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Chapter 220 Part B

3rd party point of view in fae inner fortress; fae officer’s work desk

“What’s this?” a slip of paper was handed to the man at a desk in a certain office of the fae fortress. There a guy was relaxing at that same desk when someone approached him, who was also a fae.
“Just take a look at it. It’s a magic painting of a target that needs work,” the other said with a brief salute.
“Our office does risk assessment and risk management, not assassinations. You need to the ‘Basement’ for that,” the man, agent A, tossed the slip of paper back after crumpling it up.
“That group isn’t ready for this. They are compromised. Also this isn’t an assassination request, but a protection detail,” the requester for the job said. He handed the now crumpled slip of paper back. 
“But…”
“I already have permission from my boss. Continued rejection will just make you look unwilling to do your job,” the other said.
“Wait…but how did you get the boss to accept this?” the guy trying to reject the job asked while planting his chair on the floor, he’d been leaning back on it up till now.
“Like I said, this is a special situation. I want to know what we’re dealing with. But half the guys that normally assigned are too biased with racism or bribes to get an accurate picture of what’s happening. In this case, I feel that bias will cause the job order to fail. I need someone on this that I can trust,” the requester asked.
“And you came to me why? Wouldn’t having someone you can trust on it, mean doing it yourself?”
“I thought about that. But you have a good reputation as being true to the job and always following through. That’s why I thought of you. Plus, I heard you’ve been wanting to do more protection details instead of the gore fest assassinations.”
“Hm…someone’s been talking too much. You shouldn’t even know that.”
“So it’s true then that the assassination teams are taking bribes?” he asked.
“I wish it weren’t so. It’s still not all of them. But something about assassin teams, in every kingdom and age causes them to be corrupted fast. I think it's the nature of the work, being so dark and the absence of hope and light in one's life working such things. We think they aren’t working for the enemy still. But there are quite a few dark elves in there. And a lot of them weren’t actually brought to our side willingly. A lot of them were war orphans we raised from the previous generations’ war. They never really wanted to be on our side but were coerced. And even with our best efforts, some of them have discovered their parents were our enemies in the last war, not allies as they were led to believe,” agent B stated.
“I warned them that wasn’t a good strategy. Real acceptance, truth, and equality are really the only way to proceed with real effect in building long term allies. If you move away from that, and keep the truth from people you will never have their trust. Especially when they figured out you hid things from them they’ll be mad. Still, I don’t think it was wrong to try to rehabilitate dark elves, but just the approach could be improved,” Agent A told him.
“I…get it. I’ve learned from my lesson. I don't know if others have yet though. And I want to do good now too. But human relations have always been hard for us. I mean…humans are valuable in a lot of ways. They breed fast to replenish losses...well not as fast as orcs or goblins breed but still... Also they make great concubines…well until they get old. But they do get old too fast. They have a lot of interesting traits. But they are so ugly you know? Well except for the high humans…” Agent B said.
“Oh you have a thing for high humans huh?” Agent A chuckled.
“Who doesn’t? Can you blame me? So you can help me?” the other asked to change the subject. 
“Well if you don’t send this request to the basement, what are your intentions?” A asked. His fingers steeple together as he’s regarding the other fellow carefully.
“We don’t want this guy killed. In fact, this might be the best chance to snatch up a good game piece for our side that won’t die of old age or combat before we get our investment back. We both know high magic affinity slows aging in all races not just us. He’s already working for us, but not connected to any factions yet. But there’s a lot of things we’re trying to figure out…” B started.
Agent A opened up the slip of paper with the magic painting image on it. It was a good skillful mind painting image implanted to paper after being saved through a magic crystal. Whoever did it worked in intelligence magic. Also, the quality of the image was stunning. It was almost like you were there at that scene. And it’d been taken while the figure was being observed walking through the marketplace streets. Also there were some handwritten notes below it.
A single Asian DNA male face of a youthful man was there. He looked somewhat serious but at the same time, not as guarded as others. The picture was also taken with a female of similar DNA next to him with a huge bust. Asian DNA in this world was unheard of, and a tell that someone or a population group came from Earth, but only the fae knew that.

‘Shun, unknown origin, protection magic, support class’
Known associates;
Sunghee, licensed adventurer
Other unknowns, not yet identified, reports still coming in from agents abroad on this targets known activities and history
Believed to be Earth origin, abducted with others
Low survival rate in the ‘batch’ abduction group from Earth that this person came with

So this was who they wanted him to protect? 
“That’s all you have? That doesn’t tell me much. I don’t know habits, finances, known hangouts, or where he’s staying. What’s he been doing this whole time since coming to this world? I only know he’s in our fortress,” A said. He frowned.
“It’s not easy to get that much. We had to bribe a bunch of dark dwarves to look up what short history we do have. That’s the only area we got hits back on history. But I don’t get that, why start there?” B said.
“And he’s from Earth? That’s surprising. But are you sure about that? Usually Earthers make shitty magic users.”
“That’s what I thought too. It’s not making any sense at all. Plus, the short history suggests he hasn't been here very long. If that's the case why is his magic rating so high? The more I dig, the more it seems like Earthers would be terrible at any magic. And protection magic itself has such high mana constraints for the good skills it does have, effectively making it hard to have any gains when one skill wipes out your money. And if you can’t do the good skills with it you have big disadvantages. Even to us fae we don’t like high mana cost skills. He is in the fortress and already in our employ, I forgot to note that down. So it will help you find him,” B said.
“Hm, interesting theory I guess. It looks like you are really asking yourself the whys. I like that. Good work,” A admitted.
“There’s…something else…earlier today this Shun guy showed up to one of our adventurer sponsored training classes and made a claim of assassination attempts on our Soldiers to Citizens immigration program with the humans. Supposedly someone is attacking our assets going into the dungeon. We have to move quickly,” B said.
“What? If so, we need to put a lot of teams on this. And we have to move fast,” A said.
“I’m trying to open up more human resources on this. But you know how the general is. It’s like pulling teeth to get him to free people up. And he’s such a hoarder. You are likely only to be allowed one team not several if I can even manage getting that,” B is upset while describing.
“Yeah that’s the general all right, always the asshole miser. He’s always expecting us to be attacked, so he has a habit of refusing to let pieces go into play not realizing he’s setting us up for just standing there. But in his defense that’s why we’re still on the map because he manages to avoid being baited. It’s so frustrating that he’s both right and wrong half the time.”
“We need more resources protecting the human assets in our programs, not just this Shun guy. If they see we can’t protect them, some of them will leave. The higher pay isn’t worth one’s life,” B insisted.
“Don’t tell me that. I’ve known that for years. They don’t give humans enough credit for being smart also. They are every bit as smart as we are. I’ve told them that already several times. We could do a lot more for helping the human factions. But nobody listens to me,” A sighed.
“It’s because there’s too many dark fae in the royal faction and those people are the ones with the majority voice in making the decisions. We all know it’s the right thing to do. But when we send the recommendations, and action plans up the food chains, the dark Royals block it using their narrow majority. I’ve even shown proposals showing how it would benefit us and why but they still shut it down,” B explained.
“So I take it this report probably is going to avoid going to certain people eh?” A joked.
B suddenly stiffened. “I would never…”
“Relax. I was teasing. I wouldn’t do that to you either. We do have too many dark royals though. A few accidents on the light royal side are also too obvious to be just that. I don’t understand why they haven’t prosecuted them. There’s no way that can be a good thing. I’ll step on this request. But it’s not going to be easy. I’ll have to pull some assets I trust off other projects,” A said.
“Sorry…”
“You don’t need to be sorry. As long as we’re winning that’s all that matters. Even I appreciate the human contributions. The more of them we have in play, the less we lose personally of our own staffs. This year also the survival rate of fae faction humans is up by 23%. non-Fae faction human survival rate percentages are down 31% though. So it’s good for them too. We always need more game pieces. If someone is killing them we need to block this fast. But do we know how many pieces we’ve lost so far to this scheme?”
“I’m not sure how they got in. But the way it’s being done suggests daemon faction staff working on the inside. But how can that be?! We have such a huge magic scanner system pulsing the fortress city practically non-stop all day. Any daemons or with their genes would be flagged immediately. If there were such things we’d know about it,” B huffed.
“I’ll have to look into that. It doesn’t look good,” A said.
“By the way…how many un-compromised dark elves do you think we have in the basement?” A added.
B frowned. “Well if they are chaperoned the others will still be usable. I can only think of maybe 3 that I’d trust with my life though. You aren’t thinking of using one of them are you?”
A shrugged. “I’ll give it a chance. I’ll borrow one of them. They make great espionage agents. So let’s put one of them into play in one of the teams. Also if what we’ve said is true the enemy will be monitoring this Shun guy too.”
“Oh? What would happen if our espionage units ran into one of the enemy ones? Who would win?” B asked.
“Hm, tough to say. Our side has less turn over and better survivability. But a few years ago the daemon prince side started to implement gene implants to compensate. So now they’ve been trying to create super soldiers on the cheap with implanted DNA and abilities. That’s a lot scarier than people think. And if what I think is right, this Shun guy probably has a whole team targeting him next. The other side is going to be mad that their moves were ‘outed’ by him. They will make a move, probably tonight. We’re going to have to act fast,” A said.
“I’m on it. That’s not a lot of prep time though. I’ll put a team together…but I need help with the general’s permission.”
“Yeah about that…don’t tell him. What he won’t know won’t hurt him.”
“But…that’s against the rules.”
“Sometimes you have to act before red tape can interfere. We do have a problem with red tape. If we only moved every time we got permission, we’d have lost already. Also, you have a lot of idle game pieces bored from having to guard nobles houses that aren’t even targeted while the needy don’t get attention. Remember that.”
“Got it. You’re right.”
“Check in with me before lunch on this Shun guy. I want you to have that team together before then. One more thing, this protection detail also needs to make sure at all costs that this Shun guy doesn’t go to work for the dark royal faction. Do you understand what that means?”
“I get it. But I don’t like it. I don’t want us to be protecting someone just to off them for making friends with the wrong people. Wow…I’ll have to run,” B ran out the door in a hurry.
“Heh, I wish I was still young like him and able to run around so energetically…”