I got a lot of good information out of the half-demon over the course of the night. The Rashirat had a few warehouses in the slums and the industrial district, though he couldn't give me any precise locations. Be easy enough to figure out by spending a few nights of observation though.

The problem was that I didn't have the time for it. I had to move into Caemor, and although I could probably sneak out easily enough, I hadn't scoped out what my situation would be like there yet. The Rashirat would have to wait for me. Hopefully they'd be patient.

Around dawn, I made my way back to my apartment. I found the place empty but also a complete mess. Couldn't really expect a kid to completely clean up after himself. Maybe his tutor could cook and clean too.

Danio returned not too long after I finished a quick clean and finished a pot of tea.

"Tryg! Hi!" He smiled and had lost a tooth. Hopefully, that was supposed to happen at his age, been a long time since I'd been younger than 17. "I got some good information for you about Rashania and Co. You'll be real proud."

What a great kid. I had him sit across from me at the small dining table. He wasn't tall enough for his feet to touch the floor when he sat on the dining chair.

"Let's hear it then," I said. I started peeling the apple with a knife.

"No one knows where they're located," he said. "No one knows anyone who works there. Basically, no one knows anything. Grandpa Arne said--"

"Grandpa Arne?" I asked.

"He said to call him that." Danio nodded and took a quick drink of tea. "Grandpa Arne said that he'd met with a representative. A woman from Praor Swa. No name. Went by the name of 'Lady Rashania.' Oh, and he said she went through all the proper channels and stuff to get a meeting with him."

That was boring.

I said, "The name Lady Rashania doesn't tell us much. And anyone can claim to be from Praor Swa." That was the type of place it was. A place to get lost. A place for a new identity. A place to be no one. A place to be someone. I cut out a sliver of apple and gave it to Danio.

"That's what I said." Danio gave a gap-tooth grin. "He said he had someone follow her, but they were stopped by a pair of coppers." He munched on the apple.

"Interesting." That matched up with what the half-demon had told me. "Did he say why they were stopped by the cops?"

"Just that they looked suspicious and to find another route to take."

I said, "Did Grandpa Arne say when he was going to meet with her next?"

"Two weeks or so. Said you can join even."

Not ideal, but I had time to prepare for such a meeting. It'd just be a hassle with everything else going on. All I cared about was trashing their stock of love potions, where ever they might be.

"Forget about finding the woman," I said. I gave him another slice of apple and he munched away cheerily. "We need to find where Rashania and Co stores their love potions. They probably have warehouses in the slums and the industrial district. Do you think you could track that?"

"Sure. I'll give it a shot. Oh, and some man has been looking for me? Is he supposed to be my new lackey?"

"Up to you if you think he'll be useful. Do you have anyone in mind for your tutor? Be good if it was someone who could cook for you and clean up after you, too. And someone you can trust."

"Okay. Yeah." He made a thoughtful face. "I was thinking of asking this lady. She's always been real nice to me. Let me stay with her until her husband got real drunk and beat her and kicked me out. She let me call her mom for a while."

"Talk to her," I said. "She might need time to arrange a way to leave."

He nodded excitedly. "Okay." He finished his tea in two big gulps. "By the way, why haven't you asked me about my Stats or Skills at all? Cause I always get asked when I joined a new group or a new shelter. Do you have an Assess Skill? That'd be so awesome if you did."

Father had said Stats and Skills were private matters and to never ask, much like someone's age unless the intention was to flatter by grossly underguessing. That hadn't stopped many people from asking me, and I'd always just lied. Guess I figured asking anyone would be pointless.

"Tell me about your Stats and Skills then," I said.

Danio straightened, even more excited than before. "Okay, first, I wanna tell you about my Skill [Light Footed]. It's really great and I have a whole 10% mastery of it, which I've been told is really good for my age. It's why I'm so helpful, too. I can walk around and no one notices me unless their Perception is really high. Like really really high. Makes pickpocketing easy. Also sneaking around in general. If I didn't have the Skill, I'd probably be dead?"

"You'd be very dead," I pointed out, "since your throat was slit open by that old lady potion maker." He talked so much. I reached over to the liquor cabinet and poured some rum into my tea.

Danio let out a long, loud exasperated sigh. "She caught me by surprise. I don't have it activated all the time..."

"What else then?" So far, I didn't think he was lying.

"So my Class is Orphan." He started kicking his feet back and forth as he sat. "I've been told a bunch of times that when my Class changed, I probably got a boost to my Perception and Cunning Stats. The World System is generous like that, helping keep kids without parents out of danger. Or that's what they say, but I don't remember when that happened because I was so young, so maybe I didn't get a boost? My Energy is 10. Cunning and Perception are both 9. My Strength..."

Danio looked a bit sheepish but I gestured for him to keep talking. "Strength is 5," he said, "which I know is low but it was lower before I decided to stay with you. Now I get a small reward each time I complete a task for you and last time it was +1 in Strength. Never had that happen before accepting Quests to help people."

I raised my eyebrows and took a long drink. So that was why he'd stayed.

Was it his System incentivizing him to help me or was it something else, something more? Each Soul System was connected with the World System, and so maybe it wasn't a stretch that information about whatever my Soul System thought I needed could be fed back to the World System and then influence someone else's Soul System. Another reason not to do what the System told me to do, really. How could I know it was in my own best interest outside of simply giving me Stat or Skill boosts?

What else could I learn about the System from talking to this motor mouth of a kid?

[Notice]

Congratulations!

You have completed your Quest [Learn More About the System]. Mastery of the [Silver Tongue] Skill has increased by .10%.

Oh, great.

"I only have an F-Class Stage 1 Soul," Danio continued. He worried his lip for a moment then shrugged. "I guess it's normal and all, but isn't it normal to wanna move up too? The higher your Soul class, the closer you are to the Shevirat, right? Then you can make a contract with one of them to get stronger. You'd be so powerful. Maybe powerful enough to be one of their Avatars. Like the king!"

It'd been a while since I'd last heard about contracts and Avatars. I'd vaguely heard something about that once or twice in all my years on this world. The last thing I wanted to do was bind myself to some god or follow their orders. For what? Power? I should be able to achieve equal power without help or I didn't deserve it.

In the Royal Guard, the running joke among them all had been that the family didn't need our protection because they had contracts with their patron Shevira and that the king and queen were both Avatars of theirs, which gave them a level of power inaccessible to the rest of us. I'd never seen any of them in action to confirm whether they needed us or not.

I had seen some incredible things on the battlefield and as a Royal Assassin, so maybe that was the type of power Danio was talking about. Hadn't seemed like something anyone could do--more like something that would take incredible skill, years of training, decades of studying.

But back then, magic was magic, and I didn't care. Someone without any skill in magic, with the right timing and the right talents, could kill anyone. Even a duke and his entire family. Surely, even a king could be killed with the proper planning. The mighty also fell; that was how the world worked. I liked being the one to give the final push.