Chapter 44: The Price of Freedom

The four silver from the hunt didn’t stay in Eldrin’s pouch for long.

Two went toward replacing the weapon he’d nearly lost in the fight. Another paid for travel, food, and a few supplies he’d discovered were rather important when spending half the night outside the city.

The last silver went into his savings.

It was still worth it.

More importantly, the hunt had taught him something the books couldn’t.

Shade was useful.

Very useful.

He simply hadn’t learned how to use it properly yet.

The next several weeks passed in a blur of work, training, and increasingly short nights.

Eldrin kept his duties at House Korrandis during the day. Once six o’clock came, he left for whatever request he’d accepted, returned late, and spent whatever remained of the night studying his Pathway.

Shadow Step stopped feeling like a trick he’d managed to perform once.

At first he could barely manage a handful of uses before his mana became dangerously low. Then he learned to reduce the cost by shortening the distance and choosing better shadows.

Ten feet became fifteen.

Fifteen became twenty.

He still stumbled occasionally, especially when he tried to chain two jumps together without giving himself a moment to recover, but the failures became less frequent.

Veil was slower.

He learned that trying to become completely unnoticed was the wrong approach. The more he forced himself into obscurity, the faster his mana disappeared.

Instead, he learned to make himself unimportant.

A passing glance became enough.

A person looking directly at him might notice someone was there, but their attention would slide away before the thought properly formed.

It wasn’t invisibility.

It was worse to explain and far more useful in practice.

Eldrin smiled the first time he made it through a crowded street without anyone noticing him afterward.

Now that’s useful.

His mana pool was growing, too.

Twenty became twenty-six.

Then thirty.

By the end of the first month, he could maintain Shade abilities for far longer than when he’d begun.

That still wasn’t enough.

So he kept going.

The bureau began seeing him more often.

At first, nobody knew what to make of the quiet boy who kept choosing awkward jobs with mediocre rewards.

Then he started completing them.

A nest-clearing request.

A night escort.

A retrieval from a collapsed storehouse.

Another monster hunt.

Then another.

A failed hunt cost him more than money.

It cost time.

And time was becoming the one thing he had less of every month.

By the second month, the woman at the counter no longer needed to ask for his registration band.

"Another request?"

He looked down at the reward.

Five silver.

Not bad.

He folded it and slipped it away.

The biggest breakthrough came on a moonless night.

Eldrin was returning from a request when he found himself on an unlit stretch of road.

For most people, the road might as well have disappeared.

Eldrin stopped.

There was darkness in every direction.

He could barely distinguish the road from the fields.

Then he wondered:

What happens if there is no shadow to step into?

He reached for Shade.

Normally, he’d select a specific patch of darkness.

There was nothing to distinguish here.

Everything was dark.

Eldrin concentrated anyway.

The feeling was different.

Instead of finding a shadow...

he felt all of them.

The darkness itself seemed to become connected.

His breath caught.

He picked a point somewhere ahead.

He didn’t know exactly where.

He simply imagined himself there.

Shadow Step.

The world disappeared.

For one heartbeat, Eldrin felt as though he had fallen through cold water.

Then he emerged several dozen metres away.

He almost fell.

He caught himself against a tree and stared into the darkness behind him.

"...What?"

He tried again.

The same thing happened.

Then he tried to push farther.

The distance doubled.

His mana crashed.

Mana — 8

Eldrin immediately stopped.

His breathing had become ragged.

So that was the trade.

In ordinary conditions, Shadow Step required a distinct shadow to lock onto.

But in complete darkness, the entire environment could serve as the path.

He could move almost anywhere within it.

The limitation was brutal.

The cost.

One long jump had consumed more mana than several short ones combined.

Eldrin looked at the road stretching ahead.

A slow smile appeared.

So that’s how I’m supposed to use you.

He couldn’t rely on it yet.

But now he understood something much more important.

He wasn’t merely learning what Shadow Step could do.

He was learning what Shade could become.

By the time summer arrived, Eldrin had stopped counting individual requests.

The numbers mattered more.

Four silver.

Five.

Seven.

Three.

Another five.

Every time he returned to the bureau, his pouch became slightly heavier.

And sometime during his fourth month of hunting, Eldrin sat alone in his room and counted his savings.

The coins rolled across the wood.

He arranged them into neat rows.

Then counted them again.

seventy sevensilver.

Eldrin remained still.

He had expected the moment to feel different.

More dramatic, perhaps.

Instead, there was only a strange quiet inside him.

For months, freedom had been a number he carried around in his head.

Now it had become something physical.

Something he could hold.

He gathered the coins back into the pouch and tied it tightly.

Seventy seven was not enough by itself.

He already had the remaining amount he’d been saving from his earlier work.

The whole sum was finally there 100 silver coins.

Eldrin had reached the point where he could buy himself back.

That was exactly why he couldn’t do it yet.

The moment the contract was formally settled, House Korrandis would have no reason to keep him on as a household slave. He would lose access to the estate, and with it the only opportunity he had to learn what J7 actually was.

So he kept the silver hidden.

For now, freedom would have to wait.

That night, Eldrin returned to the southern edge of the Korrandis grounds.

The military district lay beyond the section of the household he knew, and the gate he’d seen months earlier was still guarded. Workers entered through a controlled checkpoint, each stopping long enough to present a permit before being allowed through.

Eldrin stayed beneath the trees until the road emptied.

Then he reached for Shade.

Veil flowed through him.

He didn’t try to erase himself completely. That had already proved wasteful. Instead, he pushed the ability as far as he could, suppressing every little thing that might draw attention... his footsteps, the movement of his clothing, even the instinctive urge to look around.

The cost showed almost immediately.

Mana began draining far faster than it did during ordinary use.

Eldrin ignored it.

He had planned this carefully.

He waited until a group of workers approached the checkpoint, then moved with them.

Nobody stopped him.

The guards glanced over the passing group, checked permits, and waved them through.

Eldrin kept his head down until the last guard turned away.

Then he continued.

Only after he had put some distance between himself and the gate did he let the Veil fade.

His breath escaped slowly.

Inside, the military district was nothing like the central estate.

Barracks stood alongside workshops, supply buildings, training grounds and rows of modest homes where soldiers and their families lived. Children ran between the buildings, messengers hurried along the roads, and soldiers returned from patrols while servants carried supplies in the opposite direction.

It was busy enough that Eldrin didn’t need to hide every second.

He simply became another face among hundreds.

He walked for nearly an hour.

No J7.

He checked the administrative buildings first.

Nothing.

Then the storage yards.

Nothing.

He searched for numbered sections, coded warehouse markings, anything that resembled the designation from the merchant ledger.

Still nothing.

At one point he found a building marked with a series of letters and numbers, but none matched.

Eldrin stood beneath an awning and looked at the notes he’d memorized.

J7.

It had to mean something.

But there wasn’t a single public building carrying that designation.

He followed another road farther south.

More homes.

More training grounds.

An enormous compound surrounded by a high wall.

He stopped there.

No entrance.

No visible sign.

Nothing.

Eldrin’s frustration began to build.

I’m missing something.

The designation was probably never intended for ordinary people to understand.

Perhaps J7 wasn’t the name of a building at all.

Perhaps it was an internal classification.

That would explain why Rowan’s map contained nothing.

Eldrin looked toward the heavily guarded compound.

Two soldiers stood outside its entrance.

Neither looked particularly threatening.

That wasn’t what worried him.

It was what lay beyond them.

Whatever was important in the military district would be guarded by people far more capable than the men at the gate.

A newly awakened Shade user might fool ordinary guards.

He had no confidence he could fool someone trained to detect infiltrators.

And if he were caught here, there would be no convincing explanation for why a Korrandis household slave had been wandering through restricted military grounds at night.