixed in a very specific proportion and composition, like a scent-code. That way, with the help of magic, it’s possible to track you without you realizing it and without emitting magical energy. It’s a fairly sophisticated method…”

  “Probably because they know you’re with me. You’d notice immediately if it were something that simple.”

  Lily replied with a frown. She felt flattered, but also worried that Vincent might be starting to see her as some kind of superhero who could rescue him from anything. Even so, that was exactly what she was about to do. She lifted her staff and pointed it directly at the scented spot on his tunic. After a quick spell, she neutralized all traces of color in that area.

  “Looks like a pretty useful spell for washing clothes.”

  “This isn’t a joke, Vin. This is serious,” Lily scolded him. “Do you know when they might have marked you? Did you feel a bump on your shoulder? Maybe someone got close to greet you and touched you without you noticing…?”

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  Vincent thought about it for a moment. Had it been one of the trio? No, that had happened today. Then he remembered his encounter with Charly.

  “Now that you mention it… someone bumped into me while I was trying to push through the crowd. That must’ve been when they marked me.”

  “What have you gotten yourself into now, Vin?” Lily asked, worried.

  Vincent told her everything that had been going on, what had happened the day before, everything he had earned and what he expected to earn once the husks finished selling.

  “One hundred silver towers? Five gold coins!? That’s a fortune!”

  “I know, and that’s why they’re after me. Think about it: even if I toned down the sales, I could probably pay off my debt in a few weeks. In one or two months we could leave this place, do you understand?”

  “So soon? That can’t be safe. There’s no way the tower would let you go that easily.”

  That made Vincent's blood run cold. Lily was right. Even without the threat of other groups, the tower would never allow something that disrupted the order of things so easily. A horrible fear ran down his spine; he could not even imagine how they would stop him if he tried to pay off his entire debt all at once.

  I need to be smarter about this…

  Life itself carried risks, business especially. He knew that better than anyone. It had cost him his life once. He would not make the same mistake again. He had to be more sensible, calmer, take fewer risks. But that did not mean disappearing. He could only reduce them to a manageable level, to the point where he could defend himself.

  “You’re right about the tower. Don’t worry, I won’t try to confront them or do anything that would anger them.”

  Or at least, not too much…

  “But I still need a way to defend myself. A way to use spells.”

  Lily looked even more worried.

  “What are you planning to do, Vin? I won’t let you get involved in that kind of conflict.”

  “The conflicts have already caught up to me. I just need a way to protect myself.”

  “They can’t kill you, don’t worry. The crime of murder is punished with something worse than death.”

  “But even if they can’t kill me, they can hurt me, right? They can cripple me, torture me.”

  Lily did not dare to argue with that.

  “Still… even if it’s about teaching you something, with your magical level there’s no way you could use anything truly useful,” Lily thought aloud. “Although I could teach you things to avoid conflict, like the synesthetic spell, or something to help you identify poisons in food.”

  “There’s really no way to increase my magical power? I was thinking about supplementing my mana flow externally. If I create a device that replicates my meridians outside my body and attach it to my arm or my hand, that should circulate too, in theory, right? Some kind of external meridian system… a large magic circle that I can wear.”

  “Oh? Are you talking about a magical gauntlet?”

  “What?” Vincent asked, genuinely surprised. “That already exists?”

  “That’s what it sounds like you’re describing. They act as prosthetics for mages who have had one of their arms atrophied in battle.”

  “Then why didn’t you mention it before?”

  “Because it’s not something you could realistically obtain. If you wanted to replicate your meridians outside your body, you’d have to use something valuable, a metal flexible enough to circulate that energy, but also extremely precious. The bare minimum would be silver… so imagine the cost.”

  I figured as much…

  “And there’s no way I could buy one? Maybe make it myself?”

  Lily was about to dismiss the idea, at least the part about buying one. But when it came to manufacturing it… Vincent had proven himself to be a remarkably capable engineer. A magical construct as delicate as a gauntlet was impossible for an ordinary person, but for Vincent…

  “There are manuals on how to make them… but I doubt it would actually help you defend yourself.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I just need at least a sliver of an advantage.”

  I don’t know how much a gauntlet could increase my magical capacity, but at the very least it would let me use magical tools. If it helps me manufacture other things, then I’m saved.

  Lily agreed to show him the manuals for crafting a gauntlet, though part of her knew it wouldn’t truly help him defend himself. It wouldn’t grant him real power, but it was better for him to spend his time and money on something non-dangerous rather than trying to build a weapon…

  “If you need to defend yourself, you can always count on me. You don’t have to fight on your own, you have me.”

  Vincent knew that was true. Lily, despite her slender build and short stature, could probably defend herself far better than he could against almost any threat.

  “Still, believe me, I’m not looking for a fight. I’ll try to avoid it, I’ll try to negotiate. But just like countries with no defenses, my options are limited. If I can’t defend myself, they’ll impose their conditions, and that’s it.”

  The idea of being subservient to someone else was abhorrent to him. He wouldn’t let himself be ordered around. He wouldn’t let himself be threatened…

  They’ll probably try to intimidate me… force me to stop producing, Vincent thought. Or, if I’m lucky, take a cut of my profits. But if they have the power to hurt me and I can’t do anything, they could take everything.

  Another option would be to hand the design over to the tower and be done with it, but that was the coward’s way out. If they hadn’t confronted him yet, it was because they still didn’t know what he was capable of.

  They probably assume that, since I’m classified as a resurrect, I must have some kind of power. They can’t possibly know my meridians are atrophied.

  Now, Vincent was racing against time. Eventually, they would find out he couldn’t defend himself, and until then he had to find a way to demonstrate power. To intimidate them. Even if only once, even if it was disposable, he needed to make a display. He needed to show that he could bite back.