A new day had come, bright and clear. In the center of the loft's living room, Zero sat cross-legged on the floor, his eyes closed in deep concentration. The chaotic energy of the previous days had been replaced by a focused stillness. Last night, after their debriefing, Erwin had placed a hand on Zero's forehead, and in a dizzying, disorienting moment, had transferred the entirety of the scant knowledge he'd gleaned from the library's demonology texts. Soma, ever the wit, had tried to come up with a clever name for the ability—Mind Meld, Knowledge Infusion, Synaptic Transfer—but Zero, with a stubbornness born of exhaustion, simply kept calling it "touching foreheads."
Today, Zero intended to deep-dive into that new, confusing knowledge, to explore the very nature of his Archdemon magic. He would let Soma manage the café alone. Besides, after the debacle with the Vipers, he knew what was coming. The gossip would spread like wildfire, first about the Master Chef, then about the thugs, and finally, inevitably, about the demon owner with the horns.
Sure enough, when Soma flipped the sign to 'OPEN' and unlocked the door, the frantic, desperate line from the day before was gone. The alley was quiet. Over the next hour, only a handful of customers trickled in—a few of the familiar faces from the day before, the ones who had stayed through the chaos. Soma didn't mind. The quiet was a relief.
He was in the kitchen, preparing a simple breakfast hash, when one of the customers, a gruff-looking dwarf with a beard like iron filings, spoke up from his seat at the bar.
"How's your boss?" the dwarf asked, his voice a low rumble. "Heard some gang scum came in here last night trying to cause a ruckus."
Soma, who had been preparing himself for this exact question all morning, turned from the stove with a practiced, easy smile. "The boss is alright," he said. "He's just taking a well-deserved rest today, that's all."
The dwarf grunted, taking a long sip of the dark, bitter coffee Soma had served him. "Your drink is good," he said, setting the mug down with a solid thud. "But not as good as your boss's." He looked Soma directly in the eye. "Tell him it doesn't matter if he's got horns growing out of his forehead. I couldn't care less. He does the work, and he's damn good at it. That's all that matters." He then turned back to his drink and his food, the conversation, in his mind, concluded.
A genuine, unforced smile spread across Soma's face. The tension he hadn't even realized he was holding in his shoulders melted away. It was okay to have fewer customers. It was more than okay. At the very least, the ones who came back, the ones who mattered, seemed to be fine with who Zero was.
Another regular, a human tailor from down the street, watched Soma smiling to himself. "Hey, Soma," he joked, "stop smiling like that while you're holding that cleaver. It's creepy."
Soma laughed, a bright, easy sound that filled the quiet café. He brandished the cleaver playfully. "Careful, or I'll come over there and use it to clean the wax out of your ears."
The other customers chuckled along with them. Soma's heart felt light. 'This is it,' he thought, looking around at the small, loyal group of patrons. 'This is better. We don't need the ones who don't want to be here.'
…
While Zero delved into the mysteries of his own magic, Erwin took to the streets. He had forgone his commander's uniform for a simple, practical disguise: a well-tailored but unremarkable suit, a brown wool overcoat, and a mid-century style hat with a brim that cast his face in a perpetual shadow. He was blending in. His rationale was simple: looking poor would bar him from the establishments he needed to enter, while looking rich would only attract the wrong kind of attention. Middle class was the perfect camouflage for an observer.
He continued the observations he had started the day before. The city, which had been a ghost town the previous night, was now teeming with life, a frantic return to normalcy that felt almost defiant. It was as if the entire populace had a silent, collective agreement to pretend the terrifying, monthly ritual of the Silent Night had never happened.
His keen eyes, sharpened by the fusion of two brilliant minds, began to notice the deeper inconsistencies. As he moved from one borough to the next, he saw the deep rot in the city's law enforcement. In a wealthy, noble district, he witnessed a minor traffic incident: a horse-drawn carriage scraped the side of a nobleman's gleaming, magitech automobile. The damage was trivial, a mere scratch in the paint, yet a Watcher patrol car was on the scene in less than a minute, its officers bowing and scraping as they took the nobleman's statement.
An hour later, in a lower-income market district, Erwin watched as two thugs from the Vipers gang roughed up a stall owner, openly demanding protection money. Several meters away, two Watchers stood on a corner, observing the whole event with bored indifference. They didn't intervene. They just watched it happen, a clear and silent endorsement of the city's criminal element.
This disparity was most stark when he reached the slums. Here, the Watchers didn't even bother to patrol. The streets were narrower, the buildings more dilapidated, and the air thick with a sense of hopelessness. He noted the demographics immediately: the residents were almost entirely demons and various beastkin, with only a handful of humans, elves, or dwarves in sight.
It was here that he felt the eyes on him. A subtle shift in the crowd, a few figures detaching from the flow of foot traffic to fall in behind him. He didn't change his pace. He let them follow, his mind calmly calculating their numbers and assessing their intent.
After leading them for several blocks, he spotted what he was looking for: an empty, trash-strewn alleyway. He took a hard, deliberate turn into the narrow passage and stopped once he was deep in the shadows.
He waited. Then, without turning around, he spoke, his voice calm and clear, echoing slightly off the damp brick walls. "Alright," he said. "Are we going to play hide and seek, or shall we get straight to the 'rob and kill' part of the evening?"
One by one, the shady figures that had been following him emerged from the mouth of the alley and from behind stacks of old crates, blocking his only exit. There were five of them. As Erwin turned to face them, he saw they were mostly beastkin—a gaunt-looking wolf-man, a rat-like creature with twitching whiskers—and a single, desperate-looking imp demon. He also saw, with the clarity of a detective, that they were all clearly unhealthy, their bodies thin with malnourishment, their eyes holding a desperate, hungry light. The clothes on their backs could barely be considered rags, and the crude knives they held were gripped in trembling, uncertain hands. This wasn't an organized attack; it was an act of desperation.
…
On the other side of the city, in a bustling merchant-class market, Sebas moved with an entirely different kind of purpose. Dressed in his immaculate butler's uniform, he was an island of serene dignity in a sea of shouted prices and haggling customers. The air here was thick with the scent of fresh bread, exotic spices, and the faint, clean smell of ozone from the enchanted cooling-stones used by the fishmongers.
He wasn't observing strategic layouts or criminal tells; he was observing the flow of daily life, the invisible currents of information that powered the city. He saw them everywhere: maids in the crisp, modest uniforms of their respective households, servants sent out on errands, their shopping baskets bearing the subtle crests of their employers.
A portly baker, seeing Sebas's noble attire, rushed from behind his stall, wiping flour from his hands onto his apron. "Good sir! A fine morning! May I interest you in a fresh loaf for your master's table? Our sourdough is favored by the Earl of the Keystone's own steward!"
Sebas turned, offering a polite, placid smile that revealed nothing. "You are too kind," he said, his voice a smooth, respectful baritone. "But I am merely here to wait for several of the young maids to complete their shopping. My master is entertaining guests from another house today." It was a complete and utter lie, delivered with such flawless sincerity that the baker couldn't help but believe it. The man bowed, disappointed but impressed, and returned to his stall.
Sebas continued his slow, deliberate walk through the market. His eyes followed a pair of maids from a Baron's household as they gossiped near a fruit stand. He watched a footman from the Margrave's estate haggling over the price of wine. These were the people the nobles ignored, the ones who were invisible. The ones who polished the silver, served the meals, and overheard everything. They were the veins through which the lifeblood of the city's secrets flowed. A smile, subtle and sharp as a razor, touched Sebas's lips. Here. Here were the seeds of his information network.
He didn't need magic to do what he planned next. His card, "Sebas Tian," was not that of a mage. It was that of a Monk, a Ki Master. That was why the mage on the barrier patrol had sensed no mana from him the previous night; he had none to sense. His power came from within, a disciplined, potent life force known as Ki.
As he passed a talkative group of servants, he allowed a minute, imperceptible pulse of his own Ki to extend from his body. It was not an attack, not even a touch. It was a gentle resonance, an attunement. In his mind, he could now feel their unique signatures, the distinct hum of their individual life forces. He had marked them. He could find them again anywhere in this city.
He smiled. For now, this was enough. He had identified his first potential assets. He turned and walked calmly out of the market, his face a mask of serene placidity. But beneath the calm, a cold, righteous fury was boiling. The more pressing matter, the one that required not subtlety but force, was dealing with the Vipers. And for that, he would need a different kind of plan.
…
Erwin adjusted the collar of his overcoat, his movements calm and precise. He smoothed the sleeve of his suit jacket, a gentleman tidying himself after a minor inconvenience. Behind him, in the shadows of the alley, lay the five men who had tried to rob him. They weren't dead, merely neutralized, left in a tangled heap of groaning limbs and shattered confidence. Erwin had moved with a speed and brutal efficiency that was less a fight and more a clinical disassembly. A precise strike to a nerve cluster here, a dislocated joint there. It was over in less than five seconds.
He looked down at the men, his expression unreadable. "Life isn't fair," he said, his voice quiet but carrying the weight of absolute conviction. "It never was. I don't care what precarious state you find yourselves in. If you want to take from others, you had better be ready to give something of yourselves in return."
He turned and walked out of the slums, leaving the five men to their misery. As he re-entered the more populated streets, he noted that no one dared to meet his eyes or even consider following him. A subtle, dangerous aura now clung to him, a clear warning to all would-be predators.
As the sky began to darken and the streetlamps flickered to life, he saw a familiar, dignified figure walking toward him. It was Sebas. Erwin continued on his path, not breaking stride, and as they passed each other like two strangers in the evening crowd, he whispered, his voice barely a breath of sound.
"Go back to the café."
Sebas gave a single, almost imperceptible nod, his own path altering as he turned to head back. His plan was now halted, superseded by a direct order. Erwin kept walking, his face a mask of calm purpose.
…
Back at Café LeBlanc, the last of the day's loyal customers had departed, leaving Soma to clean up in the warm, quiet space. He wiped down the counter and stacked the last of the clean mugs, the easy rhythm of the work a comfort after a long day.
Just as he finished, two figures entered the main café floor from two different routes. Zero, looking refreshed after his long meditation, descended the stairs from the living quarters. At the same moment, the front door opened, and Erwin stepped inside, home from his reconnaissance.
"Well, welcome to the café floor, you two," Soma said cheerfully.
Erwin closed the door behind him and flipped the sign to 'CLOSED', the sound of the bolt sliding home echoing in the quiet room. "I have more leads," he announced without preamble, taking off his hat. "And I think I know where I need to go next."
"Good," Zero said, a new energy buzzing around him. "I also had a breakthrough during my meditation. I want all of you to come with me. Where's Sebas?"
"He will be here in a minute," Erwin replied.
"Great!" Soma declared, rubbing his hands together. "Now, shall we have dinner first? I just made schnitzel, and I would hate to eat it all alone."
Zero smirked. "You were in charge of the café alone all day, and now you're throwing a pity party?"
"Ohh, poor me," Soma lamented dramatically. "Thankfully, I'm a Master Chef. If I weren't, this café would have gone bankrupt in less than a minute with so few customers."
Zero let out a mock laugh. "Ha ha, shut up. You're not even as good as Liu Mao Xing."
"Hey! Take that back!" Soma shouted.
Zero just giggled and darted away as Soma gave chase, their playful argument filling the café with a familiar, chaotic energy. Erwin watched them go, then his eyes fell on the four plates of perfectly golden-brown, crispy schnitzel Soma had left on the counter. A deep, weary sigh escaped his lips—the sigh of a tired father who had come home from a long day at work only to find he had more work to do. With a quiet resignation, Erwin gathered all four plates and began carrying them upstairs.
**A/N**
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