The Insider System

Chapter 170: Searching The 25th

Stepping into the market, Lake was able to answer his question of what people down here were eating, it turned out it was pretty much everything he had guessed. He still wasn\'t sure if this was stuff from above or not though. "Lake, stay here and see if anyone leaves once we start asking questions."

Lake nodded and thought about the fact that Freed had just given him the perfect job by accident. With his skill Marks Of Interest he would be able to find every person who left later if he wanted to but he was pretty sure he was just given a job to keep him out of the way because he was too new to actually be useful.

He had just been asked to be a lookout when he should be almost blind. After watching for a while he saw people start to thin out because of the questions being asked by the rest of his team and marked them. He was pretty sure if he looked at them later he could figure out where the Demon Worshipers were if he found a lot of them in the same place later if there was actually any of them here.

Just because these people were leaving it didn\'t mean they were involved and if they weren\'t they could just be trying to keep it that way. If Lake was a normal person he would probably be spooked by the type of questions they were asking as well. After a while they had pretty much asked everyone who was willing to talk to them and Freed motioned for them to follow him away.

Lake had pretended like he hadn\'t seen the signal and only followed when all of them started to walk out of the market. He was able to quickly catch up to them and once they were far enough away he heard Freed ask him. "Were you able to see anything suspicious?" Lake hadn\'t really seen anything suspicious at the market itself but he did notice a few of the Marks he had placed had kind of gone towards the same area.

This didn\'t mean anything because that could just be the part of town people lived in at the moment since the city was unfinished and mostly empty but he figured it was still worth going to if no one had any other ideas. "Kind of I guess, I noticed a lot of them were going the same way as they left and I figured we could go over there if there weren\'t any ideas based on what you got by questioning people."

Freed seemed to think it was good enough for them to go with it because he said. " Ok, but if we don\'t get anything after a while I think we should move on. It\'s a bit of a loose lead." Lake actually fully agreed and said. "Alright."

Leading them to where he thought would be a good place to start he could tell the others were a bit confused by how far he was leading them but none of them really questioned him about it and just followed. He wasn\'t sure if them being so trusting towards him was a good sign or not but he did find it convenient.

This was probably the effect of people knowing others had skills they didn\'t like to talk about and sometimes you just had to pay attention and try to understand what was going on. "Alright this is the area I\'m pretty sure." Lake left it at that and waited for Freed to make a move but he did start to use Mana Vision to look into the buildings that were around.

It didn\'t take long for him to start seeing things but he had no idea what any of it was. "I think we should knock on some doors. If there\'s anything going on around here the neighbors might have noticed something." After Freed said this he looked at Lake to see what he thought. Lake nodded and said. "Let\'s start with this one."

After he said this, Lake walked up to the door and knocked. He was able to see the people act normal and just walk to their door like nothing was going on that they needed to hide so he kind of slunk back and made it clear he wanted Freed to take over from here.

Once the door opened, Freed gave an introduction. "Hello. We\'re from the Fighters guild and were wondering if you had noticed anything weird in your neighborhood." After he said this the door was almost instantly closed in their faces. Lake understood these people wouldn\'t really understand what was at stake so they were unlikely to help.

That being said he didn\'t think telling them what was going on would be a good idea because he thought it might start a panic. Lake had seen it once already back in the capital when the war had gotten close enough that people had been able to see smoke on the horizon. It hadn\'t really been too bad but only because the guards had been able to keep the peace.

Just because that had been the case last time didn\'t mean there wouldn\'t be a riot here if word got out about the three day thing. After Lake thought this he realized he was actually in a really unsteady situation that could really affect him because of where he was at currently. If something happened that made the elevators stop working he could get stuck down here and while he was pretty sure he could still get out he didn\'t want to be here if they failed to find anything.

He would probably cut and run in one or two days so he wasn\'t here when the timer ran out. He guessed this meant he better at least try to find something and he just hoped all the other teams out there had the ability to do a good job in their areas. "Next house I guess." After Lake said this he moved to the next one in the line but he just went ahead and let Freed knock and watched how the people inside reacted.

...

Like what Freed had said they would do if they didn\'t seem to be in the right place they had decided to move on after about five or six houses and Lake just shrugged and said. "It was worth a shot. Do you guys have any ideas?" After a few seconds of silence Lake heard Peter start to talk only for Grendia to cut him off by saying. "We should split up. It isn\'t safe but doing this slowly isn\'t either."

Lake was sure people who lived here, like he was sure she did, would have this outlook because they had more at stake than someone like him who could just go back to wherever he was from. "I was actually going to say the same thing." Everyone looked at Peter and wondered if this was true but no one said anything and eventually Freed said. "Ok, but someone take Julie with them. She can\'t really fight if something happens because the balance of mana down here is so strongly skewed towards Stone and Metal."

Lake was expecting Peter to say he would but when that didn\'t happen he guessed they were going to let Julie choose. When Lake thought about it he had to give Peter kudos, this was the right move if you wanted to get a girl like Julie, you never wanted to come off too strong or they would get nervous and start avoiding you.

Or at least that was what he thought and he didn\'t even know if Peter was interested in Julie for real or just messing around earlier. Either way he just hoped she didn\'t say his name because he wanted to be able to go all out without them seeing him because he planned to do whatever was necessary.

"I\'ll go with Grendia." Lake almost didn\'t stop himself from making an \'Oof\' sound in time when she said this and just hoped Peter didn\'t take it personally because Lake thought Grendia was definitely the right choice for down here since she was the only one who could really see. With that decision made, Freed said. "Ok meet back at the market once you start to get tired I want us to give it our all because this is important."

Lake nodded and when he saw the others start to leave he went ahead and marked them in case he needed to find one of them later and started to walk away. Once he was unable to see any of them anymore he pulled up one of his skills called Detector. After thinking what would be a good thing to set it to look for, Lake just went with Demon Worshiper and when he could tell it was doing what he had asked of it he started to run.