Ren left the temple feeling quietly satisfied with himself. He was certain now that leaving Tunish had been the right decision despite the reluctance, despite everything he had left behind. He made his way down the street, heading back toward the inn, when a hooded figure came rushing past him and shoved him hard to the side, nearly sending him crashing into a nearby fruit stall.

The shove irritated him. He steadied himself and turned, and that was when he saw the guards coming, huffing and laboring down the street. They were not going to catch this person. Not in the state they were in.

"Thief!" one of them cried.

[Quest: Order’s New Arm.]

[Aid the city guards in catching the thief and earn your reward.]

[Reward: +1 universal coin.]

[Failure will result in -2 charisma.]

Ren looked at the notification, then at the figure still moving swiftly up the street ahead.

"Simple enough," he muttered.

He had nothing pressing until evening. The morning had been his to move through at whatever pace suited him, and the prospect of an idle few hours was suddenly far less appealing than this. He watched the figure a moment longer, noted that instead of staying on the street they had taken to the buildings, using the rooftops to stay clear of the guards and maintain their lead. That was how they had been so effective. The guards were physically capable but they were not built or trained for this kind of chase, and this particular thief appeared to have made a study of getting away.

Ren stepped to the side, took a running jump, and pulled himself onto the nearest roof.

Without mana reinforcement his physical capability alone already exceeded that of a knight who had mastered basic mana manipulation. He moved across the rooftops easily, jumping and landing and jumping again, covering distances that left the guards struggling far below and behind. The grey hooded figure heard him land and turned. Ren caught the flash of surprise even from a distance. They had not expected anyone other than the guards to join the chase, and they certainly had not expected someone moving the way Ren was moving.

He assessed as he ran. He had assumed the thief was using mana reinforcement to maintain their speed and pull away so cleanly, but as he closed the distance and his senses settled on them, he realized that was not it at all. Their mana was entirely ordinary, the modest reserves of an average person with no particular training. They were not channeling it into their body at all. And yet they were fast, genuinely fast, with a quality to their movement that left brief afterimages trailing behind them on the sharpest bursts of acceleration.

A skill. It had to be. A speed skill of some kind, likely one with a cooldown built into it. He watched the pattern as he followed. The thief would surge forward leaving afterimages, then drop back to a regular pace, and after a stretch they would surge again. The acceleration was the skill. The deceleration was the waiting.

"Still fast though," Ren admitted between breaths.

If I keep going like this without boosting, they will eventually open enough distance on me.

He had wanted to keep things even, some part of him enjoying the chase as a test of his base capability. He let that go.

Enough of that.

He opened his core and let mana stream into his limbs. The effect was immediate. He watched the afterimages blur ahead of him as the thief activated the skill again, and this time he read the movement clearly enough to act on it. He launched himself from the roof he was crossing, the force of the jump significant enough that the rooftop cracked faintly beneath his feet. He dropped to the cobblestones below and immediately redirected the momentum upward, appearing directly behind the figure in a single bound. The distance between them had collapsed to almost nothing.

The thief activated the skill again, pushing for another burst, but Ren’s hand shot forward and closed around the collar of their shirt before the acceleration could take hold. The figure stopped hard, pulled against the grip, and looked back at Ren with open horror in their eyes.

"Let me go! Leave me!" The voice that came from beneath the black cloth wrapped around the lower half of their face was deep and clearly male.

He was determined not to be caught. He wrenched himself forward with everything he had, pulling against Ren’s grip until the collar tore, and the sudden release sent him pitching forward. He hit the cobblestones and went down hard, lying there and making weak sounds, the wind knocked from him. He was fast, but he had not been built to absorb impact. That much was obvious.

The guards caught up. Two of them hauled the man to his feet and pressed him face down against the street. A crowd gathered at the edges of the scene. The guards acknowledged Ren with nods, a brief and wordless respect for what he had done.

Ren stood and watched. He could sense the mood in the guards and it was not good.

One of them slapped the man across the face. Another reached down and pulled the cloth mask away.

Ren went still.

The face underneath was young. A dirty blonde teenager, the skin beneath the mask marked by grime and the fresh red of the slap already rising on his cheek. Another guard hit him, splitting his lip. Blood ran down the boy’s chin and dripped onto the cobblestones.

A guard retrieved what had been stolen. An ornate box, sealed, something of apparent value inside though no one opened it to confirm.

Then one of the guards drew his sword. A curved blade, pulled clean from its saber in a single practiced motion. He raised it and brought it down across the boy’s neck without ceremony, without hesitation, without a word.

The boy went still.

The guards lifted the body and carried it away. The crowd dispersed quietly, the way people did when something was over and there was nothing left worth watching.

[Quest achieved. You have earned one universal coin.]

Ren did not move for a moment.

He had seen death in this world. He had caused some of it himself and had made a degree of peace with that. He was not soft about it, and he had stopped pretending otherwise. But something about this sat differently. He had helped the city guards chase down a boy, and the city guards had killed that boy in the street for stealing a box, and Ren had not known that was where the chase was going to end.

Had he known, he would not have joined it.

That was the part that would not leave him as he stood on the quiet cobblestones with the crowd already gone and the afternoon continuing around him as though nothing had happened. He had not foreseen it. And now he could not undo it.

Ren exhaled.