Hello, and sorry for the lenghty hiatus!

I was enstared in the beautry of not having to write anything for a while, and thus... you know... didn `t write anything...

Then my lady grew tired off me, and I was commanded to go and write something!

Sooo.... Here I am... Writing.

Enjoy the Chappy, folks!

Now... How do I go about building a network from scratch… I should probably ask Atre how they usually do it.

A passive monthly sum paid out to either a governmental organ tasked with providing assistance for the homeless – ran by the homeless, or just give it to their central hub… They should have one in this place as well… they sure did in Alymor… Or… maybe a branch in the military, where the homeless are given jobs and work under a strict set of rules? I think I need to rethink this…

A million thoughts run through my head as I ride to the external branch of the castle. For some reason Atre didn’t seem too interested in staying inside the castle. He never really gave me a good reason for denying the stay here, and just brushed it off with “I have too many memories of that place”.

I guess that is good enough of a reason, but I feel my curiosity spike every time I remember those words. There is a lot of things Atre hasn’t told me. I feel like the reason is not because he doesn’t trust me with it, but something else entirely.

I guess I should just leave the man to his own devices then… He will probably tell me eventually.

I get off my Dunedime beast just outside of his rather modest shack. That is, modest in comparison to the castle. It is still a mansion. A newly constructed mansion.

The sleek curvature of the building, and the absolutely gorgeous flowers and bushes flourishing the entrance and the garden, makes this place look… soothing.

Not the “Aaah… I wish my life was this calm” soothing, but the “This is what I need in my life to stay calm” soothing. Sounds pretty similar, but it has two very different meanings.

I nod to one of the middle aged guards, who in return carefully eyes me to see if I provide a threat he needs to be worried about. I guess my presence here has been few and too far between.

I give him a smile, ask tell the careful man;

“I am Akif Kas. Would you be so kind to get Atre out here, please?”.

“I don’t care for your name, Boy. Don’t take liberties mentioning the prince by his first name. To you, he is Prince Atre, and nothing else. Got it?”

Prince Atre, huh? BWAHAHAH! I look forward to his face when he realizes I am his friend!

I grin deviously to the man, and give him a nod. The man just stands there in silence, and doesn’t even show signs of moving.

“Uuuh… Are you planning on getting PRINCE Atre?”, I ask him with a questioning look.

“No”, he tells me stone faced.

Okay then…

“Aight! You guys should put your fingers in your ears”, I tell him as I ready a stream of telekinesis to my vocal cords. The guards look at me with mocking eyes as if telling me “What are you going to do? Yell at him?”.

With a grin yell out with my telekinesis reinforced voice;

“OOOI! ATRE! GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE! YOUR GUARDS DOESN’T WANT TO LET A “BOY” INSIDE YOUR MANSION!”

Judging by their absolute shock, I guess they didn’t expect me to actually do that. They also didn’t expect it to be this loud.

“THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, BOY?”, the guard I talked to yells at me as he walks towards me while drawing his sword.

“You didn’t want to let me in, or tell Atre I am here, so I figured I should get his attention a different way”, I tell the man with an amicable smile.

That pissed of the guard even more, and with a “Do you want to die”, he charges at me. He clearly has had bad training, because Lukas had a better charge and sword strikes than this man…

Atre… What the hell have you been teaching these guys?

I dodge and weave until a familiar looking figure stands in the doorway leading into the mansion.

With a smile, I place a palm in the solar plexus of the guard, and start walking towards Atre. The rest of the guards have already seen Atre, but for some reason they didn’t tell the guard attacking me to stop… Poor dude… Betrayed by your friends…

The guard didn’t seem to relent even after Atre exited the mansion, so that was the only thing I could think of… I didn’t want to kill the guard after all. He is just a bit slow in the mental department, and that says a lot coming from me!

You should have noticed your friends behaving differently.

Atre seems pissed as fuck, but seem to get less… pissy… after I flash him yet another smile.

Silently, with determined steps he walks from the entrance to the gates where the guards stand in attention. The partner of the guards tells Atre as he walks past him;

“I am sorry, Prince. we will remove this boy immediately”.

Oooooh… yes! MORE! COME ON! Call me boy one more time! Oooomnomnomnom! Your doom is neigh, friend! LET ME EAT YOUR FUTURE SUFFERING! BWAHAHAHAHAHAH!

“THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN “REMOVE HIM”! FIRST OF ALL, THAT “BOY” IS ELIYONS LOVER, AND A PRINCE OF OUR NATION!

SECOND OF ALL, HE IS MY FRIEND! THE ONLY ONES THAT SHOULD BE REMOVED ARE YOU RETARDS!”.

That seems to have scared some sense into the guards, and the man heaving for breath on the ground realizes what he has done.

“Plhhease f…orhhgive me, Prince”.

I look down at the man with a smile, and gently steps over him as I make my way to Atre. Venali is standing in the doorway with a friendly smile on her face, and lightly waves at me when she sees my eyes resting on her. I give her a gentle smile as I follow Atre back to the mansion.

“Atre… You need to train your guards better… Lukas was more of a challenge than that guy…”, I tell him during out short walk back to the mansion. That is after he is done tearing the guards a new asshole. Figuratively, of course. Almost literally as well, if it wasn’t for the fact that he grew cold in his … uuh… bathrobe? That is the closes word I have for what he is wearing.

“I am not in charge of the training of my guards, but I will pass the word to their captains”.

Atre seems a bit grumpy, but this time I am 89% sure it was not my fault.

Atre POV

And here we were getting our jam on, and a yell interrupts us? How long do I have to wait before we can make love! I HAVE WAITED FOR YEARS, AND NOW SHE FINALLY KNOWS I LOVE HER! JUST AS I AM ABOUT TO STICK IT IN, AKIF RUINS THE WHOLE THING! If he wasn’t so monstrously strong, I would kick his ass for that… Way to cockblock, Akif… You traitor…

Venali flashes me smirking glances as Akif keeps her entertained while I go to our room to blow out the candles. She doesn’t seem too broken up about it, and the small wink she gives me before I exit the hall makes me regain hope that our little roll in the hay has only been postponed, not cancelled.

Between the sounds of me blowing out candles and making the bed, I can hear Akif excitedly tell Venali about a story from his childhood.

“… and he started touching his daughter! BWAHAHAH! You should have seen Balfin’s face when his new slave started touching his own daughter. It was fucking priceless!”

“The only words he said was “string him up”, as he pointed to me. Not one to disobey orders – especially when it looked like I was going to be strung up with him if I said no, did just that, and waited for Balfin to get whatever he was looking for. You know those sheers you use to cut hair with, right? No? You don’t? Seriously?”

“Anyways! They are practically two knives held together with a screw and a bolt. Sharp as fuck, and deadly weapons in the right man’s hands. He was like “pull down his pants”, and grabbed a hold of the Kin`s balls and dick, and looked the man in the eyes with the evilest fucking grin I have ever seen HAHAHAHAHA. With a snip, his dick and balls were rolling on the floor, and the man screaming like a little girl BWAHAHAHAHAH! FUCKING PRICELESS!”

“He then got a torch, and cauterized the wounds so Kin wouldn’t bleed to death. He told me to undo his restraints, and drag him over to the pillory. You know… where you put the head and hands through some holes between two wooden posts, and get locked in place?”

“Without pants, and restrained, he was the perfect prey for men that grew tired of doing it with their hands. It is a good thing I didn’t know what being horny was… Every time Sera came to visit me, I just thought I was sick or something. It was pretty painful, and I didn’t understand why it happened only when Sera came to visit, but ooh well… I survived. I have been enlightened now though… several times a day, in fact!”.

“Aaah! I’m running of on a tangent. Anyways! Balfin yells out: “You guys have just gained yourself a slut! He will gracefully receive any load, no matter how big! Enjoy, boys, and remember; The next one that starts flirting with my daughter will end up in the same position”.

Ooooh… noooo…. DON’T TELL ME! HE IS TELLING STORIES AGAIN!

“I think Four eared Joar was the first one to take him up on that offer”.

“Four eared Joar?”, Venali asks Akif with a horrified voice…

“Aaah… I haven’t told you that story? Ok… Here is how it goes. I was slee…”

“HOLD IT, AKIF! No more stories for Venali! In fact, don’t tell anyone your childhood stories! Got it?”

Luckily I manage to stop Akif before he further corrupts the innocence of Venali with yet another childhood story. I internally yell at myself for not coming to her rescue any sooner, but at least I manage to stop him before he tells her that story as well as the one he just told her…

“Atre… Venali is a big girl! I think she can handle a few stories from my childhood… I haven’t even told you guys the bad ones yet!”, he grumpily moans at me as he looks over to Venali for a sign to continue. Luckily, that sign never comes. I think she has realized that listening to his childhood stories is a bad idea.

That being said, I can’t help but focus on what he ended that complaint with.

Haven’t told us the bad ones, yet? WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED IN THOSE BARRACKS!

“Haaah… just… don’t tell her any stories unless I am here, ok? I know enough about you to filter out the bad ones… the ones she doesn’t need to hear…”, I tell the grumpy man in attempt to soothe him.

“Anyways! Why are you here?”

Akif POV

Don’t tell her any stories, he says… He will filter out the bad ones, he says… Does this look like a face that will listen, Atre? Does it?

If you think it looks like one, then you are sadly mistaken! She seemed to actually find my stories interesting! Not like your family… No tears or stunned silence! SHE EVEN ASKED A QUESTION!

NOONE HAS ASKED A QUESTION BEFORE… at least I don’t think they have?

She seemed genuinely interested in my stories! *Sob*

“Anyways! Why are you here?”, Atre asks me with a gentler voice.

“AAAH! Yeah… I have an idea for an information network, and the possible hiring of spies, if they prove to be effective employees. Do you know how to write?”, I ask him. Atre looks questioningly at me, but doesn’t say anything. Venali gets up, and tells us;

“I will write!”.

With excited steps, she runs out of the living room to find a maid or something. It doesn’t take her long to get back with something to write on, and with. By that time Atre has gotten us some tea and pastries from the kitchen.

“Ok! What is it you want to discuss”, Atre asks me between sips of tea. The tea is pretty delicious. Minty flavour with some berries in it. He has been generous with the honey as well!

He certainly knows how to make tea, that’s for sure. Or… maybe it was a maid that did it for him? It probably was a maid…

“Let’s see… where to start”, I muse to myself.

“This is a rough idea I have, and I wish for either you, or someone you trust, to flesh it out”.

“We send a passive sum to a branch of the military designated to help the homeless better their life. We have to create that branch from scratch, of course, but surely you can do that”.

“In return for that money, we want any and all information deemed important to the military. It is voluntary to give away information, but information verified to be true will be rewarded with a sum of money”.

“Say… 50 silver or something. Not enough for them to grow rich on, but enough for them to live a decent life for a while. That sum of money also decreases the chance for men and women to do anything stupid to get that money”.

“As you know, the homeless are invisible in this city. No one looks at a homeless man, and thinks “oh… no! My plan has been foiled! The homeless man heard me!”. Most of the time people doesn’t even notice a homeless man being close enough to hear them”.

“We give them the opportunity to get gain money, and in return we get information we can act on. We can educate leaders in the homeless community to properly handle the monthly, or bi weekly sum of money for the good of the community, and teach them what information is relevant, and what is not. That way we have filtrated out the “noise”, and only have what we want – pure information we can act on”.

“After that, the report is divided into two parts. The counter measure part, and the intel part. When the head of those branches get together, we have the whole message. That also decreases the chance of people knowing what we know, and how we will act”.

“Our only weak link is that first filter – the community heads. They are the only ones with the whole message. That being said, they will have to filter out a lot of messages, and it will be hard for anyone knowing who exactly it was that sent the message, who it was sent to, and which leader sent the message up the chain. We can’t just have one person in charge of sending messages up the chain. I presume you have at least a hundred thousand homeless men and women in this city. If every message goes through one man, then that man will die before he is able to properly handle even one day’s work. Also, it goes without saying that the community heads need to be protected. If enough protection is provided, our weak link will turn into one of the strongest links”.

“They can even have a small force of people they can utilize for lesser important missions. If we incorporate the homeless community into the military, we have a continuous supply of information, and they have a steady place they can call home”.

“If informants prove to be effective in their information gathering, they can be offered training in spy stuff. I don’t know much about that, but I am sure you have people in the army trained for that sort of stuff”.

“This is an idea I have cooked up after taking inspiration from the system we used in the barracks. It is also widely used in the homeless community, so teaching the homeless how to do it is not something we need to be worried about. The only thing we need to do, and what I have started to do, is adapt the system to our branch of military”.

I keep on describing and fleshing out the rough idea I have for a new system of gaining intelligence. Atre seems extremely interested in my proposal, so I take that as a good sign it will be implemented. He is not the head of military, but as he told me himself; “I still have a lot of pull, and it doesn’t hurt being the prince either”. We aren’t freely giving out money to the homeless, and the homeless have something to do with their free time.

It takes us a good couple of hours of bouncing ideas back and forth before we come to an agreement on how this is to be done. Venali has been writing furiously this whole time, and from time to time she even proposed her own ideas.

A few of them were very good ideas – ideas I never thought of. Like setting up a potential route for smuggling willing participants out of Val – the human country. Louvian told me that the situation in the Val is pretty bad, and it doesn’t hurt to import labour force. That and help people in need of help out of their shitty lives.

We have more than enough projects going on. All of those projects need people to fulfill them. Human families that are willing can immigrate to either the half elves, or the elves. Since we will be setting up the same system there, it doesn’t hurt to help out the struggling locals either.

It is also no point in just getting intel internally. We also need intel in different countries.

Even though the elves and the half elves are friendly with most nations, Intel is a vital thing. If we know something is going to happen before it does, we can prepare for it. That goes for both friendly and enemy nations.

Of course both nations have already a system of gaining intel from other nations, but it is a rather inefficient system – a system that leaves a lot of room for enemy intervention.

I don’t know the specifics of that system, but apparently it is very outdated, and wasn’t meant to be used as extensively as it is, according to Atre.

He agrees to take the framework, and flesh it out somewhat before delivering it to the head of military. There are details needed to be done I have no clue how to accomplish, so I figure it is a smart idea to leave it in his capable hands.

I am about to leave his mansion when I hear the panicked voice of Lukas;

“Akif! Are you there? Pleeease! PLEASE! Father is going to kill mother!”