The morning after Kaito turned in the mutated wolf pelts, Lord Valerius sat in his study, the report from the Adventurer's Guild atop a stack of concerning documents. A village blacksmith reporting tools that grew brittle and strange overnight. A farmer describing a patch of crops that withered to ash in under an hour. And now, this: confirmed mutation in local fauna, including a soul core.
He was a practical man. He did not believe in coincidence. A wave of bizarre phenomena sweeps the land, and then a stranger arrives with a unique talent specifically suited to dealing with them? It was too convenient. This "Kaito" was either a miraculous asset or a hidden liability. Valerius could not afford to ignore either possibility.
He did not summon Seraphina. Her expertise was arcane, her loyalties to her own research and the Hero's party. His concerns were civic: stability, security, and the flow of trade. His sources of information were his guards and the guild's own ledgers, which his office had a right to audit.
His decision to engage Kaito was a cold, tactical one. The man had demonstrated an unexplained but effective capability. Sending his own guards or mages to investigate every strange occurrence would drain his limited resources. Using a guild adventurer, especially one with a seemingly relevant skillset, was efficient. By deputizing him informally, Valerius gained a dedicated investigator at no cost to the city treasury, while also keeping the potential liability close and under observation. If Kaito succeeded, the city benefited. If he caused a disaster, Valerius could disavow him as a rogue adventurer.
When Kaito appeared to report on the quarry, Valerius saw his calculus proven correct. The problem was resolved with impossible speed. The man was a tool of unparalleled efficiency. The letter to the Murkwood was not a test of trust, but the next logical deployment of a resource. He was not trusting Kaito; he was using him.
Meanwhile, Seraphina's interest remained her own. Her encounter with the staff had been brief, but her senses had screamed in protest. It wasn't just an inert object; it was a nexus of contained, impossibly dense energy that defied classification. It didn't feel enchanted; it felt like a hole in the world, a singularity. She didn't go to Valerius because she had no proof, only a deep, academic alarm. She watched Kaito because she needed to understand what she had felt, and because a tool that powerful in the hands of an unknown variable was a threat to every established system, including her own.
So, the net around Kaito tightened not through conspiracy, but through the separate, logical actions of a pragmatic ruler and a brilliant scholar, each following their own priorities. He was not at the center of a story; he was a newly entered variable in a complex equation, and both were trying to solve for X.