Nidra started to issue orders to her officers, having some of them lay groundwork for intelligence-gathering, while others were relegated to guard duty, helping to settle in and secure the warehouse. As they discussed matters that didn’t involve him, Hirrus considered his notes. They were a bit simplistic, but he felt like he’d captured all the most useful information.

Ontario. Intricacy. Numbers. Easy fight. Rock district.

Battle Orders. Strong. Very strong. Cerberus. Upper Town.

Keynes. Silent Partners. Weak? Nidra is scared of their resources. Cloud Road district.

JudoThrow. No guild. Important? Hard to find. Castle.

He circled the four names, Ontario, Cerberus, Keynes and JudoThrow. Each of them represented a unique challenge and threat. He found himself drawing lines between his notes to add additional commentary.

Nidra had accurately identified Ontario and Intricacy as the least threat. If their strength was numbers, then they represented a repeat of a fight Hirrus had already won. It would be Rumi and his Awakened all over again, only without the potential for any number of his underlings being more individually powerful than Hirrus. They were simple adventurers. All together, they might be a threat, but he doubted they would be able to harm him any more than Rumi’s horde had.

The only risk was that their leader might escape in the chaos, but that was much less likely with Ontario. Nidra was right. Adventurers’ lives are ruled by pride.

Rumi had fled because Hirrus was obliterating underlings that he knew were individually more powerful than he was.

Ontario would watch Hirrus butcher his followers by the dozen and remain convinced of his own superiority.

This would be no challenge.

Cerberus would be a challenge, however. Hirrus remained confident that he was individually more powerful than her, but he was no adventurer himself. He wouldn’t let pride be his downfall. Nidra had said that Battle Orders were a guild of raiders. The best in the world. He wouldn’t forget how he’d nearly fallen in Orlina’s home to her raid group. And that had been an incomplete group. Orlina had not been present, along with the man who bore the Icy Greataxe he carried. He’d even taken out the woman who had blundered into him before the group could get into position to pin him down.

He would want to thin their ranks before attacking. Isolating individuals and fighting them in smaller groups, like how he had killed nearly half of Last of the Strong’s officers before facing them in their manor. It would be a challenge, but one that he was definitely up to the task of. He was stronger now, with better gear, higher stats, and significantly more Arcana.

Hirrus wasn’t sure what to think of Keynes. Nidra feared them more than the others because of the resources he commanded. But Hirrus had walked past so many guards in Inoha when investigating Last of the Strong, he wasn’t sure what resources they could bring to bear that he couldn’t circumvent. Even if he could not use something like Barin’s contract to force their mercenary force to stand down, he had grown beyond the strength any guard should bear.

The only way to buy a guard more powerful than Hirrus would be to purchase the services of an Awakened.

And no Awakened could have amassed more power than Hirrus held.

Just the same, he respected Nidra’s opinions. If she was afraid, then he needed to recognize that he might not have a complete picture of the situation. Hirrus simply didn’t respect the power of coin by itself. And perhaps the encounter he would have with Keynes would instill that respect in him.

The last was the one that worried him the most.

Without a guild affiliation, there was no way of knowing how to find JudoThrow. He didn’t know how Nidra was still confident that he would be in Denstad. Nor did he know how she could be confident that he would fall into the other social norms of adventurers and be baited into fighting by his pride. He already hadn’t put himself at the top of a corrupt guild institution.

How else might he be different?

In his attack on Rumi, Hirrus had needed to rely upon his allies. His only option was to do the same here. Maybe Nidra would know something he didn’t. Maybe one of their followers would have resources that he couldn’t even fathom to resolve the problem. His only option was to acknowledge that he was the weapon here, not the wielder. If Nidra wanted him to cut something, she had to find a way to press his edge against it.

His notes seemed a little more complete now, even if the strategies outlined were simplistic, and half of them leaned on the idea that Nidra and her forces would be able to support him. To that end, he moved out of the way as they headed for the door, moving to disperse to the tasks Nidra had assigned.

As the office door opened, the nearest of them - Ten - staggered back in surprise, whipping out a disproportionately large mace. Hirrus whirled to find a familiar armored figure filling the space.

“Listen,” GM Dave said to Hirrus, stepping into the room as if he wasn’t barging in unexpectedly. Hirrus was his sole focus and he completely ignored the others. “I’m glad you’re with the program now, I really am. And I’m here for you bud. But I need my box back if I’m going to have to keep up with you.”

Hirrus had no idea what the red-armored man was talking about, and so gave in to confusion and asked: “what?”

“You reduced like twenty dudes to red paste,” GM Dave said loudly, as if trying to be heard over loud background noise. “And then you let the dudes spattered in it walk the fuck away. But not before coaching a guy to get him to do it, too.” He shook his head. “I need my workspace back if I’m going to keep them from telling the whole world that the Merciless One is multiplying. You know, the one little tidbit that was going to get you all obliterated?”

“What did you do?” Nidra asked Hirrus, though at the same time she was gesturing for the others to walk around GM Dave to exit the office to get to work.

“Cedril and I were attacked,” Hirrus said. “They were from Last of the Strong, and were hunting for me along the Hari Path. There were not twenty of them. And the remains of those few that I used Arcana against were far too chunky to be called a paste. The reason I came back was because…” Hirrus waited to watch the last of the officers leave. As soon as they were out of the room, he finished: “because he was pathetic. Rumi did not prepare these people to fight this war, and nothing we did filled the gap in his education program. These people will die trying to do this. But if I’m here, they won’t have to.”

“Anyway,” GM Dave cut in, clearing his throat conspicuously. “I need to be able to isolate and do damage control properly, and I can’t do that while keeping Barin and Dahlia housed and comfortable.”

“They can stay here,” Nidra said, gesturing towards the warehouse beyond the doorway. “We’ll protect them just fine.”

“No,” Hirrus said firmly. “Not here. I will secure them board at an inn nearby for them.”

Nidra looked to be about to protest. He wasn’t sure if she was opposed to the distraction or the expense, but she chose not to voice her complaint. He wouldn’t have listened to her anyway. Dahlia was too heavily pregnant to find comfort on a hastily-constructed straw mat in a drafty warehouse.

“Secure the room, then,” GM Dave said with a shrug. “I’ll drop them off once you’ve picked the spot.” He looked to the left and whispered to himself “inns near me” and his eyes glazed over. “The Jade Inn is only about two blocks from here. A little ritzy-looking, but that’s probably what you’re after.”

“Which way?” Hirrus asked.

“South,” GM Dave said, pointing.

“Have your first plan of attack ready when I return,” Hirrus said to Nidra. “I won’t be long.”

GM Dave’s description of the Jade Inn was accurate. It was a tall building decked out with all manner of unnecessary finery. After seeing the way adventurers decorated their spaces, though, it looked far closer to classy than ostentatious. After staying in the tavern-attached inn in Inoha, and then GM Dave’s near-featureless stone box room, this would likely seem like a return to Dahlia’s roots as a noble scion.

At the very least, Barin would have no room to complain.

The interior was a match for the exterior, overdone just barely to the point of classiness. Paying for a room rental for the rest of the week was an absurd amount of money compared to his usual salary, but he had a literal king’s ransom worth of adventurer gear in his inventory. Only three or four raid-level pieces had to go to be able to pay the full amount up front, along with putting some money on account for food to be delivered.

He went for a corner room, facing the river. He had some crazy idea that if trouble came, they would be able to escape through the windows and jump into the water, but if it came to that, they would likely just be captured instead of doing something so boneheaded. It did mean that the room had a nice view, and two large exceptionally plush beds.

“Great,” GM Dave said, emerging from the attached washroom without fanfare. “Fantastic. That’s taken care of. Check that off the list.”

Dahlia was right behind him, with Barin close at hand supporting her weight to get her across the room to a bed. She looked around the room and visibly paled, likely imagining the expense.

“I’d love to say and help with the settling,” GM Dave said, turning for the exit, “but there’s a trio of adventurers who don’t know they’re overdue for a date with a big purple dragon.”

The man was gone before Hirrus could thank him for keeping Dahlia safe.

“You didn’t have to do this,” Dahlia said as Barin helped her into one of the beds. The way she gasped in relief as she settled in on the soft mattress and downy pillows told Hirrus that she was lying. He couldn’t imagine the back pain she was suffering from being so heavy with child.

“I need you to be safe,” Hirrus said simply, moving to her side. “If it helps, imagine that I’m doing this for myself, not for you. For my peace of mind, and not your comfort.”

Despite the concern still in her eyes, Dahlia smiled. “Yenon is well cared-for, with you looking out for it.”

Hirrus shot Barin a look, aiming to keep him in line, but the man was already drawing her a glass of water from the iced pitcher by the window. As much as the man had been a bit of a weasel when they first met, some amount of that had been his decision tree, not the man himself.

“Take care of her,” Hirrus said before he left. “Because I have enough to take care of already.”