Chapter 16: The Unseen Arbiter
The purge within Aethelburg's watch sent tremors through the city's underworld. Corbin the alchemist, babbling in a lightless cell, became a folk legend—a cautionary tale of a man who'd trafficked with demons and been delivered to justice by a ghost. The official story held, but the whispers in the taverns and markets grew bolder, more detailed. They spoke of a blind man who saw all, who moved through walls, who judged the corrupt and found them wanting.
Leo became a specter of collective imagination. To the common folk, he was a vengeful spirit, a manifestation of their frustrations with the corrupt and the powerful. To the cultivators and officials, he was an enigma, a destabilizing variable of unknown power and allegiance. To the remaining demonic elements, he was a primal fear given form, the "Unseen Reaper" whose name was hissed in the dark.
General Kaelen found himself in a precarious position. The city was cleaner, the watch more vigilant out of sheer terror, and demonic activity had noticeably dampened. Yet, he held the leash of a tiger that did not know it was leashed. He decided on a new approach: containment through appeasement. If Leo was a force of nature, he would try to channel it.
He visited the villa again, this time alone. He found Leo on the balcony, not meditating, but perfectly still, his head tilted as if listening to the city's heartbeat.
"Honored guest," Kaelen began, his tone carefully neutral. "The city… benefits from your vigilance."
Leo didn't turn. "Efficiency has increased. The weak links in your defensive network are being removed."
Kaelen swallowed. "Indeed. However, the… method of removal causes… ripples. The city watch is on edge. The merchant guilds are demanding answers I cannot give."
"Answers are irrelevant. Results are paramount," Leo stated, his voice devoid of any understanding of the political landscape Kaelen navigated.
"Perhaps we can… coordinate," Kaelen ventured cautiously. "There are targets. Larger nodes of corruption we have long suspected but could never prove. If you were to… gather evidence… the proper authorities could act. Publicly. It would maintain order."
He was asking Leo to be his unseen inquisitor, his spectral spy. He was trying to formalize the chaos.
Leo was silent for a long moment. The System processed the proposal. [Proposal: Coordinated action with local authority. Pros: Access to official resources, broader intelligence network, reduced risk of collateral diplomatic damage. Cons: Loss of operational autonomy, requirement for non-lethal evidence gathering, potential for bureaucratic delay.]
The cons were significant. But the pros were intriguing. Access to the city's official intelligence—maps, personnel files, shipment records—would exponentially increase the efficiency of his hunt.
"Define the parameters," Leo said, still not turning around.
Relief washed over Kaelen. "There is a merchant lord, Silas Vancourt. He controls half the ore shipments into the city. We are certain he is diverting strategic materials—black iron, spirit-warded stone—but we can never catch him. His ledgers are flawless, his guards are loyal, and he has… friends in high places. If you could find his true ledgers, the ones that show the discrepancies…"
"Silas Vancourt," Leo repeated. The name was already logged, a medium-priority target with a corruption level of 18%. "The task is accepted."
That night, Vancourt Manor received an unseen guest.
The estate was a fortress of wealth and paranoia. Qi-infused wards hummed at every window and door. Cultivator guards patrolled the grounds in shifts, their senses extended. To any normal spy, it was impregnable.
To Leo, it was a diagram of vulnerabilities. His Energy Perception mapped the wards as faint, shimmering patterns of energy. They were designed to detect Qi. He had none. He walked through a ward on the south garden wall, and it didn't even flicker.
His Echo-Location painted a perfect blueprint of the manor. He moved through the halls like a ghost, his footsteps silent, his presence undetectable. He found Vancourt's study—a room behind two locked doors and a pressure-plate trap on the floor. He disabled the trap by simply not stepping on the plate, picked the physical locks with a sliver of demon bone, and was inside in under thirty seconds.
The true ledger wasn't in the safe. That was a decoy. Leo's Perception scanned the room, listening to the density of materials. He found a hidden compartment behind a false panel in the bookshelf. Inside was a ledger bound in demon hide, its pages etched with Abyssal script.
He didn't take it. He committed every page to memory in minutes, his mind a perfect recording device thanks to his optimized neural pathways. He learned of shipments diverted to false canyons, of meetings with figures identified only by codenames, of payments made in raw, uncut spirit stones that bled corruption.
His primary mission was complete. But as he prepared to leave, his Perception picked up something else. A faint, dissonant energy signature coming from a display case. Among Vancourt's collection of rare artifacts was a small, unassuming obsidian figurine of a twisted, multi-limbed creature. It looked like a trophy.
But to Leo's Energy Perception, it wasn't inert. It was a focus. A tiny, dormant portal thrumming with the same energy as the Netherworld Gate, but infinitely smaller. A listening post.
The demons weren't just bribing Vancourt; they were watching him.
Leo considered destroying it. But that would alert the watchers. Instead, he did something more subtle. He focused his Will, a force honed by the System and his own indomitable spirit, and pushed it against the figurine. He didn't attack it; he imposed a static upon it. A constant, low-level feedback loop that would render the intelligence it gathered into meaningless noise.
It was a silent, undetectable sabotage.
He left the manor as he came, leaving no trace of his passing. The next morning, a sealed, anonymous packet was delivered to General Kaelen's desk. It contained a single sheet of paper with a list of coordinates, shipment dates, and the names of Vancourt's accomplices within the city's bureaucracy. Irrefutable evidence.
That afternoon, the city watch, led by a furious and embarrassed Kaelen, stormed Vancourt Manor. The merchant lord was arrested in a very public, very loud spectacle. The real ledgers were "discovered" by a diligent watch captain.
The city cheered. Order, they believed, had been upheld.
In his villa, Leo monitored the aftermath. The corruption signature of the figurine flared with frustrated energy before settling back into its doctored static. Several other mid-level corruption signatures throughout the city winked out in panic or were arrested.
He had not just culled a target. He had used the city's own machinery to do it, he had protected his own operational security, and he had actively deceived the enemy. He was no longer just a surgeon or a reaper.
He was an arbiter. An unseen hand guiding the pieces on the board, human and demon alike, toward his own endgame. The EXP from the indirect neutralization of targets was less, but the strategic gain was incalculable.
General Kaelen looked at the arrest report, then out his window towards the villa. He had what he wanted. Order had been served. But the cold, precise nature of the delivered evidence filled him with a deeper dread than any demonic roar ever could.
The tiger was not just powerful; it was intelligent. And it was learning how to play the game.