Eclipse Tower at five past five in the afternoon was quiet in a way the Hub never let public buildings be quiet. Adam walked to the reception area, duty desk.
Brandt was there.
He had a coffee in his good hand and a senior-queue printout under his prosthetic. He looked up when the front doors opened.
He looked back down and then up again.
He stood up.
"Adam."
"Brandt."
The prosthetic flexed once at the elbow joint. The good hand set the coffee down.
"You came back early. Two days."
"Yeah."
"Let's move to the private office."
Adam followed him to the back hall.
Brandt's office was the second door on the left, deliberately small. A desk, two chairs, one window that looked over the Hub plaza, no shelves. Brandt closed the door, sat down, picked up the coffee he had carried with him, and waited.
Adam took the chair across from him.
He told him the story. The world, its people, powers, the mission. The Bazaar interception. The Pioneer title. The pathway lock-in and the Stalker name. The Quiet Coat replacing the Suit-Hatsu. The two stamps. The Theft override. The parasite removal at ten thousand. 12,290 NP left in the account.
Brandt did not interrupt.
When Adam finished, Brandt drank from the coffee mug and set it down. He looked at the desk for a long while.
"Rate yourself."
"Four. At best. Maybe high-four if everything goes right and I get lucky."
The prosthetic flexed once.
"You were a six."
Adam exhaled through his nose. Something in his lower back, a small tension his body had carried for years as the baseline of a man who had built up to L6, settled a fraction lower on the chair than it should have. He noticed it. He did not say so.
"On the books I was a four. In reality a six, yes."
"In front of the senior members we were calling you a six."
"And we will not be doing that any more."
"People knew you publicly as L4 but no one would put you in that category before."
"Now they will." Adam did not smile this time.
Brandt looked at the window for a while. He did not speak. The prosthetic moved through three small adjustments at the elbow joint, which meant Brandt was thinking. The pattern Adam had learned years ago.
"You know what this will do."
"I do, sadly. Eclipse is eleven months old. We have two hundred and ninety-eight active members. The whole pitch we wrote into the senior framework is compounding builds. Every public document we have written quietly assumes the founder is two tiers above the people he is teaching. Tovis is a clean four. Lyra Quist is going to land at five in strength. The senior queue you saw at breakfast last week has eleven fours and two fives on it. If I rate myself at four right now I am no longer head-and-shoulders above the people I am recruiting."
"And."
"And the world is not stable enough for a founder to be weaker. Hub politics still treat Eclipse as a minor Varen guild. If the founder is a four, the guild looks weaker than it used to be. We lose the senior candidates we have not signed yet. Some of the signed ones will reconsider when their year is up."
"And."
"And the bigger problem is the optics. I have been preaching compounding builds with myself as the example. If members see me drop two tiers in a single deployment, the lesson they take is compounding does not protect you, not Adam got hit by a L8 to L9 entity I have never heard of. The first thought is what spreads."
Brandt drank his coffee.
"At least you understand."
"I have to. We do not get to survive this without me being the example."
"What do you want to do."
"Hide it."
The prosthetic flexed once.
"For how long."
"Until I regain what I lost. My prediction is that I will be at old strength when I reach Sequence 7+. More likely 6. This can take anywhere from 3 months to a year."
"Well, you'd better do it in three."
[ Host. I have an assessment of this option. The two Stalker addons make hiding a valid option in the short term. The Veil draws attention off you where ever you are. The Shadow tells you when someone is searching for you actively. With these abilities and my support we can keep your weakness hidden for an extended period of time. We only have to avoid public showcases of your capabilities. ]
How likely is exposure.
[ Inside Eclipse, in the next month, low. ]
Outside Eclipse.
[ Depends on whom you meet and what abilities they have. Your state now is unique. Few Explorers carry mystic powers in their kits. Without those in play, you are safe. ]
Good news for me. Also a lesson. We need to teach the members how much one well-placed trick can break raw power. The right ability at the right moment makes the other person's strength irrelevant, open a new section for me to write later, call it HAX abilities and their effects.
[ Done. ]
Right.
Adam looked at Brandt.
"Short term I hide. I keep the Veil up in any room I cannot vouch for. I keep field deployments off the schedule until my numbers are back. I stop publishing under my own name for a quarter. Anything that needs a public face goes through you or Ren. Nobody outside this office knows the rating dropped."
Brandt looked at the desk.
"That is the right call. I do not like it. It is still the right call."
"I do not like it either."
"You will explain this to your family. They should know. Especially Ren and Sophie. They rely on you the most in this guild."
"I know, I am prepared for that."
Brandt set the coffee down.
"You are going to grow stronger but how does the new system work."
Adam explained the new progression.
The Sequences nine through one, with zero at the top. The mid-tier window at seven through five. Low-tier at nine and eight. High-tier at four and three, everything above don't even mention it for now. The acting method: living the role of each Sequence until the potion settles, the losing control risk if you fail. The Bazaar-only purchase path. The information lock that hides the next-Sequence detail until commitment. The Sequence-five-and-up mission gate that replaces the canonical ritual. The Sequence-four share-right that lets him grant access to others.
Brandt listened in silence. When Adam finished, Brandt thought about it for thirty seconds.
"It is a different system. It is one you are stuck with now. The question is the speed of the climb."
"The Bazaar already gave me Sequence nine fully digested as part of the deal. I do not have to act out that one. Sequence eight is the next purchase."
"What is the cost."
"Sage."
[ Pulling the listing. Stand by. ]
The Bazaar interface opened in the corner of Adam's vision. The new shelves the Pioneer title had unlocked sat at the top of the listing in a slightly brighter blue, the way the Bazaar coded recent additions. Beneath them, the Stalker pathway entry had populated.
▓ STALKER PATHWAY — SEQUENCE EIGHT
Designation: Trespasser (variant of Swindler; Adam Varen exclusive)
Prerequisite: Sequence Nine of the Stalker pathway, digested. (Met.)
Cost: 5,000 NP. Information lock: detail of the abilities will surface on commitment.
An outline is provided below.
▓ ABILITY OUTLINE (pre-purchase summary)
Sequence Eight is the Marauder-family deception tier. The base Sequence delivers a passive Charm, Eloquence that pushes through the Spirit World onto the listener's mind, thought misdirection, brief induced hallucinations at close range, a second increment of physical enhancement, an expanded Superior Observation that picks out micro-expressions and gauges short-range mental state, and a Theft that lifts spiritual materials at short range through physical barriers. Trespasser-variant addons widen the kit with a short-range translocation through shadow and a brief Veil extension over a second person. Full detail on commitment.
Brandt read the block over Adam's shoulder. He flexed the prosthetic.
"Five thousand."
"Yes."
"What is the acting method on this one."
"Listed under commitment. I will see it when I pay."
"By the way are you able to see the new listings in the Bazaar. The sequence potions?"
"Let me check."
Brandt browsed through the market but found nothing.
"I don't see any."
Sage can you check the market listings real quick?
[ Pulling the listing. Stand by. There has been a new hidden addition to the Bazaar. Tell Brandt to search for Eclipse exclusive entries. ]
"Brandt, search for Eclipse exclusive."
Exclusive?
[ Host. It seems you got more than initially taught. These sequence potions from LOTM are only available for your members. ]
Does Bazaar actually accept guilds as valid organizations. I thought its only something the IEC pushed for?
[ Until now it didn't. Maybe this is a privilege you got as a Pioneer. ]
Brandt chimed in.
"Ah, I see it. Adam, how is this possible? All of these potions are connected to our guild somehow. Is this because of what you did?"
"Well most likely. We need to inform the members about this change. We can also use it when representing our guild, as having unique Bazaar purchases. Also tell everyone to not buy any until I make a guide."
"Good idea. Let's go back to your situation for now. You can't afford to waste time."
Brandt thought about that for a second.
"Buy it, the next potion. The faster you climb the smaller the window where the books look wrong. Stay at L4 until the next incursion deployment exposes you, and the membership starts doubting you. Stay there for two months and we will have issues with seniors. Buy it today."
"That was the plan already."
Sage. Confirm.
[ Confirming. The item is open for purchase. Funds available. ]
Buy.
▓ TRANSACTION
Stalker pathway Sequence Eight (Trespasser) — purchased.
Price: −5,000 NP.
Closing balance: 7,290 NP.
Acting method: surfaced on commitment.
See ability sheet.
The notification bloomed under it.
▓ STALKER PATHWAY — SEQUENCE EIGHT (CURRENT)
Designation: Trespasser (variant of Swindler; Adam Varen exclusive)
Spirituality reserve: deepens by one tier on digestion completion
Acting Method (current): successfully trespass — enter a secured place the host does not have lawful right to enter, steal something, and walk clear without being implicated. The Stalker arsenal is the toolkit: Veil for hiding, Shadowstep for shadow translocation, Stalker's Shadow for the awareness of being searched for, Charm, Eloquence and Thought Misdirection for any human encounter inside. The theft on the way out is the load-bearing risk that converts the entry from harmless to operationally meaningful. The host must not be caught, named, or filed against. Successful clean exits increase the digestion.
▓ NEW TRAITS (from canon Swindler, adjusted for cross-world operation)
Charm. A pervasive social warmth the host emits in conversation. People are more approachable around him, more willing to trust his word at face value, more willing to bend a small rule on his behalf. Operates passively; sharpens when the host wills it on a specific target. Resistance scales with the listener's spiritual depth or trained suspicion.
Eloquence. Speech carries a Beyonder weight that pushes through the Spirit World onto the listener's Body of Heart and Mind. Argument and persuasion land harder than the words alone would justify. Works against most cognitive layers.
Thought Misdirection. The host can redirect a target's line of thinking. Achieved through the Eloquence ability, but also achievable through action, posture, arrangement of the room, choice of conversational opening. A skilled Trespasser can misdirect without using the Beyonder abilities at all. Range: conversational. Effect: target follows the misdirection until something external snaps them out of it.
Mental Disruption. The host can induce brief hallucinations in a target at close range. The hallucination can be visual, auditory, or tactile. Duration scales with the target's spiritual resilience. Useful for momentary disengagement, distraction, or planting a false memory.
▓ STRENGTHENED TRAITS (carried up from Sequence Nine, deepened at this tier)
Physical Enhancement. Body baseline rises again. Agility, reflex speed, and short-burst acceleration all gain a noticeable second increment on top of the Sequence 9 increment. (Lifting 75t, sprint speed at Mach 1, durability enough to tank most rocket yields.)
Superior Observation (Swindler tier). Already a a pull towards valuable items at Sequence 9; now adds micro-expression and involuntary-movement recognition. The host grasps the target's mental state from short-range observation. Spiritual-signature detection at short range is also sharpened, provided the signature interacts with the Spirit World.
Theft (Swindler tier). The host can now steal spiritual materials from short range, including materials separated from him by a physical barrier. A spiritual material buried in earth can be stolen without excavation. A reagent inside a sealed pouch can be lifted without opening the pouch. Range: roughly three to five metres.
▓ STALKER ADDONS (unique to this variant)
Shadowstep. A short-range translocation through any shadow large enough to fit the host's body, anchored to a place his Stalker's Veil has already touched. Range at Sequence Eight: about 15 metres per Step. Spirituality cost: roughly two seconds of Stalker's Veil upkeep. The Step is silent. No sound on departure, no displaced air on arrival. Stalker's Veil keeps the Step unnoticed even when an observer is looking directly at the destination. Cooldown: ~2 seconds.Veil-Bind. A two-target extension of Stalker's Veil. The host may extend the veil over one other person for short durations. The bound target becomes unwilling-to-be-looked-at alongside the host. Requires physical contact at moment of cast; once cast, the bound target can move independently within ~30 metres of the host for up to two in-world minutes. Cost scales linearly with target strength level.
Stalker's Veil — sensor refinement (Sequence Eight refinement). While the Veil is actively engaged, mechanical and electronic sensors fail to register the host. Pressure plates, motion detectors, infrared trip-beams, biometric scanners, magical-circuit alarms keyed to spiritual presence return null on the host's location for the duration of the Veil. The refinement extends only to the host. Spirituality cost: a small steady increment above the passive Veil baseline.
▓ THEFT OVERRIDE
The Sequence Nine Theft modification persists through this Sequence. The expanded Theft inherits the extraction-filter override. Any item lifted under Theft is tagged and crosses worlds with the host on extraction.
Adam read it twice.
Brandt was also focused on reading it on his tablet. Adam typed it out for him.
The prosthetic flexed once.
"Shadowstep is what we needed. We have not had a short-range translocation before. This closes a hole."
"It does."
"Drink the potion."
Adam reached into the Spatial Pocket and brought out the vial. The vial had appeared there at the moment of purchase. It was a thumb-sized bottle of clear blue-grey fluid that did not catch the office light the way a normal liquid did.
He uncorked it and drank it.
It tasted like cold metal.
The spiritual layer in his chest shifted, slightly, in a way that was not painful. The Marauder kit deepened. The Veil grew a fraction wider. The reserve in his chest expanded by what felt like a quarter.
[ Sequence Eight integrated into the framework. Mind stabilized. ]
"It done," Adam said.
Brandt nodded.
"Now you act. Fast as you can. I want the digestion done before Ren gets back."
"That is fourteen days at most."
"Then get to it."
The first trespass was on Day Three.
Sage scouted the target overnight. The Hub stayed off the target list — Bazaar-sanctioned space, was not the place to draw attention in. Adam crossed the perimeter of a private bonded warehouse on the south industrial bank of the Velden in Kerenth at half past three in the morning, the Veil engaged, the Shadowstep moving him through the chain-fence shadow in two soundless transits. The facility belonged to a retired mid-tier Explorer who ran a private storage business for clients who did not want their goods sitting in their houses and could not afford Hub storage rates. The outer ring carried six pressure plates, two infrared trip-beams, and a privately-warded presence-ping the owner had paid a high-tier ward-engineer to lay last summer. None of them caught him. Sage fed him the floor plan and the patrol intervals while he moved.
He took a small sealed reagent jar off the third shelf of the second aisle. Some sort of an alchemical material. The Theft put the item automatically to the spatial storage.
He left the way he came. The patrol guard walked the aisle four minutes later and noted nothing out of place.
[ Trespass logged. Theft successful. Digestion started. Continue. ]
The second was on Day Six.
A private collector's display vault under a wealthy merchant's residence in the Hillcrest district of Kerenth. The merchant was not an Explorer, but he liked to hold Explorer-recovered items as show pieces, and his defences were legitimate. High-tier magic wards on the outer door (mana-based work, almost certainly an Explorer commission), two human guards inside, one minor anomalous artefact in the central case. Adam Shadow-Stepped through the cellar shadow into the vault interior at ten past one in the morning. He had Charm and Misdirection primed, but the guards did not notice him. He stole the artefact, replaced it with a weight-matched cloth bundle Sage had planned for him, and Stepped out the same shadow. The collector did not discover the substitution until the following week.
[ Digestion progressed. Theft secured. The next Sequence digestion needs higher stakes. ]
Between those two and the third, Sage logged a steady cluster of smaller breaks. A locked records cabinet inside an after-hours Kerenth shipping office on the docks. The reagent shelf of a low-tier alchemist's back-room in the old quarter after the proprietor had closed for the night. A junior diplomat's papered desk inside a Valdros consular annex in Kerenth twenty minutes before the morning cleaners arrived. None of them on their own would have moved the digestion by much, but it fed the digestion in small increments, and it taught Adam the practical edges of the full Stalker arsenal faster than any single named trespass did. The Veil saved him three times. The Shadowstep saved him twice more. The Stalker's Shadow flagged a searcher once and let him fold back into the dark before the searcher's lantern shined on him.
The third major operation was on Day Ten.
Adam crossed into the secured evidence room of a Kerenth municipal magistrate's office at four in the morning, with the Veil at full sensor-bypass and the Shadowstep moving him past two locked doors. The evidence room held a small artefact, a wand, recovered from an unsolved harbour case three years earlier, sitting in a cardboard box on the third shelf, sealed under an evidence tag the magistrate had stopped chasing. He took it and left no trace. The duty clerk did not notice. The evidence log would not be reconciled until the quarterly audit, and even then the artefact's three-year-cold case would not be the first thing reviewed.
He left at four-forty in the morning.
[ Item recovered. Eighty-three percent digested. We need a riskier venture for the last stretch. ]
Sage.
[ Yes. ]
So the Sequence is grading my trespasses on adversarial difficulty.
[ Confirmed, Host. You have been breaking into places that do not have a high tier observer watching them. The acting method wants you to trespass somewhere an explorer would catch you if you slipped. You are a Trespasser. The progress will stall under eighty-five percent until the cover survives a real danger. ]
Of course it will.
He sat on that for two more days. He could not find the right place. Sage was modelling possible locations in the background but no concrete plan came together. He needed an opening.
The opening walked through the Eclipse lobby on Day Fourteen at eleven in the morning.
Ren came in the front doors at three in the afternoon.
She had a duffel bag over one shoulder and a small black case in her right hand. She crossed the lobby at half a jog, dropped the duffel at the duty desk, set the case beside it, and turned toward the lift.
She stopped halfway.
She looked at Adam from across the lobby and did not say anything for two seconds.
She crossed the lobby to him in five strides, but did not embrace him. She put one hand on his chest, the kind of touch she used when she was worried. Her other hand was still wrapped around the handle of the black case.
"Brandt's office."
"Ren —"
"Brandt's office."
Brandt was at his desk.
Ren put the black case down by the wall and took the second chair and looked at Brandt.
"How long has he been like this."
Brandt looked at Adam.
"Two weeks. Plus expedition time."
Ren turned to him.
"Sit down. Tell me."
Adam recounted everything.
It came out cleaner than it had with Brandt. He noticed his new eloquence; through the report, into the implications, out the other side at the operational consequences. She listened. She did not interrupt. When he finished, she looked almost afraid.
She did not speak for almost thirty seconds.
When she did her voice was steady.
"You lost your strength, dropped to L4 at most?"
"Yes. Well, around there, but yes."
"The whole pitch I made to my family about Eclipse last quarter rested on you being strong enough to keep me from being conscripted back into the family service."
"I know."
Brandt watched Ren without speaking. He was sitting still.
Ren put both hands flat on the desk.
"I am not angry. I am scared. The Delacroix do not value many things. They value strength. They value the ability to take what you need without consequences. You just lost both of those. They will see the loss and they will assume Eclipse is structurally weak now and move on me again."
"They cannot move on you again. Mirelle cleared it with the family."
"Mirelle cleared a three-month clock. The clock is over. A new clock will start when my uncle gets a look at you. I have maybe two months before he flies into Kerenth without warning. He was already planning to come sometime soon."
Brandt spoke, finally.
"Then we make him misjudge you when he gets here. Adam digests Sequence Eight inside this week. By the time your uncle lands, Adam will fight at L6 if the conditions are set right. The Shadowstep alone, with the Veil and the new physical baseline, lets us stage a sparring showing L6 baseline."
Ren nodded once.
"How far is the digestion."
"Eighty-three percent. He has done three decent break-ins and a cluster of smaller ones. The Sequence is grading him on adversarial difficulty, and the targets so far have not put someone on his or higher level in the same room."
Ren looked at Adam.
"You need a hostile environment."
"I do."
"I have one."
She left the room for fifteen minutes and came back with a small black case in her right hand. She set it on the desk, opened it, and turned it toward him.
Inside the case was a single sealed credential wallet. Black leather, the Delacroix sigil pressed into the cover in dull silver, a small wax stamp at the inner fold. No photograph. No name-bar. No service record. The wallet opened to a thin card stock that carried only the inspector's rank, the family's authority code, and the inspectorate's standing instruction in three lines of Valdrosi script.
"My mother gave me this when I joined the service," Ren said. "It is a bearer credential. The Delacroix inspectorate runs on anonymous spot-checks, because the family learned a long time ago that an inspector you can name is an inspector you can soft-pedal. The wallet does not say who I am. It says I am an inspector. The bearer carries the authority. The detachment cannot ask who you are. They can only confirm the credential is real."
Adam took the wallet.
It was lighter than it looked. The leather had a small pressed line at the spine he had only ever felt on Delacroix internal documents. The wax was unbroken.
"It has never been used."
"It has never been used. My mother gave it to me as backup if the family hold ever turned against me directly. It works exactly once. The inspectorate sends a follow-up team to verify within forty-eight hours of any use, and the credential is retired after the verification."
"Forty-eight hours."
"Mm."
He looked at her.
"What is the inspection."
"The Delacroix detachment in Kerenth. Small training annex on the north bank of the Velden, ten minutes from here. Twenty-two staff. One senior officer, two junior officers, the rest enlisted trainees. They run the family's Earth-Prime forward presence and report to my uncle on a weekly schedule. You walk in, you flash the credential, you spend an hour walking the floor, you file findings on the way out. Roster, training schedule, current rotation, anything the floor officer hands you when you ask. The family normally guards that data from anyone outside the inspectorate. With the wallet, you carry it out clean."
"And the follow-up team."
"Arrives inside forty-eight hours. If they trace the use back to me, the family hold restarts the same day, and my mother takes the hit for handing the wallet off. If they do not trace it back, well I dont know at that point it doesn't matter."
"They will trace it?"
"They might."
He held the wallet a second longer.
"You are putting your mother on the table."
"My mother put herself on the table the day she gave me the wallet. I am cashing in what she invested. She will understand."
He turned the wallet in his hand once. Then he set it back into the case and closed the lid.
"I am not taking it."
Ren's eyebrows lifted a fraction.
"You better explain yourself."
"I take the wallet, the inspectorate accepts it and I am let in. Where is the trespassing?"
"I do the inspection. I emulate the credential." Adam smiled.
She did not speak for two seconds.
"You can do that?"
"At this Sequence, with Mental Disruption and Thought Misdirection both focused on the gate guard, yes. The illusion has to put a credential in his hands he never actually verifies, walk his attention through the motions of opening it, reading the rank line, closing it, handing it back. The whole transaction has to land inside his memory as if it happened, and the wallet has to never have existed."
"What is the failure mode."
"He tries to verify it. Picks up a comm-link, calls the inspectorate, asks for the courtesy notice. The illusion does not survive an outside check because there is no real credential on the other end. If he calls, I am done."
"He will not call."
"Probably not. Who in their right mind would try to impersonate a Delacroix inspector? It's a death wish. The inspectorate runs on anonymous spot-checks. Calling to verify disrespects the inspector and the system; the gate staff are trained out of it."
She looked at the case on the desk. The wallet sat inside it, unmoved.
"That is much harder for you."
"It is. If it works, the digestion finishes because the Sequence digests faster on higher difficulty. If it does not work, I retreat under the Veil and we lose the day. Either way your mother is clean — no credential was ever signed out, so the trace cannot land on her."
"And the inspectorate."
"They will still send a follow-up team inside forty-eight hours, because the gate guard will file the visit on the duty log and the inspectorate audits visits look through those. The team will find a gate report claiming an inspector came through, no matching credential check-out in the family ledger, and a senior officer who can describe the inspection in detail. They will know something happened. They will not know who. It will lead to a dead end, unknown party impersonating an inspector, which is a family-internal problem they will chase."
"And the theft."
"Same as before. While inspecting I snatch a few important documents and hide the theft under misdirection."
Ren nodded at the end.
"Tomorrow morning the operation begins."
The Delacroix training annex was on a quiet street called Hollander Reach, set behind a stone gatehouse and a low courtyard wall, the brass plate at the gate reading only Delacroix — Valdros Liaison. No street number. No notice of business. The two enlisted men at the gate wore the family service gray, with the small silver knot at the collar that marked Valdros internal posting.
Adam walked up to the gatehouse at nine-thirty in the morning.
Operation starts.
He dropped his stalkers Veil. The guards at the gate tensed and went on guard. Someone just appeared in front of them.
The Trespasser misdirection layer was already up, set to steer any observer's perception past his own face onto a composite the wallet's bearer would plausibly be: late forties, family-service bearing, hair shorter than his own, posture the Delacroix inspectorate trained into its senior officers. Charm sat low underneath it. Mental Disruption was stacked on top of both, primed for the gate.
He stopped at the gate.
"Inspection."
The guards looked at each other thinking: High level explorer, the guy just popped out of nowhere.
The senior of the two enlisted men straightened. He held a hand out for the wallet.
Adam moved his right hand toward the man's open palm. He did not have the original wallet, just a stand-in. He had Mental Disruption seated against the gate guard's perception, Thought Misdirection layered on top, and the small steady weight of Charm under both. He let the layered effect place a Delacroix bearer wallet into the guard's hand: the leather, the silver sigil, the small pressed line at the spine, the weight of a credential the guard had been trained to recognise on touch.
The guard opened the wallet.
He looked at the rank line that was not there. His eyes tracked down through the family authority code and the inspectorate's standing instruction as if those lines were on the page. He looked at Adam's face for one short second, with no recognition the misdirection layer let him form. He closed the wallet.
He moved his hand back toward Adam.
Adam took the wallet. The hallucination dissolved at the moment of return. The guard's memory closed around the transaction as if it had happened.
"Inspector. Senior officer is Lieutenant Verel. Second floor, east wing. May I escort you?"
"No."
"Yes, Inspector."
The gate opened.
Adam walked through.
Sage spoke very quietly in his ear.
[ The illusion held. Completely fooled. Stay inside the cover for the duration. ]
Understood.
The next hour was Adam inspecting a Delacroix training annex on the outside, and doing something else underneath.
He walked the ground floor first. The barracks bay, the armoury check-out station, the duty roster on the corkboard outside the floor officer's office. He noted the names of three recruits scheduled for advanced placement next quarter. He noted that two of the junior officers were on rotating assignment to a Valdros detachment in Constant. He noted the standing armoury inventory and the date of the last live-fire exercise.
He climbed to the second floor and walked the training-plans room. He spoke with Lieutenant Verel for eleven minutes about the annex's rotation schedule. Verel answered him in the cadence Valdros officers used with senior inspectors, which Adam had heard about and practised in front of the mirror for an hour the night before. The misdirection layer held. The Charm sat at exactly the weight it needed to. The Eloquence pressed through cleanly even on Verel, who was a tier-5 Explorer with the kind of trained cognitive resilience that should have caught weight on his mind. He did not. Adam carried on with the conversation.
In the middle of the eleventh minute, when Verel turned to retrieve a binder from the side cabinet, Adam Shadowstepped.
The shadow of the training-plans room's east wall opened for him. He came out inside the senior officer's adjacent private safe-room, a six-by-eight space behind a sealed warded door no inspector visit had any reason to touch. The Veil's sensor refinement fooled the room's two motion plates and the single camera.
He usd Theft on the safe.
He got one sealed Delacroix internal dossier, a document marked For The Director's Eyes — Earth-Prime Posture Q4, and Stepped back into the training-plans room shadow.
Verel turned around with the binder. For him Adam never moved. The conversation about rotation schedules continued from the sentence Verel had paused on.
Six minutes later Verel handed him the current week's roster on request and the standing training schedule.
Adam left the annex at twenty past ten.
He walked to the bridge over the Velden, shook off the inspector's posture in a small park on the far side, and let the misdirection layer dissolve. The Charm slid out of him after it. The Mental Disruption residue burned a small cost out of his spirituality reserve as it settled.
[ Success. Item secured. The Sequence digestion in progress. ]
He kept walking.
Two streets later, at twenty-six minutes past ten, Sage's voice came in clean.
[ Digestion complete. Sequence Eight, Trespasser, settled. The acting method has finished. Congratulations Host. ]
Adam stopped walking.
He stood at the corner of Hollander Reach and the river road, in his own coat, on his own face. The reserve in his chest had a different weight to it now. The Stalker pathway had pulled a fraction deeper into him. The Veil sat ready at the back of his attention. Every ability seemed lighter, easier to use.
He exhaled and teleported to Bazaar Hub.
Adam rushed to his private floor and found Ren.
"Ren. It's done. Your family seriously needs a better security system."
"Good job. Tell me how did it go."
Adam explained the details. In the meantime Brandt also arrived.
"So you can now buy the next potion, Sequence 7?"
"Yep, it's unlocked on the listings. It's just that I don't have enough to buy it yet."
Ren took his hand. "I can give you my points. I don't need them as much as you do now."
Brandt chimed in. "Have you forgotten that we have Guild funds for situations like this? Or is this just a show of affection?"
"Of course we knew." Both Adam and Ren blushed a fraction.
"Anyway. We have three thousand two hundred NP in the guild vault."
Adam crossed to his desk and pressed his hand to the orange plate set into the surface. The plate was one of the building terminals the Bazaar provided for guild internal trading. The building had its own virtual vault for currency. Members who paid for information and services used these terminals to credit the guild directly. Only Adam had withdrawal rights. Brandt and Ren had read access.
Adam withdrew 2,710 NP from the guild vault into his personal balance. With his closing 7,290 plus the withdrawal he now sat at the 10,000 the Sequence Seven potion would cost. The guild balance dropped to 490 NP.
AN: If we get to 500 power stones, I will release an extra chapter on 700, another one. If you wish to support the story and read ahead, visit [email protected]/skeri123