The coins in his pouch jingled with a satisfying heaviness, a tangible reward for a day's work. Yet, the sound was drowned out by the echo of Seraphina's departing footsteps and the weight of her unspoken accusation. She hadn't said it aloud, but the implication was clear: the world was sick, and she was beginning to suspect he was the pathogen.
He needed to move, to do something normal, to ground himself in the mundane. The memory of the failed intoxication was still a fresh bruise. He wouldn't try that again. Instead, he found a quiet tavern a few streets away from the guild, one frequented by carpenters and stonemasons rather than adventurers. He ordered a simple meal of stew and bread, paying with a few copper coins without a second thought. The act felt good. Normal.
As he ate, he watched the craftsmen talk and laugh, their conversations revolving around wood grain, mortar consistency, and the price of nails. Their world was so solid, so real. He envied them their simple problems. No one here was trying to unravel cosmic mysteries or suspect him of unraveling the fabric of reality.
[Social camouflage is effective in this environment. The subjects' concerns are localized and material.]
[They're not subjects, Sage. They're people.]
The correction felt important. He was not a researcher observing specimens. He was trying to become one of them.
Finishing his meal, he decided to invest his earnings. He found a reputable-looking shop and purchased a well-made bedroll, a waterskin, a whetstone (purely for show, as the Leviathan Staff needed no sharpening), and a week's worth of travel rations. He spent another silver on a detailed map of the Whitepeak Barony and its surrounding territories. Spreading it out on a table in the tavern's corner, he began to study.
His goal was A-rank. To get there, he couldn't just wait for mutated quests to fall into his lap. He needed to be proactive. His eyes traced the roads and landmarks. The northern foothills where he'd found the wolves were just the beginning. To the east were the Cinder Peaks, where Roland's party had slain the Titan. The map noted it as a "high-mana zone." To the west lay the Murkwood, a forest noted for its treacherous bogs and will-o'-the-wisps. And to the south, the road eventually led to the capital itself.
Each location was a potential source of the instability he had caused. The mutated wolves were a direct result of the magical "fallout" from the panicked exodus. Where else had that energy settled? What other creatures were changing?
He wasn't just an adventurer seeking rank anymore. He was a warden, patrolling the borders of a catastrophe he had authored. Every quest he took from now on would be a two-fold mission: to climb the guild's ranks, and to secretly contain the ripples of his own existence.
He folded the map, a new resolve hardening within him. The path was no longer a straight line. It was a web, and he was at the center. He would walk its strands, one by one, pacifying what he had disturbed, all while wearing the mask of a simple man trying to make his way in the world. And with every step, he would feel the gaze of a certain sapphire-eyed mage following him, a constant reminder that his mask was already beginning to crack.