“Ookay, and that’s another bounty under your belt. Congrats, you’re now officially a blood gold shadow. Now, I noticed that you brought back the diary of Count Narfthtah - good lord that name’s a mouthful - ahem sorry, that was unprofessional of me. So, I understand that that’s what you were required to do for proof of the mental torment part of the request, but since most nobles have their diaries in a secret location, often also secured in a locked box or drawer, I have to ask... how did you get your hands on it?”

“I simply had to watch where he put it - in a safe hidden behind the painting over his bed - and cut that open after killing him”

“That technically qualifies as a method of completing some basic silent shadow requests. Are you interested in branching out into becoming a silent blood shadow?”

“Spy work, huh? I could see myself doing that pretty easily. Sure, why not? There haven’t been many interesting kill requests recently”

With a bit of paperwork and a few minutes of work with a spirit tool, Lavi handed me a basic silent iron shadow insignia, a pair of half-folded batlike wings inlaid into a small block of wood using iron, alongside the same for the blood gold shadow’s insignia - three connected droplets made of gold, again inlaid into a small block of wood.

“Ah, hold on, there’s one more bit of paperwork I need you to deal with for me... see, I’m going to be taking an extended break soon, for about a month or two”

“Oh? What’s the occasion?”

“Parental leave, I guess?”

She looked at me blankly, looked down towards my torso and then back up, blinked a few times, and finally shook her head slightly before shrugging and carrying on looking for the form I needed.

“Congratulations are in order, it would seem. I guess it’s true what they say, half tabaxi don’t really show if they’re carrying a small litter”

I... elected to ignore that comment, as I still am trying to keep my sex ambiguous - an air of mystery is part of my persona now. To deny her at this point would strip away some of that mystery, and leaving that misunderstanding leads them further from the truth of who I am... though, is that really needed at this point? I mean, I’m trying to avoid being outed as Tama the alchemist, but there’s probably not still a bounty on my head, right?

“Alright, anyways, here’s your form, fill it out when you can, then bring it back and hand it to me, and I’ll process it quickly. It’s not too complicated, but take your time to think about-”

“Done, here you go”

It was pretty simple, needing my name (Glatisant), a multiple choice “why are you going on leave” to which I circled “parental leave”, and then the start and end dates. I picked 1/4/2/632 as the start date, and 1/4/4/632 as the end date, a two month break. That means I’ve got about a week and a half to try raising my silent shadow rank to copper, if not silver. But before that, I’ve got some items to commission... hmm, you know... yeah, that’d work.

“Reymir, I hope it’s not a bad time...”

“Ah, Glatizant dearie. Iz good to zee ya! Come in, come in, I’m not busy a’ all! Vat can I do fer ya today?”

“Well, I recently hit gold, so I need a new insignia”

“Zame one a’ I did afore? A wee li’l charm fer zome brazlet I’ve ne’er zeen ya vearing?”

“Yeah, but also, two - no, three more things as well. I also became a silent shadow”

“Ooh, congraz, congraz, our dear Glati iz branshing out! So, you vant a charm fer zat too? Of courz, of courz, iz easy, no problem a’ all! Just tell me ze type an’ ye’ll ‘ave it in an hour or two. Vat else?”

I pulled out the two temporary insignia as we were talking, and when she asked for the next thing, I pointed to the silent shadow insignia, and to the mask I was wearing - not the same full-face deer mask I’d worn to register, but the one I’d commissioned from Reymir a few months into my career, a mirror-like mask covering just the right side of my face, leaving the left side exposed - and described an idea I'd had as soon as I got the silent shadow insignia.

“Well, I was thinking... you know how you made me this mask, such that it’d mold to the shape of my face and stay on without any straps? Could you make me another... but have it shaped like the silent shadow insignia? Just one of the wings, covering most of the right side of my face”

“Zat could be very interesting. I can devinitely do zat. I azume ya vant it in iron, t’ match yer rank?”

“Might as well make one in copper, I intend to try to rank up soon. Here’s the part I’m wondering if you could pull off - make the part that covers the right eye have a spot where I can swap out different blood shadow insignia, but still let me see through that eye”

I’d be wearing the mask around the shadows’ guild, while the charms would go on my collar in cat form, if I wanted to terrorize people in cat form like I did with Count Narfthtah.

“Hmm... zat vill cost ya a vair bit, but I zink I can do it. You vant a zet of ze transparent inzignia fer divrent ranks too?”

“At least silver, gold, and perhaps also black gold if you can do it”

“I can make ze higher ranks in advanz, but I ztill can’t give zem to ya until ya get to zat rank. Zame goes fer ze mask. Van more zing - vill I make ze mask revlective or vill I leave it dull?”

“Dull please, and make the copper mask, I probably won’t hit black gold for another decade or so”

“True, I nearly vorgot zat iz only been ten years since ve met, during yer orientation. Zat’s not a new record, but it iz very imprezive to become a gold shadow in just van decade”

We chatted for a few more minutes before I decided to let her get back to her work, and I went to take a few short-term information gathering missions. There were likely many ways to go about this kind of work, but I elected to slip into various noble residences and criminal hideouts as a cat, put as many documents into my spirit realm as possible when left alone with them, and then leave. 

Brute-force, but none the wiser about how it was done. Since that’s about as much as was expected of an iron or copper silent shadow, I was able to do two or three of these missions per day. Sometimes I’d sort through the documents to check if I got the right thing, other times I’d just turn everything in and say “either it’s in there or it’s not the kind of mission you said it’d be”. While I was sorting through those documents, I found some interesting ones.

“Let’s see... worthless, rumors everyone’s heard before, an investigation into his own wife to see if she’s having an affair... their competitor’s secret recipe for crab meat burgers, with the surprise ingredients being barnacle shavings, turmeric, and three kinds of mildly addictive drugs, okay, might want to have Tilly forward that to the commerce minister... more worthless stuff... lot of affairs they’re investigating - oh, with attached record crystals showing just how intimate the affair gets, that makes sense, this guy likes voyeurism and figured out how to be paid to do it”

I stopped looking much at those types of files after that, I knew all I needed to know about those now. Perhaps more than enough, but I digress.

“Ah, that’s interesting, this one is the results of an investigation into the identity of the mysterious person Empress Tilaramine refuses to talk about... and they got pretty close, they’re thinking it might be some kind of personal assassin, and they even named the Reaper’s Claw as a suspect for that personal assassin, given when I began leaving that calling card and when Tilly came back to the capital, plus who some of my first targets were. I wasn’t aware that Baron Felnore and the Grand Treasurer were both staunch supporters of then-prince Jcerniv, but I can see how that’d lend credence to that conclusion. Well, I’ll be burning that, no need to turn it in... and here’s what the guild’s client was actually looking for, the real business ledger with actual names, not the fake one they’d been given before. Was honestly not expecting to find it, but... I’ll take it”

It probably wasn’t just sitting on the desk, but in a locked secret drawer... and such things don’t really do anything to keep me from taking their contents if I can still touch them with my spirit, so if I take everything in and on a desk except for the desk itself, well... it all ends up in my spirit realm, lock or no lock, regardless of if I knew about the secret compartment or not.

[If you weren’t expecting to find it, what was the plan?]

“Well, the request had that as a bonus item, the main deliverable is just as much information as possible”

[So, are we done with this request?]

“Yep. Hopefully it’s enough to get me to copper, this is the last one I’ll be taking before I go on vacation”

[Silver was a wee bit ambitious, eh?]

“Shaddup”

Leon was right, it was a bit far-fetched when I have no particular skills in this regard. I have the ability to disguise myself as an unassuming cat, the ability to appear as having no cultivation at all thanks to my void spirit realm, and that’s about it. Getting to silver in about a day as a blood shadow was thanks to having a nigh-unblockable weapon and an effectively limitless supply of one of the most deadly toxins in the nine realms, on top of the aforementioned disguise. 

I have no skills or abilities that allow me to walk through walls or stay undetected and unseen in the middle of a room like most higher-ranking silent shadows. I also haven’t been trained on how to be a good spy - I might ask Tilly if she could introduce me to one of the imperial spymasters for a crash course, actually - and so all I can do at the moment is this kind of brute-force document gathering. 

“Or perhaps I could get some information by interrogating someone before I kill them? Though, I’d rather not do that when I’ve not been asked to act as a blood shadow, not to mention that I have no training in interrogation either, all I could do is use some pills to make them unable to lie while I clumsily torture and threaten them. But I would have to kill them at the end of it all, as having that kind of thing linked to me wouldn’t be great for my image, right?”

[Fair point, that would sssuck]

“But enough on this topic, I’ll have more tools at my disposal if I can find a teacher. Worst case, I’ll ask Lavi to introduce me to someone, but hopefully Tilly can do so”

[Alright then, how about sssome other topic? When are you planning to get me my sssecond ssset of ssspirit patterns?]

"When I find something I think would work well. Besides, I'm still only level 19 right now, you can't even get a full set"

While idly chatting with my spirit companions, I quickly finished reading through and sorting the last pile of documents I’d pilfered, and transferred everything I was planning to hand over into one of my hundred or so spare spatial rings before hopping off the roof and sprinting towards the shadows’ guild.

CaTastrophy427

Well, here it is. Chapter 1 of the second book. Took a while because I took a break to do some outlining, and I'm still nowhere near done with that. Next upload will be in my other novel, but that'll be on hold until I'm done with outlining a good chunk of this book. You can join my discord to get updates on my writing and/or health, ask questions, or claim your spot in the hall of fame for finding the many references I sprinkle into my novels.