CHAPTER 100: STEALTH MODE

Merchant Guild, Round Table

At the Round Table, a discussion regarding how to retrieve the lost cargoes was being debated.

"We should send the city guards to trace any trail with the help of the Mage Association!" A merchant suggested.

"The Mage Association wouldn’t intervene in the matter when it’s not related to one of their mages!" Another merchant quickly debunked their suggestion with fact-based evidence.

The Mage Association was a neutral force—one that was unattainable and uncontrollable by them.

Even if they offered to hire them at a high price, not many mages would accept the offer to be entangled with a merchant.

After all, from the mage’s perspective, it would be beneath them to be hired by some merchants.

The majority of people held the misconceptions of merchants being shrewd, sly, and money-grubbers. No mage would wish to be associated with them unless the merchant was credible and reputable as a philanthropist.

Needless to say, Leonard’s interest had fallen to an all-time low.

This bunch of merchants wasn’t worried about the lives of the slaves being snatched over. Instead, they worried about how their interest was now compromised.

What made him further disgusted was that some of them truly believed the Crown Prince of Aldros would be interested in slaves fighting to the death at a colosseum.

Wasn’t it a known fact to most people that the Crown Prince was a cowardly person?

Even the Assassin Syndicate had such information and believed he was a coward, granted that Claudia had seriously trusted the source until she witnessed with her own eyes that it was false.

It was hard to imagine that these merchants wouldn’t know about it either when this kind of critical information was significant to maintain their status.

’Could it be that they wanted to dampen the noble faction further by disgusting the Crown Prince?’ Leonard suddenly pondered this particular possibility.

If the intention was to increase the prestigious merchant guild and lower the noble faction’s influence, then the best move would be to make the Crown Prince dissatisfied with the noble faction.

The noble faction was mostly responsible for the Crown Prince’s accommodation in Velastra.

Anything that went wrong would be their responsibility, and not the merchant guild!

After all, Wesley could always shift the blame to them with multiple excuses, such as not knowing his preference because the noble faction refused to communicate properly.

Sometime later, Wesley tapped his fingers lightly on the table, signaling the collective merchants to stop their discussion.

In the blink of an eye, the noise completely went down.

"There are so many great suggestions that were brought up, but I wondered which one you think is the most suitable option, Mr. Vincent?" Wesley asked curiously.

’Hah, want to make me the scapegoat?’ Leonard nearly wanted to laugh aloud at his pitiful attempt. Luckily, he chose to be in disguise; otherwise, he would have never seen how much of a snake Wesley was.

While Leonard responded in a subtle manner to confront Wesley’s hidden intent, Mirelle, on the other hand, had already begun snooping around.

’The security in the guild is no joke.’ Mirelle pursed her lips as she attached herself to the ceiling. She was camouflaged with the ceiling while watching numerous guards walking past each other.

These guards were all strategically placed to oversee everything, with little to no blind spots available for her to sneak past them.

To make things more complicated, there was actually a mana-draining formation to prevent long-term usage of mana and its recovery.

Despite being a sixth circle mage, Mirelle found herself leaking an abundance of mana by hanging on to the ceiling.

’Damn it, do these guards get paid very well?’ She cursed silently. She had never seen guards behaving so diligently and paid attention to every nook and cranny like them!

The majority of the time, the guards would be clueless or love to slack off.

Some of the extreme ones would even be bringing a whore to make love while on duty to release their stress and mental fatigue.

’Come on, hurry up and move already!’ Mirelle was starting to lose her patience.

From beneath her, there stood two guards who kept pacing back and forth in a steady manner. Occasionally, one of them would lean closer to the edge to test for any anomaly.

And during that moment, the second guard would check the other side of the room connected to the path they were on.

That small window was what Mirelle had to take to swiftly get away from her current position.

However, the difficulty was after passing the scrutiny of these two guards.

Which passage must she take to continuously avoid being spotted?

There were three available options up ahead: left, front, and right.

Mirelle wished to use her magical perception to detect what was up ahead, but realized that there was a restriction in place.

Although she could easily bypass that kind of restriction with her skill, such an action would inadvertently alert the security.

Frustrated, Mirelle resisted the urge to simply knock out the two guards beneath her. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to, but she couldn’t do it.

After all, these two guards would repeatedly signal and call for their other comrades from another site to check up on things. Those sites also happened to be on her blindside, and with the muffled sound, she couldn’t discern where they were located.

’Please tell me I didn’t get slapped for nothing... that damn Crown Prince didn’t hold back his power one bit!’ Mirelle could still feel the invisible aching on her right cheek despite consuming the Restoration Potion.

A few more minutes went by, and Mirelle was starting to lose her focus. The constant need to stay attached to the ceiling using mana was very draining.

Just when Mirelle was planning on giving up stealth, an incident occurred!

"Murder!"

"There’s a murder!"

"We need some guards to come over here and secure the premises!"

In the blink of an eye, the two annoying guards beneath her were startled by the news and hurriedly rushed to the source.

’Am I supposed to be grateful?’ Mirelle was struck in a predicament between gratefulness and unpleasantness.