Chapter 11: Because Life Always Gets Complicated When You’re Close to Your Destination?

Nathan looked at the box again.

"Which leaves us with the Temple."

The box, naturally, neither confirmed nor rejected the conclusion.

"Thanks for agreeing," Nathan said. "It’s good to talk to someone who listens without interrupting."

---

He stood up from the stone. Hoisted the box back onto his shoulder.

"So the plan is this," he said, as he resumed walking. "I enter Greywall through the north gate. I walk in a straight line toward Five Anvils Street, exactly as Brenwick told me, for long enough that anyone watching me sees I’m heading in the right direction. About three blocks before his office, there’s an intersection with a street that goes south. If I take that turn, I reach the Temple of the Three in less than five minutes at a good pace. The change in direction will be visible, but by then I’ll be close enough to the Temple that no one can intercept me without causing a scene on sacred ground."

He nodded to himself.

"It’s a reasonable plan. It has flaws. The main one is that it assumes no one will be waiting for me at the city’s outskirts—which is an optimistic assumption."

Pause.

"But like I said, I’m not a hero. I’m a guy trying to do something approximately decent with limited resources. If this were easy, someone with more rank would already be doing it."

---

He walked the last kilometer in silence.

The city of Greywall appeared on the horizon, its gray walls rising above the road line, the towers of the major guilds visible even from that distance. Soul Sense remained active at the back of his perception, registering the city’s normal life as a distant heat map—no specific threats, no non-living presences in the immediate radius.

Nathan picked up the pace slightly. He wanted to enter Greywall before the sun began to drop, which left him about two hours.

He reached the final stretch of road, where the path widened in preparation for the city’s northern entrance. To his left was a dense grove; to his right, open fields. The road was flanked by a few tall trees casting long shadows across the ground.

Soul Sense flared stronger than usual.

Nathan stopped dead.

*Wait.*

The presences appeared in his perception as heat points arranged in a very specific pattern. Three to his left, in the grove. Two to his right, crouched behind a low stone wall. One behind him, about twenty meters back, where the road curved. And one ahead, standing calmly in the middle of the road itself, as if waiting for him.

Six living humans.

Four non-human but living presences. Canine. Large. Trained.

And among the human signatures, two of them glowed in Soul Sense with the specific intensity of active bearers. Seals. Channeled mana. Awakened Classes.

*Shit.*

The figure ahead on the road took a step toward him.

He was a middle-aged man, tall, dressed in reinforced dark leather armor, a short ash-gray cloak, and a clearly visible mark on his neck: an inverted triangle with three dots—the symbol of Draken, the Shadow Hunter. Behind him, emerging from the grove to his left, two more men appeared with trained combat beasts on short leashes. The animals were forest hounds—thick-necked creatures with reinforced jaws, bred specifically to hunt humans on open roads.

From the low stone wall to his right, two more figures emerged. A young woman with a visible Draken mark on the back of her hand. A thin man with a different mark—one Nathan didn’t immediately recognize, but whose profile suggested one of the minor Seals associated with private legal-assassin guilds.

Behind him, completing the encirclement, another man with a bow already drawn.

Six people. Four hounds. Two official bearers with visible Seals. A perfectly coordinated encirclement at a point on the road where there were no witnesses, where the city was far enough away that no scream would reach the walls, and where the grove provided immediate cover for moving a body.

*Alright. Alright. Alright. This is very well planned.*

*This isn’t a random robbery. This is a professional team contracted specifically to intercept this package.*

The man in the center of the road smiled. His smile was almost cordial—the kind of smile someone has when they’re about to explain a business transaction.

"Hunter," he said. "Good afternoon."

Nathan lowered the box to the ground carefully, making sure it remained leaning against the nearest tree in an upright position. If the person inside was sedated, he didn’t want them getting jostled during what was clearly about to happen.

"Good afternoon," Nathan replied, keeping his hands visible and his voice at exactly the same cordial tone.

"What you’re carrying," the man said, gesturing casually at the box with one hand, "originally belonged to a client who didn’t finish paying his debt to our organization. Merchant Brenwick acquired the merchandise without completing the proper consultations with the previous creditors. We’re here to correct that administrative error."

*Ah. Excellent. Brenwick is in a dispute with an assassin guild over ownership of the person inside the box. And I’m caught in the middle. This is getting better by the minute.*

"I understand," Nathan said, as calmly as possible. "Does this mean you want the box, or does it also mean you want me not to reach Greywall to report what happened?"

The man’s smile widened slightly.

"That depends a great deal on how reasonable you are in the next thirty seconds."

The hounds tensed against their leashes, ready to be released at the first command.

The archer behind Nathan adjusted his aim.

The woman by the low wall rested her hand on the grip of a short dagger.

Nathan, standing in the middle of the road with a box beside him that probably contained an unconscious person and six armed professionals surrounding him in execution formation, did the only thing his brain could process in that moment.

He activated Soul Sense at maximum intensity.

And started calculating very, very quickly.