For a second, Stanis saw himself blasting into the house and killing the two where they stood. But in the next second, he loosened his fists and stumbled back, eventually running away from Sil’s house. He found a dark alleyway somewhere down the distance and ran into it in order to recollect himself.

But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t throw ropes over his thoughts. He mind wandered from thought to thought, feeling the same emotions of anger and distrust every time.

Why was it Jayesh?

It was this one fact that was the crux of the problem. He had known that Sil would most likely find another person to have fun with once he left, but why was it Jayesh? Jayesh was someone who he had once been close to but also someone he had left in the dirt. He had sensed no connection between Sil and Jayesh before he had left.

But what if there had been a connection? What if he had been getting spoon-fed a sugar solution all this time when hidden beneath the sweetness was a horrible bitterness.

Stanis stretched out his arm and leaned onto the wall beside him. He pressed the other hand against his face and stood there motionless.

He revisited all his past events through his memories. He was searching for the clue, for the sign that revealed the larger conspiracy hidden behind all of this. By the end of his visit down memory lane, his jaw was gaping wide-open and his heart was beating hard. There were too many clues, too many signs…

His eyes roved across the alleyway. He could feel his hairs standing on their ends. But before his paranoia could take hold of him, before it could wrap him in its arms, a bitter coldness rose inside of him. He squinted his eyes and relaxed his back onto the wall.

He had underestimated the village; he had underestimated humanity. He had been illusioned by his own power and that of his seemingly powerful Jaguar-allies. He had essentially placed a mirror in front of himself. He had only seen the reflection of himself; he had only seen his faults that he could improve, as well as his greatness. But behind the mirror the pieces had kept on moving, in fact, they had never stopped.

It had been fine before as his power had vastly overpowered the village’s. But now it had cast itself into prosperity in his absence, and only now did he finally see the pieces moving. As if only proving his point further, Stanis thought about the lack of Jaguars now in the village. While the Jaguars primarily focused on themselves, they should have at least had one or two Jaguars posted here.

He grit his teeth and shook his head. This was not the time for thought; this was the time for action. He cast Scout and sense and followed it up with Layman’s rush. He moved like lightning, sprinting out of the alleyway in less than a second. He then lunged towards the wall of a house. The wall caved inwards and before his target could even move, before his target could even breathe, Stanis’s hand was around the watcher’s neck.

Eyes shivering wide, the watcher struggled to keep his heart in his chest as his neck scraped past the reaper’s blade. He was done for; the speed, the power, they had vastly underestimated this enemy…

“You scream, you die,” Stanis said.

Before the watcher could even respond, Stanis had already picked him up by his shirt’s neck. And just like he had come, he was gone.

Eventually, after passing by many a house, Stanis came to a halt and dropped the watcher square on his arse. Gut still rolling, the watcher recoiled from the ground and frantically peered around like a frightened hare.

“Are you the only one?” Stanis asked.

The watcher instantly reacted to the question and felt his own eyes shine. There was still a way out. He instantly put on a mask and looked up with a fearless expression, before breaking down into deep fear once again. The fierceness Stanis looked down at the watcher with: it was clear that he wouldn’t even take the slightest of bullshit.

“Yeah,” the watcher croaked out.

In truth, Stanis hadn’t sensed the watcher with his Scout and sense. He had experienced a similar phenomenon with the watchers on him earlier: it was as if they had an ability that blocked his own one. But still, due to his mana sensitivity, he had felt an invasive point watching his actions with a predatory gaze. All he had to do from there on was follow the point back to its source.

As for the watcher, he had really fucked up. After half a day of watching Stanis, the multiple watchers had graded him not much trouble and thus had left the watcher as the sole one assigned to Stanis. Just in case they said, just in fucking case…

“Why are you watching me?” Stanis asked. His cage broke near the end and the last words came out much colder than he had anticipated, throwing the watcher further on his arse.

“Orders,” the watcher answered. “Y-you skipped the defences. You were considered a danger,” He almost choked on the last word, cruelly laughing at his own misfortune. Considered a danger.

Stanis snorted in response and asked another question. “Who am I?”

“I-I don’t know?”

Stanis snorted again. The watcher didn’t seem to be lying but then again, he could just be a very good actor.

“Fine, tell me, who leads the village?”

“Drak,”

So there had been a change in leadership. All Stanis knew about Drak was that he had been the leader of the old Riverbeat village and then in a relationship with Alyona.

“I recall Jaguars being allied with this village. Where are they?”

“They’re still here, just that they don’t have much contact with anyone other than the leadership,”

“Who are the strongest in the village?”

The watcher grew further vary at this question. He was now almost certain that this domineering figure in front of him was an enemy spy, most likely a powerhouse from another village.

Stanis saw the hesitation in the watcher’s eyes and moved closer.

“Answer,” he said, as he released lightning from his palms. The lightning danced around the watcher almost as if they were connected to head-height thunder-cloud. The bolts zapped the ground around the watcher, slowing edging inwards towards the man.

“Caleb, Orena and Moonshine,”

Stanis wrinkled his eyebrows at the last name, an unfamiliar name. But it was good to know that two of the people he had taught, albeit shortly, were still the strongest.

“Who else? That surely can’t be the best you can offer,” Stanis said. He said it with a grandeur that immediately made the watcher re-evaluate him. Not just a rival powerhouse but an exceptionally strong and proud one on top of that.

“There’s Sil, David, Jayesh, Tanya, Ji-yeon and Xin. And…” The watcher stopped in the midst of his words. He stared mouth wide-open at Stanis. The links all came together: the interest in leadership, the interest in Jaguars, the domineering power, and a skill to do with lightning. While his appearance had changed, the closer the watcher looked, the more striking similarities he found. “And you.” he ended.

Before Stanis could ask another question, the watcher asked one of his own. “Why are you doing this?” He asked with both desperation and exasperation.

Stanis squinted his eyes at the watcher. “Just answer my questions and I’ll let you live,”

“But you don’t need me. Other people would gladly tell you more if they knew who you were,”

“You don’t need to know,” shouted Stanis. His sudden twist in temperament threw the watcher back into a pit of fear. He had felt a moment of security after realising the man who he had been captured by was one of the village’s. But it turned out that Stanis was immune to common sense.

“Tell me what happened to the village after I left, and tell me in DETAIL,” Stanis said.

“Uhh, after you left. Oh, then. After you left, the blacksmithing industry blew up. The stuff they pumped out drastically improved in quality. Their standard soon blasted to dream-like quality and we began winning more of anything and everything. More people began flocking here and that’s all I really know.”

Stanis eyed the watcher with scrutiny.

“Honest,” the watcher explained. “I was just chosen to watch the influx of people coming in in recent days. I don’t know much else than what I see with my eyes.”

Stanis cancelled the spell and the lightning bolts broke. In truth, even if the bolts had struck the watcher, they still wouldn’t have caused much damage due to how weak they were, after all, Stanis hadn’t been going serious. He moved around a bit on his feet as he thought of his next actions. Things had apparently largely stayed the same, and it seemed the blacksmiths had been the inciting action for all the changes that had occurred.

Stanis turned around to the watcher and met him dead in the eye.

“What’s your name?”

“Omar,” the watcher replied, confused but equally grateful at the turn of events.

“Alright then, lead me to the forges, Omar,”

If Omar had been lying, then Stanis would be easily able to chop him down as he discovered the truth for himself. But if he hadn’t been, well, then it was going to get all the more interesting…