Chapter 177 Indication

That was up until the land wasn't all that pleasant anymore.

That was where I found what I had been looking for.

The sun might have been warmly shining down these streets, too, but they were seemingly darker and gloomier. When my long tour was coming to an end, with the priestess, I arrived around these parts. I asked my guide a question, and, with a wincing face, she tried to explain to me why people referred to it as the Lawless Area.

Before long, she no longer served a purpose, so I sent her away. I was on my own, then.

The lawless area wasn't all that crappy, poor, and dangerous, but after I walked around on my own, I understood why it was called that way. Here, the roads weren't made of cobbles, even in a very rough manner, as was the case where most people lived in the capital. Dirt was enough, apparently.

Dirt and run-down wooden structures serving as houses or whatever were all you saw. The filthy, dark streets reminded me of that dark back alley back in Sville, but they weren't just a few. The filth and shabbiness spread a long way across the poorest parts of the capital. And all that poor area was about one-tenth of the whole middle-class district.

If the noble districts were so clean and gorgeous, it was because of great magical advancement and technology. If the middle-class districts were so normal, inhabitable, and cleanliness-wise acceptable, it was because of the magic arts raw, which few but enough people mastered, to help run the city. Here, it was as if the magic arts didn't exist altogether—if you were among the poorest of the poor you might have to jump above a foul, unclean stream of a hellish blend of used water, piss, and shit all together before you stepped outside your shack.

The putrid air reeked with the ugliest perfumes imaginable; I had the passive [Enhanced Flair] to thank for that.

People, covered with hoods and dark cloaks, were allowed to roam about the streets with their weapons out and stuff, here. Normally, a guard should walk up to them to let them know they were being watched, so they had better be really careful with what they did, but that wasn't the case here. In the first place, I saw no guards patrolling the streets.

Then, I thought I understood the extent of the lawlessness, in the lawless area, but it was only until some moment that I truly understood. First, I overheard signs of battle toward the darkest alley. Naturally, I headed there in search of thieves, assassins, or anything.

On top of a creaky rooftop, if you could call whatever run-down structure I was on top of a "rooftop," I witnessed a hateful hand in action: The knife kitchen it held angrily jerked about before it severed a hole into a senior man's chest, then twisted around it many times, before it snatched whatever goods the older man possessed and scrammed. With "Mana Perception," I sensed the ongoing fight, but I could only see the finale with my own eyes.

Some guy around was a witness to that, but he just ignored whatever just happened, minded his own business, and quickly walked the other way. That was about the lawless area. Or about the worst of it, I imagine. Often, the worst is what you need to see in something in order to truly know it, anyhow. I knew it, now. The worst. Probably.

And so, I fooled around the area for a moment.

The criminal woman who had just committed a crime ran off right after she twisted a hole into someone's chest—I briefly ran after her, pinned her down to the ground, tore a piece of her clothes off, and then let her off. I might have sounded like a freaky pervert who got a kick out of stealing some woman's clothes just to sniff it or some crazy crap, but I wasn't. Sure, I did give it a quick sniff, but it was just to track the lady down when I needed to. There was some sort of a plan.

With [Mana Perception], seeing was easy: I just had to pause, concentrate, and channel a lot of my energy out. I didn't consume much MPs while observing the world from a bird's eye, but it still mentally took its toll on me. Enough to slightly make my head ache. It was too bad there wasn't some sort of filtering ability that came along with the skill, in order to just focus on the few things I was after.

The shadow of my bird's eyes managed to cover around 300 feet around myself, but I really had to give it my all. And my eye took long enough. Unusable in battle, but definitely a priceless ability. I overheard many sounds, and saw many things. Liquor bottles breaking. Hurly-burly. Daggers slashing. Cries of Yes from whores. Sacs of coppers handed. Underhanded killings.

And I moved about the area, collecting more pieces of cloth from criminals. Each I obtained thanks to quick sneaky attacks, similar to how I obtained the first one. To my nose, each bore a distinctly different fragrance. When I collected about a dozen cloth pieces from about a dozen criminals, I was satisfied and knew just what to do.

I was after some friends, and I was ready to hunt them down. That was how I decided to be looking for some of my fellows. Other monster-types, depending on how I defined "monster." Some thieves and assassins. Mana-wielders who, unlike most students of the magic arts, decided to learn the craft of a person forever doomed to always hide behind their own shadows. And I wasn't going after them for any particular reason, if not just to satisfy my curiosity. Friends, here I come.

Now that I thought about it, if I was here in the first place, it was because I assumed the thief guild must be here somewhere. That wasn't without basis, since I neatly investigated and inquired about the matter beforehand, but I had no tangible indications that what I looked for was here, in Roerdenville.

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