James' latest conquest wasn't that great. Sure, it was one more place to hide in and one more group to work for him, but it wasn't that useful. Unsurprisingly the drug dealers mostly had drugs, with what little money they had being hidden in a vault in their old goblin boss' room. A nifty little trick involving a flat shadow tentacle and James' unique senses combined with what little he remembered of those lockpicking videos he had idly watched a couple of times had quickly taken care of that. The fact he more or less did the same thing a few times before he reached the fire station also helped.

The Black Border had long been an objective of James, a way to reach the main city, an environment with less casual danger than the slums and the sewers where he could live a normal life with his little ratlings, and Guy's information had been incredibly useful. Or more accurately his methods were.

The man had never been to the Sunken City in his life, and in fact, he personally considered the thing to have greatly exaggerated to reach a nigh mythical status to fool the average thugs and keep them away from the good bases on the surface, so his reaction when James had brought him down below had been incredibly amusing. The catfish the size of a car that tried to eat him on the way helped reinforce the fact he needed James to survive down there, and though he wasn't what James would have called a loyal worker he at least wasn't actively planning to backstab him, which would be sufficient for now.

While he was at the elevator stations James used to opportunity to get his Silhouette papers, and after that, he had let Guy more or less run free, though with the surveillance of one of the ghostly nuns. The man had taken to the environment like a fish to water. It turned out that once the nun had hidden and Guy just looked like a friendly old man, there suddenly were a lot more locals in the area willing to talk. More than James had seen in his early scouting. It made sense, they probably grew weary of strange things to survive, and from what Guy had gathered they were mostly kids of criminals who had tried their luck and either had failed to hold a position in the Sunken City or just kicked them out of the better areas. Others were just lone survivors of criminal groups, either kidnapped civilians or thugs themselves, who had escaped extermination or assimilation from other groups. Sort of what James was doing.

In a single week, Guy had gathered a new network, one that once didn't ask for pay - what was the use for money when they didn't have the strength to survive dealing with proper groups - but instead food and shelter. They had also wished for medical help but understood that it wouldn't as easy to obtain. This new network quickly spread via word of mouth among the poor and desperate locals while keeping out of sight of the proper groups and more noteworthy individuals and before long even people from much further away - like, say, those close to the Black Border - began to come to the orphanage to see Guy and share what they knew. James was quite glad the shop on the surface was doing incredibly well to finance all of these groceries.

It was thanks to this network that James and co had gathered enough information to plan their next step. Once the shop had been set up, the group didn't really have any major objective - only obvious permanent ones such as improving themselves and long-term ones such as establishing a stronghold in the main city - so it had been a welcomed surprise to discover that not only could they pass beneath the Black Border thanks to the Sunken City, but also that there was no equivalent to the Border underground. The only thing that stopped anyone from going from the slums section of the Sunken City to the main city's one were the local gangs and monster nests.

Of course the strength of these various probably hostile groups varied greatly but overall based on the intel they had gathered there was nothing particularly dangerous. Oh, had the Shadow Commando or even Mischief gone in alone they would have suffered many losses and maybe been outright destroyed by some of these groups, but with James? This was another matter entirely.

After drafting up a crude map of the area based on their network's and their neighbors' information that featured notable areas and groups, they planned out an invasion route. If they had just attacked everyone in sight and expanded everywhere at once then they would have attracted too much attention, and even potential allies might have turned against them in fear. If they only attacked the bases they needed to make a relatively safe road to the first elevator they could find that would lead to the main city however, although they would ruffle some feathers they might get away with it, especially if they only targeted small and forgettable gangs and wild monsters. Big groups that weren't too paranoid would hopefully see the operation as a one-and-done deal, they only needed to reach the city once after all.

It was why that day sub-packs from Mischief had been sent to deal with monster nests while James and the Commando went to base after base, James going in first to scare the thugs and deal with any powerful opponent while the Commando followed and indoctrinated them as fast as possible while James cemented his control by infusing key locations of the place. Once they were done they would head to the next, James always taking some time to scout with his infused paper planes to confirm their intel before attacking. They needed to be as fast as possible so that their various targets wouldn't have time to prepare.

It was why he had been so confident against the drug dealers led by the goblin shaman, he knew they only had regular firearms and that those wouldn't pose a threat to him. That particular test hadn't been pleasant, especially when it turned out that infused bullets - despite being made by him and shadow-based - could harm him, not by much, it was mostly a small sting, but James attributed that to his connection to those bullets. Magical weaponry made by anyone else wouldn't be so kind, at least if it was made with unorthodox bodies in mind. He wasn't sure if Grover's had been since he had made sure to evade all of his attacks and since his enchanted clay armor had crumbled to dust after getting hit by infused electricity they hadn't been able to test it out - something that James was somewhat thankful for.

On the same train of thought, when they tested his resistance to the electroguns, it turned out James was also affected by more regular energies, which should have been obvious given his experience with the Titaroach, the massive electroach he had to deal with when he met Barry and Larry for the first time. At least the energy discharged by those handheld weapons wasn't as impactful as the one unleashed by the massive bug, and thanks to his shadow resistance fully powered infused electrogun shots weren't as bad as they would normally be. They barely affected him more than the regular shots did, which was a few seconds stunned and some light grogginess for a dozen more or so.

All that to say that James was confident that, if all went according to plan, he wouldn't be in any mortal danger. The only things that threatened him were the odd magic or energy user, such as that goblin shaman or that one crazy lunatic that had tried to burn him down with a flamethrower. She had been the first human opponent that James tried to his limited magical knowledge on, and he had been pleasantly surprised. It turned out most people didn't know how to react to a bunch of tentacles growing out of their shadows to strangle them or to corrupting orbs of darkness. The homemade flamethrower had been retrieved and sent to Techlord for study by a Mischief member accompanied by a newly made shadow person.

That had been the less pleasant part of the magical surprise. James already knew this would happen based on his training on wild sewer fish and cockroaches, the first of which became aquatic scouts while the latter became a living security system. James might have been able to focus on his connection to infused objects to roughly keep track of his territory but it wasn't like he was always checking it, so having a group of loyal relatively living subordinates watch over things and report to his more intelligent employees was nice. The zombie-like husks of infused weren't as great.

To call them zombies was a misnomer, really. They were still alive, they hadn't gotten any weaker, and if anything they all looked better as black-skinned thralls than they did before, and overall they had simply become better versions of themselves, just ones with pretty empty heads. They weren't dumb, just robotic, like Solvent. They could think clearly and resolve situations with their mental faculties alone, it just happened so that they only thought when James ordered them to or it helped better accomplish the orders James gave them. The mental manipulation really didn't help with how conflicted James felt about having what were essentially slaves, especially black ones. That left a bad taste in his mouth. At least their skin didn't have the brown undertone that even the darkest skins usually have, and instead had a more greyish one, akin to ash.

So far there were six of them, two human men, one human woman, one orc woman, one elf enby, and a genderfluid clownfish person. That last one was a little different from the others, its scales weren't all black but instead black and grey, which made for a neat visual if you ignored how they originally had been the stereotypical orange and white with black highlights. If all went as he expected then James would also have one additional human man and one goblin, which, now that he thought about it, he didn't know much about.

"Brok, could you tell me about your previous employer?"

"Grench? They were an odd one. It ain't every day you meet a true shaman who knows the old ways to start things off, but a primal goblin able to think beyond what's for dinner is even rarer."

"Primal goblin?"

"Eh, most orcs and goblins you meet nowadays are mixed-blood. Even those with the purest lineage have some other sapient race or species as an ancestor somewhere, at least if they're smart enough to be people. The first of us came out of demonic mushrooms, it took a couple of centuries before the first greenskin babies were made. Sometimes a small colony pops out in the wilds and it spawns a few primal greenskins before the locals or the Union get wind of it and burn it to the ground."

"So primal greenskins, as you call them, are roughly the equivalent of human cavemen then?"

"Eh, a bit, except dumber and more bloodthirsty. It's why Grench having a clear enough head not only to think but become a shaman was impressive."

"If those primal greenskins are so rare and born in the wild, why was Grench here in the worst of Zalcien? Shouldn't they have been in a wild tribe out there? They mentioned something called the Flaming Poison."

"They were, the Flaming Poison is the goblin tribe that took them in and raised them from feral beast to spiritual warrior. Hadn't heard of it before but hey, you saw their tricks. Shamanism is shamanism. Anyway, they said they came to Zalcien and chose to stick around. That didn't go well."

"I see. Any hard feelings about their fate? I won't mind, it'd be logical, I just want to know. And in case you're wondering, I'm one of those people who value honesty. I need good men, not bootlickers."

"Eh, we had some good times, they were a good boss, they paid us well and everything was fine, but that's about it. In this line of work, you gotta be ready for a shift in power whenever. Friends can die at any point, money doesn't."

"That's a grim outlook on life. An understandable one born from necessity, but still grim."

Brok shrugged.

"If it ain't broke."

"If you say so. Now, I still have a couple of bands of thugs to take over before they catch onto my invasion plan, so let's try to make this as quick as possible."

"Wait, we ain't the first?"

"Oh no, you're the fourth gang so far, though there were also a lot of monster nests, some haunted places, and a handful of solitary lunatics."

"Oh."

"If it makes you feel any better, you're the one that suffered the fewer losses."

"Oh. Uh... Thanks?"

"You're welcome. So, my most loyal men will soon arrive and will instruct you on what to do from now on, at which point I'll leave to scout and then continue our expansion plan. My men will then follow after me at some point, which means you will be left more or less autonomous for some time."

"Doesn't that mean you'll leave us alone?"

"Yes, that is what autonomous means. I appoint you as the one in charge when I'm not here, don't disappoint me. I have my ways to watch over you, I'll know if you try anything."

"Didn't plan on it, boss."

"Good. Very good."

This is going to be a very, very long day.