A little puff of white smoke emerged from the Beacon, interrupting his reply. The aged wizard squinted at the circle that was drawn on the floor, before pulling out a bracelet. I watched it interestingly. I never had many opportunities to interact with the Conclave, after all. The only things I knew about them came from my mentor, and he went on and on about smoke, mirrors, symbols, and icons. I was fairly sure the last two were synonyms, but he’d have whacked me upside the head for pointing that out.
A green spark flared into existence for a moment, and the bracelet floated out of the wizard’s hand, into what I guessed was the exact centre of the circle.
As a whole, magic was the exclusive purview of wizards and witches. The ability to use magic was limited to the amount of mana their bodies had. Although they could draw mana from their surroundings, there was far too little mana floating around naturally to be of use.
What was interesting, however, was the bracelet.
Was it floating because the wizard was fueling it, or was it acting on its own accord? I mimicked the old man and squinted my eyes, trying to figure out the designs on it, right before it started spinning in an erratic manner, causing my head to spin with it.
For-crying-out-loud. I gave up on the endeavor and left the room, having decided that I could examine at leisure later. The bracelet was probably a way to remotely receive any messages that were headed to my beacon, as I would be bunking elsewhere for an entire fortnight soon.
I yawned loudly. The last few days had been rather busy, and any other free time had been reserved for sleeping. It was the first time in a good while that I had time to myself… although I had little to do by myself anyway. My eyes moved naturally to the wall opposite, which was decorated with photos.
They were milestones of things I’d accomplished. As they were taken by me, I wasn’t inside for most of them, but I didn’t look good on camera anyway. Most of them were pictures of the classes I had graduated from, but once I started working as a freelancer these pictures gravitated towards those of a crime scene.
There was a photo of a bunch of elves who had illegally entered Singapore by latching onto an unfortunate victim, under the purview of a smuggling ring. Another depicted a case of illegal occupation of property (a bed) by a bogeyman. And of course, the first stalker that I caught, that was bound much the same way a fisherman would bind a crab. Naturally, the last case was far more lucrative than the first two.
I chuckled at that memory. I had simply rushed up to him, and with the help of his would-be victim, turned him into a wannabe dumpling with some ropes before calling the police. Then, I took photos of him and left before the authorities arrived. Only one ended up on the wall, however; it was the one with the best lighting and angle, though that really didn’t count for much. It was the reward money that made me decide to hang it up.
I turned my head to look at the room. Evidently, the process of whatever the wizard was doing was getting rather dangerous, if one went by the lights that were flashing from the room.
“Hey! Everything going alright in there?” I shouted, a direct result of the whistles and bangs that were coming from the room.
Silence.
A little while later, the door opened, bringing with it a coughing old man, a retching middle-aged guy and a ton of smoke. I furrowed my eyebrows.
“What happened inside?”
A huge amount of smoke started wafting out of the open door, prompting me to open the windows. Moonlight streamed in, and the smoke made a bid for freedom outside the house.
The wizened old man coughed a few more times, before glaring at his younger counterpart.
“Turns out that your Beacon was in the middle of receiving a message when I was doing the upgrade.” He frowned, staring at the man from the Alliance. “The hell was with enabling the receive function before I finished my work, huh?”
He coughed again, and some more smoke left his mouth.
“B-but I didn’t,” stammered the middle-aged cultivator. “I didn’t turn it on, why would you say that?”
Right after he said that, the old man yanked at the collar of his shirt, pulling him down to his height.
“Listen here, young ‘un, I’ve lived for over a century.” He spat on the carpet, causing me to wince, before raising his fist towards the cultivator’s face in a mock threat. “And no youngster has ever harmed me like this and walked away—you hear?”
The old man flashed his teeth in eager anticipation. He wasn’t even making any effort to hide it now. “Reparations, kiddo, or I’ll complain to my bosses.”
I watched the old man as he continued to threaten the poor guy, and I rubbed my nose unconsciously. I knew where this was going. It was nothing short of extortion, but the old dude got the guy fully frightened.
It didn’t really take him that long to get what he wanted.
“Now listen here, little guy,” said the old man, jabbing a finger at the other man’s chest. “I hear my client here landed a pretty good bodyguard gig from your Alliance, and I want in on it.”
A thought of calling his bluff had flashed into my mind. It was quite obvious that this ‘accident’ was deliberately engineered, but I wasn’t too keen on pointing it out. The old man, however, had spat on my carpet… never mind. There were benefits to forgiving others. I sat back down on the sofa, feeling sorry for the maligned carpet.
“I have my professional integrity—”
“Then prepare to receive my lawyer’s letter.”
“—I’ll get you the contract.” He looked gloomily onto the floor and pulled out his phone. “Just call this number and say you were recommended by Lin Fan.”
The old man snickered gleefully, patting him on his back. “Heh, now that’s a good lad. Anything more you need?”
“I need your name to tell my boss too.”
“Look, kid, this is why you turned on the receive function by accident.” The old man sighed in mock regret. “Look at your document of labor allocation, it’s written there. If you can’t pay attention to your document, you probably can’t pay attention to anything else as well.”
I interjected in a hurry, before these two men entered their own world, while suppressing my own urge to throw up on the side, “excuse me, but do I need to sign anything too?”
The old man waved his hands in refusal and continued chattering to his victim. Shaking my head, I opened the door and sent them off, watching as they left my house. With the way things are going, someone’s going to get ripped off so badly that he’ll probably lose faith in humanity.
Not like I haven’t done things like that before though.
Come to think of it, I forgot to ask them their names too. At this rate, it was going to become a bad habit, but I never did really get around to memorizing names in the past few years. I found it tiresome, to say the least. I mentally shrugged and went to examine the newly-upgraded Beacon and bracelet.
The bracelet was still floating in the middle of the circle when I entered, spinning slowly. I took it and examined it closely. Even up close, it looked like your usual metal ornament , and the grooves on it didn’t stand out. I could vaguely feel something on it, but the clarity I had on whatever was done to the bracelet was on the level of the haze that Indonesia liked to send over to Singapore.
“Well, here goes nothing,” I took a deep breath and fixed the bracelet to my left forearm. Waiting with a bated breath, I tried to feel the surroundings for fluctuations of power.
There… was nothing.
“Idiot,” I chided myself. “This thing probably only reacts when there’s a message. There’s no point thinking about it now.”
A little wave of fatigue hit me, and I put the bracelet out of my mind for now. There would be time to examine it later, in any case. I turned around and left the room.
Chapter 8
The metallic bracelet glimmered on my wrist as I left the house, armed with a luggage case and a smaller bag on my back. Yesterday had gone by in a flash, a flurry of packin
g and dust-proofing, scaring some freeloading spiritual mold out of my house in the process.
Lugging my baggage, I walked over to the main road and flagged down a cab. I closed my eyes and hugged my bag as soft music played from the speakers, courtesy of the cab driver. The destination I had given the driver wasn’t particularly far from my house, but my body had been complaining about abuse for the past few days, something about sleep and what not. It had taken a minute for the driver to wake me, and another minute to pull out the correct amount of cash to pay him.
“If the owner was this rich, couldn’t they just hire a security detail or something?” I muttered as I got out of the cab. An impressive sight greeted me. Brown walls four times my height stared down at me, and an ornate estate gate, gold and black in colour, completed the picture. There were perimeter spikes: dangerous, metal spikes mounted on the wall, and CCTV cameras scattered about liberally.
I shook my head. “Looks more like a private military installation than a residence.”
The address listed had not given me a good idea of what to expect. Sure, the price of hiring me might have been unexpectedly high, but the sheer size of this estate was inconceivable, especially in land-scarce Singapore.
It was only a minute later that I discovered a familiar silhouette, dwarfed and hidden in the shadow of the large gate.
“Hao Wei!”
The figure jerked and turned around to face me, his mouth agape. I was almost certain it had remained that way for a good amount of time, and willing to bet that there were security guards watching and laughing at Hao Wei’s expression inside.
“Your mouth.” I pointed to my own jaw. “I could fit an egg inside.”
In response, Hao Wei’s face twitched, as though he wanted to close it. After failing to do so for a good five seconds, he forced his lower jaw back up with his left hand. I grinned. This particular piece of real estate must have been rather startling, and I could easily emphasize with him.
“I humbly apologize for that scene.” Hao Wei’s eyes turned misty. “To think that there would be a larger mansion than mine in Singapore… truly unbelievable. Had I not accompanied you, I would have continued to live in my shell.”
He shook his head in what seemed like regret. My eyebrow twitched.
Right, I didn’t know his background all that well, but there were hints that he came from a rather rich family. Still, for one to consider his own house to be the largest in Singapore… he was either insufferably ignorant or had the background to justify being so.
Knowing him, however, there was little doubt that it was the latter. I swallowed subconsciously, before following up with a deep breath. Tugging at my luggage case, I walked over to the gate, standing by him: shoulder-to-shoulder.
“Where would the bell be on a gate like this?” I looked around the gate curiously. There was a camera right there, and I walked into its view, hopping and waving around.
“Is there someone on duty? Or have the guards been dismissed?”
Hao Wei frowned, his eyes roving all around the gate. “I’m not too sure, but it should be somewhere around the left side. As for the guards…” He walked over to the pillar on his left and pressed something. “Is this it?”
“Why weren’t you that sure of the location of that button?” I asked, curious.
He looked away, suddenly incredibly interested in a certain part of the gate. “I usually just need to walk up to the main gate, and it’ll open. It’s not a good habit, but it didn’t really bother me that much. Until now, I guess.”
I punched his shoulder silently in response and walked into the sea of green. Hao Wei followed suit a beat later. We spent the next few minutes in silence, taking in the vast expanse of greenery that flanked the path towards the large and imposing building in front of us. The style of the building looked at home in the Victorian era, yet the cleanliness of the walls and spires didn’t offer any hint towards its age.
Hao Wei must have gotten more from his observation than me, judging from his rapidly turning head and widened eyes. I ignored his fangirling and walked up to the double doors that were probably the entrance to the mansion.
I blinked twice as I neared the door. There was a film of light protecting the doors and every bit of wall. It was subtle enough that I only saw it up close, and I unconsciously turned to look at Hao Wei. Did he see it too? Or was he still enamored with the mansion?
I raised my quivering arm and knocked twice.
“Hi there!” I said loudly, stumbling over my next few words. “We’re, um, here for the bodyguard assignment!”
In response, the door slowly spun inwards, horror-movie style. I backed away instinctively, expecting to see an endless patch of black. Instead, what greeted me was a nicely-lit room, with a man and a woman, dressed in similar uniforms, standing at attention.
“Good morning, sirs!” the man started off first, bowing as he did so.
“The master awaits you upstairs,” the woman followed up. “As are your companions.”
The woman smiled, silently beckoning us to follow her. I unslung my bag, leaving it on the floor before following her. After a few moments of walking, which included some turns and a staircase, she led us over to a door, and held it open.
The interior of the room was far more austere than I would have expected. At first glance, it was a study: filled with bookcases, and absent of any ostentatious decorations that I would have expected from people with such wealth, which might tell astute observers about the personality of the room’s owner.
Two people stood at attention in front of a desk, right in front of a window. I recognized one of them—the old wizard who came by a few days ago. Clearly, his blackmail had been successful…
“They sure got into their role quickly,” I murmured. It was pretty amazing to see the roguish old wizard standing so still, like a fresh recruit at Basic Military Training. Shaking my head, Hao Wei and I walked over to the desk.
I looked at the man occupying the desk, and it was with a keen curiosity that he stared back at me as well. His face gave off the impression that it was born between a sheet of steel and chiseled rock, and his well-defined muscles could be faintly seen even through his neatly worn blazer. Height-wise, he dwarfed us all, but it just gave him a feeling of a sturdy wall rather than an oppressive shadow. A faint air of spirituality could be detected from him as well; something to be expected from someone related to the cultivators’ Alliance.
They say eyes are the windows to the soul. It was true, especially when it came to wizards, who inherently had the Sight. But it didn’t take a wizard to immediately notice that this man in front of me had borne more than enough burdens for a lifetime.
“Mr. Newton, I presume? Nice to meet you. You can call me Mr. Meng, the branch leader of the cultivators’ Alliance in the Southeast Asian region.” He extended his hand to me, and I gripped it firmly.
I nodded in acknowledgement, and replied, “It’s nice to meet you too, branch leader Meng.”
His eyes flickered as I addressed him by his position. Seemingly putting it aside for a while, he gestured at Hao Wei.
“And this must be the…” Mr. Meng hesitated for a moment. “—extra help you brought in.”
I nodded silently. It was pretty obvious that he was trying to gauge Hao Wei, like what he did to me and the others. Mr. Meng broke the silence a short while later.
“Interesting. Members of the Practitioner Circle are rarely found nowadays, so it’s truly rare to see two at once.” Mr. Meng nodded his head. “Very well, welcome aboard, both of you. We have a long day ahead of us, so let’s get started immediately.”
He picked up four identical files and passed them around to everyone. “Inside are detailed maps and descriptions of potential adversaries that you might come across during this contract. We’ll have time to look through them later.”
His words got me somewhat uneasy. It was not unheard of to already have a list of potential enemies, but it was evident that whoever we
were going to be protecting wouldn’t be your average maiden. I peeked sideways, towards Hao Wei. It could have very well been a disservice bringing him along, using my knowledge as bait. He wasn’t anything I’d consider remotely experienced. I had simply invited him along on impulse, and he might have to pay a price as a result.
I bit my lip and was about to raise that issue when I felt a familiar hand on my back. Hao Wei shook his head silently, a faint smile on his lips. I swallowed and turned back, where Mr. Meng was droning on.
“—imperative need for everyone here to gain an understanding about everyone else’s capabilities. I’ll bring everyone here to meet my daughter after this.”
He looked around and paused, like he was on the verge of saying something. That expression lingered on for a moment, before it vanished. Silently, he left his desk, and exited the room with everyone else hot on his heels.
As we proceeded along down the hallway, it was getting obvious that the surroundings were getting increasingly… frilly. It seemed that the daughter differed from her father when it came to their outlook on interior decorating.
Incredibly so.
I brushed away a bunch of pink stuff that was hanging low enough to smack into my face and suffocate me outright. A little drop of sweat streaked down my face—I wasn’t sure of the correct expression I should have on my face at this moment. Turning one more corner, I ducked underneath another batch of decorations, and a garden came into view.
The expanse of green was interspersed with outlandish pink garnishes, and one could barely make out a white umbrella hidden within. Mr. Meng paused for a while, evidently trying to find a way through.
“This…” I looked at the equally flabbergasted Hao Wei. “How’re we supposed to navigate this?”
“It’s like the Labyrinth, the one at Knossos, but of the garden variety,” said Hao Wei, a little frown on his face. I turned to look at the old man and the other person.
I might have mentioned this before, but I was ridiculously awful at taking stock of people. It was an unconscious habit, one that didn’t endear me to many people. This probably started around a good seven or eight years ago, but I never really got around to rectifying that.
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