The God of Jesters
Chapter 303 - 5.09.4 Piece falling to places.

Chapter 303: 5.09.4 Piece falling to places.

Lies, they had to be lies, she thought.

Lies conjured up to weaken her resolve. Lies to make her give up on her life and walk into a trap.

But Sheva knew in her heart that these were not lies.

Whoever sent this little girl this way, they were aware of what they were doing and from the looks of things, it worked.

So she did as they had wanted, she planned to leave this place and walk into that obvious trap of theirs.

"I can’t let you." But before she could do such a thing. A small dart struck her neck. "Sorry for this. I can’t let you sabotage this mission." The man said while dropping the gun and rushing to close the door.

But none of that happened, Sheva just gave the man one look, took out the dart from her neck and then gently carried the girl in her hands, while speaking words of comfort to her.

"??"

It didn’t work. "Do you know, you are falling into their trap."

".... I am sorry, but I promise to not say a word of it to them." She says, but the man barely believed her. ’Shit.’ He thought before putting another dart into the gun, but then stopping.

Too much of the paralysis poison can turn lethal. So although he didn’t understand how Sheva was able to handle that, he knew that another shot might just kill her.

"This is why you shouldn’t trust an outsider." He thought to himself. But he knew Sheva had a purpose as well, she was here to lead them to the orphanages with the connection to Jester. Or so she had thought, as in truth, after she had named the orphanages, there was no real reason for why she was here to begin with.

This was only something Remira knew or even aware of, though from the perspective from the Gray eye, she was baggage and nothing more.

*****

It was day three since I last met with Henry, and he visited my home again. "I brought some beer," he said today.

In last visit, he got to see my Master Max, who looked closer to the corpse. Drained with barely any light in them, the only proof that he was alive was the little light in his eyes that screamed of his sentience, but nothing more.

"This is him?" He had asked that day and I told him stories about my master’s greatness with some little modifications.

It’s why his mood had turned worse, seeing the life I lived when compared to his, and how I was able to still go on, while he had given up on his own, it was a contrasting experience for him. It was also at that moment, he faced a certain realization.

’I am a coward.’ There are people with way worse life than him and they were able to go back to normal, but here he was, fallen into depravity and stuck in his room, waiting for his own end.

’I wronged her, I had wronged my parents.’ he thought, before looking at his friend’s foster father and then his friend. ’More than anyone, I wronged him.’

Crow needed him the most and Henry abandoned him. That was the wrong thing to do and he had come to realize this.

It’s why he tried to go to school again, but gave up at the last second until he tried again and again for the next two days, but finally came to Crows house with some beer. "You can’t drink it." Crow complained, while taking the beer bottles from Henry. "So come in before anyone sees you."

They got drunk in the morning, a simple drunk where Crow was in complete control of his emotions, unaffected by the emotional swings of alcohol, he talked a bit more, leading Henry away, throwing him hints and pieces of hatred, until Henry said. "He used me."

Henry didn’t know how, but he knew that Rashid came to him, a person without any strength for a reason.

Because why else would he be brought there? Why else an apprentice like him would be dragged into something dangerous like this, instead of Rashid’s bodyguard, that was enough.

"He probably didn’t expect things to go so bad." Crow said, as if defending Rashid, but Henry just shook his head. "You were not there...*hick. Heee.’ His voice slurred as he tried to talk."

"She was horrific... It’s impossible... he didn’t know." The last month had been filled with self reflection for Henry, he kept repeating the past events in his mind. And no matter how hard he thougt about it, considering that Rashid had been aware of that woman’s identity and the amount of danger all of this would put Henry in. Rashid still chose to drag Henry into all of this.

This was not ignorance, there was a reason.

"All were traumatized... gone through. Test? I... didn’t." He spoke in a slurried tone, but Crow read it all, he learned some new things, things that his boss might not be aware of.

"Hey.. hey.. Why.. Why don’t we just go.. Go and ask him?" Crow reciprocated in the same tone, and Henry’s eyes suddenly lit up.

"Yes... definitely... I.. good idea."

Two drunks, one ignorant and one a fool suddenly started to get ready to leave the house.

But suddenly, the maid of Crow appeared and then shouted at them. "Where are you going this drunk?"

"Me?" Crow pointing his finger at himself, before his body swayed while he pointed it to henry. "Are you talking to him?"

"You drunkards, first you don’t go to school and now this..." She nagged for a bit before pointing toward Henry. "And aren’t you under 18? How did you even think of drinking at this age?’

"Bu.. But he.."

"He is a dwarf, he drinks regularly."

"Oh."

One nag after another and their mission came to fail, both of them stopped for the day. And by the time Henry was sober, he slowly left for his own home.

"Good work today." Crow thanked his maid, who just gave him a deep look before asking. "I will relay today’s findings to the Leader, you should take a rest."

"No, my body filters out alcohol at a faster rate, I can still practice. You should go and look after the master, he is probably annoyed after all this noise from us."

"You do you."

Today was a fruitful day, the fool had fallen for the manipulations and things were progressing at a rate much faster than I had expected.

Now, all I need to do is trigger him enough to sway the conversation into the mission and then wallah, she will end up doing what I want.

But for now, I still have to give priority to my personal strength.

I am too weak and have somewhat stagnated in growth since a while algo. ’In the apprentice stage, for normal Knights without supernatural powers, they focus on strengthening their vitality and accumulating more energy.’

’Both of which had been secondary to my polymorph training.’

’I might have messed up the balance.’

There was generally no one to teach me what to do in such a situation. The precedent of an apprentice of my level having supernatural abilities was absurd to begin with, hence making it harder for me to obtain how others in my position handled this situation.

’Master probably didn’t suffer from this, that’s why he didn’t mention it before.’

A day doesn’t go by that he doesn’t train during his free time. And the more days go by when there is no progress, the desire to fall to the vial that his boss had gifted him becomes stronger and stronger.

"A one time boost, you can enter the adept state." Words like these keep echoing in his head, making him go closer and closer to the vial, until it remained on his table like a delectable vice waiting for him to fall to it.

’Bloodline is just a mere shortcut, if you fall to it, the only way to progress is strengthening the bloodline, other methods won’t work as good anymore.’

So what to do?

"I have a long life ahead, no need to hurry too much." Kids my age were still at the boundary of mortal and a knight, barely stronger than normal people to begin with, while for Rashid, he was just weird with how he entered the adept stage so early.

But I was not special, I never was since the start, and this won’t change when I had Iron Skin bloodline, nor with this druid bloodline of my master.

Growth is a step by step process, I can’t rush it.

No, it would be more appropriate to say that it’s my rush to obtain higher strength that had caused the current stagnation.

Though, while I was having such bizarre thoughts. A knock came on my door.

"??" Confused, as it’s rare that someone would visit my home considering we were still strangers to this city with barely any interaction with the outside world besides going for grocery shopping and some other lies to keep curious people off our backs.

Was it Henry? Did he forget something and come back to retrieve it?

I looked around and found nothing.

"Hah, whoever it is, they won’t harm me." I thought and went to open the door, while my maid slowly left my house from the backdoor. Making me curious even more.

’Hmm.’

"Who is it?" I asked, without opening the door.

But there was no more sound at first, before something fell like a slump and then the cry of a child.

’What?" I hurriedly opened the door, only to find a familiar body in front of it. "Sheva?"