"What?" Mercy exclaimed. "Aether saint? No way! But… but he's so young."
"Youth has nothing to do with it… not after what he… nevermind," Merasi said. She couldn't reveal that bit of information yet. That was very important to the tower.
"Oi Alekor! Have your eyes gone bad or what? You said he was an Aether Emperor," Silvers called from the back.
"I… made a mistake?" Alekor said, almost as if he couldn't believe it himself. Once again, he sent Aether to his eyes, trying to judge the density of Aether in Ning's body.
However… it still seemed like an Aether Emperor, not a saint.
"You can't see it," Merasi said. "He has his Aether wrapped around his core. He's only showing you what he wants you to see. If you really want to see it clearly, you need to have denser Aether than his."
"I… see," Alekor said. He couldn't have imagined that this new recruit was actually as strong as him.
Ning was quite surprised as well. 'I can't underestimate these people from the tower, can I?' he thought. It wasn't long ago that Alexis had taught him to use Aether to look at things to see the usage of Aether.
He had thought that this was an exclusive skill that only he knew. However, it seemed that it was a skill that the higher-ranking members of the tower already knew.
"Sigh, I guess I'm about to get dethroned as the second in command in the group," Alekor said jokingly. "Anyway Captain, what's the news?"
"Bad!" Merasi said, suddenly remembering her conversation with the lord. She crossed her arms and put on a pout, one that… somehow made her look cute.
"Bad? Why bad?" Alekor asked.
"If I want to keep Terran in my squad, I can't go anywhere dangerous," Merasi said, quickly adding, "he's a bit too important for the tower to lose."
"Eh?" Alekor exclaimed this time. "What about all the scouting I did then? I even found the terrorists that recently joined. I thought we were going to attack them."
"No we can't," Merasi said. "Not unless we… drop Terran from the squad."
"But my hard work," Alekor cried out. "What about we just leave him for now. He's new anyway."
"That… would be good, except I fought with the Lord to even keep him in the tower. If he finds out I left the tower without him, he will surely take him away. He's too good of a fighter to keep locked up in the tower."
Alekor couldn't deny that. Even Mercy who was angry at Ning couldn't deny that.
"Then what do we do, Captain?" Silvers asked from the side.
"We have a new mission. One that is… hopefully not as boring as it sounds," Merasi said.
"What is it?" Mercy asked.
Merasi took out a map and threw it in mid-air. The map unfolded to show a detailed map of the continent of Vilmore.
The map had the Serian empire at the bottom with the Freelands to its left, the Republic of Embers to its right, and the Principality of Losmana above it.
Ning looked at the map carefully. It wasn't as detailed as his mental map, but it seemed to have a lot of crosses and marks made on it.
"Here," Merasi pointed to a place on the map. The place she pointed to lay on the lower right side of the Serian empire, a city called Urandran.
"A nobleman by the name of Higen Callum died this morning in his house, in Urandran. It looks like a suicide, but the family suspects foul play," Merasi said.
"I see… but what does that have to do with us?" Alekor asked.
"We are to go and investigate," Merasi said. "To find if this was truly a suicide, or if someone actually killed him."
"That's great… but why us?" Alekor asked. "That sounds like a detective's job. How are we supposed to help?"
"I don't know," Merasi said. "I'm sure the Lord is just trying to give us as mundane of a job as he can to keep us busy and keep him safe."
"Why would the lord try to keep him safe? It's not like he's the lord's son or something, is he?" Mercy asked.
"Haha, no. But he is important to the lord. Or rather, he is important to the whole tower. In fact, He is more important to the tower… than me," Merasi said.
"Why is that?" Mercy asked.
"I can't tell you. It's a Tower secret that not many know about," Merasi said.
Alekor tried to act as much in the unknown as he could. He was almost cursing at his unnaturally good hearing that he liked to employ every day to get in the habit of using continuously.
Silvers came and patted him on his shoulders. "Don't worry, your scouting won't go to waste. I'm sure the other squads will make good use of it."
"In fact, you should go tell them that there is a saint on the enemy side unless they send only kings and emperors. That would be a disaster for the tower," Silvers added.
Alekor nodded. He really should do that. "When do we leave, captain?" he asked.
"In half an hour. I don't trust the lord the keep his promise of letting me keep him, so I want to take him away while I can," Merasi said, then a smile crept on her face. "Hehe, now that he is a saint, he can probably fight me too. Can't you, Terran."
Alekor shook his head as if pitying a fellow victim. Then, he left to pass along the information before leaving.
"Go grab whatever you need," Merasi turned to Mercy and Silvers, who left quickly.
"Right, here," Merasi took out a pair of coats and pants that were dark purple and white.
There was a dark purple shirt to wear inside the coats. The coat itself had an image of a tower patched onto the side of it.
On the other side, there was a sword and staff crossed together.
This was the uniform of a member of the Battle Force.
